Yippee! I've got broadband!

[hazel]

Well, I finally took the plunge into the modern age. I bought an adsl modem/router for my birthday and set up a new contract with my isp. At first it just didn't seem to work; I sat around waiting for something to come down the line and nothing did. It took a bit of browsing around in yelp to find out that I still had to make the ppp connection myself. But now I'm up and running and I can't believe how fast web pages and emails download compared with dialup.

[techieMoe]

Well, I finally took the plunge into the modern age. I bought an adsl modem/router for my birthday and set up a new contract with my isp.

Hope you read the fine print on that contract. Aside from that, congratulations!

[anomie]

Nice. Welcome to 1999.

[hazel]

Yes, it really makes all the difference, especially with something like Google maps. But one thing that puzzles me is that it seems to take such a long time to actually get connected. I keep getting timeouts waiting for PADO packets and it's about 5 minutes before the ip and dns server addresses finally come down the line. I'd like to know - as a broadband virgin - whether everyone has the same experience. Or is this a problem I need to complain about?

[techieMoe]

Broadband services should stay connected 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You should only have to connect once. Are you saying your DSL service makes you reconnect every time you want to get online?

[hazel]

Broadband services should stay connected 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You should only have to connect once. Are you saying your DSL service makes you reconnect every time you want to get online?

No, I have my adsl modem on and connected 24/7. But I only have the computer on when I want to use it. I don't approve of having equipment on stand-by unnecessarily as it wastes electricity and contributes to climate change. So I boot up, say at 11.00 AM or 2.00 PM, and then pppd starts and ploughs through all this PAD business. I shut down again in the evening when I've had enough and next day it's the same again. I know that a lot of Linux users keep their computers permanently on but I really don't want to go down that route.

[bigtomrodney]

Try using different DNS, or alternatively update your /etc/resolv.conf with the DNS so your PC isn't reliant on your router for name resolving. Some routers are notoriously bad at it. Check out opendns.org and add their IPs to /etc/resolv.conf. I know for Ubuntu you need to modify your dhclient.conf to make it stick after reboot but it might be worth trying it before we get to making it stick

[hazel]

Thanks for your advice, Big Tom. Opendns recommend putting their server addresses on the router rather than the computer itself (probably to avoid those problems on rebooting) so that's what I did. But it doesn't make any difference because I can't reach the servers either, until pppoe has completed its initial PAD stage.

Actually I wasn't asking for help exactly because I regard the Coffee Lounge as a place where people go to relax and chill out, not to be pestered with questions. I'd normally use the networking forum for that. I just wondered - never having used broadband before - whether this delay is a normal part of the experience. Sort of comparing notes. If it is normal, well, tough! I'll just learn to regard it as part of the bootup procedure, which is pretty slow anyway. I'll go away and read a good book and come back after five minutes when everything's up and running.

[fingal]

Hi Hazel

I would - like you - not consider it a good idea to leave my computer on all the time. How responsible! My ISP is Pipex, and on the whole I get a fast connection time when I boot up. However, my actual download speeds are limited and not as good as advertised. This is quite a common situation and one which is being looked into by industry regulators.

Your slow connection time might be to do with broadband contention. I don't have any technical information about this, but I was told (by a friend) that when you connect to the Net using any given ISP, you are contending for digital packets with an average of 50 other users. This might slow you down.

Maybe you have a lot of bandwidth now, but it seems likely to be an issue with the way Virgin offer their service, rather than anything to do with your local settings. I wonder what other Forum members think about this as a reason? Actually I don't think it's 'normal' for you to have a slow connection time, but 'normal' isn't a word I have much use for anymore.

[hazel]

Actually it might be a kernel thing. I have installed my trusty old Red Hat 9 on the same computer (running a 2.4 kernel) and I usually get an instant connection with that. I did just now but unfortunately got thrown off by the peer after five minutes and couldn't get back on again. So I rebooted into Ubuntu (2.6 kernel) and got connected after four or five PADO timeouts. There's no rhyme or reason to it! Still, it's so much quicker that I wouldn't go back to dial-up again.