I have only have access to dialup and have been using Earthlink for about two years.
I reside part of the year at Hilton Head Is,SC and have nothing but praise for my connection there--50.6 about 95% of the time. The remainder of the year I reside in a small mountain town in TN. There is only one local access number which was changed over the Winter. I used to connect at 44Kbs but now can only get 36Kbs--if I'm lucky. About half the time I only get 31.5.
The phone line from the house to the pole was replaced last year. There is usually a slow down in the conn speed when it rains. It has always been that way. I use Neo Trace to check on the connection and very often the first four jumps (All are Sprint) are very slow--2000-3000 ns. Then sometimes they are normal--250-450.Is Earthlink responsible for these nodes? Do they lease them from Sprint?
Believe me I have done the tech dance with Earthlink,obtained rebates,but nothing they do or check on speeds up the conn.I do not believe my settings--either on the modem or Dial Up Networking are in any way incorrect. I am forced to use the only Motorola modem driver available for XP which is for Win 2000.
My modem is a piece of crap Motorola SM 56 winmodem so in desperation I have ordered a $54. "performance" hardware modem by USR. Will this help?
The modem log does have a recurring entry that states that the DSR is low and in effect questions whether the modem is on.All other entries seem normal. I do not have actual connect or kick off problems--just a very sloooow conn speed.
Remember I have nice speed with the old modem while at HHI.
I am running Win XP Pro on an Thunderbird 950,256 MB ram,dual 80 GB Maxtor hard drives.
Any suggestions on improvement in conn speed or dealing with Earthlink tech support?