Configuration is IMPORTANT

Pray tell, how do you know we didn't?

Paul
--
I have a screen capable of displaying the first 34 lines of a post at once,
If I can't see any new text in those, I move on.

: >In article <KLP5bCA2$Vzz...@pkdbell.demon.co.uk>, David Pearson
: ><Da...@pkdbell.demon.co.uk> writes
: >>Hmmm,

: >>
: >>Regards,

: Which is a *lot* kinder than I was going to be...

: I wonder what setup string he uses to avoid the engaged tones? Or the
: screeching modems, the failed negotiations, the loss of routing, the
: CBNLs, the "high demand" message, the line drops...

To be fair - failed negotiations, loss of routing, CBNLs and line drops
*could* all (just conceivably) be problems with your setup (TM).

Engaged tones, screeching modems and the "high demand" messages might
better be described as "problems with your setup Demon (TM)".

--
Thomas Sandford | Thom...@prds-grn.demon.co.uk
Paradise Green Technical Services: S'ware/Hw design and Theatre Tech. Services
Email to this address from commercial mailing lists constitutes unauthorised
computer access, and appropriate action will be taken against offenders.

Regards,

--
Dave

ROFLMAO!!! Yes guys, it's your set-up. Check it again. :-)

> In article <SGlC2EA1...@ugsmedia.demon.co.uk>,
> "geo...@ugsmedia.demon.co.uk" <geo...@ugsmedia.demon.co.uk> writes

> >My own opinion is that BT is deliberately fucking up Demons and other
> >ISP's routings to make their own service a better proposition to
> >Disgruntled netters, just look how their service has shot up in Internet
> >Magazines ratings.

> Frankly, I think you overestimate them if you really think that they are
> that competent.

:)

Seriously however can we kill that thought, it will do no one any
good in the present circumstances.

We (Demon) have no reason to believe there is any such 'deliberate'
activity taking place.

Everyone is doing their utmost to help resolve the situation, for
which we are grateful and which relationship we do not want to see
damaged, even if it means we can not tell you the details of what
is being done to resolve the problems.

--
Malcolm S. Muir Demon Internet Ltd.
Sunderland 322 Regents Park Road
England London N3 2QQ

Sounds a bit like some of the above is rather near to the truth but
"please don't rock the boat". Are things really that bad re. BT etc.?
So bad that subscribers to Demon have to be kept in the dark?

--
Phil Edisbury
ph...@deyne.demon.co.uk

I log all of the connection attempts from this machine, together with why
they failed. At mid-day today our exchange in the village was converted to
a digital one. I'll be able to analyse the differences between the two and
see if there is an effect on the connect rates.
Two connects is insufficient data to base an opinion on (however finch-155
has shown a 33.6k connection rather than the ususal 28.8k)

If you're having problems do you send details of each failed connect
attempt to demon?

eg
node - line - carrier - when - event
finch-155 - 20110 - 33600 - 1997-07-18 20:23:26 - OK
finch-167 - 20121 - 33600 - 1997-07-18 20:33:46 - OK

Average Modem carrier speed: 33600

RjL
ps. this report brought to you using the Power Of Perl
+----------------------------+
| ric...@illuin.demon.co.uk | Aut viam inveniam aut faciam
+----------------------------+

>I have almost no trouble, one or two busies, immediately redialed,
>one or two loud modems, hit escape, and immedialely redial.

You appear to be getting a very minor form of the problem.

>
>I very very rarely get a line drop, or get no routing.

I concur, once connected no real problems - no line drops, fast news
transfer (although not from news.demon.co.uk) fast Ftp transfers and
reasonable WWW speeds (international problems outside Demons control
excluded)

>
>I have a strange sense of deja-vu, those complaining now have no idea
>how bad the USR racks with the Morning Star software were, dialing
>Demon currenly is comparative heaven.

I guess it all depends where you are dialling from. I do remember the
USR racks and believe me the problems that I am seeing now are *much
worse*!!!!

