Poor Connection

[Palustris]

This really is getting beyond a joke. We have been advised that it may be a Registry problem, but rather than using the Repair disc we should force the computer to use our ISP's own DNS numbers rather than letting the computer find them for itself (?)
To that end I Emailed Supanet and they kindly sent me their DNS numbers. I entered them in the appropriate place on Network Management and they were not accepted as being valis. They insist they are correct so what do I do now?
I tried both typing them in and Copy and Paste by the way and no go.

Edited by George
To do our best to help Eric, and to keep the suggested tests and a quick Yes/No from Eric in one place, heres a summary, on the initial posting of the topic.
Hopefully this will be easy for new visitors to review, get a handle on the problem and avoid repeating questions to Eric.
To Eric: Post a quick Yes/No or brief summary reply here, and an expanded explanation (if necessary) in a normal reply in this toipic.

1) (From George) See posting 14 Aug
Is your problem that you a) keep getting disconnected or b) Have a very slow connection?
Answer from Eric:

2) From Laurie. See posting 15 Aug
Have you had your BT phone line checked?
Answer from Eric:

3) From Laurie see posting 15 Aug
Is it only on certain web sites that you visit that you notice the problems?
Answer from Eric:

4) From Laurie See posting 15 Aug
Does the problem happen (or intolerable) only at certain times of the day, e.g. evenings and weekends
Answer from Eric:

5) When/How did the problem start, or was it always like now?
Answer from Eric:

[ideasguy]

Ive sent an email to a friend who knows more about this subject that I do, Eric.
I'll update with another reply when Ive heard back from him.

Meanwhile, who offered that advice?

[Palustris]

Someone on Answerbank Done this before and it did help.
Other link given was this one but beyond me.
http://www.melbpc.org.au/faq/dropouts.htm

[ideasguy]

The very last thing I would do would be mess with the registry.
That is a job for very experienced IT experts.
No news from my friend yet (Weekend!)

Is your problem that you a) keep getting disconnected or b) Have a very slow connection?

[NightHawk]

Eric, I agree with George.  Don't mess around with your Registry.  Unless you know exactly what you're doing you can de-stabilise your Operating System.

If you're having a problem with being disconnected, this could be a slight fault on your BT phone line.  If there's any sort of interference, static or other 'noise', on it this could affect your connection.  In this case, you would need to have your phone line tested.  I know of some people, when dial-up was the only choice available, experienced this problem and it was attributed to the phone line.  Worth a check.

If you're just having a slow connection, then there are several reasons that could cause this.
If the problem is at certain times of the day, e.g. evenings and weekends, then your ISP's servers could be getting overloaded which slows down everyone's connection speed.  Not much you can do about that though.

If it's only on certain web sites that you visit that you notice the slowing down, then there is probably a lot of other visitors at the same time causing it.  Only solution here is to try visiting again at a different time.

If the slowness is all the time, no matter which web site you are trying to get to, then it could point to the BT phone line again; maybe old wiring from the telephone exchange to you that can't cope with the load.

That's all that occurs to me at the moment Eric, I don't have any other suggestions for now.

Hopefully George's IT whizz can give some other choices for you to try.

Laurie.

[ideasguy]

Please re-read the initial posting for my edited notes.

From what Eric has told us elsewhere, he gets cut off midway through posting a reply, or indeed simply reading the topics!
Hopefully our combined efforts will help get a solution to the problem and get you back on line again Eric.
Weve been missing your invaluable contributions since this problem started.

[Palustris]

Edited by George


1) (From George) See posting 14 Aug
Is your problem that you a) keep getting disconnected or b) Have a very slow connection?
Answer from Eric:
The connection when it is working is at the normal speed for Dialup and Modem ie 56kbs

2) From Laurie. See posting 15 Aug
Have you had your BT phone line checked?
Answer from Eric:
The phone line has been checked both from the exchange and from our neighbours back to the Exchange, standard quality.

3) From Laurie see posting 15 Aug
Is it only on certain web sites that you visit that you notice the problems?
Answer from Eric:
All Web sites even our ISP's homepage when first connectiing

4) From Laurie See posting 15 Aug
Does the problem happen (or intolerable) only at certain times of the day, e.g. evenings and weekends
Answer from Eric:
All the time

5) When/How did the problem start, or was it always like now?
Answer from Eric:
Began a few weeks after we had this new modem fitted but before the power supply failed.
Modem has been tested and is supposed to be working ok.

