tips and tutorials

DISCONNECTS, SLOW SURFING, PHONE

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DISCONNECTS

This was a post written back in 1999 by the WebTv Guru Paul Ericson.

Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999

If your terminal builds up excessive static electric charge, it will disconnect _or_ power off.

If your terminal overheats, it will disconnect or power off.

If your phone wire is loose at the back of the terminal, it will likely frequently disconnect.

If your phone wire is worn or breaking, it will disconnect.
If you use a loose or old splitter, or the phone connection between the splitter and where the "split" comes from is loose, you'll get disconnects.

If your phone is old and cranky, it can cause disconnects randomly.

If your phone has an battery memory backup for phone number storage that runs only off the 48V line power, that battery will recharge itself every so often, and that can drop the signal on the line to the point of disconnect.

If your wall jack is old or poorly maintained (loose wires, crossed wires, dust, corrosion), you'll get disconnects.

If your wiring _in_ the wall is old or damaged, you can get disconnects.

If the phone cable running from your house/building to the
pole/curb/basement-distribution-box is old, with cracked insulation, corrosion, loose connections, you can be disconnected.

If you have external wires, during high wind or wet weather, small intermittent shorts can occur, causing disconnects.

If there's a problem _on_ the pole or in the underground vault, disconnects again.

The above are all things that can cause disconnects... I know, some will say, "but we can't _all_ have phone/phone-line problems!"

And they're right. But if you _do_ have one or more of these problems, you will be disconnected all the time, day in and day out.

It's your decision whether or not checking these things is worth the trouble, but if you can check, or have them checked, you will at the least have eliminated the possibility of this being the source of trouble, and at best _solved it_.

For more information on disconnects and poweroffs, visit

http://www.digi-one.com/ces/webtv/

My Help & Links: http://ericpaul.net

Frequently Requested Answers:

http://ericpaul.net/current.html

PHONE

Re: LOL! It really WAS the phone line!

OK, most of you have probably seen this post in users, but it bears repeating... it's _my_ story, for what it's worth........

I was having major difficulties connecting and going to web sites when I first signed on as a WebTV subscriber. At first, I thought it was just "the speed of the internet".

But later, I began to hear static on my phone line... audible static when trying to use the phone. I called WNI and was told to unplug all "extras" such as portable phones, answering machines, caller ID boxes, etc. I did all that, but to no avail.

I then called the phone company, and they did a "remote check" of my line and told me it was just fine. I asked the operator to run the check again, since she could also hear the static.

The second check came out fine, too. So I asked for a phone repairman to be sent to the house to check my lines. I was told there would be a charge for this service if he didn't find anything wrong. I agreed to this. (Hey, I was _desperate_.)

He came out and found a bare section in the wire between the house and the telephone pole. The break in the insulation was allowing moisture to collect inside the insulation, all along the wire. The copper wire was corroded and green.

Once the bad wire was replaced, my surfing speed was like greased lightning, faster than I even knew it could be! My point? That you can never trust any kind of remote check of your phone line. Noise can come from a number of sources, and none can be ruled out until everything has been checked "hands on."

Additionally, the distance between your point of connection and the telephone switching office has a major bearing on your surfing speed. A distance of more than 2-1/2 miles will have a definite detrimental effect on your ability to surf with "speed." Longer distances may even hamper your ability to connect or surf at all, or to stay connected.

DISCONNECTS

PHONE

Pick up the handset on your telephone and dial 1. This will stop the dialtone at least 30 seconds.

Listen for pops, clicks, or faint voices. If you hear any of these, take a phone handset outside to the junction box, and open the Customer Access side of it.

Disconnect the cable for your phone line, and plug the handset into the jack.

Try the dial-1 test again. If you don't hear the line noise anymore, the problem is in your in-house wiring.

If you still hear it, it's in the phone line --- call the phone company and request a fix.

DIALING TRICK

Here is a 'trick' that you can try:

Go to TV Home...click 'Settings'... click 'Dialing'... click "Basic'..... then, enter your secondary dial-up number into the 'Prefix" box; click all the "Dones"...hang up, and reconnect....

If this works, it will slow your _initial_ connection to the WWW, but, if your situation is like mine... surfing thereafter will be faster....

