Dial-up internet and phone lines in general

[Havok]

Yea I still use dial up for FFXI, we have shitty hughes net for other internet needs but that's all that's available here. Anyway, dialup was always fine untill recently. I'd get connection speeds between 28.8k and 44k almost always, which is perfectly fine for shit like FFXI. Recently I've been seeing a decline in speeds; I'd be lucky to connect at 21.6k, sometimes stuck at 14.4. The past week or 2 I cannot for the life of me manage a connection over 9.6k. Sometimes it is even lower (7.2 or even 4.8). I've tried 2 different ISPs, different numbers, different modems, different phone cables, I've even gone out to the box outside and plugged directly into that. Same results every time. I can get a 14.4 connection maybe 1/200 tries...FFXI will basically function at anything lower than that.

So am I correct in deducing that it probably a line noise/quality problem somewhere along the line? I know that phone companies are only required to provide a 9.6k connection for voice communications. But I figure with such a steady and noticeable decrease in speed and quality something has to be up...

I want to make sure i have all my shit correct before I call the phone company up, I don't want to waste a lot of time with them.

[Pikarya]

If you've narrowed it down to the box. Then the problem is obviously on their end. My father had this issue when they had DSL set up for the first time, it also made phone calls very static/hard to hear due to something wrong in their neighborhood. Not sure if thats something else you're having.

[TheMysteriousX]

Disconnect any line extensions from the main box and retry your test.

If your cabling or boxes inside the house have any damaged wire or corroded contacts, it can cause electronic "echos" which modems would be sensitive to; also any faulty equipment connected to them could cause line noise. Disconnecting everything from the main box eliminates any of that as a possibility.

If with everything disconnected you still have problems, ask your phone company to perform a line noise test and a "whoosh" test. If both of those pass, then ask them to increase your line gain.

EDIT: something else I thought of, a lot of companies are upgrading their networks to use devices called DACS, or "line doublers". These can cause severe problems with analogue modems.
In the UK you can by law request that your phone line be undoubled, elsewhere YMMV.

[Havok]

Sometimes there is a lot of static. We don't actually use the line for a lot of calls, but when the modem is dialing sometimes there is quite a bit of static and other nasty noises, sometimes not. And yes I have tried with all other phones/modems disconnected also.

I'm kind of wary of even mentioning a modem since they aren't obligated to provide any higher speeds for internet. But should I go ahead since I am frequently getting speeds even lower than 9.6k? It really does almost feel like they've put some kind of speed limiter on our line lol...nothing else seems to make any sense. I'm not sure why sometimes I can get through at a higher speed though.

I wouldn't doubt that the wiring, etc. inside the house is terrible, it's old and probably never been touched since the house was built, but I figure since I did bypass all of that and go outside to the box and got the same results, the inside wiring can't be the only problem. If it is at all.

[Valient]

At my old job we had 10 copper lines and sometimes on or after a rainy day some of the lines would get wet and create a lot of static on the those lines. Once we knew which line it was happening on we would call the phone company who would send out a tech who would test the line then move the pair to a different line in their central office. If you can get standard phone and plug it into different spots and listen to the dial tone from the central office and hear background noise that's a pretty good indication you have a noisy line. You can call the phone company about that and they should come out and fix it for you otherwise it would be just a poor quality of service.

[Havok]

Still waiting on someone to come out to the house, since talking to idiots on the phone never seems to go anywhere.

Can anyone explain to me how connections are made within the phone company's network or whatever. To me it feels like, our line has been...given a lower priority or something. Like when we make a call, we're being restricted to low speed/quality connections, and when there is lighter traffic we might be given something slightly higher. Could it be something like that in their actual network that is restricting our connection speed, or would it definitely be a physical line issue somewhere? This is Verizon btw.

Also would switching to another provider change anything at all? Or would it just be the same problem with a different retarded company?

[Havok]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_gain

could this be something they have done, to increase the number of customers/calls they can support without actually adding more lines?

Should I show the tech that page when he comes tomorrow and ask him? lol

If I beg them to remove it and restore out speeds will they care, or is verizon going to fuck us over from now on?

halp

paying for dialup ISP+FFXI the last month and unable to use either 90% of the time is really pissing me off.

[Merovingian]

Do you live in rural area?(my apologies if you said yes) why don't you try satellite? The problem of living in rural areas is that phone companies don't give alot of maintenance to the phone lines. From what i read in this thread it must be something with the line maybe not in your house but somewhere in between, usually what old analog modems do is negotiate with the receiver that's why you don't always get the same speed.

[Havok]

Yea I do. And we have satellite. However any kind of gaming on satellite is basically impossible. More than a second of latency on anything you do does not work out well :/

Hell all I'm asking for at this point is 'average' dialup speeds which are perfectly find for FFXI. Someone supposed to show up tomorrow 'sometime before 7pm' so I guess we'll see what I can get out of them.

[Furtwangler]

I feel your pain man. I was on 24k(at best) dialup for years playing ffxi, and I decided to switch to hughes. I played on that for another year. Finally got basic dsl in my area last year (then I move to college with an 80mbit connection)

Anyways, as others have said it def sounds like their problem. I'm assuming the tech hasn't came out yet? I've never worked with verizon ones before but the ones from my phone company always seem to try their best to get you back in order. One thing I would give a shot though, preferably before he comes, is try to grab an external (or internal if you don't mind dealing with the comp case) dialup modem from walmart or something, and try that too just to make sure your modem hasn't gone wacky. You can just return it when you're done.

I had that happen before and my internal was just shitting the bed. Chances are it is their fault though. Hope they can find something wrong and fix it.

On a related side note, we've had issues with our home phone for the past year and the phone company hasn't resolved it completely yet. Our lines are very staticky. I've triple checked filters, and no matter what phone you use, where you plug it in (even in the box) there is always some noise, and anyone on the other end is extremely hard to hear.

They 'fix' it, and it goes away, and comes back shortly after, and is never 100% fixed. I dare think how it would've effected our dialup if we were still using it.

[Havok]

Oh yea I've tried 2 or 3 different modems at this point. I'm 99% sure it's not me lol.

I also find it funny, looking at verizon, their own dialup service is $25 a month....MORE than DSL, which they won't even bring out to us.

[Kaisha]

I'm assuming you've looked at providers for residential wireless? If you're in range I'd just grab that in a heartbeat although it's a bit costly due to equipment rental. Can expect ping rates of around 40ms if you're a good distance between the wireless tower and a gaming server within the same country.

I used to have two phone lines (one for phone, one for dial-up), had a month where our line was just utter shit. Took that month of bugging our phone line provider to check it out. Apparently about 8 miles away from our house one of their lines was shitting up and was causing our problem. ;/

[Havok]

There is basically no wireless coverage here either. We tried that service from verizon for a while as well. 90% of the time there would be no signal, and if we could get connected it wouldn't be for long.

Still waiting on repair guy to show up.