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General discussion

ADSL 'on demand' access

by oisin Feb 12, 2006 12:37AM PST

Hi, does anyone know what 'on demand' access means in the context of an ADSL connection. I have recently moved from a wireline ADSL/router to a wireless one. Every couple of days or so I will try to surf the web but will get a standard, 'website cannot be contacted', error from my browser. When I go to the configuration page for the router the Connection status is listed as 'On Demand' instead of 'Connected'. From the very limited documentation supplied with the router it seems that my WAN connection can be set for 'Always on' or 'Access on Demand'. According to the manual when in 'Access on Demand' mode the router should re-establish the ADSL connection when packets are sent, which I presume should happen when I try to access a website. Obviously something is going wrong as it does not re-connect until I reset the router. So I have found the setting on the router which allows you to choose between 'Always on' and Access on Demand so I could change this setting and presumably solve my problem. I don't want to do this however until I understand what the purpose of both of these settings is. Why on earth would you want to set an inherently 'always on' technology (ADSL) in 'Access on Demand' mode? What is the purpose of this mode? Does it provide some advantage that I would loose by switching to 'Always on' mode.

Thanks,

Oisin.

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ADSL is not always-on

by kschang Feb 12, 2006 12:19PM PST

In fact, most don't keep it always on. I certainly don't, until I got the router. I don't need hackers seeing my machine on the net. Even now it's set to "on-demand".