Posted by LisaWI on 12/7/05 6:12am
Msg #80822

Internet Connection Question

To all you computer guru's who are way smarter than me on this stuff. Is there such a thing as making a dial up connection faster?? We have to move and there is no cable or DSL connection to the house we would like to move into. Satellite is waaay too expensive, not to mention, it can get frazzled during a snow storm. Do any of you still use dial up?? Im pretty spoiled by the cable connection. My downloads are pretty quick. I also checked into T1, but there are too many trees in the way. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Lisa

Reply by Danny_FL on 12/7/05 6:55am
Msg #80825

I would look into the DSL connection. Check out different companies as some may have DSL in your area of the new house.

Danny

Reply by LisaWI on 12/7/05 7:01am
Msg #80826

Hi Danny,
Thanks for the response, but this house is somewhat in the country and there is no DSL in the area. So that possibility is out. I've already checked with several companies.
Lisa

Reply by Janel Nichols on 12/7/05 7:35am
Msg #80827

Hey Lisa:

Please contact your local service provider. They may be able to boost your dial up connection. See what gadgets they have to offer. I feel your best bet at this point is the Satillite for download speed etc..otherwise T1 would be a good option. Going from DSL to dial up is a bummer!!! I am spoiled too! Is there no location by the road or anywhere where trees are not a problem?

Reply by CarolynCO on 12/7/05 7:35am
Msg #80828

Lisa,
Check out Directway through DirecTV. I've never used it myself, but two people at the cabin are now using it.

Reply by Mitch_MD on 12/7/05 8:22am
Msg #80841

Lisa, if DSL or cable are not available and Directway (satellite) is too expensive, then dial-up will be your only choice. However, if you have less than 56K speeds on dial-up, you *may* be able to improve that by getting the phone service-based voicemail. When I did this many years ago with Verizon, the inclusion of phone service-based voicemail required them to switch my analog lines over to digital lines, due to the heavy amount of noise I was receiving over the phone. Once they did that, my dial-up speed went from around 14.4K on good days to almost 56K all the time.

Another angle you may wish to pursue is the "turbo" type of dial-up, whereby some of the data is cached by the dial-up service to deliver speeds that are a little faster. Please note that this doesn't work for everyone.

Reply by PAW_Fl on 12/7/05 8:46am
Msg #80848

No cable or DSL, bummer. How about ADSL? For me, satellite is out of the question because there's just too many problems with it. T1 is very expensive too, but very nice. You may see if there's a possibility of getting hooked in to a fractional T1 or shared T1 arrangement if there is enough interest in the area to support it.

With dial-up, you will always be limited my the modem. That's a set speed that cannot be altered. However, what a lot of companies offer (like NetZero, Netscape, AOL, etc.) to speed access to common sites is cached data rather than direct access. This certainly won't allow for lightening fast connections, but it's better than nothing. Also, for downloading stuff, there are accelerators that actually create multiple connections to the server. I use DAP (http://www.speedbit.com/) even with DSL which allows me to download 10Mb files in about a minute or so, depending on your actual line speed. There's a free version as well as a "premium" version. They also have a companion product, a "speed optimizer" that may be beneficial. (I have no connections whatsoever with this company, just use their products.)

Reply by LisaWI on 12/7/05 11:40am
Msg #80944

What exactly is ADSL?? I saw it on Ebay, but couldnt make heads nor tails out of it. And I already checked into the T1's. Direct TV could have done it, but the equipment is $600 with a $60 a month service bill. Thats out of my pocketbook. For wireless, they wanted $173 a month. And the speed was half of what I have.
Thanks everyone for the responses.
Lisa

Reply by PAW_Fl on 12/7/05 12:29pm
Msg #80953

Re: Internet Connection Question - What is ADSL?

ADSL started out as the phone company's way to compete with cable TV by delivering both TV and phone service on your plain old copper phone line. Now it's also a good candidate for high speed Internet access.

The "A" stands for "Asymmetric", meaning the phone company can send lots of data to you, but you can't send much to them. Originally, only a tiny uplink of 16 or 64kbps was supported; recent flavors of ADSL support up to ten times that much.

ADSL is one member of a continuum of last-mile transport systems called DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line, which can carry about 1 to 6 megabits/sec over copper lines. It does not include any way to make long distance data calls, or even local calls. That's another matter entirely-- one which is still up in the air. ADSL was originally designed so you still can use it as a regular phone line when the power goes out, which would be a big improvement over BRI ISDN.

For the moment, the only form of DSL really being deployed is HDSL, which is more or less a direct replacement for traditional T1 service. T1 lines have been around forever, but require technicians to tune the line to perfection; HDSL modems can handle dreadful lines cheerfully, so should be much cheaper to install and run.

Other kinds of DSL are coming soon. In general, the fastest DSL schemes only go a couple miles; the slowest can go farther. It's a tradeoff.

For alternatives to ADSL, e.g. cable modems, do a google search and see all the interesting stuff that is out there.