a false connection XP

Hi all, (On another computer) Sometimes I'm getting a false connection, the dial up connection by the clock shows that I'm connected at 46 bps for so many minutes, but I'm really not connected at all. I can't send or recieve email, or get to any web page and windows messenger will not sign in.
It only happens sometimes, not everytime. restarting computer does not help.
Is the problem with my computer or with the ISP?
any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, HooT

 

Yep, it very well could be an ISP problem...sorta'. While your ISP may be alive and well, its provider may be having problems.

Since this happens to me occasionally (DSL modem lights are all green but I can't go anywhere), I did some investigating. The head geek at my ISP gave me the route through which the ISP accesses the net. By pinging my ISP, then each provider in turn, I could find the bottleneck. With one exception, it's been same outfit. I found out they were doing some sort of massive upgrade and there's never an upgrade without a problem or twelve.

If you do a tracert on the same three or four destinations several times a day for several days in a row, you should see the same IPs appearing at the beginning of the list. Those are the providers your ISP uses. Write down the numbers for the first however-many hops always appear...usually no more than three. Then the next time you have the "I'm connected but nothing's happening" problem, start pinging those IPs to find out who's having trouble. The information won't do you much good since there's nothing you can do to fix it but at least you'll know who to blame.

 

Thanks Miz, kinda went over my head though.
I don't know anything about tracert or pinging.

Of coarse the ISP is trying to blame everything but them, if it's not the ISP, is there anything settings I can check?
XP pro

this is a fairly new computer, after installing XP pro, I gave it the same workgroup name and connected it to my Linksys network router, and it connected to the internet all by itself, I downloaded all the XP updates and was able to go to web sites, but after installing pc-cillin antivirus I tried to register it and get updates, got an error that said it was unable to connect : check my internet connection settings.
Now it's set up in my daughters room with dial up connection, when it is actually connected to the internet, it still gets the same error from pc-cillin (pc-cillin support doesn't have a clue)
Is this problem related ?

 

Sorry, sometimes I start typing and don't remember to start at the beginning.

Try this: First: Disconnect from the net. Then go to Control Panel>Network Connections (you are using XP, aren't you?). Right right click on the dialup connection you use and go to Properties. Look at the list under "This connection uses the following items." If you're NOT on AOL but there are entries for AOL, delete them all. (If you are on AOL, then you're outta' my league so hopefully somebody with AOL experience can help.)

Then go to Control Panel>Internet Options>Connections tab. If there are any entries in the "Dial-up and virtual private network settings" field which you don't use, delete them, leaving only the one you want to have active.

Then, on the same window, click on the Setup button. That will bring up the Internet Connection Wizard. Go through all the steps to make sure your computer is using the right connection.

Sometimes this won't work and you have to set up a "new" connection. It's not really new, it's just a repeat of the same connection you've been trying to use...Windows often just can't deal with re-configuring an existing connection.

I hope that solves the problem.

 

Before I seen your post I signed up with a different ISP just to see. I created a new connection like you said for them and have not had the problem yet. [fingers crossed]
If it starts doing it again, I'll post back.

 

HooT - glad you are fixed for now. But if you have problems or just want to poke around a little in the future, here is a "quick & dirty" on tracert and a couple other goodies. They aren't hard, just unfamiliar to most folks.

When you surf around the internet, you will not go directly to your destination. Your signal/packet will be bounced around some to finally get it to the right destination.

TCP/IP which is the protocol/language used on the internet has some interesting diagnostic tools available. Two of the most common are tracert (which is short for TraceRoute) and will show you every computer your packet passed thru to get to it's destination. The other is ping (a programmer joke based on ping-pong) where you "ping" the destination machine and you will get responses back telling you that you got there and how long it took.

Both these tools have times they are useful. You can use the built-in ones by opening a command/DOS window and running them or you can get prettier tools that will run from windows. I like the free ones you can download from Sam Spade.

The earlier suggestion was that you run tracert from your PC to some of your favorite sites. You would be looking for the first 3 or 4 addresses that listed since these are the internet routers your ISP normally uses. Do it 3 or 4 times at different times of the day and on different days and you should have a pretty complete list.

Then if you begin to have problems getting out, you can ping the addresses starting from your ISP and moving outward until you locate the problem system (it won't answer your ping).

If all of them seem to be answering, then you either have a problem on your PC (which we can help with) or else for some reason like dead internet servers, the route is too long.

You will notice when you do a ping that one value is TTL. Full name is Time To Live which is a flat-out lie. It is really the number of hops your packet will make before it dies. So, if you are using a TTL of 128 and the place you try to reach is 129 hops away, you'll never get there. The folks who designed the internet and TCP/IP had to do this to keep a poor packet from bouncing around forever if it couldn't get where it was going.

For instance, from home in Texas you are trying to look at a site in Kansas. Normally only 2 or 3 or 4 hops. But if an internet router or two is down, you may be routed thru Australia to England to South America to Canada and die somewhere along the way. There are a couple of ways to increase your TTL if you ever need to but it isn't such a great idea if you don't need to.

 

Thanks very much for the explaination, I appreciate it!