There is nothing here with our system causing you to get bumped off. There are only two things our system is set for disconnecting a customer. One is 20 minutes with no packet travel. The other is after 4 hours of solid connections, packet travel or not during high traffic periods. Neither of these settings can be changed, and are almost universal with all ISP's around the world. These settings are there for the protection of the system and the customer. If you are online for 20 minutes, doing nothing, the system assumes you left your computer connected to the net and are no longer there. This leaves us and you vulnerable to attacks from hackers. The 5 hour rule is in place to allow a more equitable turnover of phone lines during a period when busy signals are most likely to occur. If you do get bumped because of the 5 hour rule, there is nothing keeping you from connecting again right away. I hope you can see how it is fair for everyone for us to bump the people online for long hours in favor of those who haven't been on at all yet for the day.

In nearly every case we have investigated, the disconnect issue remains with phone lines and/or modem connect speeds. Also, a loaded cache in your browser, especially Netscape will cause a shut down of the browser or a disconnect from the net.

Depending on where you are downloading from, the weather even affects your download. Remember, your packet travel must go down phone lines from here to wherever you are connecting, anywhere in the world. Lightning and inclement weather between Texas and the point of presence (POP) for your download will cause you to be disconnected because the lightning will cause noise on the phone lines which will join your packet travel and when that noise reaches your modem, it will not be able to translate it and will disconnect you. Naturally, you could be disconnected repeatedly for this reason. If you have been disconnected, it is best to choose an alternate download site if possible.

A slow connect speed will cause you to get disconnected during heavy traffic times. This is because your packet travel is actually "run over" by faster packet travel going down the same phone lines. This causes corruption in your packets which causes your modem to shut things down because it cannot translate the packets. A unrealistic fast connect speed is unstable and will cause a disconnect for almost any little problem. If you are connecting at V.90 speeds for normal internet use, I highly recommend you set your modem speed back to v.34 or 33.6 for major downloads. You will notice a much more stable download, and in fact, you most likely will find the download coming in quicker. V.90 is good for quick browsing, but is still way to unstable to be relied upon for major downloads.

I highly recommend the current version of Netscape for browsing and email, but it has at least one problem that requires regular attention, especially with heavy net usage at sites with large graphics. It's cache does not automatically dump itself and as it fills up, it hoggs the resources of your machine slowing things down drastically and then finally shutting down the browser, or disconnecting the internet connection. It is best to do a cold boot (kill the power to your computer) and bring the machine back up fresh before any download. This way, you have the full power of your machine to do the work. If you don't, you only have partial resources and problems are more likely to occur.

The best time to download large files is after midnight, EXCEPT for Sunday evenings (Monday mornings). This is the time our T3 provider (Sprintlink in Dallas) chooses to do work on their system. Usually between 2 am and 4 am. They will not give us a work schedule, only that this is the time period the system could go down if they are doing work.

Hope this helps with your problems and answers your questions as to why you get disconnected during downloads. If you have any more questions, please email.

Question:
Dear Sir,
I have been a customer of 2 fords for over 18 months. This evening within
minutes after calling up I am disconnected. This has happened ten times.
When I called "support" the message was the same as it has always been,
"It's not our fault!"

2 fords never has a problem -- it's always someone else. The story is getting
very old.

When I asked when the problem will be fixed, as usually "no one knows -- no
one cares!" Again this is getting very old.
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Answer:
Most likely you are given this reason... for a good reason! When one person calls up and says they are having problems, the problem is usually theirs, not ours. When hundreds call up with a problem, we can assume the problem lies with either us or the phone lines coming IN to us or OUT from us to the internet. The problem can only lie in 3 places.

One, and the most frequent, is corrupt preferences on your machine, caused by an entire plethora of reasons. Without ever needing to know the cause, this problem can be solved by a simple cold boot of your machine BEFORE trying to fix something that is not broke. Some time spent reading our online "Help Guides" on the subject would be beneficial. In fact, your letter (without your name) and this reply is being posted to the help guides as a benefit to someone else with
the same question.

Two, and the second most frequent, is your phone line connection between your computer and ours. This problem needs to be determined by a simple call to our tech support. They will tell you if we are having problems, and if we are not, it is either you or the phone lines.

