OT Grrrr......



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Wafflycathcsdir

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I am totally teed off.

I can't get on to AOL from my computer since end of last week. All of a sudden no carrier signal. To
cut a long story short - I've been in contact with AOL & BT (I have a BT ISDN line) and guess what -
both take the "nothing to do with us guv" approach. I've uninstalled and reinstalled bot AOL & the
ISDN software and *still* can't get a carrier signal. BT have tested the ISDN line and say there's
nothing wrong with it. AOL say nothing wrong with them.....

AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

helen s

~~~~~~~~~~
Flush out that intestinal parasite and/or the waste product before sending a reply!

Any speeliong mistake$ aR the resiult of my cats sitting on the keyboaRRRDdd
~~~~~~~~~~
 
"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I am totally teed off.
>
> I can't get on to AOL from my computer since end of last week. All of a
sudden
> no carrier signal. To cut a long story short - I've been in contact with
AOL &
> BT (I have a BT ISDN line) and guess what - both take the "nothing to do
with
> us guv" approach. I've uninstalled and reinstalled bot AOL & the ISDN
software
> and *still* can't get a carrier signal. BT have tested the ISDN line and
say
> there's nothing wrong with it. AOL say nothing wrong with them.....
>
> AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

How did BT test the line? From the exchange probably? Can you make phone calls? If so the line is
probably OK. If not its definitely buggered.

Ask BT to come and test the line from your end. If nothing else, once BT have done that you have AOL
by the short & curlies.

Of course you could use a proper ISP rather than AO Hell.

T
 
>Of course you could use a proper ISP rather than AO Hell.
>
>T

:) Have to admit, not had any problems with AOL really, until now. AOL suita me
- I *need* unlimited access - I use the net as a research tool & for work, and I need the access at
reasonable cost for unlimited access. I don't like the layout of AOL newsgroups onscreen, but I
can live with that :)

BT have called me back & are sending out an engineer. Have to say, BT's *manner* on the phone
fault/helpline is much better than AOLs.

Cheers, helen s

~~~~~~~~~~
Flush out that intestinal parasite and/or the waste product before sending a reply!

Any speeliong mistake$ aR the resiult of my cats sitting on the keyboaRRRDdd
~~~~~~~~~~
 
"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> >Of course you could use a proper ISP rather than AO Hell.
> >
> >T
>
> :) Have to admit, not had any problems with AOL really, until now. AOL
suita me
> - I *need* unlimited access - I use the net as a research tool & for work,
and
> I need the access at reasonable cost for unlimited access. I don't like
the
> layout of AOL newsgroups onscreen, but I can live with that :)
>
> BT have called me back & are sending out an engineer. Have to say, BT's *manner* on the phone
> fault/helpline is much better than AOLs.

I had a similar problem some time back. At first BT swore there was nothing wrong with the line but,
after some persistence suggested they send a man around. From then on, service wonderful.

I know what you mean about needing access to the net. Since I moved and now have broadband my
internet costs have shrunk to 1/6th of the previous dial up or ISDN levels. Have a look to see if
you can get proper broadband to your place (again, while living in a little village it was marginal
so, knowing I was moving, I didn't bother. But now it saves me lots of cash, is much faster and more
reliable.)

T
 
"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Hahahahahhahahahahahaaa ... note hysterical laughter at mention of
broadband
> ;-)

Yep. I know. Not currently available on your exchange due to lack of demand? That's BT's normal
line in BS.

T
 
"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> >I had a similar problem some time back. At first BT swore there was
nothing
> >wrong with the line but, after some persistence suggested they send a man around. From then on,
> >service wonderful.
> >
>
>
> Now sorted.... Long story... Neither BT or I can actually believe it and *cannot* understand it...
> but, now sorted !

genuine ISDN or home highway? my home highway box occasionally (once or twice a year) crashes -
pulling the power for a few minutes sorts it again.

