Sophos on Dial-Up

Due to some problems we've been having this week with our wireless Internet in one of the four buildings in our stake, we've been forced to switch to Dial-Up for MLS transactions this week in that building.

Doing so has revealed something that many may not be aware of.
I believe it's been mentioned that the Sophos AV package doesn't update over Dial-Up. However, we had a different experience this week with the Internet down.

When the computer boots Sophos checks for the presence of an Internet connection. If it doesn't find it, then there's no update. However, when MLS is brought up and a Send-Receive is executed over a Dial-Up connection, we discovered that Sophos WILL actually perform an update over the slower Dial-Up service.

If you're trying to down-load updates for MLS AND Sophos at the same time over a Dial-Up, you may as well leave for dinner and come back much later.

When this happened to us we brought up the Sophos update screen and canceled the update, allowing MLS to have a much bandwidth as possible. This at least permitted us to download the 3.2.3 update for MLS this week with a minimum of wait time.

If the MLS download takes too much time, Sophos will make another attempt at updating, so you have to keep an eye on it and cancel the Sophos download again if necessary.

Once our wireless Internet is back up this week these issues will disappear but I thought it worth mentioning here.

What I've seen before is that Sophos will attempt to update, but wasn't able to complete it before MLS closed the connection.

I don't know how, but in reviewing the stake machine, it does seem to get updated. Perhaps something gets pushed down, or some change has been made to insure that the connection stays open long enough. I don't know. But it does seem to update after a fashion.

RussellHltn wrote:What I've seen before is that Sophos will attempt to update, but wasn't able to complete it before MLS closed the connection.

I don't know how, but in reviewing the stake machine, it does seem to get updated. Perhaps something gets pushed down, or some change has been made to insure that the connection stays open long enough. I don't know. But it does seem to update after a fashion.

The fact that the connection would be terminated before Sophos finishes is certainly a valid consideration. My point was that leaving Sophos to attempt to perform an update would definitely slow down your transmission. As I was more concerned with obtaining the MLS update to 3.2.3 I didn't wish to wait for Sophos to "do its thing", so I canceled the Sophos update to speed up the MLS update.

RussellHltn wrote:What I've seen before is that Sophos will attempt to update, but wasn't able to complete it before MLS closed the connection.

Sophos will update over dial-up, given a long enough "mls send/receive" session, as you suggest, on a computer without an internet connection. And with our dial-up, and the fact the sophos might need 20 - 45 minutes to update over our slow phone line, ours would normally never be able to update.

We've learned to "trick" it on our machine. Do a standard MLS Send/receive, and if there is nothing to print, you're out of luck. MLS will close the connection and the sophos update will fail.

But, if you've got a membership transaction or other item to print during your send/receive, just don't print it...this leaves your connection open while MLS is waiting for your decision in the print dialog box, and allows sophos to keep using the connection in the background to update. When sophos finishes it's update, (after your dinner!) you can return to your computer, select your choice in the MLS print dialog, print your MLS transaction report and allow MLS to finish its "send/receive." And close the connection.

This is obviously less than ideal, but we don't all have wireless, or high speed, or a stake IT tech who knows how to fix it...How many other wards don't know their sophos won't update until they start a "send/receive," and get distracted for 45 minutes?

kisaac wrote:We've learned to "trick" it on our machine. [...]

But, if you've got a membership transaction or other item to print during your send/receive, just don't print it...this leaves your connection open while MLS is waiting for your decision in the print dialog box,

Odd. My memory of Send/Receive is that the membership printing questions happen after the connection is closed. Or at least my impression of the action is that the S/R is happening independent of the printing process.

But this certainly could explain how the stake machine gets updated as I believe they start and S/R and then go into their meetings.

RussellHltn wrote:Odd. My memory of Send/Receive is that the membership printing questions happen after the connection is closed...

But this certainly could explain how the stake machine gets updated as I believe they start and S/R and then go into their meetings.

