Troubleshooting your connection.
Author/s: Roger Gann
You have a nice shiny modem, top of the range computer and the
fastest ISP on the planet, but your connection speed is still in single figures.
It's the Net's fault, right? Not necessarily. Roger Gann tells you how you can
get the most out of your modem
Show me someone who says their Internet connection is plenty
fast enough, and I'll show you someone who's being economical with the truth. It
doesn't matter how fast your Net connection is, it's rarely ever fast enough.
Some lucky souls now have always-on broadband connections, but the vast majority
of us, myself included, still have to make do with ye olde dial-up. While you'll
never get a V.90 modem to break the sound barrier, there are a number of steps
you can take to boost the speed of your Internet connection.
Your Net connection speed is determined by a number of
factors, and how well they all work together:
* Computer-its hardware and memory capacity determine how fast
it will be.
* Modem speed -- cable modems through to slow modems.
* Phone lines--the weather, believe it or not, is a factor.
* Service provider-the number of people using your ISP and the
speed of the IS P's connection to the Net.
* The Internet backbone -- congestion or technical problems
can ruin your online experience.
* Web sites you're connecting to-they're subject to the same
factors as you. You don't have much influence over the last three, but you can
do something about the first three. Usually, the only way to speed up your
computer involves spending hard-earned cash. But the good news is that the
second and third items can be dealt with at a cost of precisely nothing. If
you're looking to tweak your connection to the absolute maximum, you have to be
willing to invest the time necessary to test, then change settings, then retest,
then change settings, and so on. Luckily, there are tools available to make the
process easier.
You might not have any control over the performance of the
internet beyond your phone socket, but it's possible to use simple diagnostics
to track down where your Internet problem lies. Have you ever logged on to the
Internet and were not able logo to a particular site? Or maybe it was unusually
slow that day?
Windows 9X comes with two small but useful utilities, Ping and
Tracert, that can help you gauge the quality of the connection between your
computer and the Web site that you are trying to reach on the Internet.
Both Ping and Tracert, which is short for TraceRoute, show you
how fast or slow the Internet is between your computer and the computer you're
trying to reach. Ping will tell you if the computer you're trying to contact is
responding, and Tracert will find exactly where the problem is if you can't get
to that Web page you need. Both utilities are installed, by default in the
\Windows \Command folder, These are DOS utilities and so have to be run from a
Command prompt- the easiest way to do this is to click Start, Programs then
MS-DOS Prompt.
To explain what a Ping is, let's use an analogy. Suppose you
called one of your friends on the phone. If your friend stays silent for some
time, you might ask, "Are you there?" and your friend should reply
with, "I'm here!". That's a human-to-human ping. The Ping command is
similar for two computers. All Ping does is ask the computer at the other end to
respond.
Ping pang
In the screenshot above, I've Pinged the BBC Web site
(C:\[greater than] ping www.bbc.co.uk) and it has responded to my request in
about 100ms, or one tenth of a second.
Now for a little explanation of what you see. The bytes mean
how much data was received back from this particular server, The time means how
long it took to reach you. And the TTL (Time To Live) means how long the data
that you sent is kept in the memory of the computer that you're trying to reach.
This also is a crude DNS test since it shows that the URL has been successfully
resolved into an P address, 212.58.240.32.
Note that not all sites respond to Pings - Microsoft and MSN
don't for example, so the mere fact that a site doesn't return a Ping and you
get a 'Request timed out' response, doesn't mean there's a fault. So be sure to
try more than one site.
But say you got a 'Request timed out' on a site that should
return a Ping- the next thing you should do is run a Tracert. This'll tell you
where the problem lies by tracing the route it takes to get to the computer
you're trying to reach. This utility tells you each router your packets cross
when trying to reach your destination.
In my example (see screenshot above), you can see there were
12 hops between me and the BBC site. Even thought was in London, my connection
went via New York. The first number is the 'hop' or router number the route
takes. The next three numbers are the round-trip times in milliseconds for three
tries to reach that router. The last column is the hostname of the responding
system.
