NetZero

[Charlie Self]

For some reason, my Internet connection in Bedford is half the speed it used to be: 28.8 instead of 56K. Right now, no DSL from anyone. No cable, either, yet. Satellite, yes. But I'm truly not up for a $600 equipment investment, plus a monthly dish access charge of at least $40.

I ran across a thing called NetZero, and am considering their "high speed" dial up. Supposedly 5 times as fast as my current speed, which is still lousy, but...

Is anyone using this service? If so, what kind of results have you had, how happy are you with it, does it make NG access easy or difficult?

Charlie Self "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." Dorothy Parker

[Todd Fatheree]

I'm not using it, nor would I ever unless, God forbid, I move out of range of cable (which I have now) or at least DSL. But just so we're clear on the "5 times faster" thing, the way they supposedly achieve that is that NetZero's servers cache web content so that, for instance, when you're going to

you don't actually have to get all the way to the NRA web servers to retrieve the information, because it's likely already cached at one of NetZero's servers. Now, if you do a lot of downloads, you're screwed, because those will come down at the same, slow rate as before.

Regarding your current connection, have you tried other 56K numbers to dial up, assuming there are any? For completeness, I should also point out that the connection speed that is reported is only the initial speed that was negotiated between your modem and the ISP's equipment. Both ends are constantly negotiating the best speed that they can get. For an additional helping of completeness, you never got 56K. The best you can do, in theory, is 53K, because that is what the speed over an analog line is limited to, by law, though I'm not sure if I ever saw a reported connection speed over 48K. In any case, 28.8K is dreadfully slow and I hope you get it fixed, because I sure couldn't deal with it.

todd

[Bay Area Dave]

you GOTTA be kidding!!

Just "ran" across a "thing called NetZero"?

Don't be peeking at my posts, or any posts that respond to me ole Charlie!!

LOL!

dave

[Bay Area Dave]

Todd Fatheree wrote: The best you can do, in theory,

I've got one line in my house that nearly always connects at

49.3 Another line can't do better than 28.8

dave

[Dave Hinz]

Satellite gives you good speed, once the connection is made. Speed of light and distance to geosynchronous satellites dictates that you'll have at least a second of lag before anything you request gets to you. Not a problem for downloading big files, but for something like a webpage made up of dozens or hundreds of individual objects, can get painfully slow.

From what I've read, they get this speedup by re-sampling the images on the pages before sending them to you, making them lower resolution and therefore faster. Some of the other "5 times faster" is probably in the V92 modem protocol's compression, which has been out for rather a long time. One might argue that that compression isn't fair to compare to "ordinary" as everyone's using it.

Once you're on the net, connecting to a usenet server isn't a biggie. I use a free one out of Germany which I am extremely happy with. No binary groups, but for me that's a non-issue.

One of the disadvantages of living in "God's country" is that it's almost always a dial-up situation. I'm fortunate to have a friend close to my house who sells software, so he has a T1 feed to his house, which I then relay over to mine (just over a mile) to get a _very_ nice network feed. This isn't likely to be the case for many folks, though.

Dave Hinz

[Dave Hinz]

Hm, if that's how they're calculating it, then it's even more iffy than I thought. Any ISP is going to be on a very fat pipe compared to a dialup user. The time lag saved by caching the data in a local proxy server is minimal - they do it mainly to decrease having to re-fetch the same object dozens or thousands of times a day. Makes sense from a bandwidth usage standpoint, but only buys a tiny fraction of the total time compared to a bandwidth download of the same object.

Yes; there's only so much data that can go down the line at one time, no matter how you look at it. The garden hose won't put out the forest fire.

I saw a 52K connection just last night on dialup, it was the first time I saw anything over 50. May have been a change in how it's reported, though.

I'm spoiled by my home connection, that's for sure. I get to someone's house where they have dialup, and if their system needs work, it's actually almost always quicker to drive it over to my place, install a NIC, and use my feed to go get the patches or drivers or whatever. Then, I play in the shop while the stuff is downloading, so it's a win-win.

Dave Hinz

[patriarch]

Bay Area Dave wrote in news:LAiCc.76670$ [e-mail]:

THAT sounds like an inside wiring issue, if they are the same telephone number. How's the voice quality?

Patriarch

[nospambob]

[Dave Balderstone]

Look for the words "up to"... which includes "nought".

I'd ask whoever owns the copper coming into your house to do a line check first, then check the copper inside the house.

djb

[George]

Right answer. You get a degraded page, and as "popup blocking" is normally included, the two combine for a bit fuzzier but faster load of a new page. Balance this against competing in a limited bandwidth for the proxy, and note how slowly the _second_ page loads. I'm thinking of canceling my free trial, because it doesn't really do much. They also seem to block your PC's cached page from loading. You know how the framework seems to pop right up, then fill with changing data?

At the department we have DSL which is slower than my non-cache dialup for browsing, because it has the world's clunkiest DNS. Daughter had cable at her apartment which was slower in browsing mode than the wireless from the University, which she could get at the NW corner of her living room.

There's a lot of stuff involved, connection speed being but one.

[Dave Hinz]

That makes sense in this context. The html comes in from the server, the .css is cached, and the elements within it need to be fetched for you.

If she'd build a cantenna (google is your friend) she could probably get it from her entire apartment.

I had an interesting discussion with the folks from Go'mez yesterday, regarding just this. The first time their testing software fetches our page, most of the delay was the DNS lookup. Second time, that dropped to a couple milliseconds, and it was more ssl and download than anything else. A non-caching DNS server could make life miserable, or if the connection isn't set to "keep-alive". Lots of tuning can be done out there, but at the end of the day, a phone line can only move so many bits per second.

