[Vision2020] Frontier DSL

[Paul Rumelhart]

I hope they haven't oversold their lines so much that normal school year traffic kills their network.  I doubt they'd do that, but you never know.  One possibility is that the recent influx of students is overwhelming their DNS server.  This is the server that gets the numeric address for a named one (i.e. google.com).  If you are savvy enough to be able to change your DNS server from their local one to one of the free ones on the net, you might give that a shot.  Depending on your setup, you may need to change the DNS server on your router instead of your PC.

I've had trouble with Road Runner's DNS servers before.  Frankly, I don't know if it's still a problem because I have put some things in place to mitigate this.


If you haven't already, you might try running something like Firefox with the AdBlock and NoScript extensions - they don't make connections to all of the ad servers and javascript code repositories that almost every web page seems to need to connect to in droves.  You can whitelist your favorite sites so that they get the ad revenue from you, and you can OK the scripts on sites you trust not to hijack your machine.  As a side benefit, there are fewer connections made to the DNS servers when you surf the web.  


In linux, you can setup a hosts file that contains the names and IPs of sites you frequent often.  That eliminates the need for a DNS lookup.  The downside is that the site becomes unavailable if they change their IP address.  You just need to be aware of that and change your local entry or delete it.  I believe that Windows has this same functionality.

I also use a DNS caching utility (dnsmasq, I think it is), but I don't know if there is such a thing for Windows.

The bottom line is that if your trouble is just too much Netflix traffic on the network, you're screwed until Frontier does something on their end.  If it's the DNS server, the options above may work for you.  Be careful, though, you could make your machine unable to connect to the network if you mess up setting up a DNS caching utility, modifying your DNS entries, or mucking about with your hosts file.  It's fixable, but when you're suddenly unable to google for the solution, you begin to realize how ubiquitous net access really is.  Be sure to read up on it first before trying anything.  Also be sure to write down your current DNS server addresses before changing them so you can put them back to what they were.  I do recommend the Firefox extensions (or similar functionality in Chrome), though, to everyone.  It's insane the amount of traffic speeding through the network making sure that you see some stupid ad you'll never ever click on anyway,
 or javascript that is doing the gods know what.


Mucking about with this stuff can cause problems, be sure you know what you're doing before you do it.  I can't be held responsible if you suddenly can't download your stock data or whatever :)


Here's the page on Google's free DNS servers: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/


Paul



________________________________
From: Bev Bafus <bevbafus at frontier.com>
To: 'Saundra Lund' <v2020 at ssl1.fastmail.fm>; 'Moscow Vision 2020' <Vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Frontier DSL


Thanks Saundra.
 
Yes, we lose all connectivity pretty much spot on 8 p.m. each night, and it doesn’t come back until sometime between 4 am and 6 am each morning.
 
(The only reason I know that is that I was up the other night, and 4 am it was still off – usually have it back when I regularly get up at 6 am)
 
We have the newest modem.
 
We have turned in a trouble ticket twice – and no one has contacted us.
 
Seems to be related to the fact that the students are back – that is when it started.
ARGH!
 
Can’t get much done via computer this week in the evening.
 
Bev
 
From:Saundra Lund [mailto:v2020 at ssl1.fastmail.fm] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 9:43 AM
To: 'Bev Bafus'; 'Moscow Vision 2020'
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Frontier DSL
 
Hi Bev,
 
We use Frontier DSL & have been having some . . . issues recently.
 
Most commonly, we’re having periodic issues of a day or two of really slow speeds (as in 0.46 Mb/s download speeds, which is a far cry from the 3.0 we should be getting – so far today, we’ve been hovering around 1.83 Mb/s).  Very annoying.  We know the lines in our neighborhood are pure crap – for a while, Verizon & then Frontier was having to come out pretty much monthly to splice or whatever wires on the main trunk line somewhere a few blocks from our house – that went on for years.  The last time seems to have fixed the phone line static problems, but it’s been since then that we’ve noticed DSL speed slowing to a crawl periodically.
 
What do you mean it’s shutting off around 8 PM?  Are you losing your connection?  If so, we’ve be having an issue for the last couple of weeks where our we lose our connection every dang day between 12-1 PM for several minutes.  I was thinking that’s when the modem was contacting the mothership to reauthorize/get a new IP addy, but according to Frontier, the connection shouldn’t be dropped when that happens.  They looked at the 8 hour log (IIRC) for our modem & there are errors, so the thinking is that our modem is going out.
 
Did you get the flyer in their bill about the new modem?  
 
 
Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID
 
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
~ Edmund Burke
 
 
From:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Bev Bafus
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 6:24 AM
To: 'Moscow Vision 2020'
Subject: [Vision2020] Frontier DSL
 
Anyone else in Moscow using Frontier DSL?
 
And have you noticed it shutting off at 8 p.m. every night for the last week or two?
 
We can’t get any help from Frontier…….
 
Bev
 
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