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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg from Edmonton who wrote (11529)	11/21/2000 10:24:20 AM
From: PMS Witch	Respond to of 14778

I too experienced consistent connect speeds in the 36 range. I moved to a new city and without changing anything on my system, now get connections at 46 regularly. I consider 56 as some Utopian theoretical speed, a result more likely achievable in marketing department imaginations than the engineering lab. I've jumped to the conclusion that the speed I get is out of my hands. (Unless I move again.) A number of sites offer assistance in fine-tuning and optimizing settings for faster on-line performance. I've tried a number, and beyond feeling I've done my part, I couldn't detect any difference in my system's performance in doing the tasks I most frequently engage in. Cheers, PW. P.S. System reliability ... This may sound nutty, but I use a UPS for my laptop. I keep copies of my disk image on Zip cartridges both in my safe and at a friend's place. Working data and system changes backups are done daily, with full system backups made after significant alterations have proven stable for some time. The standard I set is to be able to re-generate my system from a blank hard disk in under an hour. I've 'crippled' my network capabilities. This seriously impedes attempts to gain access to my system. Although probably not as secure as the highest stone walls available, I'm comfortable. I encrypt all personal files. My passwords use both upper and lower alpha with numerals. I use different passwords on-line and at home, and I have forgotten a few too: a major pain. I set password protection at BIOS level. Laptops can grow feet. A CEO of a large tech company recently lost his laptop with a ton of important stuff on it. If I lost mine, I'd only have lost a box of chips. The data would be safe. I'm also sure the CIA could break into my system, but why they'd bother looking for half-finished projects and corny jokes is beyond me.

To: Greg from Edmonton who wrote (11529)	11/21/2000 12:55:37 PM
From: Moving Sphere	Respond to of 14778

>>"46k modem connect, consider yourself lucky. I am out in the sticks with a bad phone line."<< Wow, and I thought 56k connection speed was very common. There were some interesting result that I like to share. One time awhile ago, I decided to try a different phone number from a zone which was considered to be a little further away from my house. Lo and behold, I got a modem speed of 53K!!! Thinking that I was blessed with good luck, I continued to use that phone number until my phone bill came. You guess it, there was a zone chart on that phone line and I couldn't believe how much I owed the phone company. Needless to say, I went back to old number with 26k to 46k (I don't always get 46k) access speed. Interesting lesson from this is that the modem speed may not be depending on my side of the phone line but "their" sides of the phone line. How else could I get faster modem speed from a much far away place? >>"No what I was referring to is a totally separate computer that runs Linux, and is just used to share the internet connection and protect the internal network. It doesn't even have to be anything fancy, a 486 with 16MB RAM and a couple of network cards would work just fine. I have a similar setup except that it uses a single dial-up modem."<< Hey, this is interesting. Do you mean to tell me that I can set up a small network where everyone of my household can access the internet at the same time with their own PC using one AOL access? If so, could you please point me to the information base where I can learn how to do it? I'll appreciate it very much. Thanks again.

To: Greg from Edmonton who wrote (11529)	1/15/2001 12:19:09 PM
From: Richard Goodman	Respond to of 14778

<<No what I was referring to is a totally separate computer that runs Linux, and is just used to share the internet connection and protect the internal network. It doesn't even have to be anything fancy, a 486 with 16MB RAM and a couple of network cards would work just fine. I have a similar setup except that it uses a single dial-up modem.>> I run such Linux boxes on both my DSL lines (home and office). The learning curve on Linux is pretty steep - I found I got nowhere until I found a student mentor from a local engineering college. You can build them cheap, but I prefer pentiums or K6-2's to 486s so that if you have to do a kernel recompile it doesn't take forever... Dick