Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with adsl

Help me with my internet annoyance.

zardoz — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:37:04 -0800

I sometimes have trouble with downloading via torrent: surfing becomes a slow crawl/not an option. I have a broadband DSL connection and I'll often download torrents via Transmission on my iMac.

The problem is with torrents: with either Transmission, or uTorrent I can go for several days, even longer than a week, but then suddenly surfing pages on a browser will slow to a crawl and then stop. Torrent downloading may or may not stop at that point, but eventually it stops too.

When this happens I unplug my DSL modem, plug it back in, wait a minute or two, and then I'm firing on all cylinders, torrent downloading and surfing are good for another week or so.

So how can I avoid this step? Settings in Transmission? Hack the modem?

Thailand [Krabi] internet and long term accommodation

simplesharps — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:46:36 -0800

I'm planning on taking a working holiday mid april for two months (or longer) in Thailand with a friend. I have a few questions... Last year I spent some time in South East Asia and really enjoyed myself. We both like the sounds of Krabi but neither of us have been there.

Would you recommend Krabi or some place else? We like relaxed, green, away for huge cities but not rural living (need internet & gym). We're only going to stay in one spot for the whole time.

Any recommendations on places to rent? Sharing or separate. An apartment or house would be nice. Middle price range - no idea really how much that would be. Close to a gym would be best.

Who would you recommend for high speed internet? What's the speeds we can expect?

Many thanks!

How much postage on a webpage?

Solomon — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:28:14 -0800

Do you use Post Office broadband as your UK ISP? And if you do, what are they like? I've been reading lots of reviews online, but I can't seem to find out what the surfing experience is like. All of the reviews I've read so far seem to have come from people inexperienced with PC/DSL problems. I can find lots of people slating the customer service helpline, and that side of things, but nobody is talking about the surfing speeds, the ping times, and such. What are they like?

FWIW, I already have broadband (have had for several years), a router, etc. I'm reasonably sure I can deal with most problems like SMTP passwords myself. I hopefully shan't have much need of customer services at all. I just want to know what the day-to-day surfing experience, and the change from one ISP to another, etc, is like.

Wall of confusion

southof40 — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 06:53:28 -0800

Safely use someone elses ADSL connection ? I'm a long way from home and I need to hook my PC up to my hosts ADSL connection.

They have an ADSL modem (D-LINK DSL-302G) but no other hardware protection (and with NAT disabled on the modem currently).

I have a Windows XP SP2 machine using Windows firewall (I also have in my bag a WRT54G Linksys router).

I don't want to mess with my hosts setup and I don't have a manual for the WRT54G (I've tried various things with the 54G and failed to connect)

What's the safest way for me to make use of their modem ? My current ideas range from :

* plug in directly to ADSL - hope Windows firewall can handle it
* go and buy replacement ADSL modem but with built in firewall (not easy long way from shops)
* install some extra layer of software firewall

All suggestions welcome

Which is faster or better, ADSL or cable internet connection?

feelinggood — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:47:58 -0800

Which is a better broadband connection type: ADSL or cable? Plus a couple of other smaller (and simpler) questions. In Toronto (actually Richmond Hill, a suburb) I have a choice of ISP types. Which is better? I am now with Bell Sympatico on an ADSL line.
I've just tested my speed with speedtest.net and with pcpitstop.com and they give me download speeds of between 2547 kbps and 2897 kbps. Is this good?

Is there any way of finding out what speed Sympatico claims to provide (really)? I'm paying for what they call "Total Performance" for which they say "Enjoy up to 7 Mbps".

Can others tell me what they are getting from Sympatico, or is this discrepancy a known issue?

ALSO:

I now rent from them a Speedstream 5200 'modem'. It's about 4 years old. Should I ask for a new one?

Is there any way they will let me not rent a modem from them (that is, buy my own and spare the rental fee - $2.00 a month)?

I have a Netgear RP614 router. Does it provide me with a firewall, or do I still need a software firewall in addition?

Why can't I open webpages?

k8t — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:49:00 -0800

ADSL working but HTTP not working. I just got an ADSL connection (in Armenia, provider is Beeline, only documentation is here and is in Armenian. 256k though. Woo!)

