[vox-tech] Weird ppp dialup problem -- switch to DSL?

[Brian Lavender]

Switch to Sonic Fusion.
http://www.sonic.net

Did you try using minicom and dial in using a shell account? Does
calweb still have shell accounts?

brian

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 03:10:48AM -0700, Margo Schulter wrote:
> Hello, all.
> 
> Please let me share a weird ppp dialup problem
> where failures to connect with a timeout started
> gradually happening and getting more common early
> this year, but really serious by early May,
> when I might sometimes try ten or more times
> without success with a 56K external modem,
> Slackware 10.0, and ppp files which had given
> no previous problems.
> 
> I tried calling 611, and they checked the telephone
> line, confirming that it seemed fine (this was
> at a time I had just made some unsuccessful
> connection attempts).
> 
> Then, starting May 23, I was unable to make a
> connection -- and looked into /var/log/messages.
> One thing I noted was that sometimes the message
> at the end of an unsuccessful ppp attempt was
> 
>     chat[1078]: alarm
>     chat[1078]: Failed
>     pppd[1076]: Exit
> 
> but sometimes
> 
>     chat[1056]: alarm
>     chat[1056]: warning: alarm synchronization problem
>     chat[1056]: Failed
>     pppd[1054]: Exit
> 
> After a week of things like turning the modem
> off and on, or rebooting the system, I tried
> a hard reset -- maybe what made the difference,
> since I then could get online maybe every other
> attempt from either DOS 6.22 ("Try everything") or
> my accustomed Linux.
> 
> I'm still getting timeouts at least 50% of the
> time, which makes me wonder about what could
> be going on -- the "warning: alarm synchronization
> problem" happens on some ppp timeouts, but others
> are just the "alarm - Failed - Exit" type.
> 
> I've been advised that the modem and the telephone
> line are usual suspects -- although I haven't
> generally noticed lots of line noise on voice
> calls.
> 
> A larger question is whether I might want to
> delve deeper into debugging this, or maybe
> shift to DSL.
> 
> But I'm curious what might be happening,
> and thank anyone who might have experience
> or educated guesses on this.
> 
> Most appreciatively,
> 
> Margo Schulter
> mschulter at calweb.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> vox-tech mailing list
> vox-tech at lists.lugod.org
> http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech

-- 
Brian Lavender
http://www.brie.com/brian/

"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other
way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."

Professor C. A. R. Hoare
The 1980 Turing award lecture