Help for an old codger please.

Krafty

Hi, My Dad's in his 80th year and whilst he does use the internet occasionalyy (mainly for holiday bookings/research) he can neither afford nor justify getting Broadband.

The result is he has a BT phone line with 56k dial up.

What "actual" dial up speeds should he be expecting from this line?

Whenever he dials in he gets somewhere between 28k and 31.2k.

Is this acceptable? Should I be taking on BT on his behalf to get a better speed?

Thanks in anticipation.

oldagetraveller

i can only tell you what I get with 56k modem on dial up. I live in a rural area, about 3 miles from the exchange and consistently get 45 -46k. On my old pc I was getting 48k. My daughter, in Liverpool gets 52k but this is through a "cable" line (Telewest or whatever they're now called!). Can only assume it depends on quality of 'phone line and maybe distance from exchange? Or even maybe the actual modem? It doesn't seem to make any difference whether I use the BT master socket or an extension 3 away from that.
If it were me I'd definitely ask BT though because that seems unacceptable.

espresso

Krafty wrote:

Whenever he dials in he gets somewhere between 28k and 31.2k.

Assuming that the modem in use is capable of 56kbps i.e. V90 standard, when speeds are consistently that slow, it is often due to having DACS on the line. See here for more information on DACS.

superjaggybunnet

If he only uses it occasionally why not just get rid of it and use the local library any time he needs to.

Saves money and they will have a faster connection that he can use and do what has always taken ages on his dial up in a fraction of the time.