My primary dial-up number always connects at 28.8KBPS, while my secondary dial-up number always connects at 32+KBPS...

Thanks, Doc for this suggestion. It works.

DIALING

Q. How can I be sure my WebTV unit is not dialing long distance ?

A. This has been a concern for many new owners. First be sure WebTV has a local connection number for you by checking the WebTV local access database.

If you enable Audible Dialing, the number you are calling will be displayed.

If you are still worried that you may be connecting to a long distance number, or if WebTV is mis-identifying a local number as a long distance number you can BLOCK your WebTV unit from dialing a long distance number.

You do this by setting the "Spooky Dialing Options". Here is how:

#1 Power off your WebTV unit.

#2 Press 77437 on your keyboard as you hit the last 7 you should see the lights on the front of your WebTV terminal blink. If they do not, remove the batterys from your keyboard, replace them and try it again.

#3 Turn on the power to your WebTV unit and you will see the "Spooky Dialing" control panel.

#4 Select the third option ( Do not dial 1 before a long distance number)

By not dialing a one before a long distance number the WebTV terminal will not be able to dial a long distance number.

WITH THE NEW UPGRADE

Not every WebTv unit responds the same or properly to the new upgrade. The Tech Support at the 800 Go WebTv are ready to help anyone with these problems.

Be aware that because of the Upgrade there are a lot of people calling them with a lot of questions and requests for help.

So you might want to stay relaxed, get a cup of coffee, juice, milk...a newspaper or magazine, or even watch TV while you are on hold. YOU WILL GET HELP.

Usually, after they are working on a problem like the mail-freeze, or major slow-down, or increasing/decreasing your access speed, they MIGHT ask you to:

1. Power off the WebTv unit.
2. Unplug the WebTv unit from the power plug.
3. Wait thee-five minutes
4. Plug back the Unit
5. Power on the unit and chose from the pop-up box the MOVED instead of SAME LOCATION.

That will get your box to UPDATE itself for the new settings they have done on the server for your account.

SPEED: 33.6, or 56K?
I was TOLD that not ALL THE PHONE lines can support the 56K speed. And I do believe them.

For a stable, smooth connection they say that 33.6K is most preferred. At a 56K speed on a BAD PHONE LINE , your unit might experience frequent disconnections.

It is NOT the WebTv's fault. You might want to talk to your Phone company to come and check the phone lines, in order to accomodate your speed.

SLOW SURFING

Another thing you might want to check is when you experience a VEEERYYY SLOW surfing on a PARTICULAR SITE.

"Is is my WebTv, or is THAT SITE?" is a proper question to ask yourself. Easy to find the answer: Get out of that site, see how well you navigate around your Home, how fast OTHER PAGES/SITES are responding to your clicks....etc.

If EVERYTHING is slow, then there might be some reasons:

1. you have been on-line for several hours filling up your "cache" memory with A LOT OF pages.

Mostly, when you are going to MUSIC pages and are listening A LOT, or play games for hours, THAT LOADS A LOT and slows you down.

Power off the unit, unplug it, have the lunch or dinner, then come back, plug back the unit, power on, chose "same location"...and you go like a new born.

If you are STILL experience the painful slow surf, THEN CALL THE 800 NUMBER.

Many of you are having trouble with slow surfing, slow e-mail loading, slow Favorites access, etc.

Here are a couple of tips to try out.

(A) Find out how many local dial-up numbers your unit is capable of dialing. WebTV will assign one "main" number for your unit to dial, but there may be others.

To find out how many local numbers are available, click here and follow the prompts.

http://www.webtv.net/products/lookup/local_access.html

(B) Try using audible dialing to actually "see" what number your unit is dialing each time you log on. To use audible dialing, follow these steps.

1. From Primary (Main) username, go to Home screen.
2. Choose "Settings"
3. Choose "Dialing" at bottom of screen
4. Choose "Advanced" at top of right-hand column.
5. Place a check mark beside "audible dialing"
6. Click on "Done" when prompted

You can now see the number you use to dial up WebTV the next time you log-on. Make a note of that number.

(C) The next time you log on, try this. As the unit is dialing the number, momentarily unplug the PHONE cord which is connected to the back of your WebTV unit. This will cause the unit to re-dial, but this time it will dial another number.

