The Horrors of Alaskan Internet

[imported_Zeke]

I live in anchorage, Alaska and I am forced into using ACS DSL, because they are the only broadband provider without monthly transfer caps. In addition to the ACS network just being plain slow, recently my wrt54gl will disconnect (always after ACS's limited tech support hours end), and when I try to reconnect it will say "unable to obtain an IP address from the PPPoE server." I have tried messing with every relavant setting I can think of and upgrading/downgrading the firmware. I am currently using tofu 13c. My DSL modem is a vinate nortel ntex35 made in 1999. The last few times it happend the problem seemd to eventually fix itself. One of the times I was able to connect through the modem directly from a pc but not through the router, but this is no longer the case, and it dosent seem to be fixing itself this time. Sometimes if I reboot the router...i would say 1 in 5..it says connected....fills out the ip and dns in the status page...however i cannot aaccess anything on the internet, and it quickly disconnects. Does anyone have any ideas what the hell is going on here?

 

[imported_Zeke]

UPDATE: The middle light on my nortel modem is now orange. This cannot be a good sign.
UPDATE: And its magically fixed again.....anyone know what is wrong here?

 

[skyking]

contact your ISP about line quality and dropped connections. It really sounds like an external issue out of your control. if a reboot of both the modem and the router does not restore your connection immediately, it is their problem.

 

[MrDudeMan]

why dont you get another modem? made in 1999? thats pretty old for computer standards especially...

have you tried another router to see if the one you have is just faulty? try leaving the computer hooked up directly for a few days to see if the frequency of the connection drop increases/decreases/stays the same. there is no way for us to help you if you havent tried many things to rule out one of a million possible things that could be wrong.

however, i am inclined to believe if what you have said is true or even partially true, it is not your fault. make your ISP come test the line. afterall, it is what you pay them for.

 

[SinfulWeeper]

Heh, I live in Nome and can only use GCI's hypernet which really bites in terms of performance/reliability. Sorry I can not help you out on your problem. But start writing to our house and senate. They regulate AT&T Alascom so hard one can not even afford to make a local ISP anywhere in state. GCI is laughing all the way to the bank then come up with more ways to ask the regulatory commision to keep AT&T regulated saying poor us.

-Former ISP owner, forced out of businiess from GCI's contol over the Alaska Regulatory Commission.

 

[imported_Zeke]

Yeah, GCI is clearly the devil.

 

[shrumpage]

ACS just rolled out their DSL stuff here in Kodiak.

it sucks.

One of our hard core gamers was literally the first to make the switch - the service was aboslutely horrible. If he started downloading, even if it was throttled, he couldn't even browse the web.

In one month he switched back.


sorry that doesn't address your problem - but you are not alone.

Even though GCI has caps, its better then dial up! Dial up with a sattitallit hop is the absolute pits.

 

[RebateMonger]

Stop complaining, you guys. Or we won't let you in on the bounty when we invade Canada.

 

[yukichigai]

PPPoE, in general, is an incredibly badly designed system. It basically takes the worst elements of dialup service, amplifies them, then applies them in a very hacky way to an ethernet connection. PPTP would be better, and is even vaguely designed for ethernet, but most providers stick with PPPoE because it's easier to administrate. Easier, but not easy. It's not too hard to screw up PPPoE setups on the ISP end. From what I hear, anyway.

This sounds like a classic problem of crappy ISPs: X customers, Y IPs allocated to the ISP, where Y is less than X. One of the "advantages" of PPPoE is that the ISP can easily enforce a periodic disconnect for all accounts so that IP addresses can be re-allocated. Sounds like you got booted so someone who pays more than you can get online.

If the DSL blows so hard, consider looking into multilink dialup. It allows you to use multiple modems on multiple lines to "pool" a number of dialup connections to the same ISP. "Shotgunning", if you will. Windows has supported it since 98, as do many builds of Linux, though unfortunately most routers don't. However, it could be a more reliable way to get "highspeed" internet up there in the frozen north.

So, eskimos, eh?