What should you expect from a dialup connection?

(A.K.A. Why is my connection slow, and/or why do I get disconnected?)

Most of the Internet today is accessed by individuals using a modem over a standard telephone line. Sometimes this line is shared by those actually wanting to "talk" on the phone (how 20th century!), and sometimes the line is set aside for Internet access exclusively. Either way, the result is the same - it's a regular phone line.

If either of these is the case, then there are a few things you need to know to maximize your enjoyment of the 'net.

FIRST THINGS FIRST:

The first thing to keep in mind is this: Your phone line was never designed to handle two modems talking to each other. Understanding this is crucial.

When you talk on the telephone, there's actually a lot of "silence", even when you're talking. For instance, between words or sentences, or when you're waiting for the other person to reply or pick up the conversation (or if your spouse walks in while you're talking and you cover up the mouthpiece to tell them to shut up - after all, you're on the phone!). Either way, the actual amount of time used while you're talking is not as large as it may first appear.

Secondly, you're not actually pushing as much "sound" through the phone as you could. For instance, let's say that you're talking in a quiet room. Your voice would be the only thing heard on the other end of the line. If, however, you're talking from my house, you'd have the television, my daughter's stereo, and the sound of my wife asking "who are you talking to?" all coming over the phone at the same time. You'd hear all of that in addition to my voice on the other end of the line - in other words, more sound.

The combination of all these elements is something we in the big brick building call "bandwidth". Bandwidth is the actual measurement of how much stuff you can send over that pair of rusty wires buried in your back yard (or in my case, the front). Human speech doesn't take much bandwidth, and the telephone system was designed for human beings to talk to each other - with or without the background noise.

BUT (and this is a big.....well, just pay attention), when two modems try to communicate with each other, they take a LOT of bandwidth. The faster the modem, the more bandwidth it takes, 'cause it's shovin' more stuff down those same two rusty wires.

LET'S GET DIGITAL

When everyone had 14.4 modems, the problem wasn't all that bad - they pretty much got maximum speed every time they connected. But, speed does not kill in this business, and the engineers were asked to produce more and more of it. A few years ago, some of the major modem manufacturers began to produce high-speed 56K digital modems (actually, all modems are digital, but actually using that word makes it sound new, so....). At the time there were two competing technologies: X2, which was developed by U.S. Robotics (now 3COM), and 56KFlex, which was developed by Rockwell, and used by pretty much everyone else in the world. As you might guess, there was a big fight ("my 56K's better than yours is", and so on), but at some point, the warring parties decided to sign a peace treaty, and co-developed a third standard: V.90 (a nice, technical-sounding term). The result is that no matter whether you have an X2 or a Flex modem, if the modem you're trying to talk to has V.90 and if your modem also has V.90, they can talk 56K - maybe - and it's that word "maybe" that is the fly in the ointment, the rub, the stick in the mud, the.....well, read on.

As we so ineptly discussed earlier, there is a small thing called bandwidth on standard phone lines that we have to contend with, and there's a limited amount of it. As a matter of fact, 56K modems (regardless of flavor) pretty much use all the available bandwidth to try to shove 56K of data through those lines (here's another gotcha: actually, due to something called "crosstalk", the FCC - your friendly Uncle Sammy - has limited that to 53K, but hey, who's going to argue over a measly 3K, eh?). Many phone lines in the United States can actually handle 56K speeds all the time. However, apparently, not many of those lines are around here. As we said before, the U.S. phone system was designed for humans to talk, not for modems to talk. As a result, most people won't get 56K, even if theirs is gold plated from Neiman-Marcus (mine's plastic from WalMart). Some people will get 40K or 35K or 33.6 or even 28. I have actually talked to some individuals who consistently get 53K (and yes, I did get their autograph!), and I've talked to a LOT of people who expected to get 56K, but only got 21.6K - they were not happy campers. So what's the problem? NOT ENOUGH BANDWIDTH!

There's another problem that's cropped up lately as well. When 56K first came around, modems were fairly expensive. The best modems went for around $250, but even the cheapest was around $100. Nowadays, every computer manufactured has a 56K modem in it, and most of those things cost less than $30. Also, someone came up with this idea of "Winmodems" - or modems that were designed to operate well with Microsoft Windows, and were really cheap. I use the word "cheap" here, because a lot of them were. The experience we had with the first of these was that if you had problems with a Winmodem, you could replace it with one of the older $100 or $200 modems, and things worked much better (one of those "get what you pay for" deals everyone hates). So, number 2 on your list of suspects is the modem that came in your computer. The only way to find out if that's the case is to try a different modem. Sorry.

Now, assuming that your modem is OK, not enough bandwidth could be caused by a myriad of things. For instance, you could actually have a pair of copper wires that were installed in 1936. They sound OK when you're talking to Grandma, but Yahoo and CNN.com just don't get in any hurry. Then, you could have some "hum" or "static" on your line eating up some of that precious bandwidth. The equipment used to handle your specific phone line at the phone company could be at fault. It could even be something in that $3 million telephone company "switch" that's causing the problem. It could be something as simple as a rusted ground rod outside your house. Also, if you'll notice, your speed suffers when it rains, or when the seasons change. Moisture and temperature don't go well with trying to shove bandwidth through your telephone's wires. Whatever the problem, you're only going to be able to shove a certain amount down those wires. Now, you can call the phone company and ask them to fix the problem, but unless you can get them to listen to your phone line, and then sometimes only if they hear static or a hum, they might not do anything.

