Woo Hoo I just got broadband at home! (1 Viewer)

[Howard Williams]

I live between San Diego and Los Angeles. 2 huge cities. There still remains no form of high speed internet access to my home. None. No cable-modem, no DSL. Not even DirecTV service. I don't consider ISDN to be high speed. Yet 4 miles away, all types of service are readily available. I have been trying to get some sort of high speed connection for more than 6 years. For the first 4 years all I ever heard was "It's coming". The last 2 years it's been "Nothing is scheduled for your area". I have pretty much given up. It's not like I live on the moon or something. Well actually, it's just like that.

ARGHHHH!!!!

 

[Carlo_M]

WHOA!!!
2wire must have recently changed the way they test! I used to get between 1200-2000kbps at home and at work, but now my work PC keeps getting back a result of 4300-5900!
Will have to try at home when I get there...after the Laker game that is.

 

[Jack Briggs]

May I join in here?
I just signed up for DSL. The box with the necessary goodies should arrive via UPS in a few days. Using 56k/dial-up on my loaner iMac and on my now-dormant personal iMac consumed most of my memory. And I got so sick of my connection timing out right when I'm in the middle of writing an eloquent post for Home Theater Forum.
Without arousing any partisan emotions here, what are the advantages and disadvantages of DSL as compared with broadband cable modem?
And, Kyle, if you think your thread has been hijacked, please report me to the HTF administration.

 

[Richard Travale]

Welcome to the club Kyle. The only thing wrong with having a broadband connection is that you will never, I repeat Never be able to go back to a slow connection.

 

[Kyle]

I can already tell I won't go back to regular dialup! I'll have to check those tweak sites after work. Ha don't worry about it. This is the most replies I have ever had off of a post.
I'll post my results after I hit the tweak sites.

 

[Peter Burtch]

Hi Jack,
It's sort of a loaded question. IMO the biggest disadvantage of DSL is having to deal with the phone company from the get-go since they are the ones who provision the 'pair' & owns the wires to your home. When I tried to obtain DSL service last year it was clear to me that SBC/Ameritech was not in good faith doing what they were supposed to do. Telocity pointed the finger at Ameritech and vice versa. They would simply not show up for the scheduled install appointments(!) The other disadvantage is you need to be within 18,000 feet of the CO (phone company building) to get 'normal' DSL service since it degrades with distance. Cable does not have this limitation. So with the DSL/phone guys ignoring me, I quickly signed up for AT&T Broadband, which was up and running in less than one week. I was blown away by how much easier this was for me versus DSL hell .
If you are a huge online gaming aficionado it is possible to purchase ($$$) types of DSL service which will give you very quick upload speeds (i.e. low ping times). In many areas (including my own) the cable internet service upload speed is 'capped' around 128kbs. Since I am not a gamer, I do not care. My download speeds hover around 1.5MBs, so that's what counts . DSL for approx. the same price (~$45) in my area has the same upload cap, so I don't feel like I am missing much. There is a whole lot of great information on broadband internet at DSL reports:
http://dslreports.com
It's basically where I researched the whole process. There is a whole lot of misinformation regarding which is better. It depends on your usage and where you live for the most part. I don't have any of the download/service problems that other folks seem to constantly be reporting to the forums at dslreports.com. But my next door neighbor where I used to live had his DSL in 2 weeks ;O. Go figure.
hope that helps,
Pedro