If you are having difficulty connecting to the internet, or your modem keeps 'dropping out', there are many reasons for this behaviour. This article will help you understand the problem, and show you possible solutions. As an ISP, we want to help you get connected, and stay connected.
Please print this page out, or save it to your computer for easy reference.

56k Modem Connection Problems

Problems with modems are not uncommon. You may find while you are able to initially connect OK to your ISP, the connection may drop out regularly, slow down to a crawl or just plain not go anywhere at all. The problem may be much worse if you live in rural areas, or many miles outside the centre of town.

The basic culprits here are your Modem and your Telephone line. Public telephone lines were designed to carry voice, which means that their signal carrying capability is very narrow. Telstra only guarantee that the public telephone system will carry up to 14.4kbps of data for faxing purposes - that's one fourth of the speed we are asking of it from a 56k modem. Your modem will try and connect to your ISP as fast as it can, sometimes at 50-52kbps. While it may connect OK at this speed, you can be sure of drop-outs or slowdowns.

First Step: How good is your phone line?

Many times we have had customers ring us to complain about connection difficulties, and many times we can tell the problem straight away is the telephone lines. Firstly, pick up your telephone and make a call - what can you hear in the background? You may hear a slight echo as you talk or a slight fuzziness to the words you hear. You may hear a distinct noise like the constant tick-tick-ticking of an electric fence if you live in rural areas. All of these thing will influence how well your modem communicates over this telephone line.

Some of this interference can be caused by other equipment sharing the same telephone line. If your modem is plugged in at the same time as your telephone or fax/answering machine, you should definately try unplugging this excess equipment first and see if the problem goes away. Also, if you have 'Call Waiting' active on your line, you will need to switch it off before using the modem as the tone it makes will cause the modem to hang up. If you have a burglar alarm in your home, you will often find it is attached somewhere to the phone line as well. If you have had a seperate line installed for internet use, you should test this line by plugging in a telephone and making a few voice calls to listen to the quality of the line.

If your line has an echo or fuzziness to it, and you have removed all other equipment from the line, you should try calling Telstra and asking for your line to be tested.

If you can hear some sort of external noise on the line, try and find the local source of the noise. A constant and regular ticking noise usually indicates an electric fence is being used somewhere nearby. If it is your fence, switch it off and check the line again. If it is your neighbours, try asking them to switch it off so you can test your line, or find out if the fence is turned off at regular times. If you are unable to find the source of the noise, try contacting Telstra to see what can be done.

With a bad phone line, you are not going to get very far at all. Even with a good phone line you may have occasional drop-outs or bad connects. This is all part of using a modem.

Second Step: Slow down your modem

If your ears tell you that your telephone line is OK, let's turn our attention to your modem. When you dial into your ISP, the screeching noise you hear is your modem negotiating with the answering modem. Negotiating means that the two modems are trying to work out the best speed at which to talk to each other. This process normally takes about thirty seconds for a 56k connection and you can often hear if your modem is having difficulty connecting because the process will take longer than normal to connect and you will hear the patterns of sound repeated again and again. After getting connected, if the modem detects too many errors on the phone line it will attempt to renegotiate. This is the delay you may experience where no data will be sent or received, and normally lasts about thirty seconds. If the modem is unable to renenogtiate successfully, it will drop the connection.

When you do get connected, what speed has been negotiated? You can often tell this by placing your mouse cursor over then little icon of two computers which appears in your system try, down by the clock

Place the mouse cursor over this icon to see what speed you are connected at

If your modem has connected at greater than 50k, you are bound to have trouble. In town we have found the average reliable connection to be between 45 and 49kbps. In outerlying areas, sometimes the best you can hope for is between 28 and 33.6kbps. There is no point in connecting at a speed that is too fast for the modem to maintain, so the trick is to find which speed your modem will connect at and maintain reliably.

Most modems can be told to connect only within a set limit. You can set this limit manually, and tune it until you get a good connection everytime. The exact method of slowing the connect speed varies from modem to modem, so it is important to know what brand of modem you have. To do this, click your Start button, then go to Settings and Control Panel. In the Control panel you will see an icon for Modems, open it.

Note down the name of the Modem listed here

On the General tab, you can see what modem is installed in your computer. Note this down, you may be asked for it if you ring for support. Click the Properties button to bring up the modem properties page.

