Improving Dial up connection speed.... [ SOLVED !!! ]

[kiljay]

I am happy to report my Puppy install to my low resorce machine is coming along nicely. I have Puppy 4.3.1 with Seamonkey FULL install to the HD with 384 mg. of ram and no swap file. I connect thru Penggy to AOL flawlessly every time. I have installed Java 1.6u20 and Adobe Flash 10.1 prerelease version . Both have been configured according to posts in this forum and both test out on there sites as working properly. Seamonkey has not crashed in 8 to 10 hrs. of surfing so far. Penggy reports connection at 115200 b/s [doubtful] thru a older CIS Technoligys series m1-5614pm3 high speed fax modem at port tty-SHCFO. I have been unable to get my external serial modem to work, [maybe a prob. with it]. Speed however is very slow with internet speed tests reporting under 20 kbps. Sites will load very fast to 80 - 90 percent on the progress bar and then just seem to stall. Live streaming sites will alternatly play and buffer every 30 second or so. This worked pretty well before with Win98 and AOL software on this build. Upgrading to better build would be no problem, But I am stuck with AOL dialup at this location so this has to work. As a newbie to Linux I feel I am just missing something small. Any Suggestions ? Havin a BLAST with Puppy !!!

[purple_ghost]

Have you tried other browsers?

[kiljay]

Only with Seamonkey that came with Puppy 4.3.1.

[purple_ghost]

Tab labeled "Edit/Preferences/Advanced/Cache"

This may help a bit, but not really give an acceptable performance. I have heard some say Opera is faster for some versions of Puppy, but I do not know.

Suspect your solution will be as you now know, in the speed that is getting limited by one or more. The speed of the web page you are using to play, I know I used to stream music from Yahoo and Yahoo offered several different speeds to stream to me. Where is the music you are streaming from? An AOL service? Perhaps the speed problem, (or cache size) is also being set by whatever player you are using in the browser. Is that Flash? Speed of the modem, modem driver. Some kind of limit in Peneggy.

Also, what info can you offer on getting Peneggy to work? Which programs did you use?

Not sure what to say about the problems with your external serial modem. Did the lights show that the external serial modem was dialing out? You would have to describe the step by step of what you did in trying to get the modem to work and what you saw on the screen. Perhaps it would be easier to prove to yourself that this particular modem is working by using it on another computer, or even with Windows.

[mouldy]

I doubt you got any faster speed with windows. No matter the modem or isp or the browser or anything else, on those speed tests I usually scrore around 21k or little less . I connect around 24k. Part of it is rural lines, but also phone company has for sometime been splitting bandwidth in half since they found way to provide voice phone service to twice as many households without laying new lines. If you question them, they at first will pretend to not understand what you are talking about. If you get hold of a genuine telephone techie person (and not just customer service person) and pin them down, they will say they are only legally required to provide voice call service at an acceptable level and that data bandwidth is not their problem. In other words got to learn to deal with 26k or less service or find a way to get broadband, cause they arent going to provide the traditional 40k to 50k dialup service (nobody ever got 56k, that was theoretical maximum to dialup).

As time goes on, they have converted more and more of the old full bandwidth connections to the newer half bandwidth connections. Rural areas were first of course cause its high dollar to run new lines over long distances.

Also light weight browser helps some. I like Opera. It offers toggle to turn on/off whether you want it to load images. Turning image loading off speeds things up considerably cause there is less to download. There is an extension for Firefox that does same thing. Otherwise its pain in rear to do this as you have to get couple levels into preferences. Also helps to shut off flash as this is a big bandwidth waster on slow connections, though you just cant navigate some websites without flash.

[kiljay]

I was under the impression that Seamonkey was a lightweight browser and that is why it was used in Puppy. Can you tell me how to turn off image loading? How about turning off or slowing down graphics acceleration like you can in Windows ? Can you indeed turn Flash off, as some sites might not need flash ? I`m open to all suggestions. I have been regularly loading in Win98 at 36 - 40 kbps. The good news is Penggy works perfect. The penggyfullpet I used is the newer one posted by Subito Piano and configuration according to Mouldy`s posts. Maybe I will give the sereal modem a try again tomorrow and post back.

[muggins]

You can install flashblock for seamonkey. Noscript could be useful as well. They're both easily adjusted to allow for trusted websites e.g. banking etc.

Plus it would be useful, for pupsters with modem knowledge, if you could give more info on name/brand/model of serial model, as maybe someone can help you get it going.