I can use all sorts of applications pretty well (iTunes downloading podcasts, Flickr uploader, Outlook for mail, gChat, etc.), but I can't do anything HTTP. I open Firefox and can sometimes get a mobile page to load and I can search Google or Yahoo and see the results, but I can't open "normal" webpages at all. I tried IE and Opera but the same problem occurs.

I tried getting into the configuration page for the DSL modem, but doesn't look like it'll work well.

Also, suggesting updating firmware for DSL modem or something isn't possible. I am on really bad dialup otherwise.

Why would this be? (And yes, I've called tech support. They are less than impressive. They only introduced this service this month and aren't exactly supporting it.)

I am running Vista. I have tried to turn off all firewall-related stuff that I can possibly think of.

Any other ideas?

Home internet networks over large distances?

zaebiz — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:48:45 -0800

I have a wireless router in my house. 150 metres away I have a shed where I want to be able to use the internet on my laptop. There are electricity outlets in the house and in the shed but not in between. How do I get the signal from the house to my shed? For example are there battery-powered boosters that I could lay between the two places and recharge them at night? Can I buy a more powerful router? Can I buy some sort of signal magnifier to attach to the router? Or .... is it crazy to run a telephone cable all the way from the ADSL port in my house to the router in my shed? Any other ideas?

Wireless router woes

juva — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 01:32:34 -0800

Is there any way to connect a USB ADSL modem to a wireless-G broadband router? My roommate and I want to share an internet connection so I went out and bought a Linksys wireless-g broadband router in haste. It turns out we have an ADSL internet connection and our broadband internet comes in through a speedtouch 330 ADSL modem which is connected to her computer via USB. The modem doesn't have any other connectivity options, just USB.

The router doesn't have a USB port, only ethernet cable so I can't connect the modem to the wireless router.

I later saw another wireless router which is an ADSL modem at the same time but it's much more expensive and I already bought this one.

What are my options? Is there an adapter that will let me connect the USB modem to the router's ethernet port? Do I need a new ADSL modem (not a USB one)? Am I condemned to getting the expensive wireless router/ADSL modem in one?

The cheaper the solution, the better.
Thanks guys!

Recommend a good ADSL modem + wireless router

adrianhon — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:43:12 -0800

Recommend a good ADSL modem + wireless router (G or N) that can also mount an external hard drive as a network share - for the UK My current Belkin ADSL modem/wireless router is frequently crashing, so I'm looking for something new. I was aiming to get the Airport Extreme, but I'd have to get a separate ADSL modem and I just can't be bothered with that (plus it's pretty expensive). I'd prefer something with decent range, since I have a lot of walls in my flat, and the network share thing would be very useful, although I'm not terribly bothered about whether it's a fully-featured NAS or not.

Trying to find a broadband checker site

ascullion — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:19:02 -0800

I used to have a link to a very very detailed UK ADSL broadband checker - it gave lots of information about which broadband providers were enabled on each exchange, instead of just giving generic info about the quality of the line, as most of the checkers do. Of course, I've lost the link, and Google isn't helping. Does anyone know the site I'm talking about?

How fat it was, how fat

fightorflight — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:19:42 -0800

Help me understand bandwidth, servers and net speed in general please! I'm looking around for a colo just now, and pricing at the bottom end of the scale. Some places price at 1Mbit/s connections, others at 100GB/mo. On this, I am confused. How do the two relate: could I get the 100GB at varying rates, or is it simply another way of expressing the same thign?

Additionally, 1Mb seems slow: My home broadband (ADSL) for instance, is 8Mbit down, 1Mbit up. Serving from it is way too slow. Is this the same sort of speed I'd be buying from the 1Mbit connection service? T1 lines are 1.5Mb/s, aren't they? They used to be spoken of in hushed tones of awe as being killer for speed -- surely they're not the same thing as my modem is trickling up the pipe? (Ignoring contention ratios here)

Can you clear this up for me?

