I know a lot of you out there are in the biz or have extensive knowledge/experience in the PC/E-mail field. A couple of questions if I may.

I live in a "pocket" according to both my phone and cable company which means that the 1 mile section of the street I live on does not have sufficient housing density to offer cable modem or the equivelant phone service.
There is such service offered in the surrounding housing developments, but there are only six homes on my stretch of the road.
Is there any other way to get fast/instant connection to the Net? I cannot connect any faster than 28600 on my best day and the phone Co. says that is as good as it gets.
Is there a satellite dish alternative or some other way to go?

Secondly, I get kicked off of AOL regularly for being "idle". Some days it's five minutes, some days, 20. And, of course, it always happens when I am in the middle of something like this and Bingo! I lose the whole message.
I have seen ads on AOL, even, promising that you will never be kicked off again, but most of the other software I downloaded to speed up access didn't work. Anyone know if there is a program that will kill the "idle" switch?

Lastly, and this is probably related to the first question, I get timed out switching sites probably 10 times a day. If it is connection speed related, I guess I have to live with it till I can get a better connection.

You have always been most helpful, maybe you can answer some of these questions.

Bill

------------------
Bill Murray
99 Lightning
PSP Chip & Filter
Spare Superchip
Bassani full system TBI
Oxford White w/normal options.
98 Lincoln Continental Stock
56 F100 Big Window 272 w/TBird intake headers Fordomatic
56 F100 small window w/built 300" I6
69 Belair 39/427/400 Built
69 C10 Panel Stock
Soon: 92 Town Car
Tamiya 1/10 Lightning
Lightning & Thunder Rag Doll Cats.

 

The satellite are download only, you still have to have a phone connection to upload data. I'm not sure about America on Hold but with my ISP you can right click on the dial-up icon and in properties there is a setting that disconnects for inactivity that you can uncheck or set to the maximum time. I'm at work now so I can't tell you exactly where in properties it is. I got an e-mail recently on the developement of software/hardware combination that allows the transmission of data in the magnetic field surronding powerlines. Tranfer rates ran as high as 2.5Gigabytes per second and because powerlines are pretty much everywhere they will be available to rural and remote areas. If this gets rolling they estimate about a year to get it available for general use. Hopefully there is some validity to this claim. http://www.mediafusionllc.net/northa...main/home.html

------------------
Red 99.5 Lightning,
#0975,
Born 5/6/99...Adopted 5/27/99
Chipped w/SuperChip Flipchip chip,
PSP Filter(track untested),
Water Wetter,
Mobil 1,
Foglamp Covers,
13.573@101.08




[This message has been edited by 4D THNDR (edited 01-12-2000).]

 

Bill, shop around for different providers, chose one and then call and cancel AOL!!! They (aol) will then offer you a free month. Take it. I had aol for 7 months (could have been longer, but I really had to make them cancel me!) and NEVER paid because of this. Just mark your calandar, and keep "canceling" every month. I use my other provider more, but sometimes I did use aol.
Next do not down load any "web accelerators" they tend to make things worse by sucking up more memory, and it's a bi!ch to get rid of them. on days when I'm getting a 28k speed line, (with prodigy) my 'puter still loads fairly well, with out any of that crap.
"I sure hope you didn't get Netsonic" I had to reformat my HD to get rid of that! Fortunately, I needed to do that for another reason already, but that program really gummed things up, and their stupid "uninstall" feature leaves traces of crap that further slow your 'puter down.
My little 200 pentium (the one I gave to my daughter) is quite adequate for web surfing.
One note: almost all isp's dump people now and then. Your real problem is that with aol, you have to start all over to get back to were you were. With other isp's, IF you get kicked off you can minimize the screen and dial back up, then when your back "on" max the screen again, and there you go. NO LOST INFO/PAGES!!!
with prodigy, however, when you dail in, it will take one of your minimized windows and change it to their home page, so when I use them, I just leave a "unimportant" minimized window on the right side of the screen, so if I have to "dial back in" it will use that one and leave my other windows alone.
Any other Q's you can email me

