LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : David A. de Groot <daved@uq.net.au>
  Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 22:13:30 +091800

Re: Internet drops out

On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 09:13:34PM +0930, David A. de Groot wrote:
> Hello Brian,
> 
> Monday, June 05, 2000, 8:53:43 PM, you wrote:
> 
> > This is the dial in script
> 
> 
> -->> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.41 --> Initializing modem. -->
> > Sending: ATZ ATZ OK --> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S10=14 S11=55
> > +FCLASS=? ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S10=14 S11=55 +FCLASS=? 0,1 OK -->
> > Modem initialized. --> Idle Seconds = 180, disabling automatic
> reconnect. -->> Sending: ATDT 0885620100 --> Waiting for carrier. 
> 
> Remove the Idle Seconds setting in wvdial.conf
> (this will enable Redial)
> OR set it to something a lot higher than 180 secs (3 minutes)
> Try 3600

This was soooo annoying when it first happened to me.
I was overseas using my laptop newly set up to use
global roaming IP access, and every now and then the link
would fall over and re-start - costing me money, and disturbing my
work. I thought it was amazing that in San Jose, in the middle of 
you-know-which-valley, the lines were so bad that they were dropping
out every few minutes.

But then I found that there was often an exactly 10-minute delay
between drop-outs. Very suspicious!
And after several more hotels and cities, I finally worked out
that it was the crazy wvdial.conf setting put there by SuSE.

Why would they program wvdial to drop out every 10 minutes
by default? There seems to be no benefit in this.

And then I set up a SuSE machine connected to Bigpond.
The link dropped out from time to time, but I put it down
to Telstra's bad line quality.
But the next day, I had 6 re-connects for each hour, and the
memory came back to me ---- SuSE's crazy wvidal.conf settings.
They make it drop out after 10 minutes, but they also mark
the link as persistent, so that you have to pay for another
phone call.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

==========================================================
PS. 
In my previous PS about network access monitoring tools,
I asked for some links, and the author of the
sourceforge supported project webperf sent me some links,
which I have now added at
http://www.topology.org/netmon.html

It now appears that the number of network monitoring
tools out there is truly awesome. This link:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/nmtf/nmtf-tools.html
is particularly awesome.

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