Why does the isp just disconnect for no *%$!% reason.

Factual Questions
1

Okay, because all the free ISP’s are going belly up, I’m forced to pay for the internet. I can’t get Road Runner here for a while yet, so I’m using AT&T. 21 bucks, very, very fast connect,no busy signals, 53k. Not too bad. But like every other ISP every once in a while: BOOF! I’m disconnected.

:mad:WTF:mad:

Why? What is going on that the ISP disconnects? It seems to do that when I’m into something super interesting. It happens less with AT&T than any other services I’ve used, but it still happens. WHY? What is going on that the ISP disconnects me. And, when it disconnects me, is it disconnecting other people at the same time too?

2

I’d like to know, too. I’m on AOL (please don’t throw sticks and stones) and it will tank in two ways: a get a double “goodbye” and a return to the sign on screen or it just vaporizes and I’m left staring at my desktop. I’ve heard similar stories on other ISP’s free or otherwise.

3

I used to have AOL, actually I still have it but don’t use it anymore, the rest of the family still uses it. I just got Cable Modem in my area and I got it hooked up to my system. Let me tell you, going from using slow AOL that booted me off every few minutes (it felt like every few minutes anyway) to this Cable stuff, it was like having my congested sinuses cleared. Man, so fast and always connected, no deleing up or waiting for anything. For now it’s like that around here anyway, I heard that the more people in your neighborhood that get Cable Modem the more the bandwidth gets bogged down. Each neighborhood shears the bandwidth, but I haven’t noticed any slowing down of my connection yet. I guess I’ll find out the more popular it gets. Running Napster is great, I downloaded a 7 MB song in 20 seconds. You should check and see if you can get Cable Modem, you would only be paying $8 more then you are now if you get a 2 year contract. I don’t know if they do that everywhere, that’s what we have here in Suffolk County, Long Island.

Your AT&T sounds better then AOL, though. I think AOL is one of the worst, stick with AT&T if you can’t something like Cable. Good luck.

4

I used to work as a senior level tech at GTE internet, as a fill in job between Admin positions. What my experiance has been is that more often then not the phone line that causes hangup problems. This doesnt mean that switching isp’s wont make things better or worse. Depending on where in the city thier modems are located, what kind of modems, and how they are set up, can make all the differance as to how much noise is on the line and how sensitive the connection is to noise. Many ISP’s, GTE included, dont even have thier own modems, they rent connections from UUNET, and just manage the accounts. It used to be the most irritating thing when uunet would have an area of the contry that always breaking down, and having to listen to the customers complain about GTE’s equipment always breaking down(we werent allowed to tell them).

Some of the less reputable ISP’s (and even some of the more reputable), would start bumping users off more or less at random, when their modem banks started filling up. That way, they could boast about no busy signals. One of the phone company owned ISP’s around here used to(may still), clear all thier connections every hour or so, just to keep people from staying on all day. They even admitted to it.
Modem settings on your end could cause your modem to be more sensitive to phone noise, cause other problems. The port speed for the dial up connection should be set to twice the speed of your modem, if possible. Many people try to set it to the same, and since the modem is compressing and decompressing data, it sometimes communicates with the machine faster than it does over the phone line. Some times this will cause hang ups.

Some modems are also bettter than others. The cheap 10 buck pci winmodem crap that you get on sail from frys is not going to keep a connection as well as some of the name brand modems.

Personally, after working for an ISP…I got a cable modem as soon as it was available in my area, I hear the sattelite connetions are good, and DSL is an option.

5

Could be crud on your phone jack or you phone lines. They get crud & then disconnect or you get slow speeds.

My ISP has a special number for each type of modem speak V.90, X2, etc, which is nice.

Also, some programs disconnect you after a set time if you don’t do anything.

6

I’ve lived in a rural area and was stuck with poor telco services with 56k modems for years, until cable modems came into my area. I can suggest a few common sources of disconnects.

  1. You do have call-waiting disabled, don’t you? If your software doesn’t have this option, you can add *70, to the phone number to block call waiting for just that phone call.
  2. Check your phone line quality. Some areas have poor connections or sudden bursts of noise. This disrupts the connection, and the two modems try to “renegotiate” the carrier. If the renegotiation doesn’t work at 56k, it drops to a lower speed, tries again, until it finds a connection speed low enough to be received clearly through the noise. If they can’t renegotiate for a decent speed, you will disconnect. Some modems have problems with renegotiation, which can usually be fixed with appropriate modem settings.
  3. Sometimes there are problems in the phone network that you cannot do anything about. My local telco had a bad switch in place, it worked fine for voice but would cause random disconnects due to incorrect telco maintenance. It took them months to figure it out.
7

Did you see if you can get DSL in your area. You probally can get it for about the same price as the cable modem but for that price it is usally a bit slower then cable, or for about $50/month you can get DSL that is usally just as fast as cable during cable’s light usage times.

8

A few friends of mine worked for internet companies a couple of years back. It was the big boom time in our area and anyone over the age of 14 could get a job with an ISP if he knew ANYTHING about the net.

I had a dial up connection at the time and had the same problems as you, always getting disconnected for “no reason”. Then I started hanging out with the guys at work and I got my asnwer…

They had some pretty shaky equipment back then ('97 I think, but I have a bad memory) and all the brandnew ISP companies were way too low on modem lines, this I knew 'cause sometimes I got a busy signal when I dialed up.

