Rick-Your experiences described in your recent post are all too familiar to me. I've been dealing with connection issues since I started with MB last summer. As DSL is unavailable to me, and promises to be for some time to come, I've been waiting for @Home to become available here. TCI now tells me "soon". Meanwhile, I've accepted the fact that my connection will be poor, due to what I've suspected are poor phone lines. However, after a particularly difficult week, I spent a fair amount of time with Ross on Thursday and Friday, as well as tech support at uunet, and my local computer shop. After a while, we pretty much eliminated everything except my modem. So I stuck a used 33.6 in my machine, and saw my ping times go from 500 to 200. Which didn't help my data updates much, the 33.6 couldn't handle it, it appeared. So I bought a new v.90, and managed to get it installed in time for the last hour on Friday, and everything seemed much improved. I'm reserving judgement until I have a chance to use it during the open, and/or on a fast mover.
I've drawn a few conclusions from this, take them for what they're worth, coming from a non-techie:
-My original v.90 could have been defective, and data bogged down on its way through. Not sure if this is possible.
-My original modem was a PCI device, which apparently is less efficient than an ISA one. Both the 33.6 test modem, and the new one are ISA, and both produced ping and tracert times vastly superior to the old one. The tech at the shop said the difference is the embedded data on the ISA modem, as opposed to the PCI which is a "software" version.
I didn't quite follow all of it, but the conclusion I came to, correct or not, is that my original PCI modem is a more inefficient device than the current ISA one, and/or my original was defective.
There's no doubt that I'm getting vastly superior ping times now, the question remains whether my data feed will be improved as well.
So, I guess my point is, it wouldn't hurt to have a look at your modem, particularly if you've experienced the same poor ping times I have.
All of this is just a band aid, hopefully "soon" from TCI really is.
Good luck |
