Desktop Athlon 1700 MHz with Win ME. Modem SMR56 Speakerphone for dial up connection to my email server which worked OK for long long time at 56.000.

Lately, communications didn't reach 56000 but 50000 and then less and less....

In average 60% to 80% of the attemps of the modem are failing, showing error 691 or 718 (pasword not recognized and similar). The rest reach no more than 36000 or much less down to 14000, and at the end I almost never get my emails.

I can hear the transaction taking much longer than usual and at the password check stage, the system repeats several time the whole thing.

Sometimes, I can hear a continuous whining tone forcing me to cut the communication.

Besides that, in the last weeks Outlook Express added a new problem. When the modem is required to start the transaction to communicate, it takes close to 50 sec (yes, 50 sec) for the small window (showing the user name and the passwords asterisks, where I click to actually start the communication), to show up!!

As everybody usually says I've tried "everything":
a) reinstalling TCP/IP protocol and modem driver, IE and Outlook Express 6,
b) rewrite user name and password
c) erase and re create the setup for that email server
d) complained to the telephone company for the line quality (to be honest, my ears don't perceive too much noise).
e) tried some of those free IP with dial up service (exactly the same happens again and again).

Being in use for my office I am having serious problems to keep the pace with every day work.

How to discard things to find out the culprit? Is it any simple albeit careful check I could do to discard things even the line?

How could I convince, if the line is the problem, the phone company about that?

I feel being in the middle of one of those "not our problem" situation.

 

If possible you can try to connect with another computer (a borrowed laptop with an internal modem perhaps), that way you can check whether the line is the culprit. Otherwise I would suggest changing the modem, it is not that expensive. I've had at least once experienced a problem with a modem that had intermittent errors.

 

As n9352527 says, you need to check the computer on another line just to see if its doing the same thing. If so, then consider installing another dialler from a different ISP and see if that solves your problem.

Failing that, you should probably go through the usual clean-up (delete temp internet files) and perform a virus/spyware scann just to make sure you have nothing bottlenecking your internet connection.

Dave

 

Originally posted by Dave@Jan 5 2006, 08:07 AM
As n9352527 says, you need to check the computer on another line just to see if its doing the same thing. If so, then consider installing another dialler from a different ISP and see if that solves your problem.

Failing that, you should probably go through the usual clean-up (delete temp internet files) and perform a virus/spyware scann just to make sure you have nothing bottlenecking your internet connection.

Dave

[post=12899]Quoted post[/post]​

Hi, this may be surprising, I live inGuyana SA. I had the identical problem,it was caused by noise in the phone line, the fault was external to my house and was rectified by the phone company. I am back to52000.Hope yours is rectified.

 

Hi,

Why do I feel envious? I am in rural Missouri with the phone service by Sprint. The best I can do with a V92 56k modem is 31200 baud. One mile north, and I could get DSL. Sigh.

 

Originally posted by beenthere@Jan 5 2006, 07:10 PM
Hi,

Why do I feel envious? I am in rural Missouri with the phone service by Sprint. The best I can do with a V92 56k modem is 31200 baud. One mile north, and I could get DSL. Sigh.

[post=12912]Quoted post[/post]​

Sadly that is the problem with DSL - the signal degrades immensely with distance from the exchange. I'm luck since I live in a reasonably urban area so I can get data rates of 2MB download and 1MB upload at all times, however friends of mine who live in slightly more remote places can only get top data rates of 512KB download and often only 64KB upload.

 

Hi,

Gee, things are tough...

I get transfer rates of 3.5k/sec if I'm lucky. Interestingly, I help with the computers at a nearby (12 miles) public school. They are supposed to be on a T1 line. I see transfer rates go as low as 36k and up above 1meg, sometimes in the space of a few minutes. There are two remote classrooms that use the internet for the transmission medium, and they sometimes show obnoxious video latency.

I an hoping the Xg people get some wide-area brodband running soom. On the positive side, we have wild turkeys walk through the yard, and even watched an eagle fly by yesterday.

 

Originally posted by beenthere@Jan 7 2006, 06:21 PM
Hi,

Gee, things are tough...

I get transfer rates of 3.5k/sec if I'm lucky. Interestingly, I help with the computers at a nearby (12 miles) public school. They are supposed to be on a T1 line. I see transfer rates go as low as 36k and up above 1meg, sometimes in the space of a few minutes. There are two remote classrooms that use the internet for the transmission medium, and they sometimes show obnoxious video latency.

I an hoping the Xg people get some wide-area brodband running soom. On the positive side, we have wild turkeys walk through the yard, and even watched an eagle fly by yesterday.

[post=12945]Quoted post[/post]​

:lol: I can't compete with Wild Turkeys or Eagles, the best we get is a squirrel or two and a magpie!

I take it that there is no option of Satellite-based Broadband where you live? I know this is a common solution for people who live in remote areas in Britain, however it is expensive.

 

Hi,

Oh, yes, we've quite gone away from smoke signals over distances, but only along packets of relatively dense population.

Satellite requires a separate ISP for the outgoing packets, and is expensive as well. We are right in the fringe of cellular reception. We are in a hole, population density-wise, in a rural area 25 mile south of a major interstate, and within 30 miles of a couple of largish cities. It's a political consequence of a philosophy that holds that profits have to be substantial, or else the effort isn't worth making. My wife's school faces possible closure because the student population has shrunk. Savings?. The children still have to be bussed to some school.

I shudder to think what would happen out here if rural electrification programs had not yet gone to completion. If the bridges in Missouri are generally substandard, the rural roads are at least gravelled. Autre pays, autre merde, n'est-ce pas?