off topic My DSL installation

[MikeDee]

Well my new DSL has been up and running for about a week now so I thought I would put out a report on how it is going so far.

I got my DSL from my telco, Ameritech no trouble with the ordeing process. Except for the eithernet card. I didn't understand that they included a either net card in the package, so I bought one for my laptop they included one for a desk top. Since they are not real expensive I didn't bother to try and send theirs back.

I elected the self install option. Saved about $100 bucks or so. All dates were met by the telco. My due date was 9/18/01.

When you have a DSL on your existing phone line you have to go around and put filers on all your phones which they provided. I guess the data is static on a voice call. This was easy for all but the wall phone in the basement. They included a wall phone adapter but it doesn't connect real well to the existing wall phone plate. My wall phone in the basement is a old Bell phone very heavy and it couldn't handle the weght. Ended up getting that to stay on with the universal fixer..duct tape.

The hardest thing to install was the eithernet card, I couldn't find my windows 98 CD which it wanted during the installation. Finally figured out how to direct the install software to the windows directory, the files it wanted were there already anyway and this made the install software happy.

The DSL modem and software for the DSL were very easy to install. and the DSL worked on the first try. Had a minor problem with regestering at their web site as it didn't like my userID. A minor glitch, since I was already a Ameritech.net customer. Guess they didn't figure on existing customers changing over to DSL. But this was fixed with a phone call to the help desk, and I didn't have to wait very long to talk to them.

I have made a number of tests with software that tests the actual speed of a internet connection and the DSL runs anywhere from 450K to 570k. (Probably load related to the traffic on the internet).

The software has a connection icon on the desktop. So you are only connected the the internet when you want to be and you are not connected all the time. I like it this way.

I have used it for a week now. Watching races on UBET is quite a bit better then the 56K connection, the screen is bigger, it looks more like full motion video. (This is the reason I got it) Still no comparison to cable or a dish (like TRN was) and I wish someone else would step in and offer track feeds on cable or dish.

The only problem I have is that some software can't figure out that you are connected the internet and wants to dial it up. This includes Explorer. The media player can't figure it out at all. For now I changed my preferences to never dial for explorer and I can't figure out how to tell the media player that I am connected to the internet. Going to call the help desk on this but if anyone has any ideas...please let me know.

[Glen]

Mike,

Dunno if this is a cure all for all software, but this is what I did over the weekend to solve the issue:

1) Click My Computer
2) Click Control Panel
3) Click Dial-Up Networking
4) Right click on your usual dial up choice
5) Select Properties
6) Select Dialing
7) Select "This is default internet connection"
8) Select "Never dial this connnection"


This fixed my prob....Dunno if it will work for media player though....

[JoeV]

Mike,

I first acquired DSL to improve the YouBet video, and was thrilled with the speed increase to about the same range that you are receiving now until I found out that I could dramatically increase my download/upload speed (above 1200 kbps) by tweaking the settings.

Go to www.dslreports.com/tools and run the tweak test at the bottom of the page...then follow the instructions for download and installation of the necessary tools to tweak your settings and increase to warp speed...then run the speed test to visually inspect the improvement...by the way, at this download speed the video is great, and, if you use YouBet, you can get those bets in within a second or two of posttime.

Have fun and enjoy.

[Gramps]

You can only tweak your speed up to the maximum that the DSL company allocates you. Changing the settings as dslreports recommends will help you get the maximum, though.

If you don't have the latest Media player, go and fetch it from Microsoft at: http://windowsmedia.com/download/download.asp . The lastest version is 7.1. You can check your version by opening Media Player and clicking on Help/About.

Your DSL bandwidth is SUPPOSED to be dedicated to you, unlike cable, which is a pooled resource (i.e. your cable speed may be slower during high traffic hours). Just because it's supposed to be dedicated to you doesn't mean that you're going to get it. The bandwidth chain is only as fast as the slowest link along the way, and if you run into heavy network traffic (lag) anywhere along the route, you'll lag too. Also, the site you're on may be busy or have a bandwidth restriction of less than your speed is. And then there's the good old nameserver overload to slow things down (the nameserver is the remote process that translates the internet addresses into numeric IPs to connect to). If it's lagging, so will you, even if you're on a 6 megabit line (or an OC3 for that matter).

Youbet has a throttle speed of around 300K, as does Racing Channel, so it won't help to have any faster speed for those two connections.

TVG http://www.tvgnetwork.com still has satellite coverage.

[MikeDee]

Glen- tried your solution, but when I do there I don't find steps 6,7,8
I did tell the bowser to never dial in the bowser preferences.

JAV- Thanks for your suggestions. found the dsl reports web site very helpful. Fooling with the registry is not something I wanted to do, but got through it OK. Got my speed up to 636kb which is 82% of my service speed of 768K. The web sites says I should get 90% or 691kb. I'll try that around 4AM and maybe it will run that fast.:)

Gramps- got the latest player and installed it twice, mucked around the M_soft webs Q&A, but couldn't find anything. It works ok if I use the dial up modem but not when I connect with the dsl.

thanks for the info on UBET at 300K, at least I am running fast enough to get all the bandwidth they are putting out.

Haven't heard enought good things about tvg to change out my cable for dish just to get it. I'm going to wait and see if one of the two competing cable cos' in my town will offer tvg for free.

[MtKen]

MD:

Switched to Dish Network partially to get TVG & ESPN2 (more Indians games, etc out here in the boonies) but now I have no ABC or Fox feed at all. I get 1/2 the NFL games I did before & that is with an antenna & splitter. My wife complains that she can't watch her favorites anymore. TVG or not, wish I had just kept my cable connection.

Ken

[Gramps]

Mike: It's possible that your DSL ISP restricts streaming video media (which uses a ton of bandwidth over long periods of time) by limiting the per-second bandwidth. This isn't very likely, since your bandwidth is supposed to be available to you, but it's not unheard of, either. Since YouBet uses Media Player technology in its streaming, the problem isn't likely to be in Media Player itself.

Try this: Open Media Player and click on Tools/Options/Performance. Select 384K for your connection speed and see if it works. If not, dial down to 256K and try it. If it works, then the problem is that your ISP limits streaming media, and you should get on the horn with them and complain. But in actuality, the maximum media web stream is about 300K anyhow, so it won't hurt performance much to dial it down to 256K.

If that doesn't work, then it's probably some incompatibility with either the network card or the DSL software and Media Player. Try contacting your DSL tech support and asking them. It might be a common problem, and they may have a solution or workaround.

[MikeDee]

Well, I can use UBET OK and I tried all of the differnet setings on the performance tab. No luck. I'll see what the help desk says, but I did not see any similar problems in the FAQ's at the dsl reprots web site or at M-soft so this is probably sometihing that is not very common.