On another board that I visit there were a couple of "Haha, nothing happened, you were all wrong!" posts. I found it amusing that these posts were dated 01/02/100 or (in long date format) January 2, 19100.

Go figure.

Also, I hit this site from my office which connects to the internet via T1 lines, but my connection is almost as slow as my 33.6 at home.

No biggie.

Happy New Year!

Celestine

-- Celestine (maxcel@swlink.net), January 04, 2000

Answers

Usually I access the internet with a 56,000 bps connection.

Today it's been REAL slow ... bouncing around between "Connected at 16,800 bps" or 19,200.

First I thought it was my ISP. So, I went into AOL (my alternate for emergencies). Same thing happened.

Since it happened with two different ISP's, only thing I can surmise is that it's something with the telephone company.

-- Cheryl (Transplant@Oregon.com), January 04, 2000.

Cheryl,

There's a way to check if it's your phone line. Back when I was in Florida and using AOL, I could never, no matter what I did, get a 56K connection. I found out that even though I had two lines, the one I used for my modem wasn't "clean" enough to produce that high of a connection. There might be some loss of line quality going on with your line right now.

I don't remember how exactly I did it, but I was able to test my connection via a special little program I found through AOL. You might want to go check out the ACCESS screen. It will probably have a folder with info on how to do this. Once you find it, it's pretty easy to do.

Good luck! Claudia

-- CD (cdokeefe@firstva.com), January 04, 2000.

Claudia,

I've been getting 56K for a year now. Today's just been really weird on both ISP's.

I've been bumped off all day. Past few attempts came in at 9.6K!! I've never seen that one before. But just cancelled when I saw that connection.

I'm now at 26.4K.

I've never seen this kinda stuff for past 3 years on-line. I can eventually get on-line ... but, it's a real hassle.

The thing that's a surprise for me ... was I thought ... if I had a problem with one ISP ... I could always use the other. That's not the case today.

-- Cheryl (Transplant@Oregon.com), January 04, 2000.

Cheryl/Claudia: If your modem is a US Robotics or equiv, you may be able to test your line speed by using the utility at the following url: http://www.3com.com/56k/need4_56k/linetest.html (I haven't used this in some time, so I'm not sure if it's still available.)

-- Norm Harrold (nharrold@tymewyse.com), January 04, 2000.