maxg Posted September 16, 2004 Share Posted September 16, 2004 Now I know most of you guys in the US are accessing the net at LAN speeds but for those of us not long out of 56 Kb modems ADSL is a revelation. I had originally upgraded from 56 kb to 64 kb ISDN and from there to 128 KB which seemed relatively fast for a simple browsing person like me. After seeing the costs of that ISDN in the office (logged in 24/7) we realised that ADSL would actually be cheaper overall and switched. I took the minimum performance option (384 Kb download / 128 KB upload) and my god this is different. Suddenly I can watch on-line videos (launchcast seems impressive) or have high(ish) quality radio in background whilst browsing this site. What a world of difference - and the office is on-line all the time without having to pay for that time. Apparently there is no ADSL circuit in my home region yet - so that has to stay on the ISDN for now - but as soon as it changes.... As for the leap in quality I finally got my long term loaned Stax headphones back from a friend. What a difference from the Sony Infrared unit I have been using over the last week!! The Sony is now consigned to my home PC - Stax installed on the main system. Still seems to suffer from that one channel playing only thing when sounds are off to one side. Pity! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Speedball Posted September 16, 2004 Share Posted September 16, 2004 Life is good........! When we changed from dial-up to a cable provider the change was unbelievable. It still amazes me how fast this thing is and we just have a very low memory modest old computer. Enjoy.. ..Pat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colterphoto1 Posted September 16, 2004 Share Posted September 16, 2004 One of the main reasons I moved from rural life. I lived on a family farm only two counties (60 miles) outside Indianapolis and No cable, No dsl, only 56 dialup available. In city you have a choice and it is blazingly fast. Hard to believe I was living so close to civilization yet so outdated. Life is good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frzninvt Posted September 16, 2004 Share Posted September 16, 2004 I live in a rural area in VT and used to be able to connect at a whopping 40.0-42.6K but as of late that has dwindled to 21.6-24.6K talk about sloooooooowwwwwwww. I have no access to DSL or cable and the Directway satellite route is just to expensive. I will just have to deal with it until I move. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted September 16, 2004 Author Share Posted September 16, 2004 "but as of late that has dwindled to 21.6-24.6K" Holy cow! I dont think I have seen those sort of speeds since my old 28.8K modem. I think a call to complain to your telco might be in order. You are being held prisoner by your connection and I think that speed contravenes the Genera Convention!! I get faster than that on my mobile phone for heavens sakes. Call to complain - and do it now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cleve Posted September 16, 2004 Share Posted September 16, 2004 ---------------- On 9/16/2004 9:33:28 AM maxg wrote: "but as of late that has dwindled to 21.6-24.6K" Holy cow! I dont think I have seen those sort of speeds since my old 28.8K modem. I think a call to complain to your telco might be in order. You are being held prisoner by your connection and I think that speed contravenes the Genera Convention!! I get faster than that on my mobile phone for heavens sakes. Call to complain - and do it now! ---------------- I would wager his telephone company will do NOTHING about it. In this area, the phone company only guarantees a 'dial-tone' and that's about it. In the pre-cable internet days, about 6 years ago a good friend had a dedicated phone line (for which he paid $20 a month or whatever the fee was 6 years ago) for his dial-up internet. He only got 28.8 speeds, even though he had a 56k modem. He figured it was just the fault of his internet connection. However, for some reason, he had reason to temporarily connect his computer modem to the 'voice' line in the house - he was astonished that his speed increased to 50k and up! So he called the phone company - my friend complained, reasonably so, to the phone company rep that his new line to his house was significantly slower for internet access than the regular phone line that was many years old So the trusty phone company sent a technician out, who informed my friend after a cursory inspection of the line that as long as there's a dial tone, that's all they(the phone company) guarantee. The only speed guarantees from the phone company are for the ISDN 56k and 128k lines (which are outrageously expensive for the bandwidth, far more than cable internet!) Well, he got Roadrunner immediately afterwards, because it eliminated his AOL fee AND the phone line fee, and it was only a couple dollars more a month. He's had it ever since. He told the phone company they could basically take their 'dial tone' and stick it where the sun never shines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frzninvt Posted September 