Client calls and is having connection problems. She has me call her CG and he claims it's more of a speed problem. I explained to him that according to CRTC rules, Bell only has to give a speed of 1200 Baud.

He insists that I check it out, as the client had called Bell, who wouldn't do anything about her speed.

Today I did and the speed is all over the radar, but the lowest was 13k, the highest 22k on her brand new PC, using Vista with Bell's Sympatico Dial up service. When I setup a connection to my ISP on her PC I'd get a better speed...up to 33k.

My laptop, using XP Pro and my ISP for Dial Up would give me anywhere from 18k to 45k.

So, I checked the line and there is a slight hum on it, but I've heard worst. So is Vista more sensitive to line noise?

more likely the modem the client is using. If its an internal modem, have her double check and make sure she is using the latest driver.

dave, for this reason i carry an old USR external 56k. around the part of MTL i live in every phone picks up CKGM 990 and using the USR modem it seems to work a lot better than with the internal one. As for Vista VS XP i have yet to see a difference

The only think that I can think of off hand is there is a problem at Bell exchange your client dials into and they are connecting to a slower speed than they should be.

Back in the mid 90's, an auto insurance company I worked at, when we had connection problems with our agents dialing in would take a modem shelf off line one at a time over night after the agents closed, and power cycle it to clear up the problem.

I was also thinking of Bell and Rogers doing speed throttling but that is for DSL and not dial up.

DSL is all of like $19 a month why not you just tell her to get that, and solve her problems.

Simple. Contrary to popular belief, DSL only goes so far from the CO. Client is 45-50 minutes from here. Any farther & she'd be above the "Tree Line" living next to Santa.

Actually, she'd love to have DSL. I'm just surprised that she actually has a private line.

What do you mean? They here the TEAM 990 in the background?? That would be cool, I have a tough time picking it up in my truck.

You could try one of these from Mike Sandman Modem Filter I used one like it many years ago, it seamed to help.

Z-man touched on my thoughts here. Internal modems are now more likely to be known as "Win-modems" because of the driver architecture. A Vista driver is vastly different than an XP driver, and therefore may have been poorly implemented, and more susceptible to the line noise.

I'd go along with most suggestions and use external modems, as long as the PC has the serial port.

Using my laptop(XP) internal modem, I have abbout a 1 in 20 chance of connection when trying to dial into customers site. When I go down to our shop and use my PC(XP) with an external modem, I have about a 1 in 2 chance of connection.

I also find that customers who have regular POTS lines are much easier for me to connect to versus the customers that are on PRIs, or have lines from a Frac T-1. Don't know exactly why, but that's the way it's been for about the last two/three years.

I had the same issues with my parents, who live out in the sticks, and their dial-up internet. I had tried 3 different modems, one was an external USR Sportster, none were win-modems. In all cases they would only get at best 22k, usually less, and with lots of random drops. They moved to a another house, still in the sticks, no change to the problem. I scrounged up another modem with a different chipset, and their speed doubled. The random drops went away.

I remember back when dial-up was the only option, some of the ISPs would have a list of recommended modems for clients to use. Some modems just don't play well together, even though they should be conforming to the same standards. These days I doubt the dial-up ISPs know or care what type of modems to recommend for their clients. I would tell the CG to find a bunch of different modems and keep trying them until he has a winner. If you're lucky, maybe someone from Bell can tell you what they use on their end.

I'd go along with most suggestions and use external modems, as long as the PC has the serial port.

Most PC's will not have a serial port anymore, use a modem with a USB connection and you don't need to use a power brick with it. :thumb:

How much do you care about this client? I'm one of the few weirdos that still really understands modems, and I can make it work for 'ya.

Vista absolutely has issues with modems. But so does everybody that makes/supports modems these days. I feel so...abandoned.

There are tricks to making a Winmodem behave, even with Vista. And I'm only happy to take on this project (it will give me a break from re-writing the Partner Admin code to overcome it's own Winmodem issues). It's all about AT#UD baby, and you KNOW what I mean!!!

You don't? Ummmm....Well Alllllrighty, Then! Post back and I'll see what I can do.

Tim, this is an old topic. I left it in the hands of their CG. My line is A-1.