Check out your surfing and access speeds and capabilities using this "alternate" number. If you see a dramatic improvement, you may want to experiement for a day or two to find out if the "new" number is much better than the one you usually dial.

If the "new" number is much better, consider calling 1-800-GOWEBTV to request that the "new" number be made into your "first choice " dial-up number.

It seems to me that with each new upgrade I have received, I have been given a new, or different dial-up number.

It may not occur simultaneously with the upgrade, but may come within a few weeks of the upgrade. Many people who are experiencing severe slowness may not be seeing the results of busy networks due to the rolling out of the upgrade, but rather may be seeing the results of a new of different dial-up number.

Remember that your dial-up numbers are not "dedicated" to WebTV users only, but are used by many computer users in your area as well. WebTV does not "own" any dial-up numbers. Instead, they "rent" the use of dial-up numbers which are already in existence!

SPEED, COMPRESSED-UNCOMPRESSED

Here's a site which shows your real-time line speed:

http://ddi.digital.net/~sjoiner/SpeedTest.htm

It should show a speed a little lower than
your initial connection speed (from the spellcheck word list). Once it came up 408 k, which would be wrong (don't know why).

And a site with links to lots of other speed tests:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/eaa/Bandwidth.htm
°Outpost

quote
Every time I start seeing a lot of question on this subject I post this thing. I always get in a lot of trouble but, what the heck, most of it is mostly correct. Having made my living in computers for so many years I have a natural interest in such things. I know most of the right questions to ask 1-800-GO but the problem is that they ain't talkin'.

Bps means "bits per second" and it is nothing more than the number of binary ones and zeros being sent over the phone line. So here's the little that I know:

Your connection speed depends on the condition of the phone line between your WebTV and your local server which is probably not a whole lot of miles.

The server is the local computer that answers the phone when your unit dials a local access number. WebTV techs can set a maximum speed for your individual unit ... that is what is meant by enabling your 56K modem (MOdulator/DEModulator).

I have an old PM Plus (MAT972) and I _always_ connect at 33,600 bps. _But_ maybe the line or the modems in between my local server and the server that hosts the site that I just selected won't handle 33,600 - maybe it will only handle 28,000 bps so my 33,600 isn't going to do me much good in the long haul.

When my son was in Rome, his modem was only 14,400 bps and he asked me not to send him anything with graphics in it.

Even if you have a Plus or a new Classic with a 56,000 bps (56K) modem, the Federal Communications Commission will not allow transmissions at 56,000 bps because that high speed causes interference noise in adjacent non-optical phone lines. So, until all phone lines are fiber optic or shielded cable, no one will realize 56,000 bps regardless of the speed of their modem.

Anything that is sent by or received by the modem in your WebTV is transmitted in packets of data. The software has a method (called parity checking) of determining when errors have occurred in the transmission of a packet. If there is an error in the packet, it must be re-transmitted.

If your modem speed is set at too high a speed by WebTV, and if your phone line condition is not capable of handling that high speed, the error rate will be so high that so many packets are being re-transmitted that your effective speed is actually slower than it would be if you were connected at a slower speed.

Connection speed only has meaning if you know whether you're talking about compressed or un-compressed transmission format. If you send a string of 50 asterisks in an un-compressed format, you will actually send 50 asterisks (approximately 400 bits) over the phone line.

If you have a compression routine (called a compaction routine) in effect, you _might_ send something like "ast50" ... the compression routine at the other end knows what that means and displays 50 asterisks on the screen when only 5 characters (approximately 40 bits were actually sent over the phone line. But compressing and "un-compressing" data also takes processing time so at what point are you taking more time compressing and "un-compressing" data than you're saving?

Compaction routines are a science unto themselves and people make careers out of developing them. They are also closely guarded corporate secrets.

In order to know how effective a compaction routine is, you must know it's effectiveness expressed in a percentage. This is expressed in the form of a percentage of reduction in the number of bits being sent over the phone line.

It is quite possible that a connection speed of 40,000 bps un-compressed is exactly the same as a connection speed of 30,000 bps compressed if the effectiveness rate of the compaction routine is 25%.

I'm in over my head here but I hope that this helps someone just a little bit. As usual, I will get burned by some data communications system design engineer who owns a Classic for using the wrong term but that's fine. So be it for those of us who debate in open forum.

