Computer- one of our tools

- your phone line is likely to be a physical pair of copper wires that goes from the block on the side of your house to a Central Office a couple of miles away. In many rural areas, these phone wires can be pretty ugly. By all means, run cat 5 from your 'puter to your NID (Network Interface Device...the house block)...it may help or may not. Ask if they can put your pair on a LightSpan system if available. Ask if they can put you on a cleaner pair...they may or may not. As one other writer mentioned, they're not obligated to...clicks and pops don't effect voice calls...

- pick up the phone and listen to the dial tone or better yet, call someone and listen to the background noise while no one is speaking. If you hear extraneous pops and clicks then your phone line is "dirty". You Pc modem will try to interpret this as data and will either "re-train" (the noise that modems make when they sync up) or throttle back the speed until it can get error free data through. You can try to get the phone company to give you better pair, but they're not obligated to. Begging and pleading sometimes works if you tell them that your invalid mother uses the internet as her only means of entertainment. BTW...it does very little good to plead with the clerk who answers the phone at the business office. They handle a gazillion cusomters a day and don't really care. I've had good luck with striking up a conversation with the guy in the truck or climbing the pole ("hey, can I get you a cold drink"...any chance you could find me a better pair while you're up there?). If you can't find one by driving around, then place a trouble call and talk to the guy when he gets to your house.

- you may never get a speed higher than 26.4kbps. The phone company sometimes adds bridges and taps (no, a tap is not someone listening on the line..its a connection methodology used to balance line impedance and maximize use of copper). These things change the characteristics of the line and reduce its data carrying capacity. Also, when you request a second line a lot of the time they add what is called a DAML or a miniplex...these things derive a second line from an existing pair. The older ones limit data to 26.4kbps. The newer ones are v.90 corrected and can pass higher speeds (given that the quality of the pair is up to snuff).

- I've seen where the local connection "hut" that consolidates lines in your area for trunking back to the CO (Central Office) isn't very weather proof. Lines will sometimes get "noisy" after a rainstorm. You call in a trouble ticket and by the time the phone guy gets there to put his butt-set on the line (a butt-set is that thing that looks like a phone with alligator clips that hangs from his belt), its dry and working fine again. Same thing for excessive heat (although not as likely). Do not rule out the errant rodent as well...

- There used to be a few modem vendors ( I think 3Com/US Robotics was one) that had a line quality test available on their web sites. They can evaluate the call you're currently on but, due to the variability of switched pathing during subsequent calls, it may get better (or worse) the next time you call and run it.

Bi-directional Satellite works well but is expensive. Single directional satellit (the uplink is a dial connection via landline...the downlink is high speed via the satellite), stinks. I've had it and hated it.

DSL and cable both have limits and issues (I'm pretty fussy) but are generally great if you can get them.

good luck...and sorry for the long OT post...

My question is not to know how it can be done but if it can be done, but if you what to tell how, I'm willing to learn. :)

Can "anyone" trace a ISP connection back to the orgin number? Anotherwords my home telephone number.

My grandkids are using some questionable "chat rooms" and I'm trying to educate them on what can happen when they give out too much info or if they even have to supply the info.

T_Bone

Here's what I know...and I apologize to all in advance for this very long post...

first I need to define "anyone"...If we're talking about the common tom, dick or Harry who has mediocre computer skills and knows a little about the net, then no, it's unlikely for them to be able to back-track through a dial up ISP (a DSL or cable connection is another matter). Basically, on a dial connection, it's pretty random and today's connection point isn't the same one that's used tomorrow. On a Cable or DSL connection there's an IP address that is yours either permanently (for a dedicated address) or semi-permanently (for dynamic addressing). These IP addresses can easily be backtracked.... However,ISPs in this country are pretty picky about protecting customer identities and will only give it up when faced with a subpoena.

That said, please don't assume that your kids are safe. There are two basic ways for predators to find out who you are... 1) you tell them, 2)you have stuff on your pc that they can access and view that tells them.