"So, what do I do?", you say? It helps to be buddies with the local telephone company repair man (low friends in high places are also nice, but they're hard to come by). In reality, if you can talk on your phone line, and if it doesn't have annoying static or a bothersome hum, they're not required to do anything! Keeping your name on their repair list sometimes does the trick (the squeaky-wheel syndrome - they'll do anything to get you to quit calling in!), but again, they don't have to do anything.

SO WHAT'S A CYBER-POTATO TO DO?

Cheer up, help is on the way. Spurred by a 1996 Act of Congress (you knew it'd take one of those, didn't you), many new companies are beginning to offer high-speed Internet connectivity, sometimes using those same rusty wires we talked about earlier, but changing the stuff on the telephone company side. Dixie-Net is one of those companies (large round of applause - thank you, thank you). One of the things we did, was to eliminate half of the cause of bandwidth problems by starting our own telephone company - DixieNet Communications! Before, there was a pair of rusty wires running to your place, and another pair of wires running to ours. By forming our own phone company, and buying our lines from our company, we eliminated half of those wires. Now, we connect to the other phone company using fiber-optics, which is very high-speed, and has tons of bandwidth. However, as I said, that only eliminated half of the problem.

Right now, Dixie-Net customers in selected areas can take advantage of high-speed access using a new technology called DSL (stands for Digital Subscriber Line - but that doesn't tell you much, other than that we're now also using that magical word digital!). This gives you much faster speed for a small increase in your Internet access fee. Our sales and help-desk people can help you decide if your telephone qualifies for DSL service, and you'll be digital all the way in, and believe me, it's fast! Later, as we're able to do si, we'll actually offer high-speed access directly on fiber!

BUT, and this is a big...(I can't believe I did that again): IT IS EXPENSIVE FOR US TO DO THIS, and unless you're willing to shell out big bucks, you'll have to wait until we get to you before we can offer this service. Some areas will be available as early is second quarter next year. Some will have to wait years. BUT, we are determined to get these high-speed connections to as many of our users as we can. In the meantime, DSL is your best alternative.

In the meantime, if you're not getting the speed from your modem you think you should, let us know. We do have some things we can check, and sometimes a simple adjustment in your network settings can help. However, KEEP THIS IN MIND - it's always dangerous when you try to fix something that ain't really broke. It may just be your phone line, and in that case, right now, we can't do much.

Oh yeah. First, if your computer pops up a little box and tells you it's going to "disconnect in 15 seconds", or words to that effect, then the problem is in your computer! Our help desk can tell you how to eliminate that problem, so for the rest of the discussion, we'll pretend real hard that your computer is not doing that.

Remember how we said that 56K modems (and 33.6 modems, for that matter) pretty much use up all the available bandwidth on a regular phone line? Well, sometimes, they try to talk faster than the phone line can handle over a long period of time. Here's what happens:

Your modem calls our modem. They do something called a "protocol negotiation". What that means is, they try to decide whether to use X2 or Flex or V.90 (as well as a dozen other older methods of transferring data), and the order in which they try these different things becomes important. If you have your network connections set up for the fastest they'll go (115,200 is what the setting is on most dial-up networking programs), then they're, by George, going to try to go that fast - and they may decide between themselves that a speed of 33.6 is a good speed to try. Trouble is, your phone line might not be able to handle that speed, and they get so many errors that one of the modems finally gives up and disconnects. The quickest remedy is to back your maximum speed down one notch (for example, from 115,200 to 57,600) and try again. If that doesn't work, back it down another notch. If you've backed it down two or three notches and you're still getting disconnected, then there are two other possibilities: (1) noise or hum on the phone line, or (2) an incompatibility between your modem and ours.

In either of these cases, first troubleshoot the phone line. Plug a regular telephone into the line your computer uses, and press any of the middle numbers (2 through 9 - that kills the dial tone so you can listen to just the phone line). Now, listen to the line. Hear any static? Hear a low hum? If not, the speak softly and listen to your own voice in the earpiece. Is there any "fuzziness" that happens only when you speak? If you answer 'yes' to any of these questions, call the telephone company, and report the problem to them. They do have to fix that kind of problem (and they generally do!).

If the answer is 'no', then give our help desk a call, and explain to them briefly what you've done so far to try to fix the problem. They may have some other suggestions. If at this point, they still can't get the problem fixed, then you may need to try another modem and see how that works.

We have modems on our end from three different manufacturers, so we've tried to address the incompatability issue, and the three modem types we use are the same modems the "big boys" use (AOL, Earthlink, MSN, you name it). However, ALWAYS remember - not all problems have solutions. Sometimes, there's just not anything we can do. That's increased over the last two years as more and more people buy 56K modems, but there are many times when we can help. Bottom line, if there's a way to increase your speed, we're committed to try to help you do that.