[Atomic-S (OP)]

In recent weeks or months, I have increasingly been unable to get through to Web sites except briefly. A few pages are contacted, but then the connection just stops. I reinstalled the software and it still does it. The problem seems to be time-dependent, with the worst connectivity being probably late afternoon and into the evening, and things get significantly better after around 11 PM. (Located in Arizona.) My assumption therefore is that the problem is my system, but the network and/or my service. But not everyone, I assume, has these problems. Suspecting that the level of monthy  payments for Internet service may have something to do with it, I consulted the information available about my ISP, but could find only this: An upgrade of service would buy faster data transfer, but nothing was said whether this would buy more data transfer (the number of Web pages that could be accessed in one continuous session before connectivity is cut off).  Another curious fact is that the severity of the problem seems to depend upon what web site I am trying to reacy. For example, to reach The Naked Scientists I have less of a problem than to reach my hosting provider. (I have been setting up a Web sits with a separate hosting company. The access to this is extraordinarly bad, again, it seeming to have to do with the time of day. My hosting plan is one of the cheaper ones. If I upgrade to a more expensive one, the hosting company says that it will increase the storage capacity on the site, and the number of megabytes that can be transferred into it per month, but does not say that it will improve the ability to make contact in the first place, either for myself or for viewers.)

Does anyone know anything about this, how to improve the reliability and performance of the actual data transfer process at reasonable hours?

[Madidus_Scientia]

You may have a poor quality router or modem, I had a cheap one which gave me grief. Other than that all I can suggest is try a different isp and see if that fixes it. What kind of internet do you have?

[graham.d]

No, the problem is almost certainly that there is not sufficient bandwidth being allocated to your service provider by BT at the exchange. You need to complain to your service provider but I'm afraid that some may not be responsive as it may mean they have to then pay more to BT. That is if you can even get through to the right person to complain to. A friend had this problem with Tiscali to the extent that he could not even get Google after 7-30pm and could not get through to anyone at Tiscali to speak to about it. He dumped them in the end and went with BT directly though I would not recommend them either as they are too expensive. You need to look at "contention ratio" as well as downlink speed.

[Atomic-S (OP)]

What kind of internet do you have?

Basic paid level of Juno, througgh a dial up modem.

You need to look at "contention ratio"

Whatever that is. I do not recall having seen it mentioned in any ISP sales material.

[graham.d]

Sorry Atomic-S, I did not spot you were located in Arizona so references to BT do not apply. For contention ratio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contention_ratio

but then I also noted you say are on a dial-up connection rather than broadband. This will be slow anyway so I am not so sure you would notice it dropping even more because lots of users were sharing bandwidth. However, looking at the bad press that Juno seems to get it may well be that they have cut costs to less than what would be considered a minimum.

I suggest you speak to them to explaine the problem and ask how to get it improved. There may be a higher price-band service that will reduce the problem and at least if they think you are willing pay more you may get some actual technical help. Sorry to be cynical about these guys, but there are lot of bad companies in this business.

[techmind]

While your problem does sound like "contention ratio" (too many people fighting over too-limited data capacity), it's worth checking that your phone line is in good working order. Listen on the telephone to make sure there is no hiss or crackles, which will slow your data throughput to a crawl (both dialup and ADSL broadband). Sometimes you can get poor connections and/or water-ingress somewhere - this can give bad-throughput which is weather-dependent, or conceivably time-of-day dependent (if you're getting condensation forming at the fault when the sun sets or something). Sometimes the phone company have the ability to do a self-test on your line - it's worth trying that.