In computer news this week, 04/10/2002

In computer news this week, 01/20/2003

Trouble with and beyond your modem on the internet .....

Last December I did a show on how people were accessing the internet and current statistics showed that 87% of people were using dialup modems, despite all the hype you hear about hispeed access such as DSL and cable.

With this vast majority of internet users using modems, there's a chance that you might be having some problems and are not aware of it. If you have delays, hang ups, and other frustrating interruptions, you might find some good information and possible solutions at a website named http://www.modemsite.com/, a site that has easy to read technical information, programs you can download, and online diagnostics of your problem.

Last week I talked about a problem I was having with continuous periods up to a minute of no data transfer, then it would work for a few minutes, then another slowdown. I had mentioned this to a local isp and they thought it might be a classic problem of modem retraining. That's when your fast modem connects at high speed, but the phone lines are so bad that it has slowdowns and has to retrain itself to the line quality. They suggested that I turn off the 56K part of my modem to get a better connection. I did this, but I didn't like going at the much slower speed - sometimes as low as 19K. I also wondered if this was really my problem, so I went looking for ways to diagnose what was happening.

On http://www.modemsite.com/ I found a lot of information on this problem, and it appears that universally there are a lot of people dissatisfied with high speed modems not performing well. If you buy a Gateway or a Compaq or a Dell computer, you don't really have a Gateway or a Dell modem. You need to find out exactly what type of a modem you really have, such as a USR, Rockwell, etc. There are commands that you can send to your modem using a built-in windows program - hyperterminal - which will reveal a lot of information about your modem itself - but it's kind of technical.

I found it was easier to download a shareware program named Modemcheck http://www.utilitysoft.co.nz from a fellow in New Zealand named Tony who also has several other very useful internet utilities.

Modemcheck will instantly detect your modem and tell you what it is and how it has been operating. My Gateway actually has a 3Com/USRobotics modem in it, and I could see the firmware date, and a lot of other information about the modem itself. However what was more interesting was that Modemcheck revealed my problem was not modem retraining.

I was able to dig deeper into my problem, and with some help from Richard Gamberg - the owner of modemsite.com and a communications guru, and from reading other diagnostic information on his site, I seem to have my problem solved, and am now surfing much faster without the frustrating delays.

I made an adjustment in my windows dialup networking advanced properties to change my IP packet size from the default setting of automatic to small, and then I disabled a network card in my computer which I wasn't using, per Richard's suspicion that it might be causing problems with my dialup adapter.

But there are other problems you can run into, when your computer and modem are working fine, and one of these problems might be with your internet service provider having slowdowns or maybe not enough capacity. Next week I'll discuss another diagnostic program you can download from this site - pingplotter - http://www.pingplotter.com/ and what it can tell you about your internet service.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230