On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 06:11:46PM -0700, Darrell Bellerive wrote:
> I will soon be moving into a house in the rural country. Nice place
> except no ADSL or cable Internet services. Until I can get a wireless link
> going, I will be forced to use dial-up Internet access. Residents in the
> area report speeds of 26,000 bps are the norm.
Ouch, 26k. Make sure you have the telephone company condition the line for
internet-- that's what's been done for the line I use for a data line, and I
get 52-53 K vs. 26-32 on the unconditioned line.
> I will be using a 3COM/US Robotics external Courier modem (model #
> 3CP3453) connected to a serial port to hopefully get a reliable link.
Good modem-- I have that model or one similar to it, and it's served me well
for 3 years now. :)
> Can anyone share some tips, tricks, or favorite applications to increase
> the useability of a dial-up Internet connection?
>
> My Internet needs are very simple: email, web cerfing, and keeping my Debian
> stable system up to date.
As others have said, fetchmail is handy (I use fetchmail with
postfix/procmail/spamassassin for delivery and spam filtering, but that's
not entirely necessary-- fetchmail can just use procmail to deliver,
iirc.), update/upgrade overnight (I'd recommend keeping the system running
Sarge-- less updates that way), and set pppd to use autoreconnect. If your
bandwidth is really low, (and if you don't always need to see graphics on
webpages) a text browser (lynx, links, etc.) loads faster than
mozilla/firebird/etc.
One thing people have told me (which I haven't tried yet, so I can't give a
firsthand opinion on) is to run a proxy because pages that you go to often
load faster. As I said, I haven't used any, so I can't give a recommendation.
That's all I can think of for now. HTH.
--
Vikki Roemer Homepage: http://neuromancer.homelinux.com/
Registered Linux user #280021 http://counter.li.org/
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