16, 2004 Share Posted September 16, 2004 Max, been there, done that. I have complained and they actually came out to my suprise, but it is exactly as Cleve says. If you have a dial tone and can call and receive calls that is all you are going to get. The tech was even nice enough to condition the lines while he was there. The problem still persists, I even bought a new modem and ran new phone lines to the sockets. In addition the phone company is only responsible to the Network Interface box on the side of the house. From there on it is your problem. I am beginning to think it may be MSN's servers in my area. I most of my internetting from work where the connection is much faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougdrake Posted September 16, 2004 Share Posted September 16, 2004 As the son of a telco retiree, I have to suggest you cut the telco some slack on the phone lines being used for analog data. Remember, most of that copper plant was put in place long before any thought of data in a home ever occured. It costs huge sums of money to lay new plant, and we consumers are loathe to spend any more money to help them pay for it. In my prior house, I couldn't even get a connection on my fax machine on my second line. When I ran a new pair of wires from the network interface to my fax machine/modem, it cleared right up. The problem may lay in your house wiring, not the street. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted September 16, 2004 Share Posted September 16, 2004 I have a good friend who could only get 19.2 at his house. Pretty pathetic when so many websites wee starting to use more flash and large graphic files. A former co-worker had reasonable dialup until hurricane Opal blasted all the way up to Tennessee where he lived. His connection speed dropped way off. Bell SOuth gave the same line to him when he called to complain. The person on the other end of the phone just asked him if it was the line they were talking on. When he said it was, they said that that was all they guaranteed, and for that it was working well. But I would agree with Doug, much of the infrastructure is old and was never meant to handle data the way we want it to. We have Alltel where we are and their support has been great. They plowed in new lines when we had been hit by lightning (early '90s), and replaced a bunch of stuff two weeks ago (also from a lightning strike. They said they had all kinds of bad connections along the way and replaced when they could. The dsl rocks! Marvel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scriven Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 I am about 3.5 wire miles from the central office. If my 56Kb modem connects at 26Kb I am doing good. Complaining to the phone company will do absolutely no good. When you order a voice line from the phone company that is what you get. If you get dial tone, punch the numbers, get ringy dingy and then can say and hear "Hello" as far as the phone company is concerned it works. (After all, that is what you paid them for.) Hey, it's great being a monopoly! Don't like it, build a microwave tower in your back yard! (And if you think dealing with the phone company is a hassle wait till you have a few tangles with the zoning board, the FCC and the FAA!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wheelman Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 I have the crappy diul up. I am running 52. k on the average actually pretty good for diul up I think. But it stinks in my eyes. I can't watch a video sample without it being blocky or not in live motion. But for the most part browsing is pretty fast because of the cookies are there for fast pop up on my usual websites. I pay like 18 a month and they have really good virus protection for emails and reliability and tech support(free but don't need it) is top notch. It can take up to a half an hour to download a song sometimes and almost makes it where they would owe me money for my time LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted September 17, 2004 Author Share Posted September 17, 2004 Isnt it funny the preconcpetions we hold of other countries. I wrote my original post thinking that everyone else on here (in the US anyway) was accessing the net way faster than me - even with my ADSL connection. Now it seems that not only are some of you accessing slower than I was originally (I used to get 45.5 or thereabouts on the phone line with a 56 kb modem) but that your telco's sound worse than ours. The good news for me is that the company with responsibility for installation and running of the ADSL circuit in my area is owned by a friend. Apparently the circuit will be up in the next 45 days. Tony is booked as customer number 1, me as customer number 2. Suddenly Greece is looking quite high tech - according to the guy I spoke to last night I will be able to have upto 512/512 Kb if I want it by early November and potentially 2Mb both ways by March. As it happens I think I will be staying with 384/112 for a while. Signing of in the high tech capital of the