An occasional disconnect is inevitable unless you live in an area with perfect phone lines. If you experience frequent disconnects, checking this list will almost always help.  

1.  The Most Frequent Causes of Disconnects:

A.   Call Waiting

Disable call waiting if you have it.  Add *70, to the phone number in Trumpet Winsock, or in Dialup Networking if you use Windows 95 or 98.

B.   Noisy Phone Lines.

Telephone lines were originally designed for voice communications.  They are quite adequate for that purpose, but for data transfers,  much less so. The phone company will ALWAYS say the line is good,  regardless of the real situation.  If the noise is audible, that is proof of a noisy phone line, and the phone company must fix that.   If it is inaudible noise, there is little you can do except improve the quality of your modem.

C.  Bad Modem

A bad or poor quality modem is often the culprit.  A high quality modem will usually help your connection. The best modem we know of is the US Robotics Courier. This modem has solved many line-related  problems.   Normally, a mid-priced modem is adequate, but if you are having chronic disconnect problems, the high quality modem will often fix it.

D.   Noisy Premises Wiring and Other Devices Connected to your Phone Line.

Devices such as FAX machines, telephones, and answering machines frequently cause connection problems. Try disconnecting any devices to see if it helps the problem. You may want to connect these devices to the "phone" jack on your modem, or get a "Teleprotector"  from Radio Shack. Either of these solutions will disconnect these devices while the modem is being used.  Check all wiring for loose wires,  wiring runs that are no longer in use, or that are cut and unused.   Tighten  the terminal screws on all connecting blocks and outside terminals.

E.  Phone line noise caused by bad weather.

F.  FAX Programs or other telephony applications running

Try closing down all FAX and telephony applications in Windows, then retry your connection.

G.  20 Minute Idle Time-Out.   

If you don't transfer any data over the phone line for 20 minutes,  your connection will terminate due to idle-timeout programming.   Any transfer of data restarts the 20 minute period. This is necessary for conservation of Internet resources.

H.   Modem incompatibilities.

Try using the dial-up number: 477-4141.