Roblog

I took the plunge today and signed up for AT&T's DSL service. It was pretty much a done-deal after we moved from Comcast to Dish Network late last year, since we lost the discount we got by having bundled internet and TV service. Our cable modem internet service now costs us $60/month. That is too much to continue paying, even though I am quite happy with their support.

It was 9 years ago when I signed-up for Time-Warner's RoadRunner cable modem service. I was among the first in my area to get it. I recall that the first year or so of the service, we had outages fairly often - maybe once a week. But the last 6-7 years have been very reliable - maybe one outage event a year.

I've been a little weary of DSL because of the speed (it seems it's not as fast as a cable modem), but I signed up for the lite level, which claims up to 6Mbps download speeds (I'm going to check my current speed with RoadRunner at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and see how that compares to my DSL service). And at $35/month plus a $100 rebate for switching from Comcast, the activation energy for making the switch has been reached.

A nice perk is that the modem they'll send is part of a wireless router, so I should be able to connect my Wii up to the network. I have an aging Airport base station, but it stopped working a few years ago, and I haven't spent the time troubleