"Grey Area" faultfinding

Google Groups 101

You could start at the index page with your symptom:

Most relevant groups appear to be: uk.telecom.broadband comp.dcom.xdsl

Think this post should be subtitled "How to google"

Simple problem every few day or so my ADSL dies on the computer. Switch off the external modem, reboot the PC (on XP). Ita all gets going again, How the hell do I tell Mr Google what the problem is, ADSL/or PC or windoze, which log file, if any.Yawn

Select/ask a newsgroup, fine, but which one?

Information overload...... but no info

What do you do if you don't have an IT(munsters) dept?

martin

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" Gandhi

wow that was quick, less than 5 min since I posted Dont have a spare modem, think its out of production now. I'd probably have to load new s/w, that would confuse the situation even more.

ADSL light stays on. I'm not particularly worried about the problem, its just one of those things that bugs me

martin

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" Gandhi

Hello Martin,

This means the modem doesn't loose sync, which is good. The PPPoE that Lewin mentioned can be a pain. Basically the ISP can "over-subscribe" which can lead to situations where they have more users connected than they have IP addresses. One solution to this problem is to start shedding users. Pretty much like an overbooked flight less the vouchers. Those whose connection has been deemed idle for a certain amount of time will probably be the first, I guess.

I had the same problem and this fixed it: I bought a good router with HW firewall. This does all the modem communications and the PC doesn't have to worry about it anymore. Then I set that router to "keep alive" where I believe it pings the web every so many minutes to avoid being considered "idle". Now the only outages I have is where the actual DSL signal goes into the weeds and the sync light dims out. That doesn't happen often though.

If you really don't want a router maybe your PC software has a "keep alive" feature. This is from distant memory: Before the router I used Enternet and it had that feature but it wasn't turned on as a default. When I turned it on it still didn't prevent dropped connections as good as the router does but it did improve it somewhat. I did bug the ISP a lot in those days because they had marketed their DSL as "always on".

Regards, Joerg

I'm tolerably good at un f****ng up windows, but networking is one of my weak points. I think I''ll move the modem to another PC if it gets serious. It's a bog standard install, with modem s/w provided by Spain'sTelefonica, somewhat dubious documentaion and really bad interface ( and my technical Spanish isnt that good)

It was really a post about how difficult it is to get google to solve/search complex problems. To get the hang of PPoE etc. How long would it take me, a day, 2, a week. I could be windsurfing instead!

martin

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" Gandhi

Try another ADSL modem if you can, or swap onto someone else's line for a while if possible. Check by substitution as much as possible (one at a time) until the problem stops. A pain, yes, but about the only way to do it.

Incidentally, does your DSL link light stay up, in which case the session has been lost, or does it actually go out (DSL gets lost)?

Cheers.

Ken

If the choice is windsurfing or spending (days?) learning enough to realise all you have to do is reset the modem every so often, it seems like a null-choice program. :-)

BTW, it doesn't need to be the same sort of modem (though that may help narrow it down to a possible legacy issue). Googling is great for specifics, but things like this just have to be worked through by a logical process. Best of British (or Spanish)!

Cheers.

Ken

Hi Martin:

I had good luck posting an ADSL question on the appropriate board at

Regards Ian