Keeping connected

[anhedonia]

Well, after about 6 months of cable, I'm back to dial-up. Anyway, my parents don't want me going psycho with redialling and making the phone bill huge, so can anyone provide me with some tips for preventing being disconnected frequently?

[Jan]

First of all you need to make sure call waiting isn't enabled.

If you get frequent disconnections, that is usually an ISP issue, so contact them and they can help you with extra settings for your modem and may advise you to download the latest drivers for your modem.

[anhedonia]

Well the phone line I'm using is for internet-only so call waiting won't be a problem.

[Moonman]

well in that case the only time you will be disconnected is when you reach your ISP's idle timeout limit (usually around 30 minutes of sitting doing nothing) or you reach their session limit (usually only unlimited plans have session limits, and usually about 4-8 hours) or when you disconnect yourself.

[Seldimis]

That's the problem with dial-up connections. It has to do with the ISP. My friend has an account on an ISP and when sb telephone him (at home) , he got disconnected. Choose ISP. There are a few programs but don't remember them.

[anhedonia]

Originally posted by Moonman
ISP's idle timeout limit

This is something else I wanted to ask - "idle timeout". What, specifically, does the "idle" refer to? Does it mean 20 minutes of not doing anything online, or 20 minutes of not doing anything on your computer? And do people signing in and out of MSN, and showing you the alert, does that count as doing something online?

[Robert]

Idle means no movement on your system. You won't be disconnected if for example, your outlook checks your mail every 5 minutes.

[anhedonia]

OK, so the alert popping up to say when people sign in to MSN (which happens every few minutes for me) will be enough to knock out the whole "idle" thing if I'm afk?

[Moonman]

yes probably.