Do not change the 'Maximum Speed' setting, it's not the one we're after

Click the Connection tab.

Then click the Advanced button to display Advanced Connection Settings.

Near the bottom of this window, there is a large space titled Extra Settings.

In this box, you can type commands that will be sent to the modem every time you use it. The exact string you need to enter is very dependant on your modem, you should consult your manual to save some time.

Generally, you use the '+MS' command (Modulation Select) to set the lowest and highest speed limits. The command usually takes the form of +MS=V90,1,2400,33600,2400,56000. The string has a lot of numbers because we are able to set the send and receive limits. Please note that some modems use other numbers instead of V90 to select the speed range. ie 12 instead of V90, or 11 instead of V34.

Start out by trying this string: +MS=V90,1,2400,33600,2400,48000

Click in the 'Extra Settings' box and type as per the example

This limits the maximum receive speed to 48kbps, hence 48000. Type the string into the extra settings box, exactly as per example, then try connecting. If your modem will not connect, or your computer responds with an error when trying to dial, then this is the wrong type of string for your modem. Go back and remove the string by clearing out the extra setting box, then see down further for variations for other brands.

If you managed to get connected OK, check what speed was negotiated.

If the speed is 48000 or below, see how reliable the connection is. If it is no better, or still drops out occasionally, you need to reduce the speed down another step. Go back to the extra settings box and change the 48000 to 45333.

+MS=V90,1,2400,33600,2400,45333

Repeat this process again, until you find the point at which your connection is reliable. Please note that there are only certain numbers that are valid for the minimum and maximum speed values, here is a list of numbers to try:

52000, 50667, 49333,
48000, 46667, 45333,
42667, 41333, 40000,
38667, 37333, 36000,
34667, 33333, 32000

If you find you are well down into the mid-thirties, and still having no luck, you will have to try switching your speed range to V34 (33.6k and below). The format of this command goes like this: +MS=V34,1,2400,33600

Allowed speed values for V34 are:

33600, 31200, 28800,
26400, 24000, 21600

Recommendations for different brands

Rockwell/Conexant PCI modems

Most Rockwell or Conexant chipset based PCI modems should work as per the above examples. Some versions of the modem software may require you to enter a number instead of Vmode. (ie 11 instead of V34, 12 instead of V90)

Lucent based PCI modems

Most Lucent chipset based PCI modems use the '-V90' switch instead of '+MS'. The format of the command is very simple, in the extra settings box type -V90=x . Replace 'x' with one of the numbers from the following table:

0=V90 disabled
1=Auto Rate
2=28000, 3=29333, 4=30666
5=32000, 6=33333, 7=34666
8=36000, 9=37333, 10=38666
11=40000, 12=41333, 13=42666
14=44000, 15=45333, 16=46666
17=48000, 18=49333, 19=50666
20=52000, 21=53333

Example: -V90=17 sets the speed to 48kbps

HSP56 Micromodem

The HSP56 modem series uses a slight variation of the +MS string. Instead of quoting two sets of speeds, only one is required. example +MS=V90,1,2400,48000

Please note that if your modem does not respond to the +MS command string, you will need to upgrade your modem driver to the latest version. Please contact us for more information.

As you can see, there are many different methods of telling your modem how to limit it's connect speed and we have only covered the common models. If you are having no luck with your particular modem, please refer to the manual that should have come with the modem, or contact us for more information.

Still can't solve the problem?

If you find you are going well down the list, and getting nowhere fast, you have other problems. Have you checked your phone lines for noise? Has your modem ever worked reliably?

It is very possible that your modem is faulty, and it is also possible that your modem will work perfectly at one location but not at another. In these cases, things like distance from the exchange and the signal level that the modem sends and receives come into effect. You should have your modem checked by your supplier.

You may also need to try a different brand/type of modem. Most modems will work perfectly in city/town areas, but poorly in country areas. Sometimes an external modem is more reliable or tolerable than an internal modem, and there is usually a reason why one modem is more expensive than another brand or type. Speak to your hardware supplier and ask what can be done to try an alternative.

We want to know if you are having problems connecting, but please make sure you have followed the information in this article before contacting us. The first things we will cover are the common problems listed here.