> >I know what you mean about needing access to the net. Since I moved and
now
> >have broadband my internet costs have shrunk to 1/6th of the previous
dial
> >up or ISDN levels. Have a look to see if you can get proper broadband to your place (again, while
> >living in a little village it was marginal so, knowing I was moving, I didn't bother. But now it
> >saves me lots of cash,
is
> >much faster and more reliable.)
> >
> >T
> >
>
> Hahahahahhahahahahahaaa ... note hysterical laughter at mention of
broadband
> ;-)

<AOL> me too... Here I am, bombarded with advertising, telling me to go to broadband, and for once
when I want to take an advertiser up on an offer, I can't.

freeserve anytime now allow business use. Still have a proxy server in the way on port 80, which
screws some things up for me, and chuck you off after 2 hours, but otherwise fine.

cheers, clive
 
"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> >I had a similar problem some time back. At first BT swore there was
nothing
> >wrong with the line but, after some persistence suggested they send a man around. From then on,
> >service wonderful.
> >
>
>
> Now sorted.... Long story... Neither BT or I can actually believe it and *cannot* understand it...
> but, now sorted !
>

As a (retired) computer engineer I am not surprised. If a client had a problem with BT data line
my standard response was "ask BT to test it and then retry". 9 times out of 10, on checking with
the client they reported that BT claimed no fault but on re-trying the line was fine (we suspected
that BT used some sort of general reset before or during running the test and that reset cleared
the fault)
--
IanB

swap my names around to reply to me
 
"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> >Yep. I know. Not currently available on your exchange due to lack of demand? That's BT's normal
> >line in BS.
> >
> >T
>
> Got it in one!
>
> Cheers, helen s
>
>
A-ha, knew there had to be advantages to living in inner city slums (or relatively close to them
anyways!). Broadband Telewest ISP services, no *real* probs so far, been over a year and counting
(touch plastic keyboard - ahhh for the good old fashioned wooden ones....hhhmmm another business
opportunity!!)
 
On 24 Feb 2003 11:33:49 GMT, [email protected] (wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter) wrote:

>I've uninstalled and reinstalled bot AOL & the ISDN software and *still* can't get a
>carrier signal.

AOL? ISDN? Wooooh! My trousers are turning flared -I'm sprouting sideburns! Aaaargh! It's back to
the Bad Old Days!

(said he from the comfort of an ADSL connection, having regularly scored ISDN bills in excess of
£500 per month back in the old days)

Guy
===
** WARNING ** This posting may contain traces of irony. http://www.chapmancentral.com (BT ADSL and
dynamic DNS permitting)
NOTE: BT Openworld have now blocked port 25 (without notice), so old mail addresses may no longer
work. Apologies.
 
>AOL? ISDN? Wooooh! My trousers are turning flared -I'm sprouting sideburns! Aaaargh! It's back to
>the Bad Old Days!

Good grief, those combined with the mouse on the upper lip.... jpgs!

Cheers, helen s (now back & sorted)

~~~~~~~~~~
Flush out that intestinal parasite and/or the waste product before sending a reply!

Any speeliong mistake$ aR the resiult of my cats sitting on the keyboaRRRDdd
~~~~~~~~~~
 
"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> >AOL? ISDN? Wooooh! My trousers are turning flared -I'm sprouting sideburns! Aaaargh! It's back to
> >the Bad Old Days!
>
> Good grief, those combined with the mouse on the upper lip.... jpgs!

He must have been downloading lots & lots of jpegs to clock up those charges. No wonder he has to
lie down to cycle :O

T
 
On 24 Feb 2003 13:30:21 GMT, [email protected] (wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter) wrote:

>Hhahahahhahahahahahaaa ... note hysterical laughter at mention of broadband ;-)

Hatter, mad, et cetera

FWIW, my e-mail collection has recently died; my broadband is provided by NTL. To quote a certain
cyclist: "Hhahahahhahahahahahaaa ..."

BTW, certain person, how's the cold?

James

--
A credit limit is NOT a target.
 
Tony W wrote:

> He must have been downloading lots & lots of jpegs to clock up those charges. No wonder he has to
> lie down to cycle :O

Heh! At the time I was information manager for a surgical equipment company, and I was replicating
Notes databases of up to 4GB, with tens or occasionally hundreds of thousands of changed documents
every day. The problem with ISDN routers is that you don't hear the money going down the pan - every
firm I know that uses ISDN has been hit with a bill for over a grand at least once.

--
Guy
===
I wonder if you wouldn't mind piecing out our imperfections with your thoughts; and while you're
about it perhaps you could think when we talk of bicycles, that you see them printing their proud
wheels i' the receiving earth; thanks awfully.

http://www.highwaycode.gov.uk/09.shtml#103 http://www.highwaycode.gov.uk/09.shtml#104
 
Helen,

I've just helped a client install BT Broadband in the middle of rural Staffordshire, with no ADSL on
the exchange.....

