[ale] Re: Earthlink reliability

[Fulton Green]

This may be all for naught, but here's the experience I had ...

Before getting DSL, I signed up with EarthLink for a few months. I'd dial
up the primary number provided on the website, and would experience similar
hangs (though I almost always connected for at least a few minutes). A lot
of the times, though, I also had problems with going to certain websites, an
experience which it turns out would prepare me for the $#(@ I've had to go
through w/my DSL provider.

So one day, I decided to change to a different number. After correcting my
login name (had to prepend "ELNK\" like the instructions said), I was able
to surf for hours on end, without difficulties.

The difference? Infrastructure. I don't know for sure if the two numbers'
modem pools had different modem equipment, but I suspect that's the case.
One BIG difference I noticed is that the primary number that EarthLink gave
me routed me through the Level 3 Communications backbone, whereas the other
number sent me through the old MindSpring backbone.

Just my one share of iXL's worth. ;)

On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 09:56:17PM -0500, Eric Z. Ayers wrote:
> I've been a mindspring customer for about 2 years.  Earthlink just switched 
> me to a new dialup number.  My connection was very reliable before,
> but with this new number, the connection often 'hangs' and I have to
> kill the PPP daemon to get it to hang up and dial out again.  I'd say
> that I get a "good" connection about one time in four.  Sometimes, the
> link will work for a little while, and then will freeze...  Are there
> any other Earthlink users out there suffering from the same problem?
> I can see in the logs that sometimes 'config-requests' timeout. 
> 
> When I switch back to the old number.  No problems.  Since Earthlink
> tech support has been unreachable, or sending me back form letters
> when I ask for help, I'm just about at the end of my rope: 
> 
> I'm using RedHat 6.2.  Can anyone think of something to try?  
> 
> the kernel: ppp: version 2.3.7
> pppd -v:    pppd version 2.3.11
> 
> 
> ps auxww | grep pppd
> 
>  /usr/sbin/pppd -detach lock modem crtscts asyncmap 000000 defaultroute usepeerdns debug /dev/ttyS1 115200 ipparam ppp0 linkname ppp0 noauth demand idle 500 connect /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/chat-ppp0
> 
> 
> Here are some sample log entries.  They don't tell much, other than
> that the link seems to be configured correctly - I get a new IP
> address.  I can see that one time below the connect script failed, but
> that is not normally the case
> 
> Jan  8 06:20:50 cricket pppd[396]: Starting link
> Jan  8 06:21:35 cricket pppd[396]: Serial connection established.
> Jan  8 06:21:35 cricket pppd[396]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyS1
> Jan  8 06:22:13 cricket kernel: PPP BSD Compression module registered 
> Jan  8 06:22:13 cricket kernel: PPP Deflate Compression module registered 
> Jan  8 06:22:14 cricket pppd[396]: Local IP address changed to 209.86.27.61
> Jan  8 06:24:15 cricket pppd[396]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
> Jan  8 06:24:21 cricket pppd[396]: Connection terminated.
> Jan  8 06:24:21 cricket pppd[396]: Connect time 2.7 minutes.
> Jan  8 06:24:21 cricket pppd[396]: Sent 1353522 bytes, received 14764139 bytes.
> Jan  8 06:24:21 cricket pppd[396]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
> 
> Jan  8 06:24:52 cricket pppd[396]: Starting link
> Jan  8 06:25:36 cricket pppd[396]: Connect script failed
> 
> Jan  8 06:26:10 cricket pppd[396]: Starting link
> Jan  8 06:26:34 cricket pppd[396]: Serial connection established.
> Jan  8 06:26:34 cricket pppd[396]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyS1
> Jan  8 06:26:38 cricket pppd[396]: Local IP address changed to 209.86.142.251
> Jan  8 07:07:55 cricket pppd[396]: Terminating connection due to lack of activity.
> Jan  8 07:07:56 cricket pppd[396]: Connection terminated.
> Jan  8 07:07:56 cricket pppd[396]: Connect time 41.4 minutes.
> Jan  8 07:07:56 cricket pppd[396]: Sent 1498193 bytes, received 16125000 bytes.
> Jan  8 07:07:56 cricket pppd[396]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
> Jan  8 08:00:01 cricket pppd[396]: Starting link
> Jan  8 08:00:45 cricket pppd[396]: Serial connection established.
> Jan  8 08:00:45 cricket pppd[396]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyS1
> Jan  8 08:01:02 cricket kernel: PPP BSD Compression module registered 
> Jan  8 08:01:02 cricket kernel: PPP Deflate Compression module registered 
> Jan  8 08:01:32 cricket pppd[396]: IPCP: timeout sending Config-Requests 
> Jan  8 08:01:38 cricket pppd[396]: Connection terminated.
> Jan  8 08:01:38 cricket pppd[396]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
> 
> Jan  8 08:02:17 cricket pppd[396]: Starting link
> Jan  8 08:02:41 cricket pppd[396]: Serial connection established.
> Jan  8 08:02:41 cricket pppd[396]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyS1
> Jan  8 08:02:45 cricket pppd[396]: Local IP address changed to 209.86.132.235
> Jan  8 08:11:05 cricket pppd[396]: Terminating connection due to lack of activity.
> Jan  8 08:11:05 cricket pppd[396]: Connection terminated.
> Jan  8 08:11:05 cricket pppd[396]: Connect time 8.4 minutes.
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