Virgin ADSL=BOOOO!!

Hey folky-doodles...

A friend has had virgin ADSL installed recently in her (newish development)
ground-floor flat.

The service is basic 512k down 256k up (i think ) - thing is, the USB
'speedtouch 330' modem supplied is, in my expert opinion, a pile of tosh.

I notice on the thomson website that there's 3 or 4 different drivers, one
being 'extended reach' (for ADSL lines quite far from the exchange, I
imagine), and another being 'high-speed driver -up to 8mb'.

I'm pretty experienced with networking in general, but ADSL isn't my
favourite topic, and I'm not familiar with the main issues that could cause
a fault, although of course I have a basic rough trouble-shooting idea
through trapsing about websites and other newsgroup postings. No firewalls,
tried a couple of computers, blah blah.

When connected via the USB modem with no proxy enabled in internet explorer
or firefox, it doesn't seem to respond very well to requests, with it taking
an age to load websites, if at all. Using 62.252.129.27 (nlt's proxy
server), things load as fast as you would expect. So stage 1) - virgin's
proxy servers are slow or problematic.

Stage 2) when using bittorrent in my discovery, or even just the internet,
the speedtouch mode, sometimes drops out, in the same manner as above, or
actually switches off. So stage 2) - perhaps usb issues? I disabled 'Legacy
USB' in the bios, which I felt helped at first, only for the problem to
occur again.

The connect software, where username/password are entered, just says the USB
modem cannot be found. In 'device' manager I can see that sometimes the usb
device is recognised as 'unknown device', and windows has experienced a
problem with it. I'm 99% sure it's not a driver issue, but I guess I'd have
to get even more equipment involved to experiment, seems a tad much for just
a basic ADSL connection!

I could swear that the first time I used this ADSL line, modem, and laptop,
there were no issues downloading movies! So a good point would be that my
laptop could be buggered, but after trying all drivers, including virgin's
own, still no great connection, for any length of time.

Maybe the line's became a bit crap, but are line-changes so common with
ADSL? Excuse my ignorance of the technology (although understanding it from
an academic point of view, I perhaps look at situations differently as
opposed to thinking about how things actually work practically) - but I've
only ever solved people's issues with NTL, and ADSL is relatively new to me.

Thanks in advance for any contributions or suggestions, be interested to
hear of similar problems :-)

Taylor.

Could simply be that the computer cannot supply enough power for the modem
through the USB ports.
Try an external USB hub with its own power adapter, or a PCI adapter card
with extra USB ports.

--
Colin
*Drop DEAD from the email address to reply*

If you google on Speedtouch 330 you will find lots and lots of people have
had similar problems to this and how they sorted it. USB modems are the
spawn of the devil and cheap, why do you think a lot of ISP's give them
for free.
Best advice, get a ADSLmodem/router, use it on a ethernet connectiona and
no more worries.It will also be a always on connection if you leave the
router running, instaed of the pathic pesudeo ' dial up' which windows and
USB modems give you.

HTH

Dave

"Taylor" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:AN4Nf.19157$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hey folky-doodles...
>
> A friend has had virgin ADSL installed recently in her (newish
> development) ground-floor flat.
>
> The service is basic 512k down 256k up (i think ) - thing is, the USB
> 'speedtouch 330' modem supplied is, in my expert opinion, a pile of tosh.

yup, they are utter crap, get em a router
ethernet = keep sanity

On 28 Feb 2006, 23:12, "Taylor" wrote:

>... even just the internet, the speedtouch mode, sometimes drops out, in the same
>manner as above, or actually switches off. So stage 2) - perhaps usb issues?

>... but after trying all drivers, including virgin's own, still no great connection,
>for any length of time.

> but are line-changes so common with ADSL?

First off, yes, there's a chance of some change if the line was
regraded to handle 2000 kbps (the way many ISPs did push up
the speed for customers, last year)...

Second, rather like Dave Stanton, and many other posters in this
group, USB would be an area which is felt cause of more trouble
than anything else, see http://groups.google.com/ and search
for USB in this newsgroup.

Most would probably recommend using a combined ADSL modem/router,
with various units priced from under 25 quid. I switched from USB to a
dedicated router around 4 years ago, after just a month or two, and
haven't looked back.

Everyone I know on ADSL is using a router, and with one exception,
leave them switched on 24x7 (as they keep the ISP connection 'up').

Nowadays, I'd probably suggest paying a bit more to get one which
is ready for ADSL 2+ (allowing speeds above 8000 kbps, if some
other ISP is offering service in the area) since the costs are similar
to the older models... see http://www.solwise.co.uk/ (I've been
a customer for ISDN kit, some years ago, but know they are a
solid firm and sell kit they can support - a friend in the Hull area
bought her unit at their HQ and is very happy). HTH, Peter.

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 23:12:32 GMT, "Taylor"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Stage 2) when using bittorrent in my discovery, or even just the internet,
>the speedtouch mode, sometimes drops out, in the same manner as above, or
>actually switches off. So stage 2) - perhaps usb issues? I disabled 'Legacy
>USB' in the bios, which I felt helped at first, only for the problem to
>occur again.

I have had 2 different 330s on 3 different machines and they all
experience the same problem: when you click on the "unplug hardware"
icon in the systray (to eject a thumb drive etc) the modem
disconnects. Could this be linked?
--

Shevek

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