It may be that it could require several items to download, creating a "multi-report printing" send/receive session to function this way (I can't remember, but now I'll watch and report back.) But it does work, and I now often let sophos finish updating before I answer any print dialogs during my send/receive...

Watching how our finance clerk gets distracted while working on MLS also explains why our sophos would update very sporadically before we figured this out.

RussellHltn wrote:I don't know how, but in reviewing the stake machine, it does seem to get updated. Perhaps something gets pushed down, or some change has been made to insure that the connection stays open long enough. I don't know. But it does seem to update after a fashion.

Stake downloads take longer, hence the connection is open longer, and Sophos will sometimes be able to update.

Remember that under the new and improved S/R software, the basic important items go first (finance, then membership), and MLS then asks you to start printing thing. While you are pringint all those membership records (at the ward, for example), other MLS files and updates are downloading in the background.

You can sort of see what is happening if you watch the line on the bar at the bottom of the screen during a S/R.

Our stake Sophos usually always stays updated, since we have 15 units, and the MLS part takes a while because of it.

RussellHltn wrote:in reviewing the stake machine, it does seem to get updated.

Checking the machine tonight, it seem that it's last update was 6/30/2010. It was updating, but it hasn't for awhile now.

In that case, and I do this sometimes on the PCs we have in the family history center to be sure they are all up to date (sometimes an update will fail for some weird reason and forcing it fixes it), I force the update.

I do this by right clicking the Sophos icon in the system tray (looks like a blue 'U' made of bricks) and a dropdown appears above that and one of the options is 'update now'. Click on that.

Given your last update is nearly five months back, it is going to take some time to update it. If it is as much as I think it is, it takes about 20 minutes for that much of an update to come down on a 1.5mbps DSL connection. Don't want to think about how long it may take on the dialup connections described, usually 56kbps or almost always less.

JamesAnderson wrote:. . . usually 56kbps or almost always less.

24.4 kbps in one of our buildings. And no, they don't even know that Sophos can update. [grin]

Something sounds of on the dialup speed, haven't seen any cards for nearly ten years now that are less than a 56k card when it comes to dialup modems.

Here in Provo, I'm a mile from the switch, and when I used dialup I always got usually 49.2kbps. Once I got 52kbps but that was that once.

So where is the building and what is considered the 'calling area' according to the phone book (what area is the phone local 'prefix' not area code), in the ward or stake phone number in that office? Those two bits of information will say alot about why the dialup speed is so slow if it isn't some possibly screwed up modem card.

JamesAnderson wrote:I force the update.

That's fine for a machine that has broadband, like a FHC. Not so good when it's on dial-up and MLS controls the connection. I saw it try to update, but MLS finished what it needed to do before Sophos got what it needed.

JamesAnderson wrote:Something sounds of on the dialup speed, haven't seen any cards for nearly ten years now that are less than a 56k card when it comes to dialup modems.

The card may be 56k, but the actual connection speed depends on several factors, including the modem on the other end and -- most important -- the line quality. So it's entirely possible to get a connection speed of 24k or less with a 56k modem if your line is marginal.

JamesAnderson wrote:Something sounds of[f] on the dialup speed, haven't seen any cards for nearly ten years now that are less than a 56k card when it comes to dialup modems.

The building is almost six miles from the central office. The phone company proudly declared to the person in charge of communications for the Church that the line is a 12.2kbps line, and that we were getting twice what we paid for. They billed the Church for coming out to troubleshoot the line and finding nothing wrong.

The modem is a 56k card. But MLS was timing out before it stepped down to the 24.4kbps that usually worked, and we did not connect with CHQ to transmit a financial batch for six weeks before the problem was finally resolved.

With the blessing of CHQ, we reset the modem to start at 39k and work down from there. Connections have been nearly 100%, albeit slow, since.

I suppose we could save a few seconds each week by reseting the modem to immediately connect at 24.4kbps. [grin]

The line has never connected faster than that. We could get a better line by making a dishonest request to the phone company. We made a specific determination, in conjunction with CHQ, not to do that.