>
>You could look at http://www.ftech.net/~horizon/richard/modem.hts, it
>was written over 2 years ago.
>
>Personally I suspect most of the problem is Billyshit95 and its crap
>dialer.

Yes I do use Win95 and the Demon recommended software called Turnpike
but I doubt if this is the problem with the routing through the shite
teleco companies that Demon use. (Same problem with 2 NTS winsocks,
Trumpet and DUN).

I take it that you are not using Billyshit95, so how come that you are
also seeing some of the problems?

--
Alan MacLeod
Email: al...@maclad.demon.co.uk

>I can see the Energis problem is likely to be demon's fault

It *might* be, but it's also perfectly possible that it's a line problem;
for instance, failure of the automatic gain control on the line could
result in the "loud modem" tones we've been getting. Yesterday (Friday
18/7) on Energis 0845 I got a failure to negociate (the first for months)
which retrained three times before I put it out of its misery; that could
be either an Ascend fault or a line fault; the wrong level would have that
effect.

None of this is simple.

Calling from 0181 255 xxxx Telewest.

--
Peter

Sam, you've bugger'd your sig.
How about inserting two dashes and a space before the line of dashes?
--
Burns Insert large & ridiculous ascii sig drawing here->

B.MacDonald, Northwood, Middlesex, UK
E-mail: bu...@nthwd.demon.co.uk

Look Sam, I said it MAY have something to do with the phone lines. In
fact it may be a combination of both the Ascends and the lines, as some
RACs may be more sensitive to lines with higher noise levels. The fact
that you get through some the time is not always a good indicator. Each
and every time you dial up, your call may be routed through a different
path. You would be amazed how automated switching shunts things around.
In the end, if you are saying that you have problems each time you call
a specific identifiable Ascend, then I agree that the devices in
question would appear to be part of the problem. What you have said thus
far, however, does not eliminate the lines from being a contributory
factor.
>
>But of course you
>wouldn't have known that, because it hasn't affected you.

Exactly. I deeply regret that I'm not having problems too, but there is
little I can do about that.
>
>I really don't see the purpose in completely uninformed responses such
>as these telling me nothing is wrong when it clearly is.

I didn't say that at all. In fact, I was sympathetic and was attempting
to be helpful.
You're taking this far too personally. Take a valium and go to bed.
You'll feel much better in the morning.

I'm sure you could be right- it's what we've been saying here for some
time, and why it's important to include your area code when you are talking
about a problem connecting (or not as the case may be).

But remember that Peter McDermott, who's also not getting problems, is
calling from Liverpool, but using his local VPop number.

--
Peter

and a reason I did not post the message to demon.announce !

<Snipped>

Not necessarily. I'm calling from 0171 and was getting an
execrable service. In fairness, it has improved quite
markedly over the weekend.

--
Gary Cooper

>X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.10/32.423
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=KOI8-R

Why are you posting in KOI8-R? I see quite a bit of it, mainly from
aliens (and differently capitalised). My reader would prefer not to see
it, although almost always it turns out to be perfectly readable (hint
to TP <g>).

>I, quite frankly don't

> ...

>On 18 Jul 97 15:43:17 GMT, mal...@muir-et2.staff.demon.net (Malcolm

Please answer after the material that you quote, like all normal people
and many of us here do; and see below re SigSep.

--
John Stockton, Surrey, UK. j...@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v1.12 MIME.
Web URL: http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ -- includes FAQqish topics and links.
Correct 4-line sig separator is as above, a line comprising "-- " (SoRFC1036)
Before a reply, quote with ">" / "> ", known to good news readers (SoRFC1036)

>I've been through this before. Hundreds of people have. It only
>happens on certain Ascends. It manifests itself as the Ascend refusing
>to react, while still keeping the physical connection alive. My modem

So how do you account for the fact that some people get it
on the finch-130's, yet I connect to these same Ascends
several times every day and never get a single one?

