I don't think anyone has a worse connection then me!

pbXassassinX1524

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 24, 2003
Messages
1,295
hey all, I believe my house could qualify to be in the most stone-age technology section in the world. I'm suprised I can get electricity for christ sake. The BEST I have ever seen out of 4 modems out of this house ever was a v.34 28.8 connection that is highly unreliable and can cripple anything but Lucent chipsets to be unusable. I go down the road (buddy's house) dial up into MY ISP just to be sure, and I get a 43+k connection out from there, which I'd say is about 1/4 mile away if that. I don't understand why my phone lines are so god awful that I cannot get even better then a 28.8kbps connection from this shithole. Is there ANYTHING I can do (like yelling at the phone company for something) to improve my phone lines... I know its not internal to my house either because I have taken a box outside and plugged it directly into the phone line and still only get 28.8k.

DSL - NONE (live too far from CO)
Cable - NONE (my street doesn't get even cable TV!)
satellite is absolutely not an option, ping times of 1900+ are unacceptable obviously.

okay, I think I'm done ranting. So, any advise?
 
sorry to hear that man...and you have that setup you have for nothing?
 
*maybe* if you can hear any noise or static on the line you can complain about it, else you can try having an additional line put in that would *hopefully* be a better line than the one your currently using.

Check into ISDN as a last resort.
 
yea... I guess it is kind of for nothing huh... :( , oh well, I still enjoy playing single player games.

I have looked into ISDN briefly, but what are the chances that my phone lines will support ISDN if they can't even support dial-up?
 
pbXassassinX1524 said:
I have looked into ISDN briefly, but what are the chances that my phone lines will support ISDN if they can't even support dial-up?

ISDN is normally not run over top any existing lines, they install an additional copper pair that *must* be clean in order to support a pure digital signal from the modem to the local CO.
 
OK, so I know of an ISP that will offer ISDN for 19.99 a month, same as dial up. (thats at 64k by the way, which is better then what I've got at any rate; the 128k is 40 a month)

on their site it says this however:
Please note that ISDN Internet Access is non-routed, does not include a static IP address, and is designed for intermittent usage.
I for the most part never shut off my machine or take it offline, I really can't afford the los of time for what little bandwidth I have to download files. So is there anything to that? Or can it stay on 24/7 without any problems similar to te way I keep my dial up on?
 
pbXassassinX1524 said:
on their site it says this however: I for the most part never shut off my machine or take it offline, I really can't afford the los of time for what little bandwidth I have to download files. So is there anything to that? Or can it stay on 24/7 without any problems similar to te way I keep my dial up on?

You would need to talk to the ISP to find out the specifics...... most ISPs frown on dial up users staying connected for 24/7 since they typically oversubscribe their infrastructure ( more dial up users to acutal ports). If you need to stay connected all the time, they may have a higher priced plan that allows for it.
 
Do you have caller ID? Caller ID requires that the phonelines have a clean signal. Back in the good 'ol days when I had dial up I only connected at about 24kb. The phone company had a promotion for free caller id for a month. It didn't work at first; but when they repaired it my modem speeds jumped up to 40+kb. Sign up for it a month and then cancel.
 
Well, I could have caller ID as far as I know. However, my mother cancelled it to put us even deeper into the stone age. On my Panasonic phone it just shows "incoming call" on th eface of it. If I bitch, complain, and yell enought she might have it enabled again. I could try that.

My cheapo $6 Agere (Lucent) chipset softmodem bottom of the barrel is able to stay on literally forever unless we see a storm, power loss, etc. So right now I don't think my ISP has any beef with me over it, since I am paying 20 a month still they better not complain about it.

I will give the calle ID thing a shot though!
 
you could always pay one of your neighbors to sell you internet, use two of them prigle can WiFi antennaes, and go that route.
 
pbXassassinX1524 said:
I know its not internal to my house either because I have taken a box outside and plugged it directly into the phone line and still only get 28.8k.

Now that's [H]ardcore! :p

I was on a 33.6 until recently (firmware upgrade on a 28.8) but I rarely got full strength out of it, though my dialup ISP was pretty much rock steady and I'd leave it connected up to 14 hours a day.

Hubby had ISDN at one point, it wasn't much better than a regular phone line, just cost about twice as much, plus we had to pay for two phone lines and two ISPs. Then came DSL, which was a big jump, he recently went to cable and the difference was exponential. Luckily, we live in a neighborhood where cable apparently hasn't been oversold. Now we're sharing the cable goodness over a wireless network and it's great!

