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An ancillary job of mine is to support an analog phone line for our credit card machine. From time to time AT&T changes out hardware in the core which causes the machine's modem to not connect over the phone line.

Testing the line by plugging in an anlog phone is not rigorous enough. Often the phone will have a dial tone and place calls, but there is too much noise for the modem.

I am looking for a hardware tool I can plug into the RJ-11 jack which will evaluate the line quality. I have a budget of up to a couple hundred dollars if necessary. I need to know if the line quality is degraded and unable to carry a modem connection.

I appreciate any recommendations of a tool to do this job.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Do you want to know how to construct a circuit to analyze an analog phone line for connection quality, or what tools to buy? It seems like the former (which would be a good thing, the latter isn't a good question for this site), given that you've linked to the Fluke website but wanted more. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 14:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ Shopping questions are off-topic and will be closed. No design is involved. \$\endgroup\$
    – Leon Heller
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 16:49
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    \$\begingroup\$ If you limit the community to design topics only then I think you are excluding enthusiasts who work in related fields. But maybe that's what you want. \$\endgroup\$
    – steampowered
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 21:09
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    \$\begingroup\$ This community is intended for people with design problems, not people who just want to buy something. \$\endgroup\$
    – Leon Heller
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 21:52
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    \$\begingroup\$ By signing up for this site and formulating a question on how to do something myself which is normally done by a technician, I am demonstrating a desire to learn. I could easily pay a contractor to do this, but I chose the route which requires me to learn and get involved with how the technology works. \$\endgroup\$
    – steampowered
    Commented Nov 17, 2011 at 0:59

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You could set up a line to transmit a digital signal somewhere and then this device would call this number. Off the shelf modems would probably be ok since you just need it at one place. Your device could just be a circuit that generates the same signal and computes the correlation with the signal.

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