Getting the most out of your dialup.

[King of CaveMen]

This just covers alternatives for newbies I can goto more indepth if their are any replies requesting more information. Most of this information from was within my head through experience and reading manuals. Some of this information is dated because most people have DSL or Cable now, this is for the minority Have fun reading let me know if was helpful.


DSL cheapest in the rural area I live in is $45 i use to have the best spoeed which was $76 but the $45 speed is fine too.

The best thing to do is get high quality phone wires, usually gold plated to maximize the communitcation, make sure phone jacks are do not have any corrosion on them, and that they are no longer than 4 years old, have the phone company install new ones, Also have wires firmly secured into your pc to make sure there is no physical packet loss.. The less wires the better, from your PC to your phone jack, andthe less people ONLINE in your area, the better, because if you live in rural areas it will slow you down, with phone line static.

Rural areas multiplex their phone lines which means 2 or 3 or even up to 8 people could share the same phone line to save money, because phone companies want to maximiaxe profits, so they make the end users suffer by multiplexing their lines, this is fine for voice communications - phones - but extremely bad for modems, and online use.

I did understand that once I got a second phone line, the inferance was less this line than my original phone line, I had 2 phone lines so I would be on the net and use phone at the same time.

With the second phone line I connected at 53,333 bps which was standard, then with my original line was 28.8 which was about half the speed.

Their are two alterantives to DSL and Cable tho.

Their is ISDN, Integrated Services Digital Network, which is about twice as fast as the normal modem, 56k and ISDN is 128k single, the bad thing to ISDN is that it is very expensive and you still need to use a phone line for uploads. However there is dual ISDN which can in theory double your internet speed.

Also there is a "Shot Gun" modem, which never hit main stream but a few people have used it, the bad side is, 1) it isn't really accepted I will explain why... in second. 2)It is very costly.

Shotgunning a modem is where you have two modems. Then you need an ISP that supports "multiple connections" which most ISPs will not accept, if they do 90% of the ones that do accept will charge extra for it.(To connect both modems to the internet service provider probally around )

Then you will need two phone lines, one connects to the other and the other modem to the second phone line. Then you will need to "multiulink" you modems in the Internet Configuration, which is another article by itself

In theory shotgunning a modem will double your speed, I have never done this but a friend has done this with excellent results.

I hope this tutorial covers the basics, I will go more indepth in later articles if anyone wants to know anything more about the selected articles.

[Shrekkie]

Their is ISDN, Integrated Services Digital Network, which is about twice as fast as the normal modem, 56k and ISDN is 128k single, the bad thing to ISDN is that it is very expensive and you still need to use a phone line for uploads. However there is dual ISDN which can in theory double your internet speed.

Not exactly true : ISDN is mostly delivered with two channels of 64Kb/s and one signalling channel of 16K/s. So you'll not have directly have 128K, you'll have to couple the two 64K/s - channels. The 64K channels are called B-channels and the 16K channel is called D-Channel ->
dual ISDN = ISDN2 = 2*64K + one 16K = 128K (here in belgium you would pay double traffice cost)

Btw Can you explain me how you're gonna multiplex more users (or telephone numbers) on just one 56K line (which exists from an analog signal) ? Not meaning more telephones on one telephone number ?

[machinehead]

Good info. I would add that if you think your problems are in the phone line, simply switching to dsl or isdn will not help much. Another thing to consider is if you have "Line backer service" the phone company is responsible for your internal lines.

[patman1st]

I have understood that gold to silver connections will corrode. Do you have experience with this. thanks

[bballad]

Good post
A few notes on it form an exISP worker

ISDN is hard to get in the states now because of the push for ASDL, and watch the charges a lot of phone companies charge you $.05 a dial (if you have a two channel the second channel is usually constantly hanging up and dialing depending on bandwidth needs).

If the phone company didn't install your wires initially (which they didn't) linebacker wont do you a bit of good...Ameritech got in a lot of trouble for this "service" and had to stop offering it in a bunch of states after a class action suite.

[sickyourIT]

as far as corrosion connection:

silver works fastest, faster than gold, but this speed will not last long, as silver does eventually corrode. Gold does have a high transfer rate, and does not corrode like silver does. The reason most people buy Gold is because it will hold that high speed and maintain itself, so you're not always buying wires.