If it isn't your phone line, it must be your set-up. ;-)

>In article <33d4e083...@news.demon.co.uk>,
>Jo...@datasafe.demon.co.uk (John Cooper) wrote:
>
>>Again, I don't care where the problems lie - THE BUSCK STOPS WITH
>>DEMON.
>
>What Busck would that be?
>
That's the trouble with Buscks...you can wait for ages for one,
and then three arrive, one after the other :-)

--
Bob www.best.com/~youngrn
I don't *believe* it:-)
Ex Demonite and occasional supporter:-)

There's presumably 10 of the Finch-130s, they don't all have to be
knackered. Maybe it's individual modems on one unit. I don't know, but
having certain Ascends nearly always fail with the same problem (ie
falling asleep at the Login: prompt), while others work fine would
seem to indicate a problem, especially when it happens to all sorts of
people. Maybe it's a problem with a certain part of the network
connecting the Ascends to the internal network, or to the password
servers. Maybe a wire's come loose. How should I know?

Anyway it's lovely debating this with fellow customers but I would
appreciate *someone* saying *something* from Demon.

s...@greenaum.demon.co.uk http://www.greenaum.demon.co.uk/

From my memory (and it is some months since I looked at a Max) of an
Ascend Max, there are two 2Mb/s connections to the telephone network
each carrying 24 or 30 channels (depending on modem of Ascend) and one
network connection.

Each Finch-XXX supports 48 or 60 simultaneous connections.

The 'modems' in the units support 8 or 12 connections per card.

You can see details on the Ascend www pages http://www.ascend.com/
They are actually fairly small and 'insignificant' units.

If you check the thread 'flying finches', you'll see that I post
a breakdown of the last 300 or so connections I've had to the
finches - none of which have failed. In light of this, it seems
much more likely to be something to do with the phone system to
me.

But why then would some people get it every time and others
never see it at all? Doesn't make sense to me.

They have. They don't know what the problem is yet. They
are working on it. I daresay when they know more, they'll
tell us.

And why, pray, should you feel entitled to that? demon.service is a
newsgroup for whingers: no customer may expect ANY response from Demon;
any response that you do get is a bonus.

From the file Welcome.txt, supposedly suggested as good initial reading
for all Demon customers (and posted regularly in demon.service):

demon.service
Group for posting service faults and discussing all aspects of the
Demon Service (Note this is not a support group and so we don't
give support in it)

And from Richard Ashton's excellent "Which Group?" FAQ (also posted
regularly to many demon.* groups:

demon.service Er.. This group was created to allow subscribers
to let off steam in public.
NB: It is NOT a support group, no response from Demon
staff should be expected. You may however get lucky.

--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} b...@dsl.co.uk
"Where do you want to go today?", ask M$. According to their TV adverts:
"confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis...", which means:
"the damned and accused are convicted to flames of Hell"!

That's more like it, sonny jim. Phone is "officially" 300Hz-3.4KHz,
IIRC, giving you 3.1KHz of bandwidth.

--
Mike Pellatt

It's not the *bandwidth* of either. However, the channel *spacing* of AM
is 9kHz. This spacing ensures that adjacent carriers don't overlap; the
bandwidth must be quite a bit smaller.

As for the telephone system, the passband back in pre-digital days always
used to be 300--3200Hz; I believe it's slightly higher nowadays, but is
still less than 4kHz (which must be fairly obvious when one considers
that the byte rate is 8000 B/s over the digital part, and then consider
aliasing, etc).

HTH

HTH

--
Mike Pellatt

Oh yeah. Off-topic. Sorry. Next time I have a question I'll email
helpdesk. Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

I thought it was 8KHz @ 8 bits, which gives the 64k Shannon limit for
modems. Maybe 3.4KHz is the highest frequency, with the sampling @
8KHz being the Nyquist limit. Or something.

