I Hate Broadband

I hate broadband.  I mean, I love it when it works, but I’ve used 3 different broadband ISPs and for each one, it took over a month to get it working.  Conestoga "Odyssey" DSL, Comcast/@Home/Adelphia cable, and now Comcast cable... weeks and weeks go by and it just doesn’t work and they send "technicians" (ahem) out 2 or 3 times and finally, just 9000 years later, you’re online.

Right now I’m dialing up (gasp) to my school’s ISP since my Comcast cable is not working, and the technician isn’t coming till Tuesday.  I saw an ad for Verizon DSL for only $40/mo... has anyone used that, or any other broadband ISPs in southeast PA, and had a good experience?

Posted by Anthony on 16 replies

Comments:

01. Jun 19, 2002 at 10:14pm by NoName:

I have been using Verizon DSL now for about a month.  I have had no problems with it.  This of course doesn’t mean that I will never have trouble with it.  Hope this helps!

02. Jun 20, 2002 at 1:19pm by Anthony:

What’s the bandwidth like?  I use bandwidthplace.com’s speedtest, and I get about 1 mbit/sec downstream and 56 kbit/sec upstream with Comcast.  Also, is Verizon the provider for your local phone service too?

03. Jun 20, 2002 at 11:21pm by NoName:

Um..I am not sure what all the numbers on that page mean, I am a bit confused but in the commuications box it says 708.9 kbps and I believe that is downstream.  Yes, Verizon is also my local phone service.  I don’t know what you know about how all this stuff works and I don’t want to treat you like an idiot it you already know all this but I wanted to mention something about high speed cable internet access.  It doesn’t give you a dedicated line so you are sharing the maximum speed of the connection with who ever else is on the same line as you.  So is the DSL seems slower that may change as more people in your area get hooked up to cable access.  If you already knew that I am sorry to repeat what you already know.  Hope this will also help.

04. Jun 20, 2002 at 11:25pm by NoName:

Um..I am not sure what all the numbers on that page mean, I am a bit confused but in the commuications box it says 708.9 kbps and I believe that is downstream.  Yes, Verizon is also my local phone service.  I don’t know what you know about how all this stuff works and I don’t want to treat you like an idiot it you already know all this but I wanted to mention something about high speed cable internet access.  It doesn’t give you a dedicated line so you are sharing the maximum speed of the connection with who ever else is on the same line as you.  So is the DSL seems slower that may change as more people in your area get hooked up to cable access.  If you already knew that I am sorry to repeat what you already know.  Hope this will also help.

05. Jun 20, 2002 at 11:46pm by Anthony:

Hehe, you didn’t treat me like an idiot; thank you for considering that though.  I do know a bunch about broadband, but there’s always more to learn, about broadband and otherwise!

It’s true that cable is shared within a neighborhood, but that doesn’t necessarily make it slower than DSL.  In fact, that’s almost never the case nowadays, although it used to be.  When cable internet access first became available a few years ago (which was before DSL), it didn’t have all the bugs squashed out of it... like most new technologies when they’re first released.  But now everyone I know who uses cable has a blazing fast connection, myself included.  And coaxial cable can carry much more data than phone lines can, because it was designed for TV, and full motion video requires a lot of information to be sent over the wire.  I would guess that’s why most cable plans are 1000 or 3000 kbit/s whereas most DSL plans only offer 640 or 960 k.

But you said yours is 709 which is really fast too.  Did you run the upstream test at all?  I’m happy with my 1000 k downloads, but my uploads are capped at 56k by Comcast  *frown*  so I’m curious to hear what other people’s upload rates are.  Someone I know in Virginia gets something like 3000k UPSTREAM with Comcast, which is 3x my download speed... and a friend of mine believes that Pennsylvania has some kind of law limiting upstream transfer rates!!  Sounds crazy, but you never know...

06. Jun 20, 2002 at 11:58pm by Anthony:

By the way, did my messageboard crash, or give you an error or something, that caused your post to appear twice?  I’ve never seen that before on my board.  I’m sorry if it was my script’s fault!  : )

07. Jun 21, 2002 at 8:05am by NoName:

I didn’t run an upload test b/c I didn’t see one.  I understand about cable vs. DSL and I know other people around the area of Strousburg who have alot of problems with cable hookup and having it be slower then mollassas in January.  I will check that link again and see if can find an upload test.  Does that test happen to warn that it might not be accurate on high speed connections?  I am not sure why my message was posted twice but I did not get any visible error.  Just by the way, I like your website, it is pretty neat!  Scripting is great isn’t it?  I will post again if I find the upload test and run it.