BT is running a Satellite trial which is targeted at locations where they have no intention of
running ADSL. Its expensive, but it is available (probably best for companies). Its 899GBP to set up
(inc. modem, dish and installation) - but you may get a lot of this back as a grant from RABBIT
(Remote Area Broadband Inclusion Trial). Monthly costs are 60GBP per month - it performs about 30%
better than bog standard ADSL, according to the speed test sites I used. Another plus is that it's
Satellite up and down - you don't need a wired ISP for uploads.

HTH,

Pete.

--------------
Peter Connolly Webmaster Derby Cycling Group
note: Remove Australian Lager before replying! www.derbycyclinggroup.org.uk

"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> >Hatter, mad, et cetera
> >
> >FWIW, my e-mail collection has recently died; my broadband is provided by NTL. To quote a certain
> >cyclist: "Hhahahahhahahahahahaaa ..."
> >
> >BTW, certain person, how's the cold?
> >
> >James
> >
> >--
> >A credit limit is NOT a target.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> Why James, life is so much more pleasant when you are slightly potty :)
>
> My laughter is that the chance of Broadband where I live - a rural area is
fat,
> slim, nada, no, etc., etc.. As much as I would *love* to have broadband -
like
> many in rural areas, there is no provision for it and not likely to be for
some
> considerable time :(
>
> Cold - chest infection getting better - not coughing as much - am tempted
to
> get out Gino the San Remo for a *little* ride today.
>
> Cheers, helen s
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~
> Flush out that intestinal parasite and/or the waste product before sending
a
> reply!
>
> Any speeliong mistake$ aR the resiult of my cats sitting on the
keyboaRRRDdd
> ~~~~~~~~~~
 
message news:[email protected]...

>
> BT is running a Satellite trial which is targeted at locations where they have no intention of
> running ADSL. Its expensive, but it is available (probably best for companies). Its 899GBP to set
> up (inc. modem, dish and installation) - but you may get a lot of this back as a grant from RABBIT
> (Remote Area Broadband Inclusion Trial). Monthly costs are 60GBP per
month -
> it performs about 30% better than bog standard ADSL, according to the
speed
> test sites I used. Another plus is that it's Satellite up and down - you don't need a wired ISP
> for uploads.
>

When I looked at satellite a couple of years ago there were some major problems they do not tell you
about. The big one is that it was satellite download but landline upload with the usual satellite
delay that you see in news broadcasts these days. The result was it worked fine for continuous
download of large data files e.g video streaming but if it required interactive download it slowed
massively because you send your data packet via (slow) landline, the server then had to upload its
data packet to the satellite and back down to your dish - transmission cycle time about a second or
so mainly in the time for the signal to travel to the satellite and back.

Tony
 
> I totally agree with the problem you mentioned...which is why I pointed out that its Satellite up
> and down - no landline needed. Latency is not noticeable (except perhaps for the first connection
> of the day, when the communication link is fired up for the first time).
>
> There are a lot of companies out there still offering Satellite which requires the landline, and
> some are very expensive as well! I avoid them like the plague!! Its early days, but I think BT may
> have a half-decent solution here.
>

Presumably that means satellite delay in both directions. I'm surprised the latency isn't noticeable
as its one or two seconds trip time for each packet. Are the speed test sites you are using streamed
download or interactive up and downloads? Its the latter that tend to suffer. Tried any gaming on it
for example (I know that's not an official business activity though ;-)

Tony
 
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 08:41:19 -0000, Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Presumably that means satellite delay in both directions. I'm surprised the latency isn't
> noticeable as its one or two seconds trip time for each packet. Are the speed test sites you are
> using streamed download or interactive up and downloads? Its the latter that tend to suffer. Tried
> any gaming on it for example (I know that's not an official business activity though ;-)
>

Satellite delay isn't that big. Most TV transmissions are multiple bounce which makes it look
worse than it is. I know of one station (non-uk) that for some programs a phone-in actually
involves four bounces.

(I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised if broadcasting from the UK to the UK isn't a double
bounce, one from the station to the main transmitter and then one from the main transmitter back.)

Round trip (one way) is roughly 1/4 second, going up to about 1/3 second when you include the delays
in the transmitter and receiver.

