nikhibuk

Athlon 2100+
Geforce 4 Graphics card
512MB ram
NForce2 Mobo
40 gig HD

Hi guys, hope someone can help me out.

Ive' had AOL Broadband for about a year now. I havn't had any serious problems until the last 3 weeks or so.

My problem is that AOL stops responding under load. If I'm simply using it to browse it runs fine however if I load up Kazzaa and start downloading files, after a while my download rate goes to zero and if I attempt to access a page nothing happens. This could happen after 30 mins or 3 hours.

I try to close AOL and it says "AOL is not responding" and I have to do it via the task bar. Additionally once this happens AOL refuses to load up again until I reboot my system, and the system will not shut down properly, it just goes to the signing out screen and stays there.

Ive formatted the drive and done 2 fresh windows installs using AOL 7, 8 and 9 but it makes no difference.

Iv'e rung AOL and tried a few things which were unsuccesful, Ive also contacted BT and had a test done one my line, but there's nothing wrong with it.

My drive is partitioned into 2 sections, I keep all my downloads on partition 2 and have not formatted that, could it be a virus that is on the other partition?

As I stated this is only a recent problem.

Sorry bout the essay but any advise would be most appreciated. Thanks.

Nik

NikeAero1080

I've had similar problems. It's my belief that what's happening is AOL is taking the majority of your connection. When you run Kazaa, and then surf the net, Kazaa has priority over you IP. AOL, by design, does the same. Eventually you max out your speed and it all goes down hill from there. My advice, use Kazza when you aren't on AOL.

__________________
- Chris
c.vargo@usa.net
www.totalmindblow.com

Fure6

Do you have to be logged onto AOL to connect to the modem? I have gotten cable internet with the cable company, but not through AOL. With my modem it was always logged on.

NikeAero1080

AOL Broadband is just another version of AOL. It allows you to connect to their service at a higher rate. Your cable modem is always connected to the internet. You can use the internet, email, and instant messenger w/o AOL.

__________________
- Chris
c.vargo@usa.net
www.totalmindblow.com

nikhibuk

Thanks guys

I have to use AOL to connect to the net. Once it's open I always minimise it and open kazzaa if I'm downloading, unless I'm using Bit torrent sites.

This is a strange problem, I think it may be linked to another problem I had where when playing online games my pings would one day be around the 30 - 40 mark, the next day they would go to around 500 for the same server's I had been using previously. It would stay like this for about a week before going back to normal.

Ive' currently been downloading for over 4 hours without incident so I don't know if the problem has fixed itself or not. I'm starting to think it may be the internal phone wiring in my house.

nikhibuk

Grrrr it's happening again now. After downloading from around 8:45 last night till 4:00 this afternoon I was hopeful the problem had gone away. I reset my connection and have now been cut off 3 times within the space of 2 hours when downloading. I have rung AOL again and tried even more stuff, here is a list to date of what I have tried:-

1) Changed filters and disconnected everything else from every phone socket in the house.

2) Installed 3 different versions of AOL and formatted the hard drive twice.

3) Had my phone line checked by BT.

4) Performed various tasks suggested by AOL which were never going to make any difference.

5) Run fault checks on my modem and AOL.

6) Run spybot to check for crap.

7) Threatened to beat my computer.

Aside from my next move which is to try a new ISP I can't think of anything else. I don't believe that it is an AOL problem though as it is only recent.

NikeAero1080

I thought you said that you used AOL Broadband....if that's the case, you don't need it open. Your modem is always connected to the net.

__________________
- Chris
c.vargo@usa.net
www.totalmindblow.com

nikhibuk

I'm confused.

I do have AOL Broadband but it isn't always connected to the net as I have to sign in, I think you can set it to connect automatically but I don't.

Once it loads up though you can either use it as your browser or minimise it and use IE. Or so I thought.

If there is some way of just using it connect I would love to know as it is a major strain on system resources.

skull

I have the exact same problem, I use bt broadband and for about 10 months have been using bittorrent to downloads many Gb's a month at great speeds, but for the last few weeks (getting worse now) I have been losing my downstream. Watching my BitTorrent client i see my DL rate go all the way from 100 Kb/s to 0 kbs then i lose all my connections to my peers. Going into IE explorer confirms that there is no download as google is not displayed. Although it still seems to be connected as the two monitors icon is still there. clicking on this shows that there is still upload activity. The only solution to this is pulling the modem in and out and reconnecting. Note I can browse all day with no problems, i can also download through IE explorer perfectly well. I thought that maybe I had been downloading too much (60Gb a month) and that BT had capped my connection but my contract for 1Mb says that it is unlimted.

So heres what i think it may be, I can download and browse as much as I want through IE explorer running on port 80 - but cant using P2p aps like bittorrent and kazaa as these use different ports i.e Bittorrent 6881-6889 what i think BT may be doing is stopping you using these ports for your downloads, this is the only thing i can think off. But if this affected the whole country then why wouldnt forums be full of this type of problem? The only reason i think this could be is they are targetting big downloaders because i really rip the pish out of it sometimes. I have also had a warning from ABuse@bt.com for being part of Bittorrent download chain.

If this is the case then maybe we could try to configure our p2p apps to use a port other than the default(which i am now testing). I was going to try all the things you tried to fix it but now i feel there is no point as these two problems are obviously related.


Do you download a lot?
Have you had a warning from BT or AOL?
Have you fixed the problem? If so please tell.

PS Forgot to add I usually used the bt voyager modem but got a router off a friend and the problem still persists.

skull

Right, I downloaded the Azareuse BT client and configured the port to 23089 I have no been downloading 21 hours which is a record lately considering I would lose my DL at random times usually not more than a couple of hours. So the porblem seems to be at BritishT's end, where they are probably throttling known ports for P2P which is common amongst ISP's. Although I think they are only doing this to consistent big downloaders. Anyway problem solved for now. Will keep you posted.