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# Fault isolation

You need to take some basic steps to isolate where the problem *actually* lies.

So far, it seems that you have tried with:

 * one means of connecting to the Internet (presumably your cell phone carrier's data plan)
 * one ISP (presumably your cell phone carrier)
 * one host (your local computer)
 * one remote host
 * one transport-layer protocol (TCP/IP)
 * one application-layer protocol (SSH)
 * one client implementation (PuTTY)
 * one client operating system (presumably some version of Windows)
 * one server implementation (whatever is running on the remote host)
 * one server operating system (whatever is running on the remote host)

This is nowhere near enough to determine where the problem might lie, as *any one of these could potentially be the culprit.*

So, start thinking about how you can change these, one at a time, and see what, if any, change causes the problem to be reduced in magnitude or even go away entirely. Here are some **suggestions** for how you can approach that; this is *not* an exhaustive list.

 * Do you have any other equipment through which you can connect to the Internet? Can you perhaps try using a different phone? A tech-savvy friend, colleague, neighbor, other family member, or any of a number of other categories of people should be able to help you out with this. If this works, it's something about how you're using your phone as an access point and router.
 * Can you try to connect through a different carrier's network? (Or other local upstream provider.) This need not be the same type of upstream connection; if you typically use mobile broadband, for example, don't rule out trying on someone's free WiFi somewhere. If this works, it's likely something that the carrier does that causes your problems.
 * Can you try connecting from a different computer? Failing that, can you boot from some kind of live media (for example one of the Linux live distributions) and connect from there? If this works, it's likely something local to your system.
 * Can you try connecting to a different host over SSH? There's a fair number of places where you can get free SSH accounts with shell access on systems administered by others; the Tildeverse (try [here](https://ctrl-c.club/~gauntlet/tildes/) and [here](http://tilde.club/~pfhawkins/othertildes.html)) might be a good place to start looking. Alternatively, just spin up a cheap VPS with some other provider; [LowEndBox](https://lowendbox.com/) might be a decent place to start looking for cheap, paid options. If this works, it's likely something about the remote host's configuration.
 * Can you try a long-running connection that *isn't* SSH? For example, do you have the same problem if you connect to your ISP's SMTP server and just let it sit there after the initial SMTP `HELO` command? Are you able to download a large file (sufficiently large to take those several minutes to download) without the download being interrupted? If this works, it's likely not related to the connection duration as such.
 * Can you try using some other software? Windows provides a rudimentary telnet client that you can install and use to connect to virtually anything but which of course doesn't speak SSH, or you can try using a different SSH client. If this works, it's likely a problem with either PuTTY's SSH implementation, possibly in interaction with the specific software and settings on the remote end, or some setting within your instance or for your connection.
 * Can you try setting your SSH client to some kind of debug or verbose mode? In itself, this won't solve your problem, but there is a chance that it might help point you toward the culprit.