I would be very surprised if satellite broadband is anything other than a single bounce. With TCP
fast retransmits and appropriate receive and transmit windows you really shouldn't see much of a
problem except for fully interactive things. (I suspect that even something like VNC might not be a
major problem because, in my experiences, bandwidth is a bigger issue than latency) Games would be a
problem, as would remote telnet/ssh where the 2/3 second delay would be a nuisance but just learn to
type properly and it will only be half a word behind. Far better than word managed when I used to
use it where I could type half a paragraph before it would catch up :)

Regards,

Tim.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/
 
Tim Woodall <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Round trip (one way) is roughly 1/4 second, going up to about 1/3 second when you include the
> delays in the transmitter and receiver.
>

Best case round trip for a geostationary satellite is 240ms one way (up to satellite and back down =
44,600 miles @ 186,000 miles per second) Round trip is 480ms. Normal latency accounting for the
angle factor since the satellite is not directly overhead you (usually on the equator) and the
groundstation plus the electronic and ground distances generally make the delay 2-4x longer. So
latency for sending a data packet and receiving the response is typically 1-2 seconds on
bi-directional satellite.

Tony

--
http://www.raven-family.com

"I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them
their job."

Samuel Goldwyn
 
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 19:18:59 -0000, Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote:
> Tim Woodall <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Round trip (one way) is roughly 1/4 second, going up to about 1/3 second when you include the
>> delays in the transmitter and receiver.
>>
>
> Best case round trip for a geostationary satellite is 240ms one way (up to satellite and back down
> = 44,600 miles @ 186,000 miles per second) Round trip is 480ms. Normal latency accounting for the
> angle factor since the satellite is not directly overhead you (usually on the equator) and the
> groundstation plus the electronic and ground distances generally make the delay 2-4x longer. So
> latency for sending a data packet and receiving the response is typically 1-2 seconds on
> bi-directional satellite.
>
I would be surprised at 1-2 seconds. I have sat in a satellite TV control room with a direct feed
from the studio and a direct feed from the transmitter with one bounce in between and the delay was
near enough
1/3 second. (I'll accept 1/2 second as I could only see the screens, I had no way of freezing them
so I could read the timecode properly but I would have said that there were no more than 10 frames
between them at 25fps. Interestingly the delays on digital cable TV weren't much different
although this must presumably have been encoding/decoding overheads)

If the delay is 2 seconds for satellite data transmissions (and I have never used a satellite link
for this) then I would think at least half the delay is due to encoding and decoding stuff at the
transmitter and receiver and maybe the satellite as well. Presumably the return link is transmitted
at much lower powers so the satellite will probably have to apply error correction before
retransmitting to the ground link rather than the satellite just blindly retransmitting everything.

If you are sending multiple packets then TCP doesn't require a reponse to every packet and the
sender doesn't have to wait for each packet to be acknowledged before sending again.

On something like VNC I would swap latency for bandwidth for almost any connection, certainly
anything less than 100Mb/s[1]. OK I don't want to play games across VNC and I can accept that what
you are seeing being a second or more behind what the computer is doing can be tricky but you can
easily cope. Waiting 5-10 seconds while the screen repaints itself is much more annoying.

[2] Stupid latencies excepted. I don't care what bandwidth a carrier pigeon can manage, an hours
latency isn't practical for anyone :)

I have programmed interactive games for use on live satellite TV and you can cope with one bounce
easily, two bounces comfortably and three bounces with great care and planning. (The one problem we
did have was convincing the producers that you couldn't play one person from home against a
celebrity in the studio. In theory you can simulate the delay in the studio but it doesn't seem to
work well in practice.)

(Incidently, I suspect you actually know this but it's not apparent from your comment above, for a
geostationary satellite it has to be over the equator. geosynchronous satellites will draw a figure
of 8 in the sky, the lobes depending on the precise orbit - geostationary being the special case
where the lobes collapse completely. The correction for the extra distance due to the satellite not
being overhead is fairly small as well - I'm not sure if the 22,000 miles is measured from the
surface or the centre of the Earth and I can't be bothered to work it out but even in the worst case
the round trip is only 8,000 miles further or about 50ms )

Regards,

Tim.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/
 
Tony Raven wrote:
> Best case round trip for a geostationary satellite is 240ms one way (up to satellite and back down
> = 44,600 miles @ 186,000 miles per second) Round trip is 480ms. Normal latency accounting for the
> angle factor since the satellite is not directly overhead you (usually on the equator)

............ it has to be on the equator (doesn't it?) otherwise it wouldn't be geostationary.
--
Michael MacClancy
 
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