Dialup network dropping packets?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter X
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Peter X

Hi everyone!

I'm running Win2K Pro and have just started having problems with my
dialup connection. It _appears_ to loose sync in that the traffic seems
to stop for a bit and then start working 2, 10, 20, 30 second later, so
initially I suspected my phone line.

However, I've run line tests which show it as clear and I have Linux
installed on the same machine and this isn't exhibiting the same
problems, so it appears my Win2K install has gone funny!

From what I can tell, if I ping a site continuously, e.g.:
ping -t news.bbc.co.uk

I get replies 99.9% of the time (the odd one still doesn't get a reply).
However, if I then browse to a web site with a typical amount of stuff
to download (approx. 100KB of HTML/JS/CSS and images) then a lot of the
pings will not get replies.

Has anyone got any idea what would've caused this and/or how I can fix it?

As far as I'm aware I have not changed anything myself. The only
software I can remember installing was WinAmp, but I didn't notice
installing that *and then* my dialup immediately acting strange so thats
probably a red herring. Oh, and I keep myself fully patched up, and run
Zone Alarm fairly tight and I *never* open dodgy email attachments.

Thanks in advance!!
 
Peter said:
Hi everyone!

I'm running Win2K Pro and have just started having problems with my
dialup connection. It _appears_ to loose sync in that the traffic seems
to stop for a bit and then start working 2, 10, 20, 30 second later, so
initially I suspected my phone line.

However, I've run line tests which show it as clear and I have Linux
installed on the same machine and this isn't exhibiting the same
problems, so it appears my Win2K install has gone funny!

From what I can tell, if I ping a site continuously, e.g.:
ping -t news.bbc.co.uk

I get replies 99.9% of the time (the odd one still doesn't get a reply).
However, if I then browse to a web site with a typical amount of stuff
to download (approx. 100KB of HTML/JS/CSS and images) then a lot of the
pings will not get replies.

Has anyone got any idea what would've caused this and/or how I can fix it?

As far as I'm aware I have not changed anything myself. The only
software I can remember installing was WinAmp, but I didn't notice
installing that *and then* my dialup immediately acting strange so thats
probably a red herring. Oh, and I keep myself fully patched up, and run
Zone Alarm fairly tight and I *never* open dodgy email attachments.

Thanks in advance!!
Click to expand...

Ok, I've just updated my SmartLink win-modem drivers (even though it
*was* all working fine until the last week or so!) and after a bit of
faffing around, it seems to be working _better_ than it was. It will
still get "Request timed out" sometimes, but it seems better than it was
before.

Its now only connecting at 50.6Kbps whereas before I was getting 52Kbps.

So I guess the issue isn't a problem to me now (although I haven't
tested much yet), but I'm interested in *why* my modem driver started
misbehaving!

Cheers!
 
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