Don't make me go back to dial-up!

sneakyalien — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:59:53 -0800

Why will my new ADSL connection not connect to particular pages on the web? Hey MeFites, I need some computer guidance –

I am a relatively savvy end-user who has just graduated from dial-up, only I live in the sticks and all that is available here is ADSL. Anyway, I have a Netgear wireless modem/router combo on the way, but in the meantime have hooked up a Zoom wireless gateway. I ran the CD that came with the router (was that a mistake?) but have since started using Network Magic to monitor and administer the network, but without getting too technical (for now) I cannot get to specific pages on the web – my.yahoo, yahoo sports, hotmail, and sometimes ebay. Almost all other pages load fine and with no problems. Being new to ADSL, I need some direction in troubleshooting a problem like this. These were pages that I “stayed logged onto” prior to installing the router, but would that have anything to do with it? Oh yeah, and the computer is free of malware. Needless to say, I need some direction.

Any takers?

Internet connection in a holiday apartment

toreo — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 08:05:13 -0800

Do you know of search engines/sites for holiday apartments in the Mediterreanean where it is possible to specify that you only want to return results for apartments with internet connection?

ADSL and Gibraltar (the place, not the firewall)

sueinnyc — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 15:54:31 -0800

Problems configuring a modem/router in Gibraltar I am visiting family in Gibraltar and trying to help set up a new router (with built-in modem). The home has functioning ADSL (which I'm using to post this), currently using a USB modem. The router connects to the computer via Ethernet cable.

I can't get online via the router's modem. There seem to be two problems:

1) I can't find the ADSL parameters for Gibraltar (the CD that came with the router does not have a file for Gibraltar, the info sheet that came from the ISP does not have all the info that I apparently need, and searches on Google get lots of hits concerning the firewall of the same name).

2) PPPoE does not seem to work with the settings that I have (I have tried to connect via the PC in question and also with my MacBook Pro that I brought with me, and each time I make any progress, it says that a PPPoE connection could not be established).

Does anyone have the ADSL parameters for Gibraltar handy? Is the PPPoE issue something to do with the first issue, a limitation with respect to DSL from this ISP (Sapphire) or something else?

Please excuse my ignorance. Thank you in advance for any help given. The router, btw, is made by corega.

Calling the ISP would be the best starting point, but it's Christmas and I don't think we'll reach anyone anytime soon.

Streaming cable TV

ODiV — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:32:37 -0800

I want to stream cable television from one location to another over an ADSL connection. The "viewing" location has a computer and an ADSL connection to the "streaming" location which also has a computer and cable access. How do I make this work? I have a few computers I can throw at this, but it probably won't take more than two. The two I'm hoping to use are an AMD X2 Athlon 3800+ with 2GB of RAM for viewing and a old Athlon Tbird 1.3Ghz with 512MB of RAM and an ATI TV Tuner card for streaming. Both are running Pro, but I can wipe the second and put whatever on it.

If it's relevant, the ADSL connection between the locations is direct and not over the Internet or two ADSL modems with the same provider. Usage won't be an issue.

Why does my internet connection keep dropping??

lemonpillows — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 11:58:05 -0800

Wierd adsl connection problem. My google-fu has failed me. Please help - I'm tearing my hair out! Ok, so I have broadband internet from Tiscali in the UK. At the beginining, I had no problems. I could log on whenever I wanted.

I've been with them about a year now, so I can change if I want. When I've tried to connect recently, more often than not I just can't get a connection. The LAN LED lights up on my adsl modem / router, but the adsl light just keeps flashing and won't stay solid. I try rebooting, check all the cables, etc etc but no joy. So I generally give up.

The thing is though, if I use my telephone, the adsl light will go solid, and I can temporarily get a connection. If I cut the phone off, sometimes the connection stays, and sometimes it goes.

Sometimes I can get connected, then the connection drops after about 10 minutes.

I called Tiscali, who were less than useless (asking me to reboot my machine, plug in the usb modem etc etc), and eventually I gave up, as using the telephone had gotten me a connection anyway.