The most common cause of disconnects is tine noise, pure and
simple--you can use the phone engineer's self-test number 17070 to perform a
'quiet line' test to see how your line fairs.
The second cause is call waiting -- the notification 'beep'
confuses the modem. If you only have one phone line, disable it with #43# before
dialling out. To check if it's 'on', key in *#43#. Another cause of disconnects
are idle timeouts- settings that automatically drop the line after a specified
period of inactivity. Check these by looking at the Connection tab of your modem
properties. The default is that this Feature is disabled,
No gain, no pain
Lots of people use a long extension lead from the phone socket
to the modem, and these can be responsible for far more speed loss than most
people realise. As a rule, try to keep all phone leads as short as possible.
Having loads of extension sockets with phone devices plugged into them can cause
problems as well.
Principally, it can overload the Ring Equivalence Number [REN]
of your system--you typically should have a total REN of 4 If you exceed this
value, it'll mean that one or more of them won't ring if someone phones you, but
it also affects the connection speed the modem can establish.
Line gain is another issue. Each device will consume power
from the line and might not leave enough for the modem. Testing this out is easy
enough -- detach every extra device and see if it makes a difference. If it
does, reattach them one by one to see which one is the culprit. Don't forget
that if you have a digital set top box, it has to be plugged into your phone
line, and this could affect your modem's performance.
Sometimes, if you have a bad line, asking BT to up the line
gain can help. Normally, BT applies Automatic Gain Control (AGC) to each line,
so when you make the request this feature is normally switched off. AGC is OK
for voice calls but it's not necessarily optimal for modems as the modem usually
controls its own gain and the two can conflict. Sometimes decreasing the gain
can improve performance. If you're close to the exchange, you don't need much
gain, but if you live some way away, your line needs more juice.
Tweaking your settings Your computer settings could be getting
in the way of a speedy connection. All they need is a Little tweak and you could
be zooming along
Open up the Control Panel and double-click the Network icon.
Under the Configuration tab, select the Dial-Up Adapter and click Properties. Go
to the Bindings tab and uncheck all boxes except the TCP/IP box. Select the
Advanced tab and set Enable Point To Point IP to No (unless you routinely accept
incoming calls using your modem). Set IP Packet Size to Large, and Record Log
File to No. If you mostly use the Internet to download files and view Web pages,
enable IPX Header Compression, otherwise disable it.
Next, select the TCP/IP protocol (if you have multiple copies
of the protocol installed, use the one for your dial-up adapter/modem) and click
Properties. Select the WINS Configuration tab, and choose the Disable WINS
Resolution option. Click the DNS configuration tab, and select Disable ONS. Go
to the Bindings tab. Uncheck all the boxes. Certain ISPs might give you specific
instructions for your network settings. If your ISP is one of these, you should
follow their instructions.
Next, open your dial-up networking connectoid and click on the
Server Types tab. Make sure that TCP/IP is enabled (and compression if you want
Web pages to load faster, and don't care about Ping), and everything else is
disabled (unless you have specific instructions from your ISP otherwise). This
will help you connect to your ISP faster.
Tweaking your settings
There are other low-Level TCP/IP settings you can tweak. You
can do this manually, but it involves getting your hands dirty with the
Registry, so it's best to let some software do it for you.
There are several tools you could use, but two stand out,
iSpeed (www.hms.com) and EasyMTU http://easymtu.tripod.com). Both are freeware.
These programs optimise some esoteric TCP/IP settings such as MTU, MSS and RWIN.
For example, MTU is the Maximum Transmittable Unit, and this setting is
imperative for optimal packet transmission. If it's set correctly, it will stop
information from being broken up during transfer. Windows 95 always sets this
too high for modem use, as it assumes you're connected to a LAN. Windows 98
should set the correct MTU size automatically but it can get it wrong.
