Page 1 of ADSL - something I don`t understand

Just been with this new fangled broadband for just over a month now. One thing I can`t make out is that although all the blurbs say it is a permanently on service, why does my modem dial out a series of zeros when I open my Home page using IE6, or for that matter when using the modem`s own icon ? The other strange thing is that sometimes I`m connected very quickly to my Home page, but at other times, the "Page not available " error comes up and I have to click Refresh. There doesn`t seem to be any pattern to whether or not I`m connected straight away or not. :/

JF

What`s your hardware setup?

Thanks for the reply. Er.. if you`re talking `bout just the modem and not the whole enchilada, it`s a ZyXel USB ADSL modem, model Prestige 630-C1, (no, I haven`t heard of it either), which came with it`s own software and was supplied by my ISP.

JF

I think I can answer your first problem. This looks like a USB modem. Some modems drop the connection after inactivity. some let you stop this, some don`t. The 00s you are getting are a connection string. When the modem gets a string of 0s it is a command to reconnect to the ADSL line. To fix this make sure all the "disconnect on idle" settings are off (somewhere in dial up settings).

I`m afraid I don`t know about your second problem though but the Disconnect on idle setting mentioned above may fix it.

Again, thanks for reply. Yes it is a USB modem and I checked the disconnect when idle settings which was set by default to "never". I tried resetting the time to 24 hours and as I suspected, it made no difference. I think I`ll have to have a good look at the on-line manual on the installation CD-ROM.

JF

In a hardware implementation of ADSL modems, the 0 strings are sent to tell the modem to connect to an ADSL line. A proper hardware modem has its own processor to do all this but with USB modems the 0 connection string is sent to the PC`s processor which in turn is passed to the driver to connect. USB ADSL modem protocols are not pretty and is a bit of a hash. So after the 0 connection string is being sent the driver is not kicking in to connect the modem.

You could try re-installing the modem driver again and this needs to be done in the correct way. When in Control Panel, don`t uninstall the driver but instead disable the driver. Then click Update Driver to reinstall and re-enable the driver after the install.

The other thing that I can think of that could be causing problems is if you are using Supanet or have been using Supanet as your ISP. If that is

Oh, another thing which is so obvious I forgot to mention is to check that the phone number for the connection is correct (should be something like 0,38) and no area code specified and in Advanced properties for the connection, disable the option to disconnect when connection may no longer be needed.

OK Mike, thanks for all that. I`m going on hols soon, so not wanting to rush things and leave my set up in a state of disarray, I`ll have a good look at the procedures you`ve outlined when I get back. Once again many thanks.

JF