Is there a free ISP for testing a modem

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J

just-me

I have a dialup ISP and the connection recently got very slow.
Although I pay them a premium price for their service, their support
is terrible. I have run every test on my computer and modem and
everything seems fine. I had the phone company call me and say the
phone line seems ok, although they said that they can not be sure
without coming to my house and running tests, which would be costly
for me. I still think it's my ISP, and they will never admit to being
wrong, even when they were completely broken down, and I verified
this, they insisted it was my computer. I intend to begin looking for
another ISP, but at the moment, I am looking for a free ISP to connect
to, so I can test what speed I get. I know they exist, but where? I
dont care if it's long distance, since I just plan to call once or
twice to see what speeds I get. A half hour of LD calls will be much
cheaper than the phone company wants to test my line.

If you know of anything, please post the URL.

Thanks
 
I have a dialup ISP and the connection recently got very slow.
Although I pay them a premium price for their service, their support
is terrible. I have run every test on my computer and modem and
everything seems fine. I had the phone company call me and say the
phone line seems ok, although they said that they can not be sure
without coming to my house and running tests, which would be costly
for me. I still think it's my ISP, and they will never admit to being
wrong, even when they were completely broken down, and I verified
this, they insisted it was my computer. I intend to begin looking for
another ISP, but at the moment, I am looking for a free ISP to connect
to, so I can test what speed I get. I know they exist, but where? I
dont care if it's long distance, since I just plan to call once or
twice to see what speeds I get. A half hour of LD calls will be much
cheaper than the phone company wants to test my line.

If you know of anything, please post the URL.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yeah, how about Budget Dialup? It is not free, but it's prepaid and cheap.
I used to use them sometimes and they were OK. It looks like they offer a
5-hour free trial, too. -Dave

http://www.budgetdialup.com/html/get.htm
 
I have a dialup ISP and the connection recently got very slow.
Although I pay them a premium price for their service, their support
is terrible. I have run every test on my computer and modem and
everything seems fine. I had the phone company call me and say the
phone line seems ok, although they said that they can not be sure
without coming to my house and running tests, which would be costly
for me. I still think it's my ISP, and they will never admit to being
wrong, even when they were completely broken down, and I verified
this, they insisted it was my computer. I intend to begin looking for
another ISP, but at the moment, I am looking for a free ISP to connect
to, so I can test what speed I get. I know they exist, but where? I
dont care if it's long distance, since I just plan to call once or
twice to see what speeds I get. A half hour of LD calls will be much
cheaper than the phone company wants to test my line.

If you know of anything, please post the URL.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I can tell you what happened with my modem. My dialup connect rate dropped to
about half its normal rate. I replaced the telephone wiring in the house, starting
at the demarcation point in the basement. I now have a single cable leading from
the basement to the computer room, and all other jacks and wiring have been
disconnected. Both ADSL and dialup returned to normal, after the corroded
phone jacks were removed from the situation. I have a friend with a similar
experience, where the wire was bad where it passes through the foundation wall
of his home.

Some numbers you can try as test sites. What you'd be doing here, is noting
what your modem connects at, and not trying to login to their service. V.90
is the ITU standard, while K56Flex and X2 are the Rockwell and USR proprietary
standards that led up to V.90 becoming a standard.

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/trouble4.asp

There is some background information here, on how 56K works. Transmission from
the ISP to you, in that case, is digital ("perfect") until it hits the
final telco central office that drives your copper pair. Which means the
download performance should be more consistent from one ISP to another,
for 56K services. It would depend on the characteristics of your copper pair
to the central office, as to how much of 56K you get. (The text below figure 2
explains it a bit.) It'll be interesting to see how much your connect rate
differs from one ISP test to another.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000511.../technology/tech_net/white_papers/500659.html

Paul
 
I have a dialup ISP and the connection recently got very slow.
Although I pay them a premium price for their service, their support
is terrible. I have run every test on my computer and modem and
everything seems fine. I had the phone company call me and say the
phone line seems ok, although they said that they can not be sure
without coming to my house and running tests, which would be costly
for me. I still think it's my ISP, and they will never admit to being
wrong, even when they were completely broken down, and I verified
this, they insisted it was my computer. I intend to begin looking for
another ISP, but at the moment, I am looking for a free ISP to connect
to, so I can test what speed I get. I know they exist, but where? I
dont care if it's long distance, since I just plan to call once or
twice to see what speeds I get. A half hour of LD calls will be much
cheaper than the phone company wants to test my line.

