Print out these help pages and save them when you have problems with your
system or service.
This is a brief explanation of how the
whole thing works.
When your computer connects to the Internet it first
configures your modem and dials into our Remote Access Server (RAS) which
is dedicated device containing a bunch of modems. You generally hear your
modem as it synchronizes with our modem then the modem noise ends and
Password Authentication Protocol begins (PAP).
Our RAS requests that your machine transmit your User Name
and Password which is encrypted and sent to a Server which is called a
Radius Server. The Radius Server then authenticates your user name and
password against our data base and returns a response to either allow or
deny access. The RAS then gives your system its Internet Protocol (IP)
Address and the IP Address of the Domain Name Servers (DNS).
At this point your Browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape
generally) attempts to download the web site you have designated as your
Start Page. When it attempts to make this request it will find that it
doesn't know the IP Address of the Web Server which contains the page it
requires so it makes a request of the DNS Server to provide the IP Address
of the site. The DNS Server looks up the address, sends it to your browser
and your browser requests the page based on that address. The page is sent
to your Browser using your IP Address which is contained in the original
request. The browser and web server then communicate using HyperText
Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and all the text and pictures required to form
the page are sent to your Browser. Your Browser then arranges the text and
pics in the format that you see using a language called HyperText Markup
Language (HTML). You can view this "source code" with your
browser generally from a menu selection.
When you check your mail, your Mail Client (Eudora or MS
Outlook generally) must be
configured with the name of the Mail Server, your e-mail address, your
account name and your password. It will perform a DNS lookup for the Mail
Server then perform a login on that server using your Account Name and
Password to verify your authenticity.
If you have mail waiting it is transmitted to you using Post
Office Protocol (POP3). When you send mail out, you again log onto a Mail
Server which is not authenticated (except for spam control) and upload
your mail using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Locally our mail
server for both POP3 and SMTP is mail.sanx.net
or mail.san.com.al. All data
transferred across the Internet is done so using Transport Control
Protocol over Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). IP does the transfer and TCP
does the error control.
All other client/server connections for upload and download
are performed in much the same manner. Each different type of server uses
special protocols such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Network News
Transfer Protocol (NNTP) which simply makes each data transfer as
efficient as possible. Ftp sites provide file access through simple
directory listings and text (txt) files with some information. Factors
that can affect the quality of the connection
Initialisation
string
The initialization
string is probably the most common cause of data speed problems. A
browser's dialer program sends commands to the modem before dialing the
required telephone number. These commands set-up the modem for different
types of connections. Apart from some basic commands, most commands are
specific to a particular modem. A command that disables compression on one
modem might do something completely different on another modem. Incorrect
modem settings in the dialer program may cause very slow connections or
other unpredictable problems.
DTE
rate and compression
DTE rate is the
rate at which your computer sends and receives data to and from your
modem. If data compression is used, the DTE rate should be set as high as
possible. The ITU V.42bis compression standard can achieve 4-to-1
compression, and automatically switches off if data cannot be compressed.
The MNP 5 compression standard can achieve 2-to-1 compression, but does
not switch off if data cannot be compressed, and slows down data transfer
as a result. Note that compression is most effective on text files like
HTML files and has little affect on files that are already compressed such
as ZIP files and JPG graphic files.
Line
quality
The distance you
are from the telephone exchange will affect your connection rate. One
modem manufacturer recommends that you are less than 6km from the public
telephone exchange to achieve speeds above 33,600bps. If you hear noise,
crackling or a hum on ordinary voice calls your connections won't be as
good. Albtelecom now uses
multiplexing equipment, so-called "MUX - Pair Gain Devices", in
order to increase the number of customers they can connect to their
existing cables. From the telephone company's point of view, they are
ideal for customers who install a second line, except, it seems that they
typically limit line speeds, often to around 9 600 bps. Private telephone
switching systems (PABX) , such as those found in offices and hotels, can
also limit the maximum line speed.
Processing
power
Since HTML pages
contain formatting information mixed in with plain text, they require
processing to turn them into the formatted pages that appear on your
browser. A faster processor and more memory will speed up this processing.
Internet
activity
As end-user access speeds increase dramatically, the true
cause of the Internet’s inherent slowness is becoming more visible:
latency. Multiple factors contribute to the total latency of the Internet.
Congested networks, congested servers and packet loss are well-known
causes.In addition to the causes above, there is another critical basis
for the Internet’s latency: the speed of light. Internet protocols are
two-way, requiring hundreds of round trips between the client and the Web
server housing the information being requested. A million or more miles of
network distance must frequently be traveled to fulfill a single Web page
request. Over this distance, the speed of light through fiber frequently
contributes 5-15 seconds of latency for each request.Improving the
response time of the Internet requires technology that eliminates these
latencies. It is not enough to simply cache Web pages. Accelerating the
Internet requires facilitating faster access to the Web server content
that exists at the moment the request is made. Trouble
Making or Maintaining a Connection
Several things can happen to affect your
connection with us.
