Connection headaches

Over the past week my DSL connection has been giving me multiple headaches. When I initially switched from Earthlink to AT&T I discovered that the old DSL "modem" didn't work with the new fast connection. Rather than wait several days for AT&T to ship me one of theirs I went to Fry's and bought whatever they had. This was probably a mistake. Although it worked adequately for a few months, these past two weeks has been especially bad. After several rounds of phone calls and field repair by the AT&T engineers, the conclusion is that my DSL "modem", made by ActionTec, just isn't cutting it. The suggestion is that I should replace it with something AT&T likes. The new device just arrived so all I have to do is make sure it is configured correctly and drop it in place. If I have any connection problems after that, they can't blame my equipment.

Just for fun, this is my MRTG connectivity graph (ping round trip time) for last Wednesday. A lack of response is shown as a zero value and indicates the times where my connection was not working.