Troubleshooting your Messiah College Dial-up Connection

1. Frequently, dialup difficulties are not due to problems with your computer equipment but an "outside source" (providing you have done nothing to change your dial-up networking software settings). You may be able to determine the possible cause of any problems you are encountering by checking the following...

Check your power supply in the house/apartment: are the lights dimming?
Are you running the washing machine and the lights flicker when the motor shifts, and your modem drops at the same time?
Did a huge A/C compressor just kick on and take your connection with it?
Is there a thunderstorm overhead?
Are you tapping your foot and occasionally hitting one of the cables to the power/modem/phone line?
Are you pounding the edge of the desk in thought, and pinching a cable between it and the wall?
Are all the cables securely fastened into their respective receptacles?
Do you have a statically-charged cat rubbing it's whiskers on the phone jack?
Is your teenager picking up the phone extension every 10 minutes to try to make a call?

Any of the situations listed above will negatively impact your dialup connection and could result in an inability to connect or suddenly disconnecting from an established connection.

2. Using a good quality telephone attached thru the modem, on the phone line you are dialing up with: call a friend in a quiet location. With both ends of the conversation as quiet as possible - listen for any noise on the line. If you hear some, try to eliminate it (unplugging answering machines, extra modems, wiggling cords, replacing faulty cords, etc). Once the line is absolutely silent - try the dial-up call to the Messiah modems again. You can even try with the telephone (not the modem) and listen to see if the connection you get to Messiah's modems has noise in it. If you continuously hear crackling, or other noise on the line (no matter where you dial) the problem is your line, and you need to fix it.

3. If the phone line is consistently quiet, and dialing-up to Messiah is consistently breaking (for example: "dropping" after 10-20 minutes) - call the your Telephone Company Operator from the troubled line, at the time you are having trouble. Note this time carefully, and if possible, get the name of the operator you speak to. DO NOT authorize someone to come to the college to check the wiring here. If your phone line is quiet and you are otherwise completely happy with how your phone line is working (except dialing up Messiah) then DO NOT authorize them to come to your location either. (here is the potentially frustrating part) Explain to the operator that the problem is BETWEEN your line and Messiah's line and that they need to address it within the phone system. (good luck!).

Note: We have attempted to present this "troubleshooting guide" in a light-hearted fashion. ITS understands that connection problems can be inconvenient and frustrating. However, many problems can be rememdied by the end user without the need for extensive technical support.