I have been having connection problems for a few days now. I can stay connected for no longer than 5-10 minutes. It is not my browser or my ISP, I'm having the same problem on my work Telnet dial-up. My connection log shows 'Carrier Dropped' on every occurance. I have the ability to 'listen' to the connection, and I hear the normal sounding 'chatter' with the initial 'handshake, sync up' tones about every 30 seconds or so. After a while, I get the phone company message, 'if you'd like to make a call'. When and after being online the box get real unstable, but is OK if used only offline. Running '98 second edition with latest MS patches installed. Is it me, or is Bell South up to something ???? No noticable problems with voice.....

-- BH (silentvoice@pobox.com), October 17, 1999

Answers

Funny stuff has been happening in several areas of the country by some reports. Down several lines is a post about not being able to make calls within a local exchange.

Locally people have been talking about their answering machines having messages on them of getting calls from AT&T's automated long- distance operator system "If you'd like to place a collect call, press 0 now..." We had one of those on our machine the other day.

Now does it seem possible that the phone companies are putting in new software and we're seeing some bugs?

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), October 17, 1999.

I've been having problems with Win. 98 for quite some time - kept getting kicked off, all of the time. Never had a problem with Win. 95.

To solve the problem, I've switched to "Road Runner" offered by Time Warner Cable. It costs more ($40/month for unlimited time), but it uses fiberoptic lines used on your cable box. So far, I've not had one single problem.

IMPORTANT QUESTION though - How did you get your Windows 98 compliant with the patches. I downloaded the patches & got everything compliant EXCEPT for WIN. 98. The product analyzer still says that the Win. 98 isn't fully compliant...

Thanks for any help you can provide!

-- Deb (travelersfourcats@worldnet.att.net), October 17, 1999.

I've been having problems as well but only with one of my phone lines. I can't keep the modem connection for longer than 5 minutes before I am kicked off. This occurs even though I have disabled call waiting.

Kinda interesting. I've had phone line quality problems as well.

Mike

==================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), October 17, 1999.

I didn't really upgrade '98 for Y2K reasons, was looking for patches in the system components, especially the ones that were COMM realted. I have been on for about a half hour now. I found a section in the System Monitor that records all COMM errors, signal conditions, etc. While running with the monitor ON, all has been real clean (with no performance problems, at least not as noticable as the constant drops).....

-- BH (silentvoice@pobox.com), October 17, 1999.

We've had phone problems for the past few weeks, too - with Alltel. On occasion, if you pick up the receiver, the dial tone sounds "fuzzy". When this happens, we can't connect to the internet - computer says it can't find a dial tone. Workers have been out here several times and can't find the problem. They say that's because it's intermittent and soon as they start to track it, it clears up.

-- dakota (none@thistime.com), October 17, 1999.

It would be good thing to keep in mind that, in any company the size and nature of Bell South, technical staff deal with hundreds, if not thousands of significant technical problems everyday. Cellular and data services are particularly prone to a diverse range of technical problems. Devices fail, configurations can easily be incorrect, and carriers can be subject to conditions beyond their control (e.g. a contractor cuts a major cable, a flood, a major network event, etc.).

This technology is far too new to be 100% reliable. Problems like the ones described above are commonplace today. Emerging technologies, especially those involving the networking of large numbers of remote devices, are rarely if ever problem-free. Keeping those services up and running at a sufficient level of quality to be marketable is hard work. That's what technical staffs do. If it were easy, someone would have done it long ago.

A prolonged or massive outage would be unusual. But problems similar to the ones described above, despite what what Bell South's marketing department would have you believe, are commonplace.

Are there more of these 'problems' happening these days? I should not be suprised if this were the case but unless such an increase was dramatic and unmistakeable, I don't think that there is a way to conclusively prove that such an increase exists. It's a lot like the 'increased explosions thread' going on here - interesting but pure speculation at this point.

Because I see such problems being dealt with everyday, I believe that a small increase in technical problems as a result of Y2K could be handled with minimal impact on most peoples lives (uh, except the technicians working the problem of course).

On the other hand, if a large number of technical problems result from Y2K, technical staffs could be overwhelmed or simply rendered inoperable. This could result in something much more serious.

So what is a 'small number' and what is a 'large number'? I don't know but I guess we'll see here very shortly.

One final note. I've been having trouble with my cellular service this week as well. Sometimes, but not always, when I get connected, I can hear the person I dialed just fine but they cannot hear me. If I hang up and call them back, this next call is connected with no problem.

I'm not happy about this problem but I'd be somewhat surprised if Y2K had anything to do with it.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), October 17, 1999.

Wildweasal--

I can't tell you how many times I've heard the "if you'd like to place a call" line on my answering machine. I'm in Delaware. I'd be interested if there are any others who are having problems with folks that can't get thru to their number. I believe I'm the one who posted the message you spoke of. I've also picked up my phone every now and then and get no dialtone at all. Me thinks something's squirrelly (sp).

beej

-- beej (beej@ppbbs.com), October 17, 1999.

Could be the solar activity going on the last few days.

-- cURLY~q (Curly@Q.COM), October 17, 1999.