I'm on dialup!!!

Yes, I now have dialup Internet access at home. My Skymesh satellite connection will be coming soon, but I'm going to keep this dialup account going for at least another year.

Reasons:
1. it's a backup
2. need to test dialup with Puppy
3. it's very cheap

How cheap? Only $7.49 per month if I pay annually:

http://www.netbay.com.au/forhome/index.php?sw=0

I have a problem though, which is a good thing I suppose, my first thing to fix, for the benefit of other Puppy dialupers.

I was able to connect to Netbay, everything seems fine, the nameservers got written to /etc/resolv.conf, the local IP address got assigned. It all looks good. However when I tried to look at a web page it failed.

If I 'ping' a domain name, it times out, if I ping an IP address, get responses but 76% of packets are lost. That was with an external serial hardware 56K modem.

Right now I'm running an old PC with Windows 98 and a PCTEL modem. Works fine. Connected at 21600 bps.

I've been online for about 4 hours, no problem at all, except of course a bit sluggish. I wasn't able to post to this blog with IE, but found that Firefox needs at least Windows XP or 2000. So downloaded SeaMonkey, 13MB which took about 2 hours!

Good impression of Netbay so far. Tech Support phoned me to let me know I was activated.

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Comments

dialup
Username: ttuuxxx
Well Welcome back Barry :) Dialup is better than no-up, lol I kind of miss that "ssssssshhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeoooooooosssssssshhhhhhhhhhh" sound dialup made, lol If anyone wants to hear it, and remember here's a 1MB sample. http://www.pacdv.com/sounds/machine_sound_effects/dial-up-modem-1.wav ttuuxxx

address resolution
Username: dogone
"Barry. Address resolution problems can be IPv6 related. It often has to be disabled in FF (about:config, search for IPv6). I hope this is not heretical, but I speak from a new Tiny Core 2.1 installation. I now have Opera, Sylpheed, MC and MTpaint installed and it's been flawless. I must admit to being very impressed. Tiny Core rather strikes me as Puppy done "The Arch Way" ;-).

Nameserver
Username: BarryK
"dogone, No, I don't think it's ipv6. It has nothing to do with the web browser. I use PupDial to dialup, then if I open a terminal and try 'ping', I get the problem. One thing that bugs me about IE and SM in Windows, if I do shift-quote or shift-double-quote, that is, type the ' or " characters, the first attempt I get nothing, so do it again and I get two of them. Then I have to delete one of them. Any Windows users reading this who know about this? Using Tiny Core? No problem. I will take a look at Tiny Core myself sometime, then quite shamelessly use anything that looks superior! Ttuuxxx, Dialup is ok, even my half-speed connection (21600bps), if all that is desired is to access blogs and forums! I can even disable images and ads if required.

phone lines/ .org nameservers
Username: Raffy
"Actual speed may depend on the phone lines. Here at home (years ago), we've never successfully dialed outside of our own local switchboard - must be the connection noise/incompatibility with external lines. This explains why we eagerly bought wireless broadband when it became available (US$20 per month). About puppylinux.org nameservers, expect to have a new set before August - will email you the details within July.

DUN
Username: Sage
"Never relinquished my DUN connection. Has been a life-saver during broadband outages. Also use it regularly to contact companies that persist with premium rate numbers but retain an old fax machine on a regular number. An external serial modem is fire-proof (unless physically broken) but may require some effort to get(and sometimes hold)connected. We did all this on the Forum many times - check the initialising string and use Hayes command set for troubleshooting. It's always the SW that's defective, it cannot be the HW if it pings. For Firefox under W98 you need v2.0.0.20. None of the 3-series work, except XP-&up. Opera10beta is the browser of choice for W98 as well as Puppy....

IP v6
Username: shankargopal
"Hi Barry, I know you said you don't think it's an IPv6 problem, but here in India I have regular troubles with both dialup and ADSL modems that sound very similar to yours. I fixed them by adding this as my primary name server to /etc/resolv.conf nameserver 208.67.222.222 i.e. the OpenDNS server. Maybe worth trying?

Dialup with Pupppy
Username: capoverde
"A friend of mine's been browsing around for months on dialup with Puppy 4.1.2, an old doorstopper (PII/500) and an internal Winmodem I'd given him to play with. I was extremely impressed at how well it performed! [i][b]But[/b][/i] we also tried connecting through another ISP (there's a wide choice for dialup here), and it didn't work despite getting a reply from their server -- possibly the same story as for you? There seemed to be some unfathomed setting on their servers that clogged the connection. Guess that some patient net test might tell everything; but sadly my know-how isn't up to that yet...

Windows keyboard
Username: joe21
"Window keyboard "us-international" uses ' and " to create accented characters. ie. 'a produces á. "1 Jul 2009, 21:10"00858'Netbay & Skymesh"Jonw"Greetings and well done Barry, I've been using Netbay as my "Dialup safety backend" for a few years now and have no complaints. They have a very good help desk when i've needed them, quick response, and they make sure your TOTALLY OK before they close the problem docket. One thing worth checking is whether your modem needs a firmware upgrade (if it can) or an initialization string added, my old one did to handle the modern ports at the isp end properly. It changed me from 31200 to 52K in one foul swoop. And of course Skymesh for satellite as you can pay by cheque (no card direct billing or giving your details out) and if you need extra data in a month, you can always buy an extra pack. sorry for the adds, but i'm happy with both. regards jonw

Thanks!
Username: Kein
"This is a little late, but to Barry and Jon: thanks for signing up with us! :) cheers Kein Netbay Support

Tags: general