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Trouble shooting a slow dial-up connectionAug 06 '00 (Updated Aug 18 '00) Write an essay on this topic.We all know that DSL and Cable modems are the way to go if you want a fast connection to the internet that is always active and give you a static IP address. The fact is that many of us who would really love to have DSL or Cable access to the internet still don't have the service available to us because of our location or the price of getting high speed access. Therefor, I have maximized my internet connection with my 56K U.S. Robotics V.90 modem by eliminating all restriction problems one by one. For those of us who are relying on analog modems to connect to the internet, 56K is the fastest you will ever be able to download over a telephone line and 33.6K is the fastest you can upload. So why is it when I connect it says I am connecting at 38.8K? There are several things that determine your connection speed. The first thing to check is your telephone line. If you connect a telephone to the cable that you use to connect to the internet, you can listen to the dial tone and press any number other than #,*, 1 or 0. By pressing a number you silence the dial tone and can hear what your telephone line sounds like. If you hear absolute silence your phone line is clean, but if you hear a hiss or static then you have a "dirty line" and will have either connection problems, slow access or various random disconnections. If you have this problem, try replacing the telephone cable. If you still have the problem, call your local telephone company and report it. Many times they will do their best to "clean the line" but the phone company is only obligated to guarantee you 28.8K. Another thing that can effect your connection speed is how far away from a relay you are. If you live close to a major city, you will most likely not have to worry about this but in rural areas you may find that even with a clean phone line, a 56K modem and everything working perfect you can still only get 28.8K connections. The reason is, unless you live within 5 miles of the nearest relay you can't get the full connection speed of a 56K modem. Unfortunately there is no solution to this problem other than moving closer to a relay. Many relays were added in rural areas across the United States in the last 5 years but with the coming of DSL and Cable access they have slowed almost to a halt. So chances are pretty good that if there isn't a relay near you, there never will be. One thing you can do to keep your connection as best as you can get it is to have a separate telephone line solely for your computer and have the telephone cable as short as possible. In other words, you have a separate phone number for your computer and run directly from your telephone box to the computer. If you locate your computer as close to the box as possible, this will help maximize your connection speed. If you have a telephone cable that is 100 FT in length, your connection speed will suffer. Try to keep your telephone cable that you use for internet connection away from other cables and never twist two or more cables together. I used to twist all my computer cables together and tie them up to keep them from dangling all over behind my desk but this can cause magnetic fields that can interfere with your connection speed as well as cause other problems. Not only can it hinder your internet connection but it can interfere with printing if your printer cable is involved, or network connections if your network cable is involved. One last thing to check is your modem itself. You probably should check this first actually. You want to make sure that your modem is V.90 compliant. Most modems are now but some of the first 56K modems were either Flex technology or X2 (U.S. Robotics) technology. The V.90 standard makes both modem types able to connect to one another at 56K maximum bandwidth. Before V.90 if you had an X2 modem and were connecting to an internet provider who only supported Flex technology, you would never get better than 33.6 connections. This is still the case if your internet provider supports Flex V.90 and your modem is X2 but not V.90. You can download a flash program for most modems to upgrade them to the V.90 standard without having to remove the modem or buy a new one. If you are using a Winmodem or Soft modem, you may want to buy a different modem altogether. Winmodems and Soft modems do not have a UART controller chip on the modem and rely on software emulation and Windows drivers to control the data flow. These modems work great under ideal conditions but a good hardware modem will be more reliable and generally faster if conditions in your location are less than perfect. I hope this helps you get the best out of your old analog modem. I have undergone many trials to get the most out of mine and until they have DSL or Cable access in my little corner of the world, I will continue to search for tricks to speed up my old analog U.S. Robotics X2 (flashed to V.90) modem. If I learn any new tricks I will be updating this page, so check back from time to time to see if I learned anything new. :-)  |
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