world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wheelman Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 ---------------- On 9/17/2004 2:15:43 AM maxg wrote: Isnt it funny the preconcpetions we hold of other countries. I wrote my original post thinking that everyone else on here (in the US anyway) was accessing the net way faster than me - even with my ADSL connection. Now it seems that not only are some of you accessing slower than I was originally (I used to get 45.5 or thereabouts on the phone line with a 56 kb modem) but that your telco's sound worse than ours. The good news for me is that the company with responsibility for installation and running of the ADSL circuit in my area is owned by a friend. Apparently the circuit will be up in the next 45 days. Tony is booked as customer number 1, me as customer number 2. Suddenly Greece is looking quite high tech - according to the guy I spoke to last night I will be able to have upto 512/512 Kb if I want it by early November and potentially 2Mb both ways by March. As it happens I think I will be staying with 384/112 for a while. Signing of in the high tech capital of the world. ---------------- Hay buddy I am burning it up at 52k! Everybody around me has highspeed internet I live on a hill so I guess where worhtless up here. Go down the hill everyone has high speed cable which is a smoker I guess. Go down the road a mile and you have dsl. The craziest part is there is like a celular phone tower right near me ( a couple miles) and they won't offer us anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 max, In the U.S. you can't actually get 56k from a 56k line. The FCC won't allow it. The same for how fast a connection you can get with dsl. The companies are legally limited to about 1.5 megabits (not bytes). We get about 1.1m download and 128k upload. Most of the time. They could give us about a 6 Megabit download rate if the FCC would allow. Pretty interesting how they can do that over the same copper wire we've been using. Some people know how to set their cable modems so they can get around 3 megabits, but it violates their contract. Given that a regular lan runs at 10/100/1000 megabits, we still aren't at network speeds in our homes yet. There are some areas that are running fiber to the houses, but this is rare so far. I pity the reapair folks who have to go fix the fiber when someone cuts it or just hits it enough to break it. We have fiber between all the buildings on our college campus (phones go over that as well), and the benefit is very good. No ground loops, and lightning strikes don't take out as much hardware. ... and believe it or not, there are still a lot of people in the U.S. who still have outdoor plumbing. Marvel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougdrake Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 Marvel - Interesting. In my prior house in Scottsdale, I was about 800 ft from the CO. I could have had 7mbps download DSL if I wanted it (at a price, of course). Also, I had cable for a while there and routinely got almost 3mbps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SCOOTERDOG Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 Man I really feel for you guy'w with dial up. I have a cable modem with a download up to 3megb and upload of 384. I ran a speed test after reading this thread and I am running over 2.8 megb. I would die without this. When we moved from the Bay Area I was concerned I might not be able to get cable internet any longer, however to my surprise it was available. Back in the Bay Area our city was one of the original test cities for cable internet and that was about 7 years ago. Been spoiled ever since. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Mobley Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 Glendale, Az. Cox cable modem, they recently jacked up our DL speed to 4Mb. I actually get close to 5 when downloading Linux builds late at night. It cooks. I remember accessing character based Compuserv over a 2400 baud modem. It was fast, charmode, no graphics. Starting to seem like a long time ago now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted September 17, 2004 Author Share Posted September 17, 2004 Scarey aint it Tom, I remember my first modem was 1200 baud - and it would drop down from there to 300!! I used to dial into bulletin boards to download drivers and things. Was a while ago now though - bout 20 years - my God - I have been playing with PC's that long.... Course the first computer I got to use was an ICL mainframe in the late 70's - that dialed out using an accoustic coupler onto a normal telephone (pulse dialing of course) - no idea what speed that was. Giant machine - 3 phase power and water cooled - 2 * 20 Mb removable disks (units the size of large industrial washing machines). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 Doug, Maybe the guys from Alltel were blowing smoke, but I know that it's true on the 56k modem speed. I don't know why they would limit the speed on purpose. Maybe the ISPs will just come out and say "we can give you a lot faster but it will cost way more." Marvel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.