PCA Forums

Well I finally got ADSL in the woods here. Ripped off and bad service as always so far and of course not working correct either.

Monday I was supposed to get my wireless modem router, waited most the day and phone guy comes by and gives me a box. Thanks.
I open box to connect it, plain old black box, no router no wireless!
I'll use this one for now and they are shipping me the correct one after I called about it.
It did not work! Was on phone with a couple techs on a couple calls, the internet light stayed red not turning green so they sent a guy out for Tuesday.
(Oh, I would buy my own equipment but they still have not fixed my nasty phone lines and one of the last service calls the guy said he would probably just mark down user wiring since he could not see a problem, so to avoid stupid stuff like trying to claim my parts are bad I will just rent theirs for a while till everything is working)

Tuesday I wait all day at home again and about 3pm the guy arrives.
Looks at the settings, deletes an extra setup the other tech online had me make, said it looked like not enough letters on the password so re-enters ID and password and it works! Der.... after trying about 30 times that did not work Monday I know it could not be I enter the password wrong like everytime LOL

Now I got ADSL, well sort of! I cannot get into anything that uses a SSL it seems. cratch
Forum here is fine, I already had the sign in cookie so did not have to log in.
We can load the bank websites front pages and follow links just fine, cannot log in to our accounts though. Sits dead awhile with Firefox trying to load it then a connection reset error.
DAZ3D.com I can get to the store pages and click add to cart, cannot sign into my account to actually checkout or download content.
Tried once to load a Newegg.com page, nothing!

I kill the DSL modem and connect with Dialup, it all works fine! Just got off line with tech support, no help there! He tried but wanted me to use IE I jokingly said I ain't that stupid to use IE and I have it firewalled, blocked both in and out! Actually I do have it blocked!
Suggested I try Chrome from google then. I'll give Chrome a try I guess but I want FireFox working!

I did get online into the DAZ3D account with my laptop on ADSL using FireFox (had trouble but worked) so I downloaded 4 larger files that were in my account. About 60K download speed.

Since I am on Extended DSL they say I have to pay the $50 price of 1.5M service but I only get 768K service, but I am only getting 600K at best in the 12 hours I've had it almost working.

2 days gone this week and I still don't have proper working DSL so tomorrow 3 days will be shot I guess.

Now I have to wait around till after 6AM because Centurylink is doing some type of maintenance tonight and and my state is one of about 5 they list as maybe not having service tonight. I have service now but the tech guy said call back later and try again, maybe some of my pages are hitting random service outages tonight when we were trying to figure out why only SSL pages seem to not load. Hmmm, maybe they only turned off the SSL sites? cratch
He also had me turn off SSL in FireFox LOL Well of course my bank did not like that and gave me a no SSL error not even trying to load anything!

Trust me you do NOT want to use Century Link's wifi router. They're garbage. They have some kind of block enabled by default that prevents file and printer sharing between the wired jacks and the wifi network. Couple of business clients have one of these things. All devices on wifi can share between each other, and the same between all wired devices but not between wired and wifi. I never figured it out, I just disable the Wifi and use a separate Wifi router as an access point only.

SSL will break if there is something in between you and the server like a proxy. All ISPs do packet filtering based load management now and it could be that they're having a configuration issue that breaks SSL connections, since they said there's an outage.

I would try Chrome just in case something is flaky in your Firefox.

Might also be a DNS issue. Try Chrome first and if that doesn't work then try changing your DNS manually to OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220

Do you have any kind of software installed for your dialup? Some dialup ISPs provide you a background app that improves performance (like Earthlink's "Speed Booster"). If so uninstall or disable it. Check the Internet settings in the Windows Control Panel (in the Connections tab, click the LAN button). Make sure you don't have a proxy enabled.

Run a scan with Hitman Pro. Some trojan viruses install a hidden proxy client. Hitman will detect it: http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro

Do you have another computer you could try? Borrow a friend's laptop? Just to make sure it isn't something weird on your PC?

Hope this helps...

I am only using their stuff because for things like this they would try to get out of repairs by saying my stuff was the problem. Thank's for the tip about the wired/wireless not sharing. That alone will save some of my hair pulling for something else. :lol
I will probably try to uplink my Linksys wireless router later to their modem/router once we get things working with 1 computer and DSL modem correctly.

As for various things, they are just whacked!
Dialup works for everything slowly at 28.6K

ADSL though....
Most sites load normal pages, banks loads front pages and links and the links I tried work.
Chase.com, enter using name password and try to login I get a long wait then a time out error in FF and Chrome
Greatsouth bank, long wiat loging in with FF then a balnk white page no error message. Chrome I got logged in but could not do any banking stuff like view statements nor recent transactions (was like a static page or froze, did nothing) however plain links like to load the PDF how to reset your passwords word work and the PDF loaded fine.

FF
Daz3D now lets me log into my account and seemed to work however I went to the public forum, I could read my PMs and open a reply but found I cannot send the reply, it just sits there!
I went to Yahoo, I got logged into my e-mail and read 2, that worked, then decided to send myself a hello. I cannot send e-mails! It just
sat there when I tried to send the e-mail to my other e-mail address.
Here at PCA everything seems fine so far.