08. Jun 21, 2002 at 12:33pm by Anthony:

Yes, the upload test there says it’s not accurate for broadband, but I think that it does give accurate *relative* values, so you can compare 2 broadband connections.  Also, speakeasy.net has a test that tells you both down and upstream speed.

> cable hookup and having it be slower
> then mollassas in January

Yeah, I guess it really depends on the ISP and how well they do their job.  Some companies definitely overload their systems with too many users per uplink.

> I like your website, it is pretty neat!
> Scripting is great isn’t it?

Hey thanks.  And yes, Perl scripts are fantastic.  Perl is definitely the best programming language ever.  It’s way easier and more powerful than most other languages, and the community support is light-years better than any commercial support from anyone else.

09. Jun 27, 2002 at 6:56pm by NoName:

Hello!  I ran the test at speakeasy.net and these are the numbers I got:  download 713kbps and upload 133kbps.  I have never scripted with Perl but I have heard good things about it.  I use VBScript and JavaScript for scripting at work and all of our webpages are written in ASP.  The song you quote I believe it was called "What is love" pretty powerful, I like it.  Anyway, hope these numbers give you a better idea about DSL.  Have a nice day!

10. Jun 27, 2002 at 6:57pm by NoName:

Hello!  I ran the test at speakeasy.net and these are the numbers I got:  download 713kbps and upload 133kbps.  I have never scripted with Perl but I have heard good things about it.  I use VBScript and JavaScript for scripting at work and all of our webpages are written in ASP.  The song you quote I believe it was called "What is love" pretty powerful, I like it.  Anyway, hope these numbers give you a better idea about DSL.  Have a nice day!

11. Jun 27, 2002 at 6:59pm by NoName:

I can tell you why that just posted twice.  When I use the back button on my browser (IE5.5) it posted it again.  I believe that is also what happened last time my response posted twice.

12. Jun 28, 2002 at 1:45am by Anthony:

Cool, thanks for those numbers.  So everyone I know (in PA anyway...) has a cap on their upstream transfer rate, usually around 128k.  That stinks.

I started to learn ASP last summer, but when I found out that it’s a closed Microsoft-proprietary language that only runs on IIS, I decided against it.  Perl is an open language, and it not only runs on more servers than ASP, but you can also run scripts on any PC with it.

There’s lots of stuff that I used to try to do using C/C++ that was incredibly difficult (or, for me as a non-pro, impossible)... but I can code those things in Perl in about 10 seconds and they work better and faster and the code is much smaller.

Of course, at work, you probably don’t have much choice.  But in general, I’d suggest learning Perl... I think you’ll find it to be much easier to learn AND much more powerful than ASP.  And it’s so FUN!  I actually just finished a little tutorial on Perl, it’s in the code section.

Thanks for letting me know about the back-button reposting problem.

13. Jun 28, 2002 at 3:19pm by Anthony:

So are you a web designer?

14. Jun 29, 2002 at 8:28pm by NoName:

Not specifically.  I am actually an intern.  I work on various projects but b/c I love to program I end up doing alot of scripting, usually with VBScript.  I am on the Electronic Software Distribution Team at Air Products in Trexelertown, PA.  Our job is to distribute software to the entire company via Microsoft’s SMS or Novell’s Orbiter.  Lately, though, I have been working on some metetrics which encompasses making serious changes in some of our webpages.  It has all been a spectacular experience for me actually, truly a learning experience.

15. Jul 2, 2002 at 4:51pm by Anthony:

Sounds like fun. I’d love to get a job coding in Perl. I always thought that a person would get bored quickly with a programming job, but I spend a lot of time writing Perl code and I never get tired of it.  Of course, I don’t spend 40 hours a week doing it, so maybe I don’t do it quite enough to get tired of it.

> metetrics which encompasses making
> serious changes in some of our webpages

What are metetrics?

That eskimo-looking guy on the Air Products website is scary... do you see him around the building during the day?

16. Jul 3, 2002 at 8:38am by NoName:

Sorry for the spelling error but it is metrics. When we deploy software here we get back certain status messages from the packages we send out.  Metrics refers to the statisitcs we do on those status messages.  We keep track of package infomation on an SQL database and from there we have several webpages on our Intranet that allow people to see the statistics on specific packages and specific dates.  I hope that explains it a little better.

Truthfully, I love to program and I don’t ever think I will get bored with it.  I knew as soon as I started to program that I loved it and would never get bored.  I mean maybe in 20 years or something but not anytime soon.  I especially love to learn new languages, I feel it makes me versitile.  I love the challenge and the gratification I feel when I have finished a project.

As for the eskimo guy...sorry but I don’t see him around!  I may be a bit too warm here for him.

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