------------------
Andthensometoo ®
"Moonlight Blue" 98 F150 SC XLT 2WD 4.6, 3.55 LS Tow Pkg. SUPERCHIP, K&N Airbox mod. w/ "Cool" intake, Mobil One Oil, Bosch +4's, Throttle Body Spacer Plate. Lund Fastback, Lighted visor, Runninng Boards, Crome Taillight covers, Polished Steel Fenderwell Moldings, Smoked Bug and Rain guards, Shelf-it, Carpet dash cover, "Andthensometoo" in silver Letters 3" tall on tail gate. Red Wings license plate in front, Red Wings license plate frame in back, Little Detroit Viper hanging from mirror, Oh yeah, and one "Blacked-out" grill.
Gonna get my Bed rails back on, Finally!
Couldn't find the right Polished steel design, so once I modify the powercoated ones I just bought, I will paint them.

Q: who wants my "Pocket Mount" chrome ones? Price:cost of shipping, or gas and maybe lunch if you live in S/E MI.

"Rocks don't move unless pushed, and neither do chevys!"

http://www.fortunecity.com/silverstone/daytona/843/

 

My first suggestion would be changed ISPs
from AOL to something local. If you can find a fairly small, knowledgable local ISP that has sufficient bandwith, I think you will be alot happier than with AOL. Call some places up and ask a couple of questions:

1)What's your user to modem ratio?
2)What kind of connection do you have to the internet. Frame Relay, T1, multiple T1s, T3, etc.

Post their replies and the poeple on the board can go over them and give recommendations. If they can't answer those question, you probably don't want anything to do with them. Move on to the next place.

As for DSL, if there are people really close to you (like the next road over) that have a DSL connection, I would call the phone company back up and ask about it again. DSL availiabity is limited by your distance away from some central switching station. It's something like 3miles, of course that's phone line miles. Just a thought.

Also if you change ISP and still get slow connections, make the phone company come out and check things out. If you have touch-tone phones and no audible static when you pick up the phone I would think you should be able to manage a better connect speed than what your getting, but some places just have bad lines and as long as you can hear a phone conversation the phone company can't/won't do anything about it.

Good Luck.

 

Have the same problem out in my rural neigborhood. Phone lines limit me to 26,400. Nothing will improve this bottle neck. There indeed are satellite systems by Direct TV and Dish Network. I have not done enough research on them yet to recommend them. I do have sattelite TV (Dish Network) as cable will never come way out here! My understanding is they are not as fast as Cable but much faster than your phone.

 

Bill,

For the first one, what type of modem are you using? Connection speed can be caused by many different things (modem, software, phone lines, etc). I would call the phone company and have them test the line speed on your phone line. The next suggestions depend on your new service provider, because AOL is one of the worst. Your service provider can tell you whether or not the server you dial into can handle v90 or flex modems. If you upgrade your modem to one of these two, or both, make sure the server is equipped for them.

If you have an LT Win Modem, you can upgrade the drivers on it quite easily. I have a 56K Flex/v90. When I first used it, the v90 connection did not work and I had to upgrade the drivers and add an init string to reach its full capability. Let me know if you have an LT Win Modem and I can send you some sites with more info.

acbradley@mindspring.com

------------------
The Truck: 1997 Black F-150 Flareside. Regular Cab ORP and Towing Package
The Mods: K&N Filter, Eurolid Hard Tonneau, Profile Windstream Side Deflectors and Ford Bug Deflector.
The Site:
Triton's 4.6 Liter Web Page
www.mindspring.com/~acbradley/index.html

 

He still has to be within that 3 mile limit of the phone company's switching or the best you'll achieve is 33.6 no matter what modem he has.

------------------
Red 99.5 Lightning,
#0975,
Born 5/6/99...Adopted 5/27/99
Chipped w/SuperChip Flipchip chip,
PSP Filter(track untested),
Water Wetter,
Mobil 1,
Foglamp Covers,
13.573@101.08

 

True. Modem speed is highly overrated. A can't use it but you got it kind of thing. I connnect just as fast with an old 28,800 modem as I do my 56K v90. Phone lines are most often the limiter way out there.

