A little known trick will tell you about the condition of your connection. Open your Huawei SmartAX MT882 modem setting by typing 192.168.1.1 in your browser. Log in using “admin” (without the quotes) as username and password. On the page that opens, check your ADSL status for SNR and Attenuation.

If the link does not open, change your LAN IP to 192.168.1.100 and subnet mask to 255.255.255.0. This is done by going to Start—Network Connections. Right click on the icon for Local Area Connection and select Properties. Next, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click on Properties.

SNR signifies signal-to-noise ratio. It is a measure of how good your data signal is. The higher your values, the better off you are. Typical values are in the range of 31 decibel (dB) downstream and 21 dB upstream. If your SNR ratio is too low and drops below 6, it means you have a problem. Attenuation measures the loss of signal on your line. This usually rises the further you are from your local exchange. So here, the lower the value, the better off you are. If the signal attenuates too much, it becomes unintelligible and will result in network errors. It should never be more than 60-65 dB. Good values are around 18 downstream and 9 upstream.

Armed with this data you can confront your service provider.

Sometimes you may need to change your computer’s settings to take advantage of your broadband. Go to www.dslreports/tweaks and run the test there. Follow the guide and you will be offered a series of recommendations if your computer is not properly configured for broadband. A small utility called DrTCP will help you make the recommended changes. It is basically an easy way to edit your registry. But before that take a backup of the registry.

Error Message
Often people complain that though they are connected to the Net, web pages fail to open, and all they get is the ubiquitious error message: “The page cannot be displayed”. This usually occurs when the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) stack has been corrupted. To recover from this in Windows XP Service Pack 2, go to Start—Run and type ‘netsh winsock reset’ and press Enter. Restart the computer after you run this command. Reinstall your anti virus programme and firewall if they do not work properly even after you have run this command.

If this does not work or if you do not have Service Pack 2, uninstall TCP/IP manually by editing the registry. Click Start—Run and type regedit and then click OK. In Registry Editor, take a backup of the registry by going to File—Export. Under Export Range, select All. Save the file on your Desktop where you can find it easily.

Now go to the following keys and right click each key, and then click Delete:

KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock2.

After this you must restart your machine or else the next step where you will need to reinstall TCP/IP will not work properly.

Go to Start—Settings—Network Connections and right click the local area connection, and then click Properties and do the following:

Click Install. Click Protocol, and then click Add. Click Have Disk. Type C:\Windows\inf, and then click OK. On the list of available protocols, click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then OK. Now restart your computer.

These few tips should help you reduce any problem you are having with your broadband. However, there are those Internet security suites like Kaspersky which are difficult to use and you must be extra careful while reading every bit of instruction that appears on your screen during any usage.

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