Posts Tagged ‘modem’

Change a Dialup Connection to 10 digit dialing. Hi Saskatchewan!

Monday, May 13th, 2013

My out of the blue problem today was resolving a dialup issue for a store in Saskatoon. Yes – we do support a few people using old fashioned analog modem connections.

Everything seemed normal, the phone cord connections, the modem was picking up the line, the ISP’s dialup number was answering if dialed on a cell phone, and it was entered correctly in the dialup settings… it was a puzzle. The on-screen error in Windows was a fairly generic 676.

Until the local contact mentioned that Saskatchewan just added a second area codes. The original area code 306 and the new 639. This has required mandatory 10 digit dialing – 10 digit dialing was optional for a year, but as of May 11, it’s mandatory.

The easy way to dial 10 digits in Windows XP is to shim the area code into the phone number box where there used to be just the 7 digits.

The “proper” way to make this change is to go to the dialup connection properties. Select “Use Dialing Rules”. Open the “Dialing Rules” window. Edit your location. Under “Area Code Rules”, add a new rule for area code 306 (for Saskatchewan) and set a new rule for all prefixes to “Include the area code”. Save everything and try it.

Getting the IP Address of a Dialup Modem User

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

Here are a few borrowed screenshots  to illustrate how to get the IP address of a dialup modem user in Windows XP. Yes, believe it or not I do run into dialup connection support once in a while. This is particularly tough to troubleshoot since I don’t have any dial up connections configured on my laptop – I don’t even have a landline at home!

Note: If the user has access to a web browser, visiting a website such as WhatIsMyIP.com is probably easier.

When the dialup modem connection to the user’s ISP has been established, the “two overlapping computers” icon is added near the time at the lower right of the screen.

Right click on it to open a pop up dialog.

XP Dialup Modem Icon

 

Left click on Status.

That opens this window, with the General tab selected.

 

Left click on the Details tab.

The user’s IP address is Client IP address, of course, if you’re reading this, you probably know enough to have guessed that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images modified from:

 

Phew, first blog post in months. It’s crazy how time flies when there’s a lot going on.