 

Woah Bill, only 28600? I constantly connect at 48000-49333bps. Go here and find out what you are really connected at http://www.computingcentral.com/topi.../speedtest.asp

 

Bill,

While signing on AOL, it says CONNECTED AT 48000bps, and I went to the website above and said 54bps. Tell me what you get.

 

8,160Kbps here !
Or 8,160,000bps
(Cable modem)
Never booted off either
my surfing speed seems to be more limited by the site that I am vistings server than anything else.
F150online is a relatively quick site
Can AOL it interferes with other programs and uses a lot more memory than IE or Netscape.
A reliable local ISP is best if you can't get a cable or DSL.


[This message has been edited by 54regcab (edited 01-12-2000).]

 

I get the same as 54regcab gets from that site which is really screwy because I only pay for 768K adsl speed.

As others have said, to get adsl, you need to be within about 3 miles from the phone company's C.O. (Central Office).

ISDN is should also be available thru the local telco and should work throughout the system. Only problem is, this service is very expensive and nowhere near adsl speed.

The alternative, if you can get it, is to install a second phone line and go with a Shotgun modem. It uses two lines. You'd have to find a local isp who supports it. Not many do and if they have it, they'll charge accordingly because you will be taking up two lines/modems on their system.

Finally, something that's being used in remote areas. Wireless modems. Equipment is expensive and isps offering it are few. Runs on the 2.4 ghz band, I believe. You can get speeds approaching 2 megs.

[This message has been edited by Dennis (edited 01-12-2000).]

 

Woah 54! Lucky! Well anyways were gonna be cableized for the web over here pretty soon.

 

Hi Gang:

Thanks for all the help/info so far.
I will respond later in more detail what I am trying to do, but wanted to pass on a tip one of my customers gave me today regarding kickoffs due to "being idle" or whatever AOL calls it. I just wrote an e-mail, on purpose, that took almost 45 minutes without getting kicked off.

What I did was to check my mail box about every 5 minutes, read one or two, usually the same, and then return to my e-mail and kept on typing. I never even got one "do you want to continue?" message in that time, a first in two years. It may not continue, but it worked tonight.
In the meantime, I am printing off all your responses and have a good list of questions for my cable co., my phone co. and a list of possible new ISP's. Thanks so much for your usual outstanding help.
Bill

------------------
Bill Murray
99 Lightning
PSP Chip & Filter
Spare Superchip
Bassani full system TBI
Oxford White w/normal options.
98 Lincoln Continental Stock
56 F100 Big Window 272 w/TBird intake headers Fordomatic
56 F100 small window w/built 300" I6
69 Belair 39/427/400 Built
69 C10 Panel Stock
Soon: 92 Town Car
Tamiya 1/10 Lightning
Lightning & Thunder Rag Doll Cats.

 

Just a couple quick comments. The Bandwidth site above might work well for slower connections, but it seems to be wrong for us with the speedier connections(cable, dsl). It also reported a speed of 8160 Kbps for me also over my cable modem. This is approaching the theoritical max throughput of 10Mbps of Ethernet, and it certainly more than the 4.5Mbps available from the 3 T1s my provider runs out. But we already know our connections are blazingly fast anyway right?

Next, connect speeds. Just wanted to bring up that just because you connect at some speed, that doesn't mean your stuck at that speed for the entire duration of your connection. It's probably a pretty good indication of where your at but your connection is constantly negotiating speed based on line conditions. Also, fun fact for 56k people. The modem is capable of 56k downloads, but the phone lines are regulated at 53k, so in real life you'll never be above that.

Lastly, and I'll be done. Not all Web Accelerator programs are a waste, some have merit. Programs such as MTUSpeed which change registry settings such as MTU can be helpful. Win 9x uses the Ethernet standard of 1500 as the Max Transmission Unit, while a dial up connection can be much less. Try the following from a dos prompt:

ping -f -l xxxx www.yourisp.com

The xxxx is a packetsize and should be the MaxMTU - 28. First try 1472. If you don't get an error your isp is using the standard 1500. I think alot of dialups use a MaxMTU of 576, so try 548 above. But basically the largest number you can use and not get and error message + 28 is what your maxMTU should be. You can then change the settings by some web acceleration program. You probably won't really notice a difference surfing, but it can help some on large downloads. Have fun...