If you know of anything, please post the URL.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Why not take your computer to someone else's place (preferably not in your
neighborhood) and see if the speed changes? Then do the same dialup on
their computer. If it's slow in all cases I would suspect the ISP because
you have lowered the chances that it is your phone lines or your computer
system that is causing the problem.

Charlie
 
I can tell you what happened with my modem. My dialup connect rate dropped to
about half its normal rate. I replaced the telephone wiring in the house, starting
at the demarcation point in the basement. I now have a single cable leading from
the basement to the computer room, and all other jacks and wiring have been
disconnected. Both ADSL and dialup returned to normal, after the corroded
phone jacks were removed from the situation. I have a friend with a similar
experience, where the wire was bad where it passes through the foundation wall
of his home.

Some numbers you can try as test sites. What you'd be doing here, is noting
what your modem connects at, and not trying to login to their service. V.90
is the ITU standard, while K56Flex and X2 are the Rockwell and USR proprietary
standards that led up to V.90 becoming a standard.

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/trouble4.asp

There is some background information here, on how 56K works. Transmission from
the ISP to you, in that case, is digital ("perfect") until it hits the
final telco central office that drives your copper pair. Which means the
download performance should be more consistent from one ISP to another,
for 56K services. It would depend on the characteristics of your copper pair
to the central office, as to how much of 56K you get. (The text below figure 2
explains it a bit.) It'll be interesting to see how much your connect rate
differs from one ISP test to another.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000511.../technology/tech_net/white_papers/500659.html

Paul
Click to expand...

Paul

Thanks for the help. It's not my house wiring. The junction block
from the phone company is outside and only about 12 feet from the
modem. I got a long phone cord and went out the window direct to that
block, while disconnecting the feed to the whole house, and unplugging
the phone connected to the modem. I also tried a different serial
cable, and tried COM1 rather than COM2. (I normally use COM2 because
the plug dont fit well in COM1.... Monitor plug is too close).

I went to that www.modemsite.com/56k/trouble4.asp website. I found
the list of all those test numbers. First I dialed some of the 800
numbers, then tried the USR/3Com toll number, which is supposed to
test the speed. What they don't say on that website is how to make
the dialup connection, so no matter where I called, nothing happened
except I heard it dial and try to connect.

How the heck does a person connect?

Here's what I did. I went to MY COMPUTER / DIALUP NETWORKING. I
created a new entry (besides my normal connection to my isp). I named
this new one "Test". That's where I entered these test numbers. I
left the user name and password blank. On the USR/3Com site toll
number I put "line test" as user name, (as they said to do) password
left blank. I am not connecting to these sites. I'm almost sure that
I am not doing this right. I never understand websites like this.
They give all the information and phone numbers and explain the
results, but never explain how to do the dialup. That seems typical
for many technical websites. I guess they assume we are all
technicians and know all this stuff. If I may say so myself, I am
fairly computer literate, but not a geek or professional....

Having a test number is valuable. I never even thought such a thing
existed. I am using a USR/3Com modem (56K Voice Faxmodem Pro), so it
would only make sense to connect to their test number. BUT HOW?

This modem always connected at 42 to 46K, until about 2 weeks ago when
it started to connect at 24K and since I downloaded and ran
MODEMCHK.EXE it's rarely even achieving that speed. It takes (for
example) at least 5 minutes to load ebay's home page. I went there to
buy another modem as a last resort. It took 20 minutes to get thru
the whole checkout process. (Of course that's when I read newsgroups,
since they are always faster).

If in the end, it's the fault of my ISP, I will be changing them
faster than the speed of light. I have not been happy with them as it
is. For example, they installed some email spam blocker. It blocks
desirable messages, and sends the spam. Then every day they send spam
reports, which are blank, and almost as annoying as the spam itself.
Their technicians are total idiots, and since I use Win98se they are
clueless, and they totally screwed up my computer the last time I did
what they said. Once they got it all screwed up, they told me they
could not help, and I should take my computer to a repair shop and
have them install XP. Needless to say, I will not even call them
anymore.

