Introduction
This page explains some of the myths and solutions to modem
disconnection problems. Your modem is the device that controls
your Internet connection. When you randomly lose your Internet
connection, it is usually because your modem has disconnected you
for some reason. We can solve most disconnect problems, but they
usually require changes in your computer's settings, which we can
make over the phone while you are in front of your computer. If
you are experiencing disconnection problems, please contact
Sierra Advantage Technical Support at 530.672.1078 or 800.711.9560.
Common Myths
Sierra Advantage does not randomly disconnect you and we do not
run software that disconnects you during peak periods. There are
ISPs who do this, but we are not one of them. We maintain a
premium, high quality network and pay for extra capacity so that
you won't experience network saturation. We would be foolish to
disconnect you when we have extra capacity available and very rarely
do we not have extra capacity available. You expect and deserve a
reliable Internet connection.
A network that is over saturated will let you know in a couple
of ways. First, if incoming telephone lines are saturated, you
will get a busy signal when you try to connect. If you are able
to connect to one of our modems, then we have phone lines available
for you. In order to provide Internet access at a reasonable
rate, we do not pay for one phone line for each customer. If we
did this, our costs would be over $100 per customer! However,
because people are not on the Internet 24 hours a day, we are able
to maintain a ratio which provides a single phone line for every 6
to 7 customers. This ratio ensures busy signals are rare events
for our customers.
Once connected to Sierra Advantage with your modem, there must
be available capacity in the Internet feed, as it does no good to
be connected to a network without being able to access the Internet.
Our Internet feed is based on a highly reliable, fiber optic
connection. We pay for extra capacity so that you will not
experience network saturation. We are very proud of our efforts
and provide a publicly accessible, continuously updated graph
showing available capacity. You can go to this link to see a
current graph:
http://www.directcon.net/dcweb/network/util.htm
Most Internet Service Providers do not allow public access
to this type of information for reasons that I'm sure you can guess.
Most Common Disconnect Cause
With modems, the most common cause of disconnects is connecting
at TOO FAST a speed, causing frequent modem readjusts, which in
turn cause frequent disconnects. Most telephone lines will not
support the maximum speed of a modern modem. With older modem
standards, the best you should expect is 24,400bps and any time you
get a higher speed connection you can expect more frequent disconnects.
With V.90 56Kbps modems, the expectations are highly dependent
upon how the telephone company has provisioned your service and
expectations range from a low of 24,400bps to around 48Kbps.
Our telephone lines to PacBell are fiber optic based and very high
quality. Unfortunately, your modem can be fooled into connecting at
a speed that the phone line to your house does not support. When
your modem tries to maintain a speed beyond the capabilities of your
phone line, errors in the data being transferred begin to mount up.
If the level of errors continues to climb to a certain point, your
modem gives up trying to correct them and disconnects.
Sierra Advantage's technical support can help you reconfigure your
modem to slow it down a bit in order to increase stability. When
the modem is slowed down, data errors decrease and data does not
have to be resent. The overall affect is an increased data rate
even though the initial modem speed is slower.
Low Quality Modems on Poor Phone Lines
Not all modems are created equal. There is a relationship between
the cost of a modem and its connection stability. As a general rule,
you can get away with a cheap modem on a good phone line or a good
modem on a poor telephone line, but a cheap modem on a poor line
spells trouble.
In order to get the best performance out of any modem, you should
ensure you have installed the latest firmware and/or software drivers.
This gives you the best chance of connecting at the highest stable
speed your modem will allow with your particular phone line. You can
call your computer manufacturer to locate the appropriate location to
download these drivers.
If you just purchased the latest, fastest name brand computer that
money can buy, you would expect the latest and greatest modem would
come installed with that computer. Unfortunately, this is usually not
the case. The home computer sales industry operates on a tiny profit
margin, and in order to keep a competitive edge, large computer
manufacturers are bundling the cheapest modems they feel they can get
away with. When you buy a computer, do you ask, "what is the brand of
modem inside this machine"? Computer manufacturers know that when
you get home and the modem doesn't stay connected, you will call the
ISP with questions, not the computer manufacturer. When buying a new
expensive computer, insist they install the best modem available.
Generally, the upgrade to the best modem will cost less than $100.
The primary reason modem prices have dropped to as low as $5, is
they have been re-engineered to be hardly nothing more than a structure
to plug a phone line into. All the data processing that used to take
place in the modem is now taking place in the computer itself. This
means the more programs you have opened in Windows while using the
modem, the slower and more unstable the modem will be. These modems,
called software modems, are inexpensive and can be much less stable
than hardware modems, which have their own native processing capability.
You can get away with a software modem on a good phone line, but you
still risk a decrease in performance.
For our part, we maintain the highest quality, most expensive
modems available on high quality digital phone lines. We maintain
both Lucent and 3Com/US Robotics equipment. This mix gives us the
capability to solve the largest number of modem compatibility issues.
Once again, if you have disconnect problems, call us. We can assist
you in updating your modem software to ensure the highest quality
connection. It is in our own best interest to make sure you don't
experience excessive disconnects.
Line Noise From Inside Your Home
Another common cause of disconnects is line noise. To troubleshoot
this problem, unplug EVERYTHING connected to your phone lines: caller
ID boxes, extension telephones, cordless telephones (especially 900
MHZ), other modems, fax machines, etc. Also unplug your laser printer
and microwave oven from the AC wall outlet. Many telephone line surge
protectors or noise filters will degrade the signal in your phone line.
The modem should be the ONLY thing connected to your phone lines.
Try connecting to Sierra Advantage a few times and see if the problem
goes away. If the problem you were having does go away, something in
your house is causing your modem to disconnect. Do not route the phone
line within three inches of any electrical cord, extension cord, PC
or printer cable, monitor cable, any electrical appliance, or power
supply. Especially avoid laser printers, cordless telephones and
uninterruptable power supplies (UPS). Inductance from electrical lines
and radio transmitters impacts phone line stability.
Line Noise From Outside Your Home
If the line noise is not being induced inside your house, it may
be induced in the line somewhere between your house and your local
telephone exchange central office. Your line may have one or more
conditions PacBell calls bridge taps, ground loops, cross talk, or
bad loading coils. Any of these conditions will cause random noise
and unpredictable disconnects.
While PacBell does not have to guarantee a set speed or quality
beyond basic functionality, a call to 611 will run a test for obvious
errors. Once the lines have been made as good as they can be, the modem
will have to compensate for any errors that are present.
Other Causes
There are a host of other reasons you might be experiencing random
disconnects. In most cases we can solve the problem with adjustments
to your e-mail or web software. In other cases adjustments to your
modem's configuration or updated driver software will do the trick.
If we cannot solve the problem with these measures, we can have
you bring your computer in and we can hook it up to a phone line we
have here at Sierra Advantage, that we know is good. We also have
loaner "hardware" modems we can sign out to you to see if a
modem upgrade would help.
In all cases, please give us the chance to help solve these
irritating problems by calling us and getting us involved.
530.672.1078 or 800.711.9560
Thank you for using Sierra Advantage!