Is there anything else I should be looking at? Is this a common Tiscali problem? Why will the connection work if I use my telephone, but not just connect automatically? Should I just give up on them and change to another provider?? Or is this likely to be a problem with my line?

Any help gratefully appreciated!

ADSL pricing soars in Kenya

davehat — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 06:07:54 -0800

Dear MeFites, please can you help me to challenge recent ADSL broadband price increases in Kenya. Having slashed ADSL costs significantly in February 2006, Telkom Kenya has hiked their entry level ADSL pricing by 64% after only 5 months.

The service in question is the 32/128kbps pre-paid unlimited ADSL bundle. This was revolutionary when it came out and uptake was good. New users parted with the KSh3800 ($51) connection fee, the KSh8500 ($115) modem fee and then committed themselves to a KSh5604 ($76) monthly fee with a belief that, as per broadband pricing across the rest of the known world, the price would either remain constant and the speeds increase, or the prices would come down over the course of the next 12 months or so. The really nice bit was the fact that access was via scratch cards that could be purchased as needed (no monthly bills). Though a bit fiddly for the first time user to set up each month, it provided flexibility to the consumer. It also gave users a neat way to sidestep Telkom’s notoriously erratic billing.

Seeing as I was on this tariff, I was mightily pissed off to pick up a letter in my post box today informing me of this (back dated a week, mind you). Not many people who parted with their KSh17904 ($242) first bill saw a 64% increase coming in as little as 5 months. The same service now costs an astonishing KSh9188 ($125) a month. That’s $25 more than the average monthly wage here.

At the same time, Telkom have introduced a new tariff for “home users”. The speed is 32/128kbps. The cost is KSh5604 ($76). The difference is the introduction of a 90hr monthly access limit. So that’s three hours access a day (or 6 hours if you’re a night owl and use the service between 8pm and 8am at half price). This means that KSh5604 ($76) now buys you 87.5% less time than it used to. This hourly limit means that access on the tariff is now a fraction over the cost of using an Internet café (average price of browsing in an urban Internet café is Ksh60 ($0.83) an hour).

I called Telkom and eventually a very helpful lady in the marketing department agreed to answer some questions about why the prices had gone up so sharply.

It turns out just about every Internet café owner within spitting distance of a digital exchange in Kenya has switched to 32/128kbps PAYG tariff since its launch. Businesses are supposed to use the 64/256kbps service which costs KSh16008 ($218) per month. By moving to the 32/128kbps tariff, they could slash their monthly overheads by as much as a half, what with competitor’s prices being either just as expensive as Telkom's 64/256kbps service or requiring higher initial capital outlay and additional licensing for VSAT or radio equipment. The lady in marketing revealed that the original 32/128kbps service was not for business use and that the changes in tariff were introduced to address this mass switch over.

I can see why Telkom wanted to take action against businesses using an inappropriate tariff, what I don’t see is why home users on the same tariff, who have invested a large amount of money to access a service, are being penalised so harshly; surely there must be ways or ensuring that businesses (for which read multiple users/Internet cafes in particular) are not able to use this tariff, but home users are?

Wherein lies my question:

How can Telkom offer this 32/128kbps service to home users on a pre-paid basis, whilst preventing businesses from taking advantage of a tariff they are not offered.

Any ideas are appreciated as I have been asked to forward my thoughts on the matter to Telkom. Unfortunately, I'm not very technically minded and I'm a bit jaundiced in view right now, what with being directly affected by the increase.

USB ADSL on a slow Linux box?

Nik_Doof — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:54:01 -0800

Linuxfilter: Is it worth replacing my hardware ADSL solution for a USB based ADSL Modem on a slow Linux (IPCop) box? I've recently setup a old Dell Optiplex GS+ with a P1 166mhz, 80mb RAM with IPCop as my hardware ADSL router couldn't offer the features i needed (QoS). At the moment the hardware router (a Solwise 705) is running in ZipB mode, which makes it basiclly a ADSL modem with ethernet connection.

I've been looking through my old hardware and found a Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL modem and a USB card, I've got the idea now of rigging this up to my IPCop system instead of the overkill router, as the router could really go to a better home.

