poor throughput question

[James Carlson]

"Erik" <erik at rmwt.net> writes:
> Now, when I connect, I connect anywhere between 26 and sometimes as high as
> 40000 (on a real good day).  I get throughput of anywhere from 1.4 K/Sec to
> 3.5 K/Sec if I am lucky.

That's symptomatic of a bad connection to the ISP.  The usual cause of
this is too many A/D conversions on the telephone path between you and
the ISP.

If you're able to get good connections to other ISPs, then the problem
probably isn't on your local loop.  It's likely that either there's an
old analog trunk line between your local CO and the ISP's, or the ISP
has a bad digital connection.  (Sometimes when an ISP orders digital
service, such as T1, the clueless telco will install a channel bank on
the line side of the switch.  This causes the calls to be converted
from digital to analog and then back to digital again, and drops modem
connections to a max of about 24Kbps to 28Kbps.  Digital lines are
supposed be connected trunk-side.)

> We have been told by Megapop that it is our modem, that we need special Init
> strings (but we never needed them with the other ISP), that is was our phone
> line, etc. etc. etc.

It is remotely possible that because of the brand of modems they're
using, you do need a special init string.  But it's remote.

> They have even had us go to a DOS prompt, and do PING and TRACERT's for
> them, and said "see there, very fast response, its not our system".

Well, that pretty much marks them as clueless.  Find another ISP.
Ping and traceroute are crummy ways to test performance.  Period.

> SO, what I am basically looking for, is someone that can shed some light on
> this, what are some of the technical aspects of this that I can throw back
> at them??

Given their demonstrated competence, I would think that's unlikely to
be useful.

-- 
James Carlson, System Architect                     <carlson at ibnets.com>
IronBridge Networks / 55 Hayden Avenue   71.246W   Vox:  +1 781 372 8132
Lexington MA  02421-7996 / USA           42.423N   Fax:  +1 781 372 8090
"PPP Design and Debugging" --- http://people.ne.mediaone.net/carlson/ppp