[npierce]

Can you tell me how to turn off image loading?

kiljay,

In Seamonkey 1.1.18:

Edit -> Preferences -> + box next to Privacy & Security -> Images -> Do not load any images

If you need to see an image, you can right-click on its place-holder and select View image.

Unfortunately this is far more awkward than it was on the antique version of Netscape that I ran back when I had dial-up. In Netscape I was able to simply click on its place-holder and the image would appear in its place. Or I could click a button on the navigation bar to load all the images on a page. It is unfortunate that the developers of Seamonkey didn't continue those useful features.

When I had dial-up, saving bandwidth was the primary reason that I disabled images, but I found that a pleasant side-effect was that it improved most web pages. No longer were there half a dozen animated images on pages all screaming "Look at ME!". Nowadays most of that flashy stuff is done with Flash, so I just block Flash. But if I still had dial-up it might still be worth turning the images off in Seamonkey, despite Seamonkey's awkward method of allowing you to view the ones you need to see. More likely I would install Opera, which handles this better -- much like Netscape was able to do a dozen years ago!


muggins,

Although I usually keep Flash turned-off in Firefox, I'd never looked for a way to disable it when I run Seamonkey. Thanks for the link to Flashblock. It makes browsing in Seamonkey more civilized.

[Béèm]

I remember from my dial-up period that ISP's had things like header compression etc, which would speed up the connection a bit. But the connection sw would also have the facility to set this. I don't know if Penggy has such facilities

Also even with 384MB of ram I recommend making a swap file.

[mouldy]

I was under the impression that Seamonkey was a lightweight browser and that is why it was used in Puppy. Can you tell me how to turn off image loading? How about turning off or slowing down graphics acceleration like you can in Windows ? Can you indeed turn Flash off, as some sites might not need flash ? I`m open to all suggestions. I have been regularly loading in Win98 at 36 - 40 kbps. The good news is Penggy works perfect. The penggyfullpet I used is the newer one posted by Subito Piano and configuration according to Mouldy`s posts. Maybe I will give the sereal modem a try again tomorrow and post back.

If you can get 36-40k (lucky you) with windows, then you should be able to get it with linux. Its not Penggy that is problem, my guess is that its your modem. Nothing magic about windows, except some software modems work better under windows. I know when I was playing with software modems (got a pile of them very cheap few years ago), I found only some would work as fast with linux driver. Get a good serial modem and you should get same speed on either linux or windows. Used to be all serial modems pretty much alike, but recently ran into a couple of them that ran slow.

All I can say is Opera is faster than Seamonkey or Firefox for me. I finally got the full 104mb version of Puppy 4.31 downloaded via dialup (painful 11 hour process) and tried Chrome. Its pretty fast too though has some "beta bugs" for sure.

I can also say from way back running Kmeleon (light weight windows browser using Gecko rendering engine) run under WINE is amazingly fast. Its not however a full service browser. Works well for what it is. I swear its as fast under WINE as it is run native in windows.

[mouldy]

Plus it would be useful, for pupsters with modem knowledge, if you could give more info on name/brand/model of serial model, as maybe someone can help you get it going.

Most serial modems should work with standard ATZ or AT initialization but I have run across some oddball ones that just wont work unless you use their proprietary initialization string. Its a long shot as I say most do work ATZ or AT just fine.

Just do google on your brand and model modem along with "initialization string" and you should find if it needs some special one.

Also are you sure your serial modem is 33k or 56k? Serial modems have been around a long time, there are some very old and slow ones that show up from time to time. Like 8k or 14k or even slower. Since I cant connect past 24k, I can use 28k, 33k, or 56k modem with equal effect. if you can connect as fast as 40k, you need a 56k modem.

[purple_ghost]

For Initialization String 1 "AT&F1"

For Initialization String 2 "AT&F1&N21"


Then Barry fixed PupDial so it would detect the modem and enter a usable "init string." Perhaps the "init string' is supposed to be entered into Peneggy. Did you ever use Pup Dial, which might not be possible with AOL.

[mouldy]

Perhaps the "init string' is supposed to be entered into Penggy.

Yes it can be set in the /usr/etc/penggy/penggy.cfg file. And for some modems ATZ and AT are not good enough, not even AT&F2. They have their own long complicated initialization string. Think some older Zoltrix modem i had was like that. I looked it up once and then used a sharpie pen to write it on the bottom of the modem itself so I'd never have to look it up again.

Penggy doesnt use wvdial. Pupdial is just frontend for wvdial. The only possible thing Pupdial could do is find the modem and set up the /dev/modem symlink if you want to use that. Since I use my computer both with Penggy and serial modem and also tethered to my cell phone via usb, I let Pupdial handle the usb cell phone setup and use /dev/modem for it, and set penggy to directly use the /dev/ttyS0 port.

