Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dsl and 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?

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?

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!