If you wanted to do a cacheing proxy server in-house, there's always Squid in the Linux/Unix/BSD/Mac world, or AllegroSurf in the windows world. Putting the cache and proxy in-house makes sense if you have more than a couple of machines on the home network. AS can even prefetch pages for you, so it's downloading _before_ you click on the link.

Dave Hinz

[Charlie Self]

Dave Balderstone responds:

The kicker is, I was on this line 2-1/2 years ago, and it pumped as much speed as is possible out of a dial-up. Same line, same outlet, etc.

Ah well. It's Verizon and they're supposed to bring DSL to the area shortly. I hope really shortly.

In the meantime, I thank you guys. $14.95 a month isn't big bucks, but if you don't get anything for it, it's money that could buy something useful. Not much these days, but something.

Charlie Self "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." Dorothy Parker

[Larry Blanchard]

Mine shows as 49333 some of the time, 48000 some of the time.

But Charlie might want to see if the phone company's been doing any work on his lines lately. They've screwed up mine once or twice.

[Bay Area Dave]

it isn't an inside wiring issue. a knowledgeable tech from a DSL provider explained to me years ago that one of the phone line pairs is hooked up in a different manner to the phone system, but I must say that I can't recall the technical details. suffice it to say, the phone company doesn't guarantee a fast connection using modems, so my complaints to them resulting in no repair to the slow line. I'm sure if there are any telecommunications pros here, they could explain it to you (and refresh my memory).

dave

[Todd Fatheree]

Around here, if you're getting 14.4 (that would be gun-in-the-mouth territory for me - figuratively speaking), SBC supposedly won't do anything. Back to Charlie...the phone company is always mucking around in the CO for one thing or another and is constantly messing up other lines. I'd say it's at least worth a call.

todd

[Bob]

Charlie,

Despite your earlier negative comments today (a real big thanks for that) I'll offer some possible help. Call Verizon and have them check the line. Because it worked before doesn't mean a thing and things change in 2-1/2 years. It could be a simple matter of them applying some sealing-current on your local loop to help dry out the connections or replacing some loading coils that may have gone bad. With that much deterioration, I would also suspect that a lightning protector may have gone bad right at the house interface or corrosion on some of the terminal connections.

Also, check the settings of your computer setup for the modem. For $15 you can buy a cheap WinModem to verify against. If you had a different computer

2-1/2 years ago and it had a modem in an ISA slot or was external, then it was most likely a modem with it's own controller on-board and did not use the main CPU for processing data. The "real" modems also have better line conditioning features built in and hence cost around $80 to $100 nowadays.

Anything else connected to this line> Did you add an extension and reverse the wires perhaps? You can get the polarity checker at Radio Shack - used to cost around $5. Add any filters to the phone line for your fax machine/answering machine? Same type service as before or have you added features such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, etc.?

So are things really the same now as they were before? Modem has changed probably from an ISA slot modem to a PCI slot or even a built-in WinModem and you're seeing the effects.

Bob S.

[Dave Balderstone]

Something could easily have changed outside the house in 30 months. I know here the telco will come and check the line from the pole to house free of charge. It might be worth doing.

djb

[Mike Marlow]

If the homeowner has only one phone line coming into the house, and extension jacks throughout the house, and some locations experience slower connects, then it is indeed an inside wiring issue. The problem can be caused by a number of factors including...

- polarity reversal (the red and green switched at the jack) - cheap wire - this is very common. Most folks just use cheap Radio Shack wire to run their extension jacks and they run them like they would an electrical outlet (in parallel). Cheap wire is not twisted and is susceptible to line noise which will result in slower negotiated speeds between modems as well as more retries on packet transmission. These days one should spend the little extra and use twisted pair for all home phone wiring. It's not uncommon for people with two line phones in their homes to hear cross talk between the phone lines with cheap wire. - cheap RJ11 jacks - junk jacks will build up an oxide coating on the pins which results in poor signal - the problems are obvious.

The telephone companies all use structured wiring schemes so all of their connections between the Central Office and your residential network access are hooked up in a consistent manner. It would be possible, but most unlikely for the phone company to have hooked up any of your home lines in anything but a structured manner.

Still, it comes down to the simple observation - if one location in your home works well and another does not, then it's your in home wiring that is at fault.

[Mike Marlow]

There have been lots of comments and replies to your original post Charlie - one from me included, but as I re-read your original post I have come up with the precise answer to your question. No. There - that was simple. The 5X speed up that the ISP's tout is strictly related to web surfing and as you've probably read in the other posts, is done with some trickery and there is a slight cost you pay for that as a user. What it categorically does not do is speed up your internet connection. That's a laws of physics thing and there's no getting around it.

If you can only connect at 14.4 or 28.8 today, then it's because of some problem which has been addressed by other posts. It could be a phone company problem, your house wiring, corrosion in your jacks, mice eating through insulation on your wires creating noise but perhaps not a direct short,... lots of things. This is where you need to focus. The problem could be inside your computer as well. It would pay to double check your configurations. Remember - this is the world of Windoze....

The 5X speed up deals will not help or affect your newsgroup activities however. Newsgroups are not cached like web pages are by the ISP's so each of your requests to the server for an article or for a download will still be handled the same way under the 5X offering as it is under your current service. It comes down to the fact that the 5X speed up is not really a transmission speed up but a lessening of the protocols, negotiations and accesses that the ISP's servers have to go through in order to bring you a requested web page.

HTH

[Charlie Self]

Bob responds:

I htink I lost the loop on that thread. Sorry.

snip of advice

Possible. Just makes me wonder why it connected fine most of the time in Parkersburg, doesn't here. Old lines in both houses.

I'll check in a few days.

Charlie Self "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." Dorothy Parker