(2 physicists in one post! Cooking with gas!)

> In article <869765...@dsl.co.uk>, Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
> <b...@dsl.co.uk> writes

> So why do Demon staff react so badly when customers justifiably let of
> steam in public? <g>

I don't think you are confused, but lest any new customer be, I should
point out that I am *not* a member of Demon staff.

[snip]

> The original Energis 0845 numbers is still giving the well known loud
> modem etc. problems. I've only tried the new Energis TNT number about
> half a dozen times and have had problems with CBNL and dropped
> connections after a few minutes on line with most attempts. I've now
> given up dialling Energis numbers (I was using the Energis number
> reliably for over a year until the Demon Ascend upgrade on 26th March).

When did you last try? I haven't see^H^H^Hheard a loud modem since
2218BST on Thurs 17th (calling the 01488 vPoP from 01367); keeping my
fingers crossed, I'd be inclined to believe that that particular problem
may have been fixed :-)

> Energis was extremely liable last month though .....

For what ??

--
Mike Pellatt

> <rik...@questar.demon.co.uk> writes
>
> >In reality the only way to report a problem is through the
> > demon helpdesk system which could be considered, by some, as a
[snip]

> let me get this straight... you are objecting to the autoresponder on
> help...@demon.net which indicates your mail has arrived, and you are
> further objecting to receiving an answer from the support personnel ?

I'm not objecting to anything really - just reflecting what a few
seem to be saying - that when their are a lot of problems all at
once it is very time consuming to find out through the usual
channels what is going on - and I refer back to earlier posts about
being informed - the nature and content of which do seem to be
changing for the better now that limbs and vital organs have started
flying over the issue (-;

Surely you can see that if you experience three days with seven
quite separate problems manifesting themselves on numerous occasions
- some of which mean you can't even use the mail and have
dissapeared by the time the system comes back is going to lead to a
'paper' trail if you used the usual channels and surely you can see
that a large amount of time will be spent sorting this out - and
therefore for a large amount of the time you are using the system to
sort out using the system which is time that could be spent, ermmm
using the system IYSWIM.

What I said above is based on the experience of reporting the loud
Ascend terminals to support, via phone, when they first appeared and
being asked to use helpdesk.... to supply my init string, which I
did. No response was forthcoming for 2 days and when there was a
response I was talking to 5 members of staff about the post. In the
end I received a response which was wrong. The staff member
observed, by misreading the output from my modem that I had sent in
the fax settings! They then said to try an init string, which, upon
close inspection was exactly the same as that quoted to them with
the readout of settings stored in the modem. Upshot - my original
query wasn't addressed (the problems came back for all the next
month) and I spent a lot of time answering e-mail for no end.

Whilst I *have* supplied some information when things have gone
wrong there is no way I could have kept up with the details last
week without at least a secretary ......

So, if there were a news group to actually address these problems in
and where observations of difficulties could be sorted, especially
with staff involvement and even better moderated by demon then it
would save having to use the flame-as-you-go methods needed in
demon.service

Regards

rikard

----------------------------------------------
Citizens (rikard) report 25-7-97 ++ungood
replace ungood 'liable' with ++good 'reliable'
----------------------------------------------

rikard

> mailbomb in itself. If I say I have a problem with them then I get
> an auto reply, then several replies from support staff and the whole
> thing grows into a kind of thing which looks like being designed to
> take up your time and means you can't just use the internet.

this is unusual

--
richard writing to inform and not as company policy
http://www.happyday.demon.co.uk/ reviews the DTI crypto proposals
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM

> >[ashley said]

> >> telephone system, then. The bandwidth is nowhere _near_ that.

> >9KHz must be that of AM (Medium Wave) radio, then. I know

> That's more like it, sonny jim. Phone is "officially" 300Hz-3.4KHz,

Which means the little mouse that lives in my modem...
you know, the one that squeeks and squeels the data
down the line, does a damn good job.

