Gateway said, "Too bad your house can't make use of our
superior modem." I said, "Not so fast. Your modem is not superior

The only thing that would make the Gateway integrated modem superior is that
it's connected directly to the southgate on the motherboard through a local bus
as opposed to working through a PCI bus, USB port, or a parallel port.

Other than that, I'm willing to bet it's a softmodem with a cruddy chipset,
like a PCTel or a Motorola or an Intel, and running with a sloppy set of
drivers.

The tech turned me over to a
manager who agreed to pay for an external modem. I kept the computer.

I have used the external modem ever since.

Good choice. All external modems are going to be hardware-based, at least for
the parallel port variety.


I did a modem noise check of my phone lines (in my new home) several months
ago.
It was somewhat high but then things settled down and I wasn't getting
disconnected. Now the problem has returned.

Call the phone company and have them correct the problem. They may perform a
test and say that it's okay, but tell them that this is for a computer modem
and while the line may be suitable for regular conversation, it is apparently
too noisy and, therefore, unacceptable for use with a modem.

You're paying for their services, so make them deliver you that service in the
best way possible.

What I probably should do to troubleshoot further is graph disconnects per
day
vs. weather trends. Also, maybe I'll try the internal modem.

If the problem is with the phone line, switching to an internal modem won't
help. All it will do is take one less object off your desk and free up one
plug outlet.

If you are using a parallel port connection, make sure that your BIOS is set to
allow two-way parallel port communication and that your cable is also suitable
for that purpose.

If you are using a USB modem, make sure that you have the most up to date
drivers for your USB controller and that it supports the USB mode that the
modem requires. If your modem requires USB 2.0, then your USB port and cabling
must support USB 2.0 and your BIOS must be set to allow this mode of
communication, if available.

Make sure that your modem does not have problems with using system resources,
such as I/O addresses and interrupt requests. A modem will be assigned a COM
port which means that resources associated with that COM port should be used by
the modem only. Your modem is most likely plug-n-play so it will be assigned
the necessary resources by your operating system automatically, but resource
conflicts can still occur.

Make sure your ISP software is configured to use your modem properly.

Other things you could try is to use a different telephone cord that is the
shortest possible for your needs. Also, be sure that the connection is as
direct to the phone line as possible. You can get away with running it through
one surge suppressor, though. Don't use RF-based plug-in phone jack
extensions, particularly those that are not clearly labeled as intended for use
with data communications. - Reinhart