Dial Up connection problems - bad phone line?

December 29, 2004 2:24 AM

Dial-up modem connection woes [+]

I have a dial-up connection with my local electric co-op because I live in BFE and satellite is too expensive. Thankfully I am selling this house and moving back to the city, but I'd like to solve this problem so my few remianing months here are less like hell.

I can only dial-up once per boot up. If I hang up and try to re-dial-up I get the following... First attempt, I get connected, but I can't "get" to anything on the Internet. Can't resolve domain names, can't even SSH into an IP address. Any subsequest connections cause a TCP/IP error #31: "A device attached to the system is not functioning" and I cannot connect to my ISP.

I have duplicated this across several modems, and EVEN got a cheap copper.net dial-up account because I figured my podunk ISP might be the problem. The problem persists with the new ISP. Now, this suggests that it is something internal to my computer, but not the modem, or something between my computer and a particular ISP (phone line/company or something). Also, this problem only happens 85% of the time. Occasionally I can re-dial-up fine without a reboot. Very rarely, though.

I've tried all kinds of modem settings, AT commands, and even a line test # (that seems to always be busy). I tried dialing into my ISP via hyperterm and running 'ATY11' to get a frequency/amplitude table (because I also only get 26.4K where I used to get 53.3K speeds), but after logging in I get:

Level 3 Comm nas25.2in1 UQKT2

Username:/login:/Login:"username@hostname"
Password:password
Entering PPP Session.
IP address is 4.225.93.126
MTU is 1524.

...and it just hangs. The USR linetest # is ALWAYS busy. Any ideas, thoughts, or recommendations?

Incidentally, I can log into my service provider via hyperterminal, hang up, dial through "dial-up" networking and stuff still works. That is, this dial in doesn't "count" toward the one successful dial-in per boot rule mentioned above.

posted by pissfactory to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Response by poster: Oh, Windows XP, SP1, USR Internal v92 Fax PCI Modem. 2.8GHz P4, 1.5G RAM, home built system. But.... this problem has also spanned two machines, the last being a Dell XPS 933.
posted by pissfactory at 2:28 AM on December 29, 2004

might be a phone line issue. try another phone jack (if you haven't already). at my in-laws, the jack their computer is hooked into never connects higher than 33.6, with a 56k modem. when i visit them, using my laptop in the living room (same house) i regularly get 44 or above. in the kitchen (again same house) i can't connect at all. something somewhere screwed up the lines; phones work on all 3 but computer not so much.

your neighbors have similar issues? it's less expensive to have it fixed if the problem is outside your house rather than inside.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:57 AM on December 29, 2004

I had a similar problem in an apartment some years back. Do you get a lot of static and noise on your phone lines, something like popping popcorn or the crackle of an old record album? It was so bad where I lived that I couldn't even call the phone company to complain- they couldn't hear me over the noise. And every time there was one of those static pops while I tried to connect, the connection became slower and slower. It was to the point that I wasn't even able to get a double-digit speed using my 56k modem.

In my case it turned out to be an underground phone line needing replacement, as water was seeping in. However, I was told it could have just as easily been a similar problem with the jack, or the phone cord I was using, and all were checked before they dug up the outside lines.
posted by Kellydamnit at 7:03 AM on December 29, 2004

Response by poster: no detectable line noise...

my neighbors spend lots of time on tractors and don't use the Internets...
posted by pissfactory at 9:51 AM on December 29, 2004

I live out in the country and I found I couldn't get a reliable connection above 19.2k. So, I set the modem to 14.4k and sucked it up.

Went from 1 disconnect every 10 minutes or so to never disconnecting.

Definately don't waste your time phoning the phone company, the best you'll get them to guarantee is 9600 baud, and that's just because of fax machines.
posted by shepd at 11:37 AM on December 29, 2004

Response by poster: thank god i'm leaving this god forsaken place for bright lights, big city... as soon as this farmhouse sells.
posted by pissfactory at 5:20 PM on December 29, 2004

This is not a problem with your phone lines. Period. Problems with static or poor-quality phone connections will result in retrains (lag), disconnections, or extended handshaking. It won't, however, result in a DUN error 31 -- which implies that DUN can't access the modem because it's not responding. A poor connection just won't do that. A poor connection also isn't fixed by rebooting.

This is almost invariably a problem with DUN, although there could be a mitigating factor with the modem. Did you use the same installation of XP through those two previous machines? Have you uninstalled and reinstalled the DUN component in Windows? Have you tried reinstalling the modem and modem drivers?
posted by eschatfische at 6:06 PM on December 29, 2004

Sorry, DUN = the Dial-Up Networking component in Windows.
posted by eschatfische at 6:07 PM on December 29, 2004