E-mail always welcome. Jim in Silverdale.
end quote

quote
To see what your *initial* connection speed was, go to your Mail list, click on Settings, then click on Word List. Add these as "words":

& phone;
& rate;
& vers;
[ampersand, text, semi-colon, no spaces]

Then, anytime you return to the Word List, you'll see the phone number you're connected through, the initial modem connection rate, and the WebTV software version you're running.

Actual modem connection rates typically vary up and down many times per second; and if a 56k modem is communicating with a modem on a website that only runs at 14.4k, the 56k and 14.4k modems will "negotiate" down to 14.4k.

Here's some info about data compression, taken from various sites on the Web:

=================

Data Compression

The goal of data compression is to increase the connect speed by using fewer bits to carry the same amount of information and to increase the rate of the stream of data between the two modems.

Data compression only produces good results on data that can be compressed easily. Normal, uncompressed, text files may transmit as much two to four times faster with data compression enabled.

Transmitting data which is already compressed (such as a .jpg, .gif or ZIP file) does not normally result in any savings.

Error correction

Telephone systems were developed to carry voices, so a certain amount of noise, although annoying, will not interfere with the conversation. But modems can't afford to lose data, so error-correcting protocols have been developed to maintain the integrity of the transmitted data.

Typical error-correction protocols work by having the sending modem do a calculation on the data being sent, and the results of the calculation are also sent with the data.

The receiving modem performs the same calculation and uses the results to detect and correct (if possible) any errors.

================

Uncompressed means that the modem isn't using compression techniques to encode data and send it in a shorter time.

Compressed means that fewer, encoded packets are being sent, but more data is coming through, depending on the type of file being sent, that the raw number would indicate.

The reason both data compression and error correction are important is that if you send data faster, there can be more errors, and more error correction, which can actually slow down data transmission. So, sending data at a slower speed may actually result in better throughput, if not so many errors are made at the slower speed.

Should you worry about your intial connection speed and whether it's uncompressed or compressed?

Nope.

Hope some of this info helps,
Saverio
end quote

CALL WAITING

Posted by TheWebJunkie@webtv.net on 5/30/00

For others who are completely unfamiliar with Call Waiting:

Call Waiting is a telephone company feature, not an Internet feature.

When you subscribe to the service and you are on the phone (forget about WebTV and the Internet for a moment), you receive a "beep" through your earpiece when someone else is trying to call you. (None of the extensions on your line can ring in the normal way when one of them is off the hook.) The person trying to call you does hear the standard ringing tone in his earpiece, not a busy signal.

[my note -- Different Phone Companies send out different beeps. It is this non-conformity in beeps that causes call waiting problems]

If you choose to answer the call-waiting call, you perform what is known as a "flash," or "flash hook" ––– you hang up for approximately one second, then immediately pick up the phone. The new caller will be there, and the first caller would have been put on hold.

Of course, it is expected that you would have told the first caller what you are intending to do so that he continues to hold his then dead line. If and when you flash again, the *second* caller is put on hold and the first one is re-connected.

When you are connected with WebTV, something slightly different happens. Your terminal hears the beep and responds by disconnecting, NOT just flashhooking for one second. (This disconnect is the same as when you press the "hangup" button in OPTIONS. Your terminal freezes on whatever webpage or e-mail message you are in the midst of typing. It does *not* go to power-off status or forget the websites you had recently visited that session. When you later re-connect, you can resume at the exact place you left off.)

After the disconnect, because NONE of your extensions or other devices (like WebTV) is then off-hook, something very interesting happens. Your telephone company converts the incoming call-waiting call to a *conventional* call, and your telephone rings normally. If you have an answering machine on the line, it will pick-up after the predetermined number of rings.

Be aware, though, that there will be one less ring on *your* end of the line than the calling-party will hear on *his* end (i.e. if your machine answers after 4 rings, it will answer after your phone actually rings 4 times. This represents rings 2 through 5 for the calling party, because what *he* thought was the first ring was really just a "beep" at your end of the line.)

======

Quest, (formerly US West), has a "long distance alert" feature with call waiting that gives an interrupted ring so that you know that it is a long distance call.

It was not strong enough to activate the call waiting. I had the telephone company change it to a regular ring. It's not always WTVs fault.

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