Three is when there could be a problem on our end, which we have no problem telling you when it happens, and even reporting it when it happens on our home page. If you will go to our home page and click on the "Tech Web Cam" you will see a live picture of our control room. What you are looking at is a total of some 11 computers that make up the whole of our system. It would take something massive to take out every one of those 11 computers, and the 200+ modems they are connected to. This has happened some 5 times in 3 1/2 years. Two times it was a problem with the local GTE phone company, two times it was with our backbone provider which is Sprint Link in Dallas, and once, Central Power and Light had a power failure at the Hwy. 35 plant which kept us from having service about 4 hours. Never was it our fault, and any problem we do have from time to time would only affect one of those 11 computers, or 1 of those modems, or at the very highest level, 24 modems if one of the 5 concentrators that control the 8 modem banks were to stop operating. These things do happen from time to time, but it is only for a few minutes, and in most cases the end user is not even aware of it. We have two mail servers, two radius servers, two DNS servers, three web servers, three concentrators for the digital system, two concentrators for the analog system, and all the phone lines are connected together so they will ring down to the next one if there is a problem with any one of the lines. I have built this system up to over a quarter of a million dollars worth of equipment from our beginnings 3 1/2 years ago with only one computer and ten modems. This entire system was built with customers money. We couldn't have done this without pleasing the majority of our customers. As of this writing, over 2,000 people are happy with our service and hundreds of thousands of hits go through our servers each and every day from all over the world. The system you see in our control room is absolutely the best in this entire area, including the big money operations of Corpus. No one has the amount or quality of equipment in their control room available per customer than us. In fact, we are the only service provider in this entire area, including Corpus, who even has a control room web cam online so you can see the system and people that work it. We have more  than one complete system that can take over in case of an emergency. Since the CP&L outage, we even have a 5,000 watt Onan generator for back up power.
We have an automatic alert system called "Page Sentry". It is a computer that automatically restarts any crashed machine in the control room. It also sets off an  alarm in the building, and if that is not reset within five minutes, sends out a call to a beeper alerting the technician of the problem. We just recently spent over  20,000 dollars on a total control room upgrade to make sure each modem and related piece of equipment was Y2K compliant. All but one of our control room  computers are Macintosh so they did not have the problem, but the concentrators all had to be updated, and this was all done at the same time we added the  ISDN system that comes in from the Ingleside ISDN switches. This upgrade actually caused a few problems with some of our customers who found that they too  had to upgrade their modems to make them work and be more compatible with our new systems. If you modem continually re-negotiates and tries to make a better  connection, this could be your problem too. Again, our techs cannot read minds and do not know to which degree you have your own system upgraded. Most  everyone I know that has made the latest y2k upgrades on their modems have reported better than before connections with our new system. There are so many  problems related to disconnects, it takes some time reading over the related help guides to become really educated on the subject.
So, if you want to know why we say the problem is not ours, it is because we are in "control" of our "control room". However, the phone lines between you  and that control room we cannot be responsible for. Those phone lines are your "Connection" to us. You can be disconnected 5 times by a large crane landing on  the wire near a connection box with poor connections. Was it raining? That can disconnect you repeatedly. All it takes is a little moisture in a wire that has dried  and cracked over a long dry spell. This is the number one reason for disconnects when there is a shower. I am not trying to put all the blame on the phone  company. I have to deal with all three in the area. GTE here in our primary area, Southwestern Bell in Corpus and many other outlying areas, and even Century  over at Port Aransas. They all have their problems. I couldn't recommend any one over the other, but it is up to you to report the problems you are having with  your phone lines, and what is most important is to report it as soon as it happens. They can fix a cracked wire that is letting in moisture. They can fix a weak  connection box caused from the weight of too many birds. All these things are easily fixed but it takes a call from you before they will know there is a problem.  If you let them know it is your internet connection, they know the problem lies between your house and the nearest switch building that leads to us. Believe me  when I say that these phone companies will do their best to help you with an inconsistent connection. It is their job to do just that and every single time I have reported a phone line problem, they have gotten it fixed within 24 hours. The important thing to remember, is to report your internet connection problems first to us to find out if we are having problems, and then to the phone company immediately if it is determined to be a phone line issue. In many cases, the problem will "fix itself" such as when the weather dries up. BUT... then the next time it rains, you will have the same problem again. If you call and report a problem right away so they can test the lines at the time you are having the problem, it can be permanently fixed by a repair technician.

John Ford
2 Fords Network

John Ford, 2 Fords Network: fordpub@2fords.net