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Anon | Re: PPPoE
DRAT! Unbinding TCP/IP from the NIC didn't solve my spontaneous disconnection problems.
When I moved into my new house a couple of months ago, I had to change from the reliable static IP "black Westell modem" I had at my condo to the DHCP "white Westell modem" that's used by the central office near my house.
Well, the "white modem" has been nothing but trouble since Day One, with spontaneous disconnects every couple of minutes... much more frequent than the 10 minutes reported above. I've also spent countless hours on the phone waiting on hold to speak to *clueless* Bell Atlantic technicians.
When I saw this article, I got all excited that salvation was at hand. I immediately went to Network 'Hood and saw that TCP/IP was indeed bound to my network adapter, so I unbound it and rebooted. Sadly, I still get "das Boot" every few minutes... the unbinding seemed to have no effect.
Any other suggestions??  | |
Anon | Hello,
I have DSL with ameritech, and I am pretty sure that they use PPPoE (they use an ATM card that has to log onto the network like a fast dial-up connection, I guess that's PPPoE).
It bugged me for a little while, because I had a cable modem before this, and that was straight to an Ethernet NIC. That seemed to be the most flexible way to go.
Anyway, I was annoyed by the "dial-up" aspect of it all, and the way that I solved it is by putting it on my wifes machine, and using Sygate (which I was using with the cable modem anyway).
Now, I don't see the dial-up part of the connection, and it feels more like an always on connection.
The other thing that I did was install a keep alive utility on my wifes machine, but I unistalled that after a while, because I really had no need to keep the connection constantly on, and it was safer to have it log off (like an added form of protection).
I havn't had any login problems or any random disconnect problems. I do notice that the threshold for disconnecting is pretty short, like 10 minutes of inactivity.
Other than that, the connection has been smooth, reliable, and as fast as I am paying for for the entire time I have had it.
-Mike | |
Anon | I have WinPoet and hate it. When my term is up I will switch to a static IP ISP. Why?
1. WinPoet will lock up my brand new Win98 SE 733Mhz HP 100% of the time within 24 hours necessitating a reboot. Usually after 10-12 I must reboot, that is if I don't just lock up. Thankfully this is a personal not a business computer. I somehow think it is NOT an Intel, Hewlett-Packard nor Microsoft problem as everything else works fine (apps, games, musicmatch, CDR, DVD etc.). Remaining factor : WinPoet.
2. WinPoet requires me to log on after these daily reboots. I was sold "always on" service. Then why do I have to logon to get it to work (DSL dialup looks JUST like regular modem dialup but takes only about 3 sec., unless you have to do it again, and again...)? I must keep track of names, passwords and all that good stuff. Then reboot and try again if I mistype something. "WinPoet Preserves the dialup experience" my butt. Always-on does not mean logon! I'm just waiting until I get a DSL busy signal or whatever when they run out of IP's like dialup runs out of modems on Sat. night (hey it's happened to me on Mindspring and A-NET, as well as all the freebies).
Why would my ISP make me use this crappy software?
A) To enable oversubscription of IP addresses. (Although I recycle mine to keep at least ONE of theirs allocated to me 24/7)!
B) Bandwidth metering (by time, or MB). Seems like a fair concept but I resent the back-door sneaky setup approach the WinPoet (drug) dealers use. Whatcha wanna bet that sometime they unilaterally inform users (via an unexpectedly higher bill that month) that they've been moved up to the "enhanced", more expensive, metered dialup service that was sold in writing as "always on" but obviously is not.
Do you want to see something funny? Ask the ISP what advantages there are for YOU to use WinPoet. It's like asking a minister "How is it OK to blow people away just because I'm in the army?". They stammer like a parent asked about sex by their kid!
Remember : WinPoet = BAD | |
willardk
Mod 2000-03
join:1999-12-02
Jackson Heights, NY | reply to Anon
nope its PPPoA
different implemetation...even less common than PPPoE.
Will | |
Anon | reply to Anon
Re: PPPoE
Sadly, your problem may not be internal. Before trying anything else, though, try reinstalling your Bellatlantic software right over the existing install - that worked for me. Once I was started, my service has functioned flawlessly. BUT, I had to wait an extra week because BA was installing a new "red" router at my station - apparently the old router was unreliable and caused frequent disconnects. Next time you have a couple of hours, call BA and ask to have your inquiry kicked upstairs until reach you reach a level of tech support where they can answer this sort of question. Once you reach this level, the support is excellent, but I am not kidding about the wait time.
Also, for networking, two NICs and All Aboard has worked great for me, and I have not changed any TCP/IP bindings, although I have not tried games on the internet from either machine on my LAN.
My only complaints now are the LONG boot time while the computer searches for the DHCP server, and little boxes that ask if you want to close the connections when you exit the browser. Closing the connection is good security, but so is BlackICE which I installed. | |
Anon | reply to Anon
PPPoE spontaneous disconnects solved!
I jumped up and down and hollered at Bell Atlantic until they finally sent out a technician with a laptop to test the line. Unfortunately, the dummies sent the technician out the door with a Windows 98 machine, even though I told them *repeatedly* that I'm running Windows NT Workstation 4.0 (i.e., not a fair comparison).
The technician was not able to reproduce the problem on his Win98 laptop, but he did see the spontaneous combustion occurring on my NT workstation. He noticed that the problem only seemed to occur when he stopped surfing the web or checking e-mail, which got me to thinking...
Since I'm a software developer, I decided to build a small applet that does nothing but ping a server every X seconds to keep the connection busy (but not so often that performance is degraded). Problem solved! My workstation has now been online for over two hours with no disconnections.
(By the way... since the Bell Atlantic technician wasn't able to fix my connection, he said that he would call me later Friday to arrange another visit with a Windows NT laptop. Of course, he LIED  ... he never called.) | |
Anon | reply to Anon
Re: PPPoE
gammanss said:
DRAT! Unbinding TCP/IP from the NIC didn't solve my spontaneous disconnection problems.
Rather than unbinding TCP/IP, try assigning an IP address to it (e.g. IP address: 10.0.0.1, subnet mask: 255.255.255.0). This should not affect your PPPoE connection, and will prevent Windows looking for a DHCP server, which is likely your problem, as it tends to stall your DSL when it does.
HTH | |
Anon | BA says PPPoE incompatible with Windows NT 4.0 SP5
Thank you for the suggestion, but it didn't work. I changed the TCP/IP settings as you suggested and rebooted, but within 60 seconds of DSL startup the connection STILL spontaneously dropped.
Yesterday afternoon Christopher Walker from level 2 tech support at Bell Atlantic called to find out how my Friday tech support visit fared, and I gave him an earful. He was very nice but not very helpful: According to him, Bell Atlantic does not support Windows NT Workstation 4.0 service pack 5... they only support SP4!
He also said that a new release of WinPOET, due mid-year (yeah, well, we'll SEE if it's on time), will support NT SP5 *and* Windows 2000. Hopefully, this forthcoming new version of WinPOET will also solve my spontaneous drop problem.
For now, since my "Keep Alive" utility is working flawlessly (two days without a dropped connection until I tried the TCP/IP experiment) and takes up very little bandwidth/CPUs, I am content to wait and see if B.A. can fix this problem. | |
Anon | reply to Anon
Re: PPPoE spontaneous disconnects solved!
What a whiner. So what boils down to is that your system was problem, not the DSL. If you (an all-knowing 'software developer') had known how properly configure your system, there never would have been an issue. And then you question his veracity. Whatever. | |
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