One other thing. I downloaded the demo version of Net.Medic. On the
top of their window I get the message "Health Log: [your modem
experienced a modem speed suboptimized performance problem]."
Of course the demo don't explain what that means. I sure wish I could
get the FULL version, since it was later released for free by one of
the modem companies. I cant find it though. The shareware version
cant be registered and the free version is not on their site anymore.
It's been abandoned, and yet seems to be one of the best tools around.
If anyone has the full version I sure would appreciate the file.
(supply web link, post to a binary group, or by email).

PS. I almost signed up for a Juno FREE account, until I got to the
part where they FORCE the user to accept spamvertising at a real email
address..... No Thanks !!!!

Thanks

George
 
I can tell you what happened with my modem. My dialup connect rate dropped to
about half its normal rate. I replaced the telephone wiring in the house, starting
at the demarcation point in the basement. I now have a single cable leading from
the basement to the computer room, and all other jacks and wiring have been
disconnected. Both ADSL and dialup returned to normal, after the corroded
phone jacks were removed from the situation. I have a friend with a similar
experience, where the wire was bad where it passes through the foundation wall
of his home.

Some numbers you can try as test sites. What you'd be doing here, is noting
what your modem connects at, and not trying to login to their service. V.90
is the ITU standard, while K56Flex and X2 are the Rockwell and USR proprietary
standards that led up to V.90 becoming a standard.

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/trouble4.asp

There is some background information here, on how 56K works. Transmission from
the ISP to you, in that case, is digital ("perfect") until it hits the
final telco central office that drives your copper pair. Which means the
download performance should be more consistent from one ISP to another,
for 56K services. It would depend on the characteristics of your copper pair
to the central office, as to how much of 56K you get. (The text below figure 2
explains it a bit.) It'll be interesting to see how much your connect rate
differs from one ISP test to another.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000511.../technology/tech_net/white_papers/500659.html

Paul
Click to expand...

Paul

Thanks for the help. It's not my house wiring. The junction block
from the phone company is outside and only about 12 feet from the
modem. I got a long phone cord and went out the window direct to that
block, while disconnecting the feed to the whole house, and unplugging
the phone connected to the modem. I also tried a different serial
cable, and tried COM1 rather than COM2. (I normally use COM2 because
the plug dont fit well in COM1.... Monitor plug is too close).

I went to that www.modemsite.com/56k/trouble4.asp website. I found
the list of all those test numbers. First I dialed some of the 800
numbers, then tried the USR/3Com toll number, which is supposed to
test the speed. What they don't say on that website is how to make
the dialup connection, so no matter where I called, nothing happened
except I heard it dial and try to connect.

How the heck does a person connect?

Here's what I did. I went to MY COMPUTER / DIALUP NETWORKING. I
created a new entry (besides my normal connection to my isp). I named
this new one "Test". That's where I entered these test numbers. I
left the user name and password blank. On the USR/3Com site toll
number I put "line test" as user name, (as they said to do) password
left blank. I am not connecting to these sites. I'm almost sure that
I am not doing this right. I never understand websites like this.
They give all the information and phone numbers and explain the
results, but never explain how to do the dialup. That seems typical
for many technical websites. I guess they assume we are all
technicians and know all this stuff. If I may say so myself, I am
fairly computer literate, but not a geek or professional....

Having a test number is valuable. I never even thought such a thing
existed. I am using a USR/3Com modem (56K Voice Faxmodem Pro), so it
would only make sense to connect to their test number. BUT HOW?

This modem always connected at 42 to 46K, until about 2 weeks ago when
it started to connect at 24K and since I downloaded and ran
MODEMCHK.EXE it's rarely even achieving that speed. It takes (for
example) at least 5 minutes to load ebay's home page. I went there to
buy another modem as a last resort. It took 20 minutes to get thru
the whole checkout process. (Of course that's when I read newsgroups,
since they are always faster).