Also, it tends to disconnect at random, comes up with either Cannot find Page or Connection interrupted error message. Often just stops altogether. If one goes to Task Manager it shows the  link Speed as anywhere between 56 and 23 kbs, but 0% on our side of things.
]

[ideasguy]

This reply from my IT network expert friend, Colin

In regards to the supranet dns, a quick google shows that the numbers should be 66.170.1.10 and 66.170.1.19. Is that what he was given? Windows will only complain that they are not valid if he is using the wrong characters ie a o instead of an 0 or if the address goes above the allow 255.255.255.255 range. So if its not letting him enter them then yes I would agree that something is not quite right on the machine.

Does that help Eric?

[Palustris]

These are the numbers they sent
213.40.130.245 
213.40.66.245

The ones your friend found also give an Invalid DNS  number error message too. I tried bith Copy and Paste and typing in, same result.
Did he look up Supanet or Supranet, they may be different.

[ideasguy]

Ive relayed your reply Eric. Waiting for a reply.

[ideasguy]

Reply received from my friend Colin.
First, it was a typo on the  supranet\supanet thing.

Heres his suggestion for next step:

DNS numbers are generally specific to the isp but there are things called open dns which can be used for any isp and should work.
One specific company that supply opendns are https://www.opendns.com/start/computer  so he could try the following ip addresses - 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 which they supply.

As you probably know (or not) dns just translates ip addresses into real domain names so if he dials up and logs in, can he open a browser and type the following into the address bar - http://87.248.121.75

You can do the same. A yahoo page should come up (I just picked yahoo at
random) If it does then it is definitely a dns issue on the machine. If not then there is something else not quite right with the machine.

When you reach that page, choose your computer (in your case Windows - Vista)
Takes you to this page:
Since you are having BIG problems holding a connection, you might be best to go to there directly by clicking this link.
https://www.opendns.com/start/device/windows-vista

I get a message saying

This page contains secure and non-secure items
Do you want to display the non-secure items

Be sure to click yes, as that allows you to see the screenshots.
Looks very simple to follow, and the IP addresses to use are shown in the screenshots.

Note that Step 2 in the process is optional, so lets see how Step 1 goes and if it makes a difference

More info: Heres what OpenDNS is all about.
Heres the best description I can see on the web site:
https://www.opendns.com/start/best_practices/
Quote from that page:

OpenDNS is not software
With OpenDNS you do not need to worry about downloading or installing software. To use OpenDNS, you merely choose to use our DNS servers (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) instead of those assigned by your ISP or pointing directly to the root servers. With no new software, trying OpenDNS is a no-risk opportunity to improve your network experience.

Some on-line IP tools:
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/tools-hostname-to-ip-address-lookup

http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/lookup-ip

Use these to check if the IP Addresses give by Supanet are OK

Heres a check on the IP numbers that Supanet gave you:
a) 213.40.130.245
Hostname: london.dns.netline.net.uk
ISP: Supanet Limited
Organization: Netline UK (Supanet)
Proxy: None detected
Type: Cable/DSL

b) 213.40.66.245
Hostname: manchester.dns.netline.net.uk
ISP: Supanet Limited
Organization: Netline UK (Supanet)
Proxy: None detected
Type: Cable/DSL

Look corect to me, Eric. Use them.
Could it be a permissions thing where Vista is preventing you from entering the numbers?
Can you try doing this task as adminstrator?

Hope there is something in the above to help

[Palustris]

Not really got time now to do this justice, but I did try the Number your friend gave http://87.248 etc and it went instantly to a Yahoo Press release page.

[ideasguy]

Thats a good start, Eric.
I'll relay that message.

From your PM back scenes I see you have some help from your son in law.
Hopefully this will be resolved satisfactorily soon.

[ideasguy]

Whats the latest on this Eric? Any solution yet?

[Palustris]

No better, when it works it works, but most of the time it is very poor. We were looking at trying Ubuntin Linux as that is designed for the Internet, but waiting for someone to tell us whether that is a good or bad idea.