Dialup idles

[arvindK]

Hi,

I'm having WinXp pro SP2, with a dialup connection on an external modem.

I use my comp for P2P, so it's on particularly 24 hours. The trouble is that in the nights, the line tends to hangup or idle. By idle I mean that it shows as connected, but no data is transfered either up or down. Sometime when I wake up and check the browsing, pages just don't load and there's a timeout. Disconnection and reconnection does not help, and a full reboot is required.

I've used a few 3rd party wares like HiDialer 2000, SPdialer, 42 always connected Plug, to name a few, which work ok for a few days but then it's back to normal. HiDialer even has a keep alive, where it pings a defined site at regular interval's to simulate browsing activity.

Is there any way to solve this problem within WinXp. Any other solutions also wellcome.

Could this be a modem error.

Note: Pls do not suggest shifting to a broadband, I already have a 1 MBps as an alternate, but want to use the dialup to the full extent.

Thanks.

[firefoxthebomb]

Not really sure what is causing your issue of disconnecting, could be your modem really,

A BIG BUT though, you should be using your 1 MBps connection as your primary service and the modem as your alternate. The 1 MBps is so much faster for your downloading needs, and more than likely it will not disconnect you. The dialup connnection can only reach at best a speed of only 56Kbps. Really slow for downloading.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[markw]

He's probably using the modem because it's less traceable for file sharing. (Just a guess)

First you should try the modem on another computer if you have one. If it does the same thing try a different modem. If fixes the problem then it could be the OS or hardware. If it's the OS, then can just reinstall it. Someone else might have better ideas though....

[arvindK]

firefoxthebomb The broadband line has a limit on the downloads - 5 GB in a year. So I mostly use it for surfing. On the other hand the Dialup is unlimited so I use that for P2P.

markw I didn't try this modem on the other system, but I did try an Internal modem on this system. And the problem remains, so I guess we have to strike out hardware failure at the modem end. Had formated and reinstalled the OS a few days back, not related to this prob, so we strike out the reinstall option too I guess. And wrong guess, about the tracebility on a dialup thing, just want to exploit the dialup in the nightime.

Thanks for your inputs, any more suggestions wellcome. Would surely like to solve this problem.

[[deXter]]

In that case there are two things remaining:

1) Your ISP

2) Your hardware/motherboard itself

For your hardware config problems,\ you can confirm that by connecting another computer (with its own modem) to the line and try running it thru the nite. Although I'd doubt though that your internal hardware would have anything to do with this.

But this could be a problem with your ISP itself. What you can do is set the modem to disconnect sometime in the middle of the night, close the p2p programs, redial automatically and start the p2p program. You can easily make a .bat file that does that. You could perhaps set it to say, disconnect and redial every few hours.

And btw, for cases when you need to reboot, you dont need to reboot at all. Just do a rasdial /disconnect to 'clean up, and disconnect' your line. If that alone doesn't help, you could disable and re-enable your modem. Or you may even remove your program from the modems list, and scan for hardware changes in device manager.

And even if THAT doesn't help, then it doesn't hurt to have the comp automatically reboot after a while. Just put your p2p programs at the startup, drop in your dialup connection too into the startup, enable Auto Login so that XP will automatically log into your account after a reboot. That way your comp will automatically do the needful without any intervention needed.

In case you want to do that ONLY after your connection goes dead, then you can make a script to repeatedly ping or download a page. Or you could make a script that checks the download speed in your p2p programs. When there is no ping, or the page cannot be downloaded, or the speed is 0.0k for some time, then your comp could do the 1) rasdial / disconnect, redial etc 2) Modem disable/remove with device manager refresh or 3) reboot, autologin, autodial, start p2p.

Choose a method that works best for you.

If you need any help with the above scripts, do let me know.

[arvindK]

[deXter] Thanks for the response.

Got a pc with internal modem from a friend, will be trying the line on it tonight.

I was actually, wanting to set the connection such that if the download speed goes below, say 1kbps, the line would disconnect and redial to the ISP. If a keep alive like sending a ping to a particular site or loading a particular page, at regular times could be possible it would be nice too. If you could help me with setting this up, it would be quite helpfull. A bat file, a script, anything.

[arvindK]

Well the line still disconnects on the other pc, so now the problem is definitely at the ISP level.