The
phone rings and rings without a modem answering
This is an uncommon problem we have seen and can be caused
by two things. The first is that you just called a modem which is still in
the process of resetting from a previous call. In this
case the first thing to do is try again. This will usually result
in a connection as the modem has had time to reset. We recall you that a
second back up phone number is at your disposal – take a look at your
Customer Profile Form. The second is
that your phone line is out of order and you are not able even to call any
phone number. In this case address to Albtelecom Technical Service to
bring your line up.
Can
not establish TCP/IP Connection
This is usually the result of a configuration problem in
your system and is commonly caused by a misspelled Login name or Password
or less often tinkering with your Networking or Connection parameters.
Remember, your Userid or Login Name can not contain any capital letters
while your password is case sensitive and may contain capital letters.
When your connection fails to establish properly the first thing to try is
to re-enter your Userid and Password and try to reconnect, that failing,
shutdown and reboot your machine. When you connect (establish a TCP/IP
Connection) to the Internet you become a part of a vast Wide Area Network
with a unique IP Address which depends on which of our modems you
connected with. For this reason you must insure that our server can assign
your IP Address each time you dial in, which is a setting in your
configuration.
If you continue to have trouble establishing your connection
we recommend that you call us and let us help you over the phone. Phone
support is Free of cost.
Loosing
Connection or Slow Connection
Having your modem hang up on you during a session or having
a very slow connection is almost always caused by poor phone line quality
(provided your modem is configured to connect at its highest speed) or you
are connected to our Site through a Telecom Multi plexer.
If you can hear ANY noise on your phone line when you are
using it for normal voice conversation then you have a problem with noise
and we can guarantee your modem will have a problem with it. Noise will
cause errors in your data transmissions, slow your connection by having to
retransmit data and if enough errors occur your modem will fall back to a
slower speed to try to reduce the errors and given enough noise will hang
up. We notice more complaints about this problem during periods of wet
weather as the rain affects line quality. Unable
to connect with other computers on the Internet
When you can not connect to a web site and
receive an error stating the site was not found or that a connection could
not be established there are many possible problems.
First try again, then try to connect to www.sanx.net.
If you can connect to this or any of our pages then you know that at least
we are up. We recommend that you set one of the sanx.net pages as your
Start or Home Page for this reason. Remember that your Browser will cache
any pages you have visited and if you suspect that we are off line you
should Refresh the page to force your Browser to access the site across
the net rather than from your hard disk.
If you are not able
to reach the requested web site , probably
it is down or the network is congested.
Trouble-Shooting
Software
There are several
software packages available to check out the Internet when you are having
trouble. Win
95/98 Ping Software and Win
3.x Ping Software is used to send a quick "ping" packet to
another computer to test if it is alive, The other computer will respond
to the ping with a "pong" if it is alive and if not the software
will time out after a minute or so and give you an error. Trace Route (tracert)
is used to see all of the computers and routers involved in a connection
from you to your destination computer .
Win 95/98 has these two utilities built in to it for network
trouble-shooting. You can run these from the Start Run command line or
create shortcuts to them on your Desktop or in a Desktop Folder. They are
on most systems in C:\Windows\ping.exe and C:\Windows\tracert.exe. WSPing
on the FTP Site has both of these functions built in. Just download the
text file associated with the package you are interested in and then
download the zip, unzip the file and install it.
Unable
to establish a connection with your mail server
This error is usually caused by congestion and you can
simply try it again, usually with good results. When the server is very
busy it will refuse new connections until the load goes down and this
almost always occurs within a few seconds. If your configuration succumbs
to a case of tinkering just check that you have mail.sanx.net set as your
mail server (both SMTP and POP3) and that your login name and password are
not missing or misspelled. The mail software validates your user name and
password again even though you have already been validated when you logged
in. This way you could check your mail with someone else login if you
wanted to (you should never do this for your own security), for instance
if you were out of town at a friends home with Internet access, or on the
road with your laptop.
Your
mail does not seem to do anything for a long time
This is usually caused by having someone send you a huge
file. Remember it will take approximately 15-20 minutes to download 1MB at
33.6 Kbps. Check that your connection is active by watching your
connection Icon or Connection Statistics while the mail is downloading.
The connection should show active almost continuously. If your connection
is active then it is downloading something. You should not interrupt a
mail download as this can cause problems with the your mail box.
If you suspect that there is a huge mail file in your
mailbox that you don't want to spend the time downloading, just give us a
call and we can instruct you how to solve the problem. Another cause of this is "Mail Bombing" and in extreme cases "Spamming". If you continue to be the victim of someone sending you huge files "Mail Bombs" or a lot of unsolicited E-Mail "Spam" we want you to contact us immediately as this is against the law and action can be taken to stop the bombing. Your Question not Answered Here?
If you have a
question that you think others would like to know about please submit it
to us and we will sure put it up here
If you want to learn
more jump to Internet
Learning Site or Getting
started on the Internet
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