• I can't maintain a connection for very long. Is there something wrong with CamasNet's modems or routers?
  No. We have exhaustively tested this system. We here at CamasNet often maintain a solid connection for days at a time using the same dial up that our customers use. The most frequent causes of poor connections that we have been able to document to date are:
  1. poor phone line quality in your area
  2. an incorrect setting on your computer software.
  However, no one can maintain a PPP connection indefinitely. CamasNet cannot be held responsible for poor phone connections to your home or office, glitches in the power in your area, or for lightning stikes which cause various interruptions. When you dial into one of our sites, there can be as many as 30 different connections your signal will travel through between your computer and our equipment. If you live out in a rural area where the phone service is mostly neglected then you can expect an occasional disconnect due to noise or corrosion on the connections. Connections can be lost on any system for various reasons. Even with high quality phone service. When this happens, just reconnect!

• Some one has told me that my phone line may be bad. How can I tell about this and how can I improve the quality of my local phone lines?
  One easy way to tell if your phone line is bad is to listen for noise on the line when you are talking to someone over the phone. If you have any noise call your local phone company. They are supposed to deliver a certain minimum level of service. Demand nothing less than noise-free 28.8k. We have encountered lines in this region that support only 2400 baud. Also, if the line that is feeding your computer was installed more than 10 years ago you might want to run a new line from your outside phone box (where US West connects to your house) to where your computer plugs into it. Any corosion on the line connections is a potential for problems. The faster the modem you use, the more sensitive it is to noise. Also if you notice that you have more trouble when it is raining, make sure you report that to your phone Company.

• I heard that Win98 has problems with certain modems. Is there anything to that rumor?
  If you are running a USR modem with the X2 technology and have recently upgraded to Win98 you could be having moderate to severe problems with your connections due to incompatibility bugs in the Win98 software. At this time there does not seem to be a patch for that problem. If you are running a new V.90 USR modem you should not see that problem. If you are running a USR Modem of the X2 variety and were wondering about upgrading to Win98 you might want to hold off until a patch is available.

• Some of my friends tell me that they reply to my email but they get a delivery error of "Local configuration error". What's going on?
  Your settings are incorrect on your POP email program on your home or office computer. Make sure that your mail host is listed as camasnet.com (check your spelling) and your return address is correctly entered. Always put your e-mail address in for your return address. If you try to put your real name or nick name in for your return address any replies will get lost in the system instead of coming to you.

• My friends tell me they send me e-mail but I never seem to get it. Is CamasNET having problems with it's mail server?
  A common problem with lost e-mail from friends is that they mispelled our domain name. Quite often people will send an e-mail with an improper return address and the server simply will not send it because it does not recognize the sender as a valid user of the system.
• Can a hacker get into my home computer and do any damage?
  We continue to take strikes from time to time from potential hackers, but we are doing all we can to ensure that CamasNet is secure. The best way YOU can help us keep this sytem secure is to not give out your userid and password to anyone. There are some bugs now being exploited in certain newer versions of software on the market. It is a pretty good idea to not store personal information on your hard drive for this reason. Keep personal information on floppy disc or on something like a Zip disc.

• I am having terrible problems staying connected to internet connections that require non-interupted steady streaming of information, and I have been monitoring my CamasNET connection and have found that every few minutes it just stops and I get disconnected from the net link (not from CamasNET) just to the system I am connected to. CamasNET just seems to stall just long enough to break the stream of info I am getting to disconnect me from the server I am talking to.
  When you are downloading a file or web pages from the internet your down load speed depends on a couple of things; Your connect speed (on your connection to us, but this is the smallest issue in the bunch), the available bandwidth on the path your are using to get to your file, and how busy the server is that you are downloading from. If you are downloading from a server that is overly busy and it is connected to a 56K circuit to feed into the Internet, you can expect to find multiple delays in your download due to packets of information getting lost enroute to your computer. In a situation like I just described even if you have a 56K modem and connected to one of our 56K modem you may not reach more than a couple of hunderd bytes per second on your download, and CamasNet would not have anything to do with the dismal speed!

• How come when I log on to get my mail I get disconnected before I can reply to my messages when I have only been on for about 20 minutes?
  We have set up our our equipment to monitor the traffic through our modems. If your connection has been idle for 20 minutes (while you were composing your reply message perhaps) with no traffic passing through it our equipment will drop your connection to give someone else a chance to use the system. For more information on that issue please see our policy pages .

• I have heard that there are computer viruses that can be transmitted through e-mail. How do I protect myself against them?
  While there are viruses that can be transmitted through e-mail, there is one very important thing to remember: Any virus has to come as an attachment and cannot be activated by merely reading your e-mail! If you find an email in your inbox from someone you don't know and it has an attachment, just delete it before you read it. If you open the attachment, you turn the virus loose to do it's job on your system. CamasNet is in no way responsible for any viruses you pick up from using the Internet. For up to date information on all the known e-mail viruses take a look at http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html or http://www.kumite.com/myths/

Visit this page often. It will be updated as new problems arise and solutions found. Have a new problem? Send e-mail to our helpdesk at helpdesk@camasnet.com. If there are any bad links we want to know about them!