Patrick Martin wrote: > I need to check to make sure the phoneline connections aren't slowing > things down too.
Yep. Un-needed loading coils on the line will do that, as will unterminated runs to elsewhere both in home and out in the telco POTS plant, Paralleled phones in the home can sometimes slow down speeds, as can certain telco line protectors and surge suppressors. The paralleled phone issue can be eliminated by feeding the phones from the phone output of the modem, as this is disconnected during a dial-up call. This also eliminates the possibility of a disconnection when someone picks up a phone in the home. And all modems are not created equal either. Lots of cheaper modems will fail to re-train upwards after a downward speed shift. Some get into a spiral of death to slow speeds with time. Winmodems in general are poor performers. The best dial-up or leased-line modem in the known universe is the U.S. Robotics Courier. I have lots of them on dial-up access and leased line service and there is nothing I have found that will beat them for training up after a slowdown or hanging at a high rate under trying line conditions. I get better speeds from a Courier handling a connection on a leased line halfway around the world than I do with one of the Winmodems I have here on a local call. Another good performer is the U.S. Robotics Sportster (real and not win-modem model), the full controller-based model. Look for Linux compatibility on the box and you'll know it's a full controller-based modem. The Sportster is no Courier though. The Couriers show up pretty cheap sometimes, and any of them can be flashed to the latest firmware revision. The other hint to speeding up dial-up is to locally cache DNS lookups and locally cache web page elements (and OS and other application updates). This has the effect of delivering unchanged content on previously visited pages at high speeds, while fetching over dial-up only those elements that have changed since the last page view. it can make a world of difference on a dial-up connection. Lastly, the reported dial-up connection speed is only the speed at the initial connect. It is not the current speed. Most modem makers bias this to a high value to make the user think he is getting a good connection. Shortly these train downward and the reported speed is no longer valid. Rick Kunath _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com