Dial-up users... Info needed, please read

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DragonLogos

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I am looking into some aspects of dial-up, and need to get as much info as possible:

Nature of complaint:

It would appear that some dial-up accounts are being shaped, what happens is as follows, when you download a file, you will notice that your send and receive lights will stay on for about 1.5 minutes, stop for 15 seconds or so, then carry on for 1.5 minutes and stop again

What I need to know is:

Does this happen to your dial-up (simple yes or no)

What is the name of your ISP

Please note that while this seems to be a small irritation, it stops the user from doing certain things on the Internet, and in my opinion is an abuse that needs to be reported, which is all I am going to say at this moment.

So if you are a dial-up user, or a support person that deals with dial-up, please take the time to post some info, you will be doing your country a big service
 
If you ping a random port with 1KB lets say, wouldnt you also be able to notice it by looking at ping response?
 
Yep happens to me also. downloads at 4 - 5k then just stops for 10 seconds
 
Mweb are fine, good to know that you do not have a problem, in fact thanks for the post because it helps build the case

I have ping(ed) and looked at were the hold up is, other ISPs, modems and computers have been tested, all with the same result. What is needed now is to get as many users as possible to say that they are having the same problem, using such and such a ISP... in whatever town, before making a formal compliant - otherwise they tend to say... ohhhh we do not get that problem, we will have to look into it, and nothing gets done, except for us :)
 
Yeah MWEB dies sometimes. Usually around midnight or 2AM. Even their email dies, which is pathetic considering its stored locally.
 
Xsinet does this a lot - southern suburbs, Cape Town. Don't think it's shaping though, because it happens just on normal http browsing. (And it's more 1.5 seconds of activity, then a minute of nothing). So I suspect they just suck, and it's not the same issue you're talking about ;)
 
Yeah happens here. MWeb. Started maybe 6 months ago. Stops about 30seconds. On both lines if I remember right. Definitely on one of them.

Heard that it has something to do with stopping Skype usage. But I don't think skype even works over dial-up.
 
Obvious reason actually:

Your modem is doing a re-negotiate that was triggered by either a click or similar noise on the line. At times it will even re-negotiate at a slower speed (46kbps instead of 50.3kbps) or sometimes faster. The modem will more frequently re-negotiate during storms where there is lightning. A connection drop happens if the modem fails to re-negotiate 2 times in succession due to a click or whatever during the re-negotiation process.

Pick up the phone receiver on the line the modem is running on and you would actually hear the re-negation attempt starting; it won't complete because you are disturbing the finicky analogue signals with your heavy breathing.
 
I agree with Icbxx. I have been with mWeb dial-up for over seven years (Pretoria - accessing Hatfield server). I also experienced the problem of no response. My current modem (Motorola chipset) has a nice utility that tells me what modem's status is. It actually re-negotiates your connection quite often during a session - The Windows status box doesn't indicate this. I found my connection's "reliabilty" to vary constantly -sometimes I can only "connect" at 14.4kbps!!! Usually it then gets better after a day or so. As mentioned above storms pose a big problem to analogue - although it's never a good idea to connect when there's a storm nearby. To conclude, I believe the problem lies with the physical connection (...or analogue in general) and no shaping etc. from ISP. Don't know if a good quality modem might help instead of a cheapy - since I've had my Motorola I connect at 52kbps vs. 50.6kbps with my older modems
 
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