My question is: Am i going to see a massive preformance drop if i use USB instead of a hardware solution, would the 166mhz processor be up to the job? I've tried googling for some real world figures on USB throughput on CPU limited machines, but i've found nothing. My broadband is 8192/500, will i be still able to exploit the full bandwidth?

Wireless Mac ADSL hell

ClanvidHorse — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 13:23:29 -0800

Setting up a Mac wirelessly on ADSL. Help! I have just got ADSL broadband installed at my new house. The problem is I cannot connect to the net wirelessly. Its fine when the ethernet cable is connected but otherwise wont connect. What am I doing wrong?

A few things. I am in the UK and the DSL is through BT. I have an imac G5 running OSX. The router is a BT Voyager 2500. As I said above, I can connect with an ethernet connection direct from the router and surf the net etc. but when I try to use it wirelessly it wont connect. It shows in the top right hand corner of the screen that I have Airport access to the network (I.e. it isnt greyed out) and it is obviously picking up the signal from the router but it wont translate this to web-browsing. Any ideas?

I previously used a Belkin wireless router with Cable broadband and it worked fine. This is so annoying.

Thanks

VoIP and ADSL on the cheap?

flabdablet — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:17:07 -0800

What's the minimal hardware I need to put my house phones on VoIP? Background:

ADSL has finally arrived in our little village this week, and I've signed up with an ISP that offers very attractive bundled VoIP pricing and a good reputation for helpful support. I'm expecting my line will be ADSL-enabled within a couple of weeks.

I want to set up my shiny new broadband connection with the least possible expenditure on new hardware, while at the same time getting my house LAN arrangements in order. I've got an old PC with a huge disk drive that I've been meaning for some time to set up as an always-on Linux-based server.

I know how to make that work as a NAT router/firewall and file server, and I'm sure I can work out enough of Squid to speed up my Windows updates and present a useful work-around-the-filters challenge to our nascent 14-year-old hacker, but I have no experience at all with ADSL modems or VoIP adaptor boxes. I'd like to hang one of each off of the server.

Questions:

1. Given that my ADSL connection will be PPP-based, that I do already have an old 10mbit Ethernet card I'm not using, and that there are unused USB 1.1 ports on my server PC, is there any reason to prefer an Ethernet-connected ADSL modem to a cheaper USB one?

2. Is it feasible to press my old 56K external voice/data/fax modem into service as the hardware component of a VoIP adapter for my existing house phones? If not, why not? If so, what software will the server need to simulate what the ISP's recommended VoIP adaptor can do?

3. Why don't I just use the wonderful Product X, which has an inbuilt POTS/ADSL splitter, plus an ADSL modem, plus a house phone interface that allows incoming and outgoing calls via both POTS and VoIP (selectable per phone number and/or by dialling prefix and falling back to POTS on power failure), plus a NAT router, plus an easy-to-use Web-based configuration tool, plus endlessly upgradeable open-source firmware, and costs not much more than a vanilla ADSL modem?

Internet Connection Issues

dazed_one — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:14:05 -0800

Internet connection issues: I can't seem to get my ADSL connection to work through my router. I'm not exactly savvy when it comes to this stuff, so hopefully you kind folk will be able to explain in simple enough terms. Here's the sad story: a few days ago my room-mate and I noticed a strange computer on our network. Thinking that someone was leeching off our horribly unsecure wireless network I decided to see what I could do and ended up resetting the router and running its set-up program again. I changed the settings of the router so it was no longer wireless, and set-up my ADSL connection through it's prompted questions. However, now when I open up my browser it prompts me with my ADSL provider's login and connect window. Whether I try and connect through that or hit cancel, it still won't connect me to the web. On what may be a related note, I recently started using azureus for my bittorrent needs, and I'm worried that it may have something to do with that. Something about ports and gateways that I'm somewhat lacking in knowelege about, maybe?

