Hi Folks,

For the last two weeks my dial up connection has been cutting in & out, that is to say I constantly have to reconnect & sometimes when I do my Kbps is down to 28.8. I know it's next to impossible to connect at 56kbps with a 56k modem but this is rediculous. I know its not the phone line cause I had the phone company come out & check the line inside & out.. also I hear a weird "chirp" when I disconnect.

Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Thanks,
John

Hate to say this,
but it's time to contact your ISP and have them troubleshoot this with you.

Would it be AT&T by any chance??? Mine's been doing the same, but more like a month or so. Did the "dialogue" with AT&T, and they tried to hint that it was my phone..nope..my modem..no, happening with my husband's puter too and different modems..and maybe "me." :) So, I agree with classic..you'll need to call your ISP, but I wouldn't expect too much. However, about two years ago, with another ISP..I was getting disconnected a lot and called. The ISP tech walked me through some Network setting changes, and gave me another access number and it fixed my problem. If another access number is available to you, might be worth the call.

Little baffled by the chirp thing, though. Oh, and be grateful..I have only gotten to 28.8 with our ancient phone lines every blue moon or so.

Thought of a couple of things later yesterday. Did you change anything recently..like upgrade your browser, or add a popup stopper, or anything like that?

And, are you "moving" frequently on the Net? Because the puter counts things like hanging out at a chat room, or reading a long text on a web page, or typing/composing a post here as "idle". A couple of things that might help..if you're "idle" when getting disconnected. In OE, under Tools, Options, then under Send/Receive on that first page, you can set the "check for new messages" thing for every five minutes. And, although I wouldn't think the setting would have changed unless you did some sort of change recently, you could also check Control Panel, Internet Options, Connections..highlight your ISP connection, click on Settings tab, Dial up Settings section, Advanced tab, and make sure it is not set to disconnect if idle for whatever minutes. When finding that for you, I am again intrigued by "Disconnect when connection may no longer be needed"...:)..wonder what that means, and "who" decides connection is no longer needed?

And it occurs to me now that another important question should be..which OS and which browser? Duh on my part. If you have XP, you need someone else because I just gave you a bunch of stuff to check in 98SE...sigh.

Any relationship to weather? Here in rural VA, we only have dial-up, and these past few months lots and lots and lots of rain. I have really noticed a difference in terms of speed of connections, disconnects, etc. when it's raining or very wet. Could be a specious correlation, but the pattern has persisted for several months now. Also, I only recently found out that my isp has a secondary number. Usually, either the primary or secondary number connects at 50 or 53 while the other may not (it occurred tonight in fact, the primary number would only connect at 33, the secondary at 50.6, hence I'm on the latter right now). So it's nice to have that backup option. It may be worth checking to see if your ISP has a secondary or third number you can use.

"Disconnect when connection may no longer be needed"... Kay,
That is for when there's no other browser page open. Like all you wanted to do is check your email then disconnect. Selecting close or clicking the X button would then close your dial-up connection.

You can also set your dial-up to connect by clicking on the quick launch and the connection can terminate by closing OE if desired.

I NEVER use it (Hmm don't even need it now, broadband,, so put that into past tense :) )

Thanks, Fruss, for explanation. I remember a setting somewhere that says something along the lines of "Disconnect after receiving mail" but couldn't find it yesterday. And thought that it probably wasn't the cause here anyway..so didn't search any further.

Alex: That's part of the problem with troubleshooting this kind of thing. The phone company tries to blame the ISP, and vice versa. It was weird to me back when they were the same company.:D Told the phone guy who came out what the ISP division had said, and he laughed. Still, though..bad connections and disconnects can be caused by either. I am pretty sure that my problems have been an overloaded access line, but AT&T says that an overloaded line would give me busy signals rather than disconnects. That doesn't actually sound right, but I have no other access line to try. I should be grateful (and I am) that we are in the Albuquerque calling area because that gives us access to ISPs we wouldn't have otherwise, but I am still baffled by Santa Fe (about a fourth of the size of ABQ, population wise) getting FOUR access numbers while we only get one.

And it can also be partly the browser now that I am remembering past difficulties. When we first started with an ISP, they wanted us to use Netscape...but Netscape just never worked right. I blame Microsoft for that..not Netscape..but about one month into the problems I was having in the beginning, I just told my ISP that I was gonna use Internet Explorer.

Santa Fe is always top dog in NM (I'm an old former vegas and taos rat).

Small world, eh? When we first moved from Texas, we wanted to go to Vegas, but not much work there..so ended up in ABQ. And yeah, most of the rich live in Santa Fe, and that probably explains the access number thing, but I still think a second number would be nice...:)

Novice_Nomad..are you still there?? Are you still having the problem??