Chrome is acting a little different in some ways but still about the same problems for what I have tried it for.

Laptop I only used so far to get into DAZ3D and download some files from my account last night. It worked then for that, but now I can do it on this system in FF also. I'll set laptop back up again and see if banks or anything work on it. My other tower system I do not have any updated protections on it yet since I never ever use it online. I'll have to update everything manually and get a firewall running. The only contact that other system has with anything is threw these other 2 systems that are updated and such so I never worried much about it till now.

try changing your DNS manually to OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220

I'll give that a try if I can find the setting. No docs for modem and using the address just brings up one screen for basic settings like ID password and always on etc...

No ISP software installed here. No Proxy
Should I try clicking the auto detect settings? That's not ticked. Since I been getting online and most things work like here I had not checked that part, forgot about it.

I'll download the Hitman and run that now.

Nothing found with hitman.

MODEM:
Well I would go ahead an use their modem (the basic non-wifi modem which is actually a combination modem/router). That's a no brainer. If it gets hit by lightning it's their problem. Their modem is fine, and you will definitely run into hassles with tech support down the road if you use your own modem.

Just connect it to your own Wifi router for Wifi. Be aware that whenever you call tech support you need to plug a PC directly into the modem bypassing the router because they will not troubleshoot it with your router connected.

It's possible you have a bad modem/router. Have they made you do a factory hardware reset on the modem to see if that helps? It's a little pinhole on the back that you need to insert a paperclip into.


FIREWALL:
Don't worry about having a firewall on any of your PCs. When you're behind a router you ARE behind a firewall. A NAT router IS an incoming hardware firewall (it rejects all unsolicited incoming packets).

DNS:
Change the DNS manually on your computer, not on the modem/router. For best performance you never want a router to be your DNS proxy anyway. Most routers do a terrible job of routing DNS.

Open the network settings in the Windows control panel, open the properties for your network connection, double click on TCP/IP, (IPv4 not IPv6 if your have both installed) and under "Use the following DNS server addresses", enter the addresses for OpenDNS.


AUTODETECT:
No you never want Autodetect checked. It will greatly slow down your internet connection. This is a legacy setting that is never really used.


You probably shouldn't mess with the modem/router's control panel for now, but if you ever need to setup port forwarding it's easy to login into the control panel. If it's a Series 660 modem then just browse the IP address which is your Gateway (usually the factory default is 192.168.2.1) and the default password is usually 1234.

This just gets stranger and stranger!

NOW with FF I got into my mail box, will not let me read any mails, I did go into my spam box and see nothing I wanted and deleted those mails, but I can't read any in my inbox!

Chrome will not even load http://www.yahoo.com/ at all so I cannot even try to log in with it.
Oops, Just saw now it finally has a really messed up looking yahoo front page trying to load.
Got a login page now, trying to get to e-mail, this is slower with Chrome on ADSL right now than my dialup LOL
Still not loaded anything yet

OK Chrome was super slow but both FF and Chrome got into my e-mail box, click to read an e-mail I get the blue loading bar from yahoo then nothing at all from both FF and Chrome!

Yes we reset the modem. Power off and also a pinhole reset a couple times each now.

Ya, they thought maybe so also a bad modem. That is probably why they gave me this WRONG one to begin with, just to mess with me! After I have done so many complaints about bad phone lines and the near $300 credits in bills I did not have to pay since last Nov! LOL
Yuck Yuck, the joke is on them, they will hear about this also for more credits!

No firewall? OK. So I guess it's safe to shut off TINY now? Now this is only a DSL 1 port Modem I have right now, not a router with like 4 or 5 ports, so is it the same thing?

Yep not very creative on the passwords, 1.1 and home1234 is what they told me, but that might be to get that simple page, maybe what you said will get the better setting options?

I will try the DNS settings.

My kid needed ink for her printer at collage so I told her to take it but bring it back on the next weekend, about 4 weeks ago! She comes back to town every weekend but always without the ink! Guess who has 2 printers now out of ink hat

OK, to install Chrome I used Google installer. Why does Google installer now keep popping up a firewall warning with TINY for an outgoing connection?

I guess that is one reason I thought about keeping a software firewall running, to block outgoing attempts from things I may install. Also to totally block IE and Outlook both directions!
I am Using FF right now not Chrome, though Chrome is open in another window.

As I click Deny the address changes a little
74.125.95101 port 443
74.125.95102 port 443
ect...

This time only 2 times, last time about 4 times

OK, I tested with Laptop now, about everything I tried seemed to work this evening. Just tried again with desktop and banks won't load still.
One bank gave me a new error the about SSL

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to cm.netteller.com.

SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.

(Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long)

* The page you are trying to view can not be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.

* Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem. Alternatively, use the command found in the help menu to report this broken site.

That bank works fine on this system on dialup though.

Oh, when my Laptop did work at the one bank I got a page I never got before about having to verify my identity because I was using a different computer or such. I use that laptop at that bank from various WIFI spots all the time and never got that page before, so something about DSL triggered that alert and verification!

Well I got my new junk DSL wireless router just now. No external antenna
Only a 3 port and up-link port. Going to install that now and see if any difference in anything.

That's a different Wifi router than they give us down here. Maybe it's better.