If in the end, it's the fault of my ISP, I will be changing them
faster than the speed of light. I have not been happy with them as it
is. For example, they installed some email spam blocker. It blocks
desirable messages, and sends the spam. Then every day they send spam
reports, which are blank, and almost as annoying as the spam itself.
Their technicians are total idiots, and since I use Win98se they are
clueless, and they totally screwed up my computer the last time I did
what they said. Once they got it all screwed up, they told me they
could not help, and I should take my computer to a repair shop and
have them install XP. Needless to say, I will not even call them
anymore.

One other thing. I downloaded the demo version of Net.Medic. On the
top of their window I get the message "Health Log: [your modem
experienced a modem speed suboptimized performance problem]."
Of course the demo don't explain what that means. I sure wish I could
get the FULL version, since it was later released for free by one of
the modem companies. I cant find it though. The shareware version
cant be registered and the free version is not on their site anymore.
It's been abandoned, and yet seems to be one of the best tools around.
If anyone has the full version I sure would appreciate the file.
(supply web link, post to a binary group, or by email).

PS. I almost signed up for a Juno FREE account, until I got to the
part where they FORCE the user to accept spamvertising at a real email
address..... No Thanks !!!!

Thanks

George
Click to expand...

Well, I had some fun. It has been a while since I used my modem.

First problem, was finding a cable. Got that sorted eventually.

Next problem, was my modem has never been used on my current computer.
Had to find the CD that came with the modem, to get the INF that
matched the modem. "Added" the modem using the "Phone and Modem Options"
control panel (Win2K).

There are a couple of different ways to use a modem. When you are
using dialup networking, a protocol like PPP is used (point to point
protocol). What that does, is deal with a stream of bytes, and turn
it back into packets. The byte stream can be in a binary form, which
means it isn't particularly human readable.

The beginning of a PPP connection, involved negotiation. That part
of the session may be human readable. I believe years ago, I did
some of my first dialup connections to work, debugging PPP commands
and observing responses. Once the session is all set up, the username
and password for the dialup session has been passed, the protocol switches
to a binary mode, and any further bytes are not even displayed in the
log window (because now they're turned into packets and passed to the
networking layers of your OS).

The second way, is to use a program like Hyperterm, included with my
copy of Win2K. That assumes a text session, like connecting to a BBS,
and doesn't involve networking as such.

I tried my local Freenet dialup number, to use for testing. This
was further complicated by the fact that we have to include the
area code before dialing a local number (but no leading "1").

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/121891/en-us

One thing I noticed, is when I use Hyperterm to dialup Freenet, there
was no connection speed message shown in the transaction. I'm still
working on getting my Freenet session to record the connect speed.

I tried the Modemsite AD conversion test. In Hyperterm, to set up a
dialup session, you select your "modem" from the menu. The modem is
only listed if the modem has been installed. If you don't want to
access the modem as a modem, then I use "COM1" from the menu, which
means Hyperterm is simply sending text to COM1 and not dealing with
the port as if there is a modem on it. By setting up a second
Hyperterm shortcut (.ht) file, which accesses COM1 directly,
I could send "ATY11" to the modem.

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/x2-adconversion.asp

This is what my modem recorded, when connected to Freenet. You have
to use the ATY11 command on the modem, before the modem is reset, or
the modem has attempted to dial out a second time. (That is, as long
as your modem supports that command.) So first I run Hyperterm
pointed at Freenet, and wait 30 seconds before disconnecting. Then
run a Hyperterm session which points to "COM1", so I can issue the
ATY11 command and get the frequency bins printed out.

Freq Level (dB)

150 18
300 16
450 16
600 16
750 16
900 16
1050 16
1200 16
1350 17
1500 17
1650 17
1800 17
1950 17
2100 17
2250 17
2400 17
2550 17
2700 17
2850 17
3000 18
3150 19
3300 20 <---
3450 23
3600 28
3750 34 <---

Difference is 34-20 = 14, so only one A/D conversion (suitable for 56K connections).
So I would assume I'm ready for 56K, but I need to get the connect message working
to be sure.

When I figure out how to get the "connect" message going, I'll post back. I'm used
to constructing manual AT (Hayes) commands for modems, but without all the
"automation" of Windows in the way. (I've set up a few modems on Macintosh, which
is a real PITA - at one time the setup was purely manual.)

