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
