Connection to ISP Stalls

["Christopher J. Booth" <cbooth aixx net>]

Hi, All:

I have a new PC running Red Hat 6.1. I have a dialup connection to a New
York City-based ISP, that I am accessing from New Jersey via local access
numbers. I am able to dial in and connect using wvdial, and I am able to
connect to my ISP. I can download emails, read news, and surf; the problem
is that these things stall after a time. I am not always able to download
all of my emails before the stall happens, and the same thing happens when
I try to surf the Web or read news--usually quite soon.

I have swapped in a second modem, and have the same problem. Neither
modem is a Winmodem.

Though the transaction with the news and mail servers stalls, as does
pinging my ISP's servers, I am able to continue to ping the host at the
dial-up access number afterward, and I don't get hung up on. My access to
the Internet or to my ISP's hosts stalls.

Redialing works, but it is subject to the same tenuous connection. For
example, last night I had about 80 emails to download, and it took me five
or six dial-ins to get them all. (Some of them are quite large--I get
digests of a couple of newsgroups--and the connection will usually stall
on them.)

Windows 98 connects without a problem, and stays connected without
stalling. I also have Caldera 2.3 on a second hard drive, and it too stays
connected without a hitch.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to what my problem might be and how to
fix it?

Christopher J. Booth
cbooth aixx net