I also had trouble getting an "AT command set" for my modem. It is a 5686 from USR.
They didn't have a manual for that exact modem (only a quick user guide). I had
to use this one, which happens to document six different modems including my 5686.

http://www.usr.com/support/5610b/5610b-files/5610b-user.pdf

Paul
 
From a terminal program, type
ATDTphonenumber<enter>
If you type in only AT<enter>,
you should see an OK on the terminal screen.

Paul

Thanks for the help. It's not my house wiring. The junction block
from the phone company is outside and only about 12 feet from the
modem. I got a long phone cord and went out the window direct to that
block, while disconnecting the feed to the whole house, and unplugging
the phone connected to the modem. I also tried a different serial
cable, and tried COM1 rather than COM2. (I normally use COM2 because
the plug dont fit well in COM1.... Monitor plug is too close).

I went to that www.modemsite.com/56k/trouble4.asp website. I found
the list of all those test numbers. First I dialed some of the 800
numbers, then tried the USR/3Com toll number, which is supposed to
test the speed. What they don't say on that website is how to make
the dialup connection, so no matter where I called, nothing happened
except I heard it dial and try to connect.

How the heck does a person connect?

Here's what I did. I went to MY COMPUTER / DIALUP NETWORKING. I
created a new entry (besides my normal connection to my isp). I named
this new one "Test". That's where I entered these test numbers. I
left the user name and password blank. On the USR/3Com site toll
number I put "line test" as user name, (as they said to do) password
left blank. I am not connecting to these sites. I'm almost sure that
I am not doing this right. I never understand websites like this.
They give all the information and phone numbers and explain the
results, but never explain how to do the dialup. That seems typical
for many technical websites. I guess they assume we are all
technicians and know all this stuff. If I may say so myself, I am
fairly computer literate, but not a geek or professional....

Having a test number is valuable. I never even thought such a thing
existed. I am using a USR/3Com modem (56K Voice Faxmodem Pro), so it
would only make sense to connect to their test number. BUT HOW?

This modem always connected at 42 to 46K, until about 2 weeks ago when
it started to connect at 24K and since I downloaded and ran
MODEMCHK.EXE it's rarely even achieving that speed. It takes (for
example) at least 5 minutes to load ebay's home page. I went there to
buy another modem as a last resort. It took 20 minutes to get thru
the whole checkout process. (Of course that's when I read newsgroups,
since they are always faster).

If in the end, it's the fault of my ISP, I will be changing them
faster than the speed of light. I have not been happy with them as it
is. For example, they installed some email spam blocker. It blocks
desirable messages, and sends the spam. Then every day they send spam
reports, which are blank, and almost as annoying as the spam itself.
Their technicians are total idiots, and since I use Win98se they are
clueless, and they totally screwed up my computer the last time I did
what they said. Once they got it all screwed up, they told me they
could not help, and I should take my computer to a repair shop and
have them install XP. Needless to say, I will not even call them
anymore.

One other thing. I downloaded the demo version of Net.Medic. On the
top of their window I get the message "Health Log: [your modem
experienced a modem speed suboptimized performance problem]."
Of course the demo don't explain what that means. I sure wish I could
get the FULL version, since it was later released for free by one of
the modem companies. I cant find it though. The shareware version
cant be registered and the free version is not on their site anymore.
It's been abandoned, and yet seems to be one of the best tools around.
If anyone has the full version I sure would appreciate the file.
(supply web link, post to a binary group, or by email).

PS. I almost signed up for a Juno FREE account, until I got to the
part where they FORCE the user to accept spamvertising at a real email
address..... No Thanks !!!!

Thanks

George
Click to expand...
 
Andy said:
From a terminal program, type
ATDTphonenumber<enter>
If you type in only AT<enter>,
you should see an OK on the terminal screen.
Click to expand...

That is pretty straightforward.

I used Hyperterm, opened a new connection, and set the
source to "COM1". Did the ATDTxxxxxxxxxx where the X
is the Freenet phone number (without leading 1 for long
distance), and it worked fine.

CONNECT 40000/ARQ/V90/LAPM/V42BIS

login:
Login Incorrect

login:

So my dialup modem connects at 40K, while my
ADSL modem is still running. At least it is
above 33K, so it is in a 56K mode. It used to
connect at around 43K to 46K the last time
I used it (years ago).

Paul
 
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