What should you expect from a dialup connection?

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, 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 your house, you'd have the television, stereo, and the sound of others talking 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 called "bandwidth". Bandwidth is the actual measurement of how much stuff you can send over that pair of rusty wires buried in your yard. 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 when two modems try to communicate with each other, they take a LOT of bandwidth. The faster the modem, the more bandwidth it takes because it's sending 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. A couple of years ago, some of the major modem manufacturers began to produce high-speed 56K digital modems. 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, but at some point the warring parties decided to sign a peace treaty, and co-developed a third standard: V.90. 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.

There is a 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. 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. 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 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!

Now, 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 be something as simple as a rusted ground rod outside your house. 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? 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, but again, they don't have to do anything.

WHAT ABOUT MY GETTING DISCONNECTED ALL THE TIME???

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 commonly called a "handshake". 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, then they're 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 Tech Support 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.

ALWAYS remember - not all problems have solutions. Sometimes, in rare cases, there's just not anything we can do. That's only happened a handful of times but it does happen. Bottom line, if there's a way to increase your speed, we're committed to try to help you do that.

Thank you to Dixie-Net for this detailed explanation!