Connecting a win2k server to two different ADSL lines.

seanyboy — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 05:19:15 -0800

I want to connect two ADSL lines with different IP ranges to a server. This is to allow external sources to connect to one of two completely different ip addresses for the same server. I thought it'd be as easy as connecting an extra network card, but this isn't the case. The network cards work individually, but will not work together. I suspect that return traffic is always routed via the default gateway.
I am using Windows 2000 servers. Application served include http and rdp (port 3389)
Is there any way to allow traffic to come to the same server via different ADSL lines?

I want ADSL at home!

armoured-ant — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 13:20:44 -0800

I moved to London (SE4) just under a month ago. I've already found a great job (this is good), and I'd like to get broadband at home. I ordered ADSL from Demon just before I moved, I am still waiting for it to be installed, a month later. They originally stated a 10 working day install time. They have repeatedly moved the install date back, promised they'd ring me, and so on. Generally, they've put it down to BT, distance from the exchange, etc., but not offered any means of getting in touch with anyone directly responsible for such things. When I call up, after being on hold for about ten minutes, I'm put on hold while the operator talks to the provisioning team, who I, apparently, can't be put through to.

Should I ditch Demon and go with another provider? Anyone have anything but nightmare stories when getting ADSL?

Configuring a Zoom X3 5660A router/modem for Bit Torrent

Marquis — Sun, 08 May 2005 07:25:41 -0800

I recently bought a Zoom X3 5660A DSL router/modem/all-in-one to use with my Apple Airport Extreme Base Station for internet. Everything's working fine, except Azureus (Bit Torrent). Although I can download/share torrents, they've all got yellow smilies - and the configuration wizard shows a NAT Error when I test port 16881 (which I've configured Az. to use).

This, obviously, means that port forwarding isn't happening correctly. These are the things I've done so far:

1) I turned off Azureus' UPNP auto option, as suggested.

2) I changed my Azureus port to 16881, in case my ISP was blocking the default (6881).

3) Confirmed that the firewalls are off on the Airport and Modem/router.

4) I set up a static IP address by doing following some online instructions and doing this:

System Pref -) Network -) Airport -) TCP/IP
Configure: Manually
IP Address: 10.0.1.201
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Router: 10.0.1.1
DNS Servers: 10.0.1.1

5) I configured my Airport's Port Mapping by adding a bunch of entries (16881-16889) like this:

Public Port: 16881
Private IP Address: 10.0.1.201
Private Port: 16881

6) I reset the airport.

Most of the forum-post support for configuring the Zoom X3 for BT is based on the 5660 modem, which has a "Virtual Server" button on the control panel which you can use to configure port forwarding. The 5660A does not have this feature. Sooo... I tried adapting these instructions, which are for another modem but were translatable.

8) I added IP Filtering rules, as here. (On my setup, unlike theirs, there were already many IP Filtering rules. Azureus didn't work any better with the existing ones + my new ones, the existing ones + only the BT-related one, or everything deleted except my three new rules.)

9) I added the NAT rule as here.

Anyway - no dice. Yellow smilies and NAT Errors.

At this point I've reset the modem/router to its default settings.

Some suspicions about things which still may be wrong:

A) On the IP Filtering page of my control panel, if I click the "Session" button, it states "IP Filter not enabled". I can't find anywhere that says "Enable IP Filter", though.

B) One of the problems may just be the interaction between my airport and the router side of the Zoom... Maybe I need to turn off its router features? I don't really know how to do this... I read somewhere that this was effected by "enabling Bridging", which I did, but that sort of broke everything and it's what spurred the hard-reset to defaults.

Sorry for all the complicated explanation - hopefully it's enough background that the problem can be solved by someone brilliant and insightful out there. Metafilter - please help me!

WRT54G and BT Broadband

Jongo — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 06:54:13 -0800

Does anybody have any experience setting up a Linksys WRT54GS with BT Broadband? I've connected it to the BT Voyager 205 ADSL Router that came with the Broadband package today. The ADSL router works fine (I can use it with a USB cable), but I can't seem to get the WRT54GS to work with it. After googling around a bit, I think that BT uses PPPoA, but I'm not sure. That option doesn't appear in my Linksys configuration screen. Is that a problem? Thanks in advance for any help. I'm at my wits end, thinking I was man enough to set up wifi. I was wrong.