--
_/_/ Ashley -= Ashley Hinton, Oxfordshire, UK =-
_/_/ <ash...@chal.demon.co.uk> <http://www.chal.demon.co.uk>

> I wonder what setup string he uses to avoid the engaged tones? Or the
> screeching modems, the failed negotiations, the loss of routing, the
> CBNLs, the "high demand" message, the line drops...

Loss of routing is clearly not a modem problem - and neither is the
plague of "high demand" messages and engaged tones.

All of the rest, though, are quite possibly modem setup problems. I
also have a 33.6 Courier, and only rarely hit screeching modems (once a
week?), failed negotiations (the same thing?) or line drops.

And I include CBNLs, since I never see any these days.

--
Phil Payne
(Reply address temporary - change of employer)
Phone: +44 385302803 Fax: +44 1536723021 CIS: 100012,1660

Never heard of demon.ip.support? If you had read the Which Group? FAQ
you would have found it had this to say about demon.ip.support:

demon.ip.support *Non-computer-specific* other Internet support.

A note on the purpose of demon.ip.support:
-----------------------------------------
Use it when you're sure that the problem or question is to do with Demon's
setup, or any other computers on the Internet - if it's something to do
with *your* setup use the support group appropriate to your computer type.

Still, your post was on-topic here because this group is purely for
complaining about Demon. Of course, your complaint that Demon haven't
provided a platform-independent support group is total bollocks, but that's
another matter.

--Paul

No. However, I have noticed a dramatic increase in the number
of line-drops over this last week. Invariably happens after
midnight.

>In article <s0tVsHAq...@maclad.demon.co.uk>,

>As far as I know, the only demon staffer who posts here officially is
>Malcolm. I imagine he gets pretty pissed off with people moaning in here,
>but he never shows it.

You are joking aren't you?

What do you think is going on when he periodically asks if people
would prefer if he stopped posting here?

Ah. Could account for me not seeing them. I'm generally too pissed
to find the keyboard by 23:00.

Actually, almost all my sessions are run by a cron imitation written
in REXX. The last one of the day is at 21:07 and the first of the
next day at 06:07. I spend _very_ little time browsing online, so
I'm probably not qualified to comment on line drops.

(P.S. to lurkers - please save us the inevitable <AOL> "unqualified to
comment on _ANYTHING_" </AOL> ripostes.)

>Yes, that's the data rate. That's not what bandwidth really means, though it
>is what most people these days mean by it.

I was going by the capacity to transmit data, which is what bandwidth
means in this context, eg regarding T1 lines and ISDN etc.

>A rough estimation of the maximum bandwidth is half the data rate, or 4kHz.
>In practice most lines are a little bit better than the 3.1kHz Mike quoted,
>but they're definitely less than 4kHz.

I know I said.

So on topic on both counts then?

--

If you reread BHK's post you will see he includes a snippet from the
FAQ....

I presume from this that no Demon employee posts to d.s 'officially' -
but of course I am welcome to hear other ppl's interpretations :)

Josh
--
*****************************************************
Josh Smith (jos...@bigfoot.com)
'Is this a dagger which I see before me?'
- Macbeth

[of Demon staff posting in demon.service]

[...]

And if *you* had read the FAQ for demon.service you'd know the answer.

Dan

--
Dan Glover

So it's OK for the non-lurkers to say it?

Paul
--
I have a screen capable of displaying the first 34 lines of a post at once,
If I can't see any new text in those, I move on.

Only informally. The real meaning of bandwidth is well defined and is,
depending on what kind of encoding is used, somewhere from half the data
rate upwards.

Wrong.

Wrong.

> On the other hand, other demon customers may well get
>very annoyed by people moaning in here continuously. Some may even get
>sarcastic.

Right.

--
Damien Burke
If replying by email, note d.c.u should be changed to demon.co.uk

/lurkers/lurkers & pedants/

--
Phil Payne