Verizon Phone and Verizon DSL Problems

[Mjallen1308]

Does anyone have Verizon DSL or Verizon Phone Service?

Have any of you had any of the problems with it. I question because, my cousin has Verizon DSL and he uses it on his PlayStation 2 and the connection continually keeps dropping. I also notice that while surfing on his computer, the connection is really slow and drops sometimes. About a year ago, I tried Verizon hoping that I could ditch Comcast, but I had to ditch Verizon because my connection dropped at least 10 times every hour. Also, some sites like yahoo mail, launch.com, msn mail and aol mail, etc did not load at all. I couldn't log onto my mail, and when it did, the conection dropped. Personally, I think my dial-up was faster than the DSL. Anyhow, I've been urging my cousin to switch to Comcast, but to no avail. Anyway, does anyone have any idea on how I could stop some of the connection dropping?

Also, for those who have Verizon phone service: Have any of you ever noticed an absurd charge on your bill detailing a call to England totaling anywhere from $50 to $175, and even more. I just wanted to know, because I noticed it on my bill and I've never called outside the US...

[casecutter]

Re: Verizon Phone and Verizon DSL Problems

Never make international phone calls without a good international long distance plan. I live in Canada and a friend of mine made a 30 minute call to me in Canada to the tune of $50 because he had no international long distance plan. Very bad idea. If you make more than 1 call a month internationally, the plan pays for itself easily.

As for DSL, sounds like the router is not either not setup properly, or possibly the firmware needs updating on the modem. He really needs to call Verizon and talk to someone about his issue. They usually help configue things when it is not working properly.

[Bobby74213]

Re: Verizon Phone and Verizon DSL Problems

I think I mentioned this in another post. But anyway... Slow connections and the inability to check e-mail or access secure sites is a direct result of the MTU being set too high.

If you have Verizon, chances are you have a Westel modem. If that Westel modem is not in bridge mode, your router is set to Dynamic (also called DHCP). Router's set to Dynamic tend to think they are using a cable connection, so the MTU is automatically set to 1500, which is usually too high.

Most DSL connections use an MTU of 1492, but sometimes you must go as low as 1472 or even 1452.

Finding your max can be somewhat complicated but this site explains it fairly well:

http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=156

Of course, if you don't have a router then none of this will help you.

[Mjallen1308]

Re: Verizon Phone and Verizon DSL Problems

Well, I've never made an international phone call. It was false charge on my bill that was very high, I believe it was $75, and I was concerned (since at the time we were using dial-up) that maybe my mom had downloaded a dialer progrm because my cousin, the same one who is having the PS2 problems, purposely wanted to look up some porn. Downloaded this dialer and was dialing to Africa, which he didn't know until the phone bill came in and was $795. I don't worry about it now, because we all use Comcast High Speed Internet and not dial-up.

Thanks for the tips you guys. Yes he does have a Westell Modem/Router/Wireless, etc. I will go to my cousins house and check on the settings and I'll report back. When we had verizon, we plugged directly into the modem and it still went extremely slow and dropped connections. (On a side note, they sent us the wrong modem also. They were supposed to give us the one with the wireless, the *******s!)