Note that iSpeed is really meant for Windows95--Windows 98 has
a new feature called MTU Auto Discover, that automatically determines the
optimal MTU (and will derive all of the other settings from that) on connect.
Nevertheless, you should still make sure that P Packet Size is set to Large, as
laid out in Step 1. This is because if you set the IP Packet size to something
smaller than Large (Auto assumes 576, even though it shouldn't), you limit your
maximum MTU because Windows assumes the setting is as high as it needs to go.
Another reason is that if you set the settings manually (through the Registry,
as iSpeed does), you lose Windows 98's ability to dynamically choose the optimal
settings on connect as well -- and servers have been known to change these
settings frequently to handle more traffic.
If you want to determine your MTU manually, here's how. Open a
DOS prompt and enter this command: ping -f-1 [trial MTU number]
www.[your-isp].com.
Start with a value of 548 and go up or down depending on the
message (if it tells you that the packets are being fragmented, you need to go
down -- you want the highest setting that doesn't cause packet fragmentation).
To derive your MTU from the ping data, add 28 to the highest number that worked
(packet size+28). Then, to derive your MSS from your MTU number, take MTU-40 and
insert that value for MSS.
Check your Corn Port settings. First, change your FIFO
settings. To do this, right click on My Computer. Go to Properties. Then click
the Device Manager tab at the top. Locate Modem, double click on it, then double
click your modem. Click the Connection tab and click on the Port Settings
button. Now slide the FIFO buffers all the way right. If things don't work
correctly when you try to use your modem, you should change this back. Go back a
level and click on the Advanced button. Make sure your modem is using hardware
flow control, use compression and error control for best results.
Telephone line tweaks
Sometimes when you request a second line from BT, rather than
installing a totally new second line from the exchange or local cabinet, their
engineers attach a special box outside your house that allows two telephone
lines to share the same cables back to the exchange. This uses a technique known
as DACS-2 -- Digital Access Carrier Service.
DACS is highly unsuitable for use with V.90 (and many other)
modems. This is because it effectively multiplexes two phone lines down a single
line. This is perfectly adequate for voice and fax communications (which BT is
obliged to support) but less than optimal for modem operation, especially with
V.90 modems, which rely on a direct link to the exchange, unadulterated by any
further digital to analogue conversions. Sadly DACS introduces two extra digital
to analogue conversions into the path from your ISP to your location. If you
have DACS, at best you'll be able to get 33.6kbps out of your V.90 modem.
If you order an extra line for your modem from BT, you should
specify that the line is for use with a modem, that you do not want it to be
DACS-ed over your existing line, and that you want a Direct Exchange Line.
Tweaking your settings
Go back to Device Manager. Double click the Ports section, and
then double click the Communication Port your modem uses. It will bring up a
similar Properties section. Click the Port Settings tab. Change Bits Per Second
to 115,200 or higher. Change Flow Control to 'Hardware'. Then click the
Advanced... button and it will bring up the same FIFO menu as above. Slide the
bar all the way to the right again.
Upgrade your modem
Many people bought 56k modems when they first came out several
years ago as X2 or K56Flex, without considering the update to a standard that
was bound to come. Why do it? Well, for a time most ISPs supported V.90 plus its
earlier incarnations. However, that transitional period is now over, and many
ISPs are dropping support for the older standards.
The bottom line is this -- if you try to access a V.90-only
ISP with a K56Flex or X2 modem, the fastest connect speed you'll get is
33.6kbps. Luckily, most modems are 'flash' upgradeable to the V.90 standard.
It's a simple process that takes less than 15 minutes. Check out the V.90
Upgrade FAQ at www.56K.com. This tells you all you need to know about the
procedure. Make sure your ISP supports V.90 as well.
All you must do is flash your modem's BIOS with the V.90
protocol and (for best results) update your modem's INF 'drivers'.
COPYRIGHT 2001 EMAP Media Ltd.
in association with The Gale Group and LookSmart. COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