But my friends told me a few horror stories about low-budget ISPs. For instance, their connection always started to get lagged when all the lines were busy, so when they wanted to download something big (like gamez!) they would simply hit a button: “Disconnect random users” and entered a value between 1 and 9999! They even did this for fun sometimes, or to show off to people like me :wink:

Of course they got lots of angry calls and made up answers as they went along; they ranged from trouble with the phone company to asking people to actually bring in their computers for repair!

It was handy for them at home too, when all the lines were taken they just called up work and had them throw a couple of dozen out, that way he was sure to be able to jump on to a modem line before the legitimate user could reconnect!

So, while I’m not saying this is always the case, I have some bad experiences with the official explanations ISPs give you about connection problems. I understand the equipment used is a lot different today and ISDN, Cable, DSL and T links are really the only way to go anyways.

Just don’t be surprised if you hear sniggering on the other end of the phone when you call up the greasy team of teens working in the service department :wink:

— G. Raven

p.s. In case you were wondering, the companies all went belly-up since then, or merged into bigger blocks.

9

I just tried to get DSL. They took a few months & then they said that the phone comp found ‘bridges’ on my line & the nice phone comp would clean my line for $199.00…

There are satellite modems. They don’t seem to be for sale as much as before. $20/month up to 400k

10

I dunno what the specific problem in the OP is, and I have no technical knowledge but (doesn’t it worry you when people put a but in like that) I know that some of the companies over here in the UK do it on purpose.

Two which I could name (but won’t actually put it in really small print on their adverts that they will cut you off after two hours. The reason is so that other people can connect (so they say), but you are supposed to be able to connect again as soon as you are kcike off. My ISP kicks me off after about 3 hours when I am paying for the call, or two hours if I am using free minutes.

Personally I think it sucks. I usually have to shut my whole PC down and restart before it will let me re-connect.

TTFN
Rick

11

pkbites…

If the problem is on your end, then:

  1. Check your modem. Is it a cheap LTWinModem or a good solid Boca? Something in between?
  2. Check your modem string…you’d be surprised how much the “right” string can help.
  3. Check your telephone’s wall-jacks.
  4. Check the cord that connects your modem to the wall-jack…is it in good shape? Also, make sure that it’s no longer than it needs to be. Do not drape it over the computer’s monitor, the TV, a radio, or anything else that runs on electricity.
  5. Check your registry settings (ONLY if you know what you’re doing!) If you’re using a 56K dialup, and your MaxMTU is set to 1500, you’re going to have problems…a setting of 576 is best for most modems. Better yet, get a freeware or shareware program like MTUspeed, and let it take care of your registry settings.

If the problem is on the ISP’s end:

  1. Call the ISP and bitch.

If the problem is in between you and your ISP:

  1. Call the phone company and bitch.

Mr. Blue Skies…

IIRC (and I may not–it’s been almost two years since I gave AOL the finger,) the double-goodbye is a symptom of a hardware conflict between your modem and your soundcard. If you know what you’re doing, go to DEVICE MANAGER and fix it.

If you’re not sure, then don’t mess with it until you can get a friend (one who IS sure) to come over and show you how.

It would also be a good idea if you checked the other things I listed…AOL 4.0 and higher automatically set the MaxMTU to 1500, so you’ll possibly want to change that. Also, if you change your modem string, make sure that you change it within the AOL software as well as within Windows-- otherwise, it will not help.

G’luck,
David

12

It’s a little more than $8 here in SC, but it’s well worth it. I got a free one year AOL with my Dell Computer. I rarely was able to connect, and when I did, I was quickly disconnected with the double good-bye. AOL was not very enthusiastic about helping me and told me that they couldn’t after a half-hearted try.

Now get this. I had a free year with AOL, never really got connected, and they started billing me. When I called up to complain, the lady told me she would transfer me and disconnected me. I had to call back three times. Finally I gave my item no. for the free subscription to some female who asked if I had canceled my subscription. I tried to, but couldn’t get thru. After I gave my item no. substantiating that I had a free one-year subscription, and after a little talk about my canceling, I told her to make sure the charge was deleted. “OK,” she said. “What’s the item no. again?” Apparently she was so surprised I had it, she never even bothered to write it down. She disconnected me, and I never got connected long enough to cancel my free subscription. I removed all the AOLs on my computer, so I don’t even have it on the computer.

I now have cable and couldn’t be happier. Get cable and avoid a lot of aggravation, esp. if your ISP is AOL.

13

Oh, I didn’t mean it was $8 total. I meant it would probably cost $8 more then what they are already paying. With a 2 year contract we pay $29.95 a month, if we didn’t have that contract we would be paying $39.95 a month. The modem itself would have cost us $100, but we got it at a Christmas sale for free with a purchase of at least $100 worth of stuff. Great deal.

14

As someone who works for an ISP -

Lots of good suggestions here re: checking your line and modem. The one thing I have to add: double check your contract! Some ISP’s will disconnect you after x length of “inactive” time in order to free up lines. The “x” may vary depnding on the time of day - you may be able to be idle longer at off-peak times.

Not disabling call waiting is probably the most common cause for disconnections IME.

–tygre