Modem causing slowdown?

Hello,

I'm having a download problem
I'm using dial up, I have a Spotster 56k(OEM) in a Dell XPS B 1000
My problem is with games, flash, pictures and software downloads, Everything starts fine, but then gets slower and slower
A 10mb download starts out saying 15 minutes, then slows down to 2 hrs
I've upped my ram to 256k, no change

what do you guys think???

Thanx

 

All you can really do is get broadband.

The speeds jump around at the start mainly because it's figuring out the speed and then calculating how long it will be. So at the very start the numbers it gives are wrong.

A 56K modem, if you're lucky will hold ar about 5KB a second. Now a 10 meg file is 10240 bytes. At 5KB a second that would take 2048 seconds or 34 mins. That's if everything working great but in actual truth 56K modems rarely hold 5KB/sec when downloading larger files. So although 2 hours is a little long it's not that uncommon on a 56K modem. Also you should note ususally the biggest reason for a slower connection is the phone line itself and not the computer.

Also upgrading other pieces in your computer won't effect your download speed at all.

 

I was afraid of that

Thanx for the info coco

 

I was going to mention getting high speed. lol...

A bit off topic here, but i have an interesting story about our cable connection. When i first got connected in our new house, we were getting 250kb/s to 500kb/s. Not bad..... Then we bought a big screen about a month ago and noticed our picture quality wasn't that good. We live just outside the city and i had heard the cable signal strength was not so good in the area. So i called the cable company to see what they could do. They sent a guy over who did a signal strength test and sure enough, it was low. He then installed a cable booster. I didn't even know these existed. Anyway, the picture sure cleared up and our bandwidth went WAY up. I even asked the guy if it would affect internet speeds and he said no. Regardless of what he said, we now get anywhere from 800kb/s to 1.2mb/s. Can you believe it!!??!? Thats almost as good as at work. This is from a regular cable modem. My ping on the games i play have gone way down, and my wife has turned into a downloading junky... Call your cable company and inquire. Might be worth it.

 

Do you guys think one of those download software apps would help( the ones that break it up)

Or am I doomed till I get broadband?

 

I honestly think you are doomed.... Byte the bullet...lol
Once you get it, you won't regret it! Good luck!

 

Well OK


Thanks again

 

The download apps that split it up only work to speed up connections because some ISP's limit how fast a single connection can go. Which is usually something above 20K/sec. So the only reason it goes faster is because you make multiple connections which means you can now download at 40KB/sec.

Of course this won't help much when your connection itself can't surpass 5KB anyways. It would only help if your ISP was limiting you to 2KB/sec. Which is possible, but I doubt it.

 

Thanks for the help guys, I'm doomed to needing patience



for now,,,,,,,,,,,

 

Fellow 56K user

Look for a freeware called Leechget

Then you can schedule downloads for the middle of the nite.

It will dial the connection, get the stuff, log off, and turn off the computer.

I like it alot for my slow dial-up.