OT: dial-up "response"

Trying to download something larger than 2Meg; used to be possible but recently not. Observtions: short 100-300mSec burst or bursts incoming followed by

1-20sec no data transfer; repeats until line drops out for no apparent reason. Solutions other than unobtainable high speed connection?

If you can hear static on the line. I would Call the Phone company and open a ticket for static on the line. Worked for my DSL problems.

Cheers

Can you query the modem for line quality? It might tell you something.

Sounds like you have prehistoric hardware of some sort and buffer overrun problems. What do the diagnostics say for the connection?

It would be easier to give sensible advice if you posted in one of the modem groups with specific after call diagnostics from the modem.

Better RS232 or modem drivers and chips with enhanced buffering.

I thought these days it would be hard to find any lacking these features. The 16550 became very popular when modems reached 56k because it became possible for the download speed to exceed what DOS or 'Doze could accept reliably. OS/2 could simulate IO buffering in the device driver.

Regards, Martin Brown

I think the drop-out is due to the line; and the "deadtime" might be the ISP. Too bad there is no free ISP for testing... I changed modem drivers as suggested by my ISP to no avai; a different OS not previously used for online work also had same problems. Cannot FTP upload due to similar problems (timeout mentioned in this case).

I may try that. Thanks.

Good question; what are the Hayes protocol commands for that?

Nominally before the problem(s), the datarate was 45K but have seen download rates in the 60-80K region for minutes.

some things to try:

1: test bandwidth to the other end of the PPP link

(eg: send a ping flood)

2: check line quality

after disconnecting from the ISP connect a teminal emulator (software) to your modem. and enter AT&V1

eg: OK at&V1 TERMINATION REASON.......... NONE LAST TX rate................ 24000 BPS HIGHEST TX rate............. 24000 BPS LAST RX rate................ 45333 BPS HIGHEST RX rate............. 45333 BPS PROTOCOL.................... LAPM COMPRESSION................. V42Bis Line QUALITY................ 026 Rx LEVEL.................... 018 Highest Rx State............ 83 Highest TX State............ 87 EQM Sum..................... 00D4 RBS Pattern................. 00 Rate Drop................... 00 Digital Loss................ 2000 Local Rtrn Count............ 00 Remote Rtrn Count........... 00 V90

3: complain

4: try a different provider.

(after terminating, or interrupting, the call) at&v1

RTFM. Look at the FAQs for the modem groups.

The delay is caused by your modem spitting out bytes of compressible material at your computer faster than the computer can cope. The overrun generates a cascade failure whereby data is lost, the ISP backs off and retries exponentially until you drop the connection. Line noise can make the situation even worse if speed renegotiation occurs as well.

Without the &V1 diagnostics it is a stab in the dark. And even with them it is necessary to know the chipset and revision level. Ask in the modem groups - there must be some other poor souls there still on dialup.

Regards, Martin Brown

Googled "connection testing"..Results:

1) BandwidthPlace.com screen went to "testing" and nothing happened; after about 5 minutes the line dropped out.

2) DSLreports.com selected most simple-minded version of mobile speed tests, 50Kb/s; got: 31Kb/sec 15Kb/sec 4kb/sec 11Kb/sec 0.738 -2.041 0.775 0.915 latency 13.428sec 27.583sec 89.744sec 35.770sec d/l

3) Speakeasy.net * two minutes to populate home page; clearly not for dial-up! * click on first >>> icon; get meter that stays at zero; line dropped after about 3 minutes and a screen with no meter.

4) Ping localnet.com --> nothing for 2 minutes; i quit in disgust.

It is only recently that i have has this problem and i have changed nothing. My COM1 port is configured to 115Kbaud. Both facts argue that the problem is not due to "modem spitting out bytes of compressible material at your computer faster than the computer can cope".

Thanks; will try that AT&V1 trick.

Good heavens and old style COM1 port at 115k and an external modem. That

*can* be maxed out with a decent V.90 connection and some types of web HTML (or certain types of text file). Internal modems have better buffering and these days are very cheap standard items.

What RS232 chipset, what buffering enabled and what driver?

It could also be a retrain problem. But you would be much better off asking these questions in a US modem group.

Regards, Martin Brown

chipset?? it is part of an ASIC on the motherboard (by ASUS). Driver is most recent from US Robotics. BUT... *All* of it worked for years until recently (went bad around April 1).

Maybe you got the worm...

Paul

I am trying to establish just how prehistoric your setup is. You appear determined not to provide enough information to make diagnosis easy.

There is a possibility that you have a virus that is saturating your limited bandwidth connection. Do you have current AV and fully patched OS? Also possible your ISP finally worked out how to enable compression.

You could always move to ISDN if you are stuck on dialup for the forseeable future. That gives you 64k per line (128k bonded) of raw data and more with compression - a worthwhile improvement over any 56k modem.

One thing you could try is disabling fall forward on the modem to see if it is a line noise related speed negotiation problem or alternatively force a connection at a more conservative data rate. Not sure how much tweaking of the modem S registers is allowed in the US region.

Regards, Martin Brown

I *finally* was able to get another ISP on a free trial basis.... ....WORKS FINE! ..so it seems that localnet.com has problems on their end...