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Author Topic: Dial-up Internet  (Read 6639 times)

Offline JordanM

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Dial-up Internet
« on: February 18, 2008, 05:11:37 pm »
Does anyone know how to make dial-up  internet go any faster?

Offline buzzbee

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #1 on: February 18, 2008, 06:52:44 pm »
Upgrade to dsl if possible, don't download yahoo or google toolbars ,just go to their homepage and search. Stay away from AOL,too much advertising sucking up your bandwidth.

Offline Robo

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #2 on: February 18, 2008, 07:55:37 pm »
If dial-up is your only option, chances are the speed is limited by the phone lines.  In most cases they are in very poor condition, so your only option is change your surfing habits like Ken has suggested.
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Offline ooptec

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2008, 03:59:16 pm »
You can get pretty good 2 way (up/down) sattelite dishes now.

Bud ws looking at them, $1000 last year, $300 this year own the equip. outright

Then his monthly payments are pretty much the same as it costs here in city and is high speed and unlimited bandwidth

cheers

peter

Offline Understudy

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2008, 05:31:30 pm »
Dial up, wow. Okay
http://www.inboost.com/speed-tweaks/
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37123.aspx
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/modem/


That should be a good start.


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Offline Kev

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2008, 08:39:54 pm »
You didn't tell us what speed you are presently connecting at. Before I got DSL, I regularly connected at about 40 kbps. The max on most modems is 56 kbps.

There are really 2 speeds at issue. Upload and download speeds and they are different. Most people are interested in download speed, which can be throttled back by the server. So even though your icon says 56k, your actual download speed may only be 26 or 28. Then, the sending server may be slow, too.

In the past I have used the tools at www.pcpitstop.com to test both of these speeds.

These are probably covered in the articles Understudy posted, but here are some things that you can do to make internet pages load faster:
  • Turn off Javascript and disable Java in your browser preference, these gobble bandwidth. Unfortunately, you may find that they are necessary for many website today. You also could turn off automatically loading images. Pages will load a lot faster then, but will be considerably duller.
    Try switching to another browser: Opera is reported to be faster. Internet explorer is slow. Firefox is what I use.
  • set your security to high will eliminate ads and reduce page loading time

I lived with dial-up until last year. So it can be done.
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Offline Clegs

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #6 on: February 21, 2008, 02:30:07 am »
Although this isn't recommended, you can block ads with something like Ad Block Plus.  This does take money away from the website, but sometimes it can be the only way to get the site to load at all.

My grandparent's used to have dial-up so I sympathies with you.  You can also try programs such as FasterFox which will help with caching to make pages load faster.
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Offline JordanM

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #7 on: February 21, 2008, 08:42:38 pm »
The toolbar at the bottom of my screen says that the internet is going at 28.8kbps and are carrier is M33access.

Online Michael Bush

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #8 on: February 22, 2008, 07:13:16 pm »
There are "boosters" of various names available from ISPs (for which they charge) that will cache more things and will downgrade (however much you are willing) pictures.  These usually allow you to right click and upgrade the quality if you want a better look.  These can DRASTICALLY increase the speed at which pages render.

There are also services using high gain antennas from water towers and grain elevators that sell high speed service to places with no cable or DSL phone support available.  I would try searching on google for such services in your area.
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Offline Kev

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #9 on: February 23, 2008, 06:13:49 pm »
The toolbar at the bottom of my screen says that the internet is going at 28.8kbps and are carrier is M33access.

28.8 is a pretty slow nominal connection even for dialup. And that's only the nominal connection speed.

Right now mine says 12 Mbps, but it's actually running slower than that. Only a connection test will tell you what you're really getting out of it.

switching carriers might help

kev
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Online Michael Bush

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #10 on: February 23, 2008, 09:06:50 pm »
I found that's about as fast a connection as I could get here.  A call to the phone company revealed that the switcher between here and the exchange is responsible for the slowness.  Until it was upgraded my speed would probably never improve.
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Offline Kev

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #11 on: February 25, 2008, 08:31:33 pm »
I found that's about as fast a connection as I could get here.  A call to the phone company revealed that the switcher between here and the exchange is responsible for the slowness.  Until it was upgraded my speed would probably never improve.

Yikes, I was getting about 40k when we were dialed in, which was slow enough. I can remember downloading stuff overnight. 

My DSL is a pretty funny story, too. I'm almost at the absolute end of the loop length for DSL. They kept telling me that I couldn't get it. Then my neighbor, who gets service off the same pole but whose house is another 300 feet from the pole got it. Finally, they ran a test and I squeaked by. It's slower than another neighbor up the road, but way faster than POTS.

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Offline doak

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Re: Dial-up Internet
« Reply #12 on: March 12, 2008, 10:58:36 pm »
The man came out yesterday to put my second phone in.
He found out we had to bring another line to the house from the main line.
The one we had was for only two phones, so he put a temp. line in and mine speed ed up. the old line may have been bit by lighting.
Bottom line, mine is doing better.
The first thing I did was block the pop-up's.
About a year ago I upgraded from Windows Me. to XP.
Running good for dial-up.
doak

 

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