[rerwin]

kiljay,

Penggy reports connection at 115200 b/s [doubtful] thru a older CIS Technoligys series m1-5614pm3 high speed fax modem at port tty-SHCFO.

Please be aware that the driver for the HCF modems is limited to 14.4 kbs, unless you pay linuxant $15-20 to unlock 56k.

If you want to do that, please tell us how it goes, as I have not attempted that (as modem-support developer). I have also not implemented puppy support for "upgrading", but the command line may work. If there is any interest, I could look into making that work better. But for that price, why not try any other w/linmodem, which you can probably buy for less, or get free as surplus.
Richard

[kiljay]

I have since tried another soft modem with no noticable increase in speed. I believe the problem to be as Rerwin says ,that the speed is being limited to 14 kbs as this is about what I am getting. I am now back to my US Robotics 56K externial serial modem ,model 0701. This was known to work in the past in Windows. I probe for it with pupdial, but as yet I have been unable to get Puppy to reconize it. I have been searching all the posts relating to serial modems but as a newbie I really don`t know where to go from here. I even downloaded "puppyserialdetect-1.1f.tar.gz" ,but could not figure out how to make it work. I have set all the dip switches according to posts I have found and even tried a few configurations of my own. Suggestions ?

[Béèm]

I have since tried another soft modem with no noticable increase in speed. I believe the problem to be as Rerwin says ,that the speed is being limited to 14 kbs as this is about what I am getting.

Instead of doing all kind of efforts, don't you think it would be wise to phone to AOL and ask them what their speed really is and how you could benefit of a of an access to them with greater speed?

[kiljay]

Fat chance of help from AOL on this one. They are still in denial that you can access there network with Linux!

[mouldy]

I have since tried another soft modem with no noticable increase in speed. I believe the problem to be as Rerwin says ,that the speed is being limited to 14 kbs as this is about what I am getting. I am now back to my US Robotics 56K externial serial modem ,model 0701. This was known to work in the past in Windows. I probe for it with pupdial, but as yet I have been unable to get Puppy to reconize it. I have been searching all the posts relating to serial modems but as a newbie I really don`t know where to go from here. I even downloaded "puppyserialdetect-1.1f.tar.gz" ,but could not figure out how to make it work. I have set all the dip switches according to posts I have found and even tried a few configurations of my own. Suggestions ?

Serial "hardware" modems dont need a special driver in linux, support is built into the kernel. Unless you have a very unusual motherboard, its not going to have more than 2 serial ports and most likely only one. Its going to either be /dev/ttyS0 or /dev/ttyS1. Try both. Instead of the default /dev/modem symlink in cfg file in Penggy use one of these, if one doesnt work, the other should. Does this serial modem work in windows? If it works in windows, it will work in linux. All serial modems are supported natively in linux. You can also try /dev/ttyS2 and /dev/ttyS3 although unlikely to be the case. In windows the above are com1, com2, com3, and com4.

Oh also have you checked the bios to make sure the serial port(s) are enabled. Some bioses allow you to disable serial ports. This shouldnt be the default, but ??? I'd tell you to check the serial port with some other serial hardware, but not likely you have any.

[mouldy]

I have since tried another soft modem with no noticable increase in speed. I believe the problem to be as Rerwin says ,that the speed is being limited to 14 kbs as this is about what I am getting.

Instead of doing all kind of efforts, don't you think it would be wise to phone to AOL and ask them what their speed really is and how you could benefit of a of an access to them with greater speed?

AOL doesnt support linux or Penggy. They support their newest software and winXP, winVISTA, and maybe win7. When you call AOL, you get somebody reading off a prepared diagnostic script, they would get fired for any independent thinking. If this script cant solve the problem, they tell you its fault of windows and to call Microsoft. In other words they blow you off.

Penggy was created by a French group of linux users cause at the time AOL had some advantages for those stuck with dialup in France and maybe other parts of Europe. AOL threatened them with a lawsuit if they didnt cease and desist with their efforts and take down their website and support forums. Since they werent making any money off this, they couldnt afford to do anything but comply.

[gnz11]

they are the ones that puppy sees well. have been using puppy for dailup for 4 years now. one of the only linux that finds and uses my modem. a usr softmodem doesn't like to work with lin

re awol and linux. they had a version for linspire a long while back. i might try and get that binary if i can. but since they have removed all support for linux