Mystery ADSL upgrade

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Having written earlier this evening about getting started with ADSL, one of the services that I use is the ADSL guide speed test. When we got our broadband connection at home back in 2003 (primarily for my wife’s business, but I also frequently work from home), 512Kbps was the fastest available ADSL connection. We haven’t knowingly upgraded since but recent tests suggested that the connection is delivering 1800-1900Kbps anyway. Being suspicious of the ISP’s own speed tests I tried the ADSL guide test instead and over the last week or so I have consistently recorded results similar to the following:

Results from broadband speed test recorded on Friday, 6 January 2006, 19:27
Downstream
– Actual speed: 1803 Kbps (225.4 KB/sec)
– True speed estimate: 1947 Kbps (including overheads)
Upstream
– Actual speed: 239 Kbps (29.9 KB/sec)
– True speed estimate: 258 Kbps (including overheads)

It’s interesting to note that the actual speed figure is the amount of useful data that the connection can transmit/receive per second, whilst the true speed figure includes an approximation of data overheads (estimated at around 8%). Whichever figure is used, it looks like the line has been upgraded to around 2Mbps and, as we’re not paying any more than we did for 512Kbps (although prices have dropped considerably over the same period, so what we pay is about the market price for 2Mbps), I haven’t checked with the ISP in case it’s all a mistake!

Getting started with ADSL

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last year, I helped my neighbour to get a PC and a Mac working with AOL and an ADSL connection. It wasn’t straightforward, hence the reasons for writing about it on this blog, and I’ve had more than one request for help on the subject since.

My Macintosh knowledge is patchy, at best, and I certainly don’t have time to provide PC support for everyone (the rules for comments on this blog point out that I’ll help if I can but I have a day job too); however one lady was particularly stuck as she was trying to negotiate the technical minefield of understanding here options for moving from a dial-up AOL connection to broadband. Yes, it might be straightforward to a techie, but I’ve been playing with PCs for 18 years, have a Computer Studies degree and this is my 12th year as an IT professional, yet I still needed advice from my friends on how it all works when my wife campaigned to get BT to upgrade our local telephone exchange and remove the final hurdle to our broadband access (we were one of the first ADSL-connected households after the Olney exchange was finally upgraded in the Spring of 2003).

With all this in mind, I thought I’d post some information for anyone who is trying to “get broadband”. At the time of writing, in the UK, a broadband Internet connection generally means cable (e.g. NTL/Telewest), or ADSL (from a telecommunications company like BT, usually resold through an Internet service provider – I use PlusNet and I know people who are extremely happy with both Nildram and clara.net). I don’t know much about cable broadband, but for ADSL users there is an excellent ADSL guide, including a beginners guide/how it works, availability/demand tracking information and a speed test.

Getting AOL broadband to work on a Mac: part 2

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week I blogged about my neighbour’s problems setting up his iMac G5 to use AOL broadband. Since replacing the ADSL modem with a router he is back online, but last night we spent some time sorting out a few remaining items: transferring data; installing a printer; configuring email; and working out why some web pages refuse to load in the Safari browser.

The first two items were straightforward enough (he had an external disk which was handy for the data transfer and the OS X version of the drivers for his printer were downloaded from the ‘net), but for e-mail it’s worth knowing that AOL doesn’t use port 25 for outgoing SMTP – I found an article on sending and receiving AOL e-mail via other applications, which highlights that the SMTP port is 587 (not the standard 25) and that authorisation is required.

Finally, Safari was consistently refusing to load pages from some major websites (but working for others). I had thought of installing Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS X; until Stuart recommended that I installed the OS X version of Firefox, which seemed to cure the problems with browsing.

Whatever the platform, it’s the solution that counts (problems with AOL on a Mac via ADSL)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

At the danger of being flamed by Apple Macintosh fans everywhere (please don’t) – I thought Macs were supposed to be simple.

To be honest, that’s one of the reasons I didn’t get on with my iMac in the late 90s – it was too big a shift for me as a long-time Windows user (even though I had used Macs at uni’ many years before), but that was with OS 8 or 9 (I can’t remember) and I guess, being UNIX based, that OS X will also give me a command prompt?

Anyway, a couple of nights back, my neighbour, who is very proud of his new purchase – an iMac G5 – dropped by to ask if I could help him get his Mac connected to the Internet. His Windows PC connects fine, using a BT Voyager 100 ADSL modem and AOL but when he called AOL, they said they don’t provide Macintosh support. We spent a few hours looking at this and the best advice I could find was to obtain the Mac drivers for the modem and some configuration information (as well as a phone number for AOL Mac support!) from the Mac User’s forum. Unfortunately the last post at the time of writing is just a few days old and is from someone who had a working connection that has just stopped and we couldn’t get it working either.

Fast forward a couple of days and my neighbour dropped by to say that he phoned AOL and they only support dial-up connections for Macintosh users. He also found the same anecdotal evidence I had found of people who have their Macs working with AOL broadband (but not consistently). Once glimmer of hope is that net4nowt and MacUser talk about AOL Services for Macintosh, which it seems was released on 6 May 2005 as AOL Service Assistant, allowing Macintosh users to access AOL services, although the net4nowt advice seems to be to use this on a routed connection (not direct via ADSL modem).

My neighbour is now off to buy a broadband router (probably the best solution for him anyway given that he has multiple computers now) – fingers crossed that gets him on line with the Mac.

The irony of all this is that he upgraded from Windows ME to XP and couldn’t get his broadband connection working – until I downloaded the BT voyager 100 drivers for Windows XP for him a couple of weeks back! Now his Windows PC works, but the Mac he bought in frustration doesn’t… just goes to show that it doesn’t matter what platform you use, there will usually be some complications in getting the various elements of a solution to pull together (and it seems that for broadband AOL on a Mac it just won’t work at all).

Preventing denial of service attacks on an ADSL router

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Since about April 2004, I’ve been having problems with my ADSL router at home (a Solwise SAR 110). As the hardware was just over 12 months old (and hence just out of warranty), the cynical side of me was resigned to the fact that it had just “broken”. Not wanting to lose my configuration settings through a firmware upgrade, I got used to resetting the router each day (sometimes several times a day) when it seemed to just drop off the network. Because I couldn’t access the box, I couldn’t check any logs and find out what was happening.

This all changed when I spotted a posting on my ISP’s support forum, directing me to Chris Marsh’s excellent SAR 110 and 130 Guide. Using Chris’ advice I have been able to stealth my router (as tested using the GRC Shields UP! port prober). The SAR Guide website also included interesting information on other configuration items that were not always clear from the Solwise manuals and help text.

Now that my router is no longer visible on the Internet, it seems to stay up as it did for the first year I was on ADSL (just under 13 days and counting as I write this). I can only assume that the problem was a denial of service (DoS) attack, that has now been prevented through the stealthing of the router.

Obviously, there are many types of router out there, but by following the same steps, it should be possible to stealth most ADSL routers, even if the user interface is slightly different.