Modem Troubles

[gonzo90017]

My friend says he has had modem problems ever since he moved in to his new place. So he brought his computer over and I changed some of his modem's settings and it was connecting at 46.5 kbps. But as soon as he took it home it started connecting at 33.6 kbps. And it only lasts about 5 minutes and the connection drops. I used his computer for about a week with no problems. So i'm pretty sure it has something to do with his phone line, because we have the same ISP (juno) and we use the same # to connect. So I was wondering what are the appropriate modem settings now that we know there's nothing we can do about the phone line. Like:
Bits per second
Flow Control etc.etc..

[redwudz]

Probably not much of anything you with do with modem settings. Sounds like he just has a noisy phone line. The phone company usually doesn't have any sympathy as far as low modem speeds. He may be able to complain that he has noise, static on the voice line and hope they can do something. He might try a hardware modem, but it may not help. I would upgrade to a name brand modem, if it he uses a generic one. Some software modems work better than others, hardware types usually the best. If you are on the far end of a phone line, you may have low speeds and not a lot you can do about it. I have a friend that can only connect at 14K, no matter what kind of modem he has tried.

[gonzo90017]

Funny thing is that the building isn't even 5yrs. old. What kind of crappy techs did that job? When I was using his phone you could barely here the person on the other end.

[gmatov]

You gotta remember the CO isn't likely to be outside his door. If his lines run a long way,as well as they connect to old piss poor lines, he will get low connect speeds.

Modems do a "handshake" telling each other what speeds they can get a reliable connection at. The speed will drop to the next lower if they can't agree.

If you have the manual, check the modem commands charts, and find the one for how long to stay connected after dropped carrier or lost dial tone. It's usually defaulted to 1/2 second, or something. Change it to maybe 5 seconds by bringing up Modem Properties and typing in "Additional Commands" window the command with the higher milliseconds.

The manual may be on his setup disk.

I'll see if I can find one of my manuals.

George