Sorry, I don't mean to gloat. But cable wasn't even available here until fairly recently (this is part of Los Angeles, for crying out loud) when it was available in a lot of Podunk, Nowhere towns. So keep pushing to get cable where you live, eventually they've got to come around.

That caller ID aspect sounds interesting, you won't lose much if you try it for a month and it doesn't work out. Good luck to ya! :)
 
haha, do I get a trophy for being called [H]ardcore by an admin? :p

ISDN, I'll have to find out if they it runs through the brick wall technology boundry that is my house, and find out what exacty they mean by the fact that its only designed for intermittant use.

I actually don't even know the local cable provider around me, maybe I could find out if they even have plans to run a digital cable out here. That would be awesome, but then the cost would have to be worth it for me to do also.

I am definitly going to try that caller ID thing though. My mom is off tomorrow so maybe I can get her to enable it.

thanks guys, you've been a great help so far!
 
pbXassassinX1524 said:
haha, do I get a trophy for being called [H]ardcore by an admin? :p

ISDN, I'll have to find out if they it runs through the brick wall technology boundry that is my house, and find out what exacty they mean by the fact that its only designed for intermittant use.

ISDN is still basically a "dialup" connection, just a bit faster than a standard phone line. So it's not like an "always on" connection like DSL or cable. As mentioned, ISPs typically oversell and if everyone with an account stayed on 24/7, well, it would cause bottlenecks with people trying to get online, since "average" use is maybe a couple hours a day and they sell based on "average" use.

No trophy, but you're cool in my book. Sometimes you just gotta make the best of what you got, whether those limitations are due to money or available technology or whatever. :)

Do let us know how the caller ID thing works out. I'm intrigued.
 
I live in tn and isdn cost around 34.49 a month plus the fcc tax gheyness cost. Its been a hell of a lot better than dialup but my only complaint has been the fact its a bitch to find isdn modens (( terminal adapters ))
 
Okay, so just a bit of an update here. On friday I did call the phone company and got caller ID enabled on my computer's line and the home phone. They said that it should kick in on tuesday (tomorrow) so I guess I'll just be waiting some more to see if it works. It would be great if it did. I might actually be able to use my USR modem again! (best dial-up gaming modem I've ever seen)

Just to show how long I normally leave my connections up for one time: :p
connection.gif

This one hasn't been up real long, but notice the 2 recieved errors... what in the world are those? On every XP system I've ever used here I always have 2 errors.
 
I was in your shoes a year ago, I could only connect at 26.4 or 28.8. It was just my neighborhood. Everyone else I know would get 56k speeds. DSL became available 3 years ago, and guess what. It's available everywhere but my neighborhood. Even some people out in the country can get DSL, and I just a few miles from down town.

The cable co. finally started installing the equpment to offer digital cable and cable internet service, and my neighborhood was the last to be hooked up. I finally have cable internet, but it's some little dinky operation. They charge $50/month for 512k up 256k down. :rolleyes: Oh well, it beats dialup, and cheaper than moving.
 
lol,

A year ago when i still lived with my parents, the fastest I could go was 19k,

which was highly unreliable, and just crappy.

compare that to your 28k, rofl

and when i'd call the ISP, they said, that it was the phone carriers fault, and then vise versa,

eventually i had the phone carrier do a line test, and got speeds up to 28k

YAY!

I had dial up for about 5 years

then I moved out and got cable, rofl
 
Having worst connection than you is not having any connection at all... :D
 
PuNkErX said:
lol,

A year ago when i still lived with my parents, the fastest I could go was 19k,

which was highly unreliable, and just crappy.

compare that to your 28k, rofl

and when i'd call the ISP, they said, that it was the phone carriers fault, and then vise versa,

eventually i had the phone carrier do a line test, and got speeds up to 28k

YAY!

I had dial up for about 5 years

then I moved out and got cable, rofl

A friend of mine had that problem, both the ISP and the phone company blamed each other. Finally he signed up with the phone company for internet service, then complained and they fixed his lines. Then he cancled their service and went back to his old ISP. :cool:
 
Good news! I have caller ID now! And to make it better it did nothing for my connection!

So, oh well, guess I'm SOL for... well... forever. Thanks for the tips guys :(
 
Back
Top