🚀 go-pugleaf

I have a problem of which I can't figure out the source: my modem,
or Merit/Michnet.  I call from the Detroit area, using
the Merit phone lines, to a computer (this one)
at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  
Well, lately my modem has been freezing up after awhile (like 10 minutes
into operation).  It doesn't freeze permanently, just stops sending
my keystrokes to the remote machine for about 15 seconds.  It stops
accepting input from the PC too, and my keyboard buffer fills up.
That is, none of the keys on my keyboard, including the scroll keys, work,
and after about 12 keystrokes my keyboard buffer fills up and starts
beeping whenever I strike a key (it's my PC's "keyboard buffer full" beep,
not the remote machine's beep).  Then, after a 15 second wait, I hear
a strange beep, the PC and modem unfreeze, and all the characters in
my keyboard buffer get played out (the local scroll keys I've hit scroll
the screen up and down, those keys that would send characters to the modem get sent, etc.)
It should be noted that my screen scrolling has nothing to do with the
remote machine (I'm just dialed in with Kermit v. 3.01 as my terminal
program), so what's really happening is my PC freezes up waiting for
my modem.
In the worst cases, which seem to be happening more and more, the first
character I type after my modem unfreezes just freezes it again, and I
am limited to typing no more than my keyboard buffer will hold for the
next 15 seconds.  So the worst cases look like this:
<Screen freezes>  <I go on typing until the keyboard buffer is full>
<I wait another 10 seconds> <Screen unfreezes>  <First character I
type freezes it again> <I continue typing to the keyboard buffer limit>
<I wait another 10 seconds> <Screen unfreezes> ad nauseam.
I think it's a combination of some weird thing Merit's connections do
and my modem.
Which leads me to:  does anyone else get infuriated trying to access
U of M--Ann Arbor computers over Merit from the Detroit area?  It's
so incredibly slow and lagging sometimes it's ridiculous.  Just
to get this advice tonight I'm making a call direct to the Merit
connection in Ann Arbor.  This connection is fine--is there some
sort of 1 kilobyte per second gateway between Detroit and Ann Arbor
through which all of Merit's information must pass?
Thanks for any advice you can give me.

Brad

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Brad Baillod						baillod@eecs.umich.edu