1) "you tell them"... These SOBs are real good at getting little snippets of info over time from your kids. Today it may be the state they live in, tomorrow it may be the town (gee lil' squirt...what football team do you play for in high school...and where was that again?). The next day...well it all adds up pretty fast to enough info to track you down. Not sure if you know about "reverse lookup". Go to any phone book website (I use anywho.com) and click on the "reverse'lookup" button and type in your phone number...shazam! I know where you live! There are even a few that can track email addresses. Scary huh?

2)"you have stuff on your pc that tells them"...Those bits of info that you send to companies that you buy things from on the 'net...they put things called 'cookies' on your pc that contain all sorts of info. Most are fairly benign, but an enterprising snoop can get access to your hardrive and obtain all sorts of info. How you might ask?...simple, "hey lil' squirt, go to my website and click on that picture of a puppy"...well that picture of a puppy launches a program that can access your hard drive and transmit pretty much anything it wants back to the SOB. Other places include the info you put into your email "From". When you set up your email program (say 'Outlook'), there's a place where you can fill in name, address, phone,email, and nickname. Accessible from the outside using "pictures of puppies"? ...yup!

Scared yet? you should be.... What can you do?
Get involved with your kids...monitor where they go. A parent's primary duty is to make sure his kids stay alive until they're at least 18. That takes hands-on effort....and it isn't easy. I'm 52, my wife's 47, we just had our first...our son (yessir, we've redefined that phrase "shock and awe"). You've asked me a question that has struck a lot closer to home than you know.

Get a firewall for your pc. There are a few that install directly on the pc itself and can give you some protection from the outside. Don't depend on it blindly tho'. There are also pieces of software that can log where your kids go...there used to be something called 'NetNanny'that I think worked that way. Go to a Computer store like CompUSA and find one of the geeks (I like geeks...I were/are one). Ask them. Explain your problem. Be careful that they don't sell you a skillion dollars worth of stuff. Ask if it effects your performance and/or response time (some do more than others).

get a yahoo.com or hotmail email address and use that instead of your real one. It helps prevent spam as well.

Go to ZDNET.com, or cnet.com and browse around the sections on home internet security. They'll even provide some product recommendations and ratings.

Good luck and hope this helps....

Mike

Congrats on the new "shock & awe" son....lol

Many thanks for the info. The 13yr old granddaughter was falling for chat room "leading" questions from someone she just met as I was trying to explain too her about the boogieman thats lerks in the dark corners. There method of speech was a dead giveway to there age bracket.

Thanks, I learned something about DSL and Cable I didn't know.

I've been researching wireless networking as I like the wireless part. T_Bone

email me at [email protected] so we can take this "offline". I don't want to clutter up the board unnecessarily (unless y'all want me to).

I'd be happy to give you my thoughts on the different wireless standards, Router/Access point placement, and encryption/security...

I have a combination of wired and wireless network running in my house with 5 drops, a file server, and shared printers and disk volumes (I told you I was a geek!).

mike

T_Bone

The biggest differeance for me was changing ISP. Went with Hawk Com for $83yr with tax for 56k V.92. I'm in AZ there in GA. I get 26.4k since I'm 30 miles out of town. My son is closer and he gets 44k. Old ISP had too many customers and not enough old equipment.

Then it was only checking Tc/IP and unchecking the rest. Decreased connect time.

Then it was a new laptop puter running XP home. Big difference here vs Win98se with the new V.92 compression system along with IE6.1 cashe web pages. I'm so happy that I haven't repaired my Win 98 puters.

I was too the point I was going to go with satillite downlink and tele uplink, about $480yr. Now I don't need too. Web pages DL about twice as fast as my old set-up and is adaquote for what I need.

Could be you moved the wires and got a better connection.

T_Bone

• Hawk Com

I had a friend who had a good home phone line, you could get 46K+ on every connect. They added a second line, during which the phone company disconnected and reconnected his existing line on the pole, after which he could not get more than about 26K on the modem speed.

The phone company only garantees voice capability on the regular lines, so you have no recourse.

Charles

A 56k Bps modem transmitts 56,000 bits of information per second. It dosen't take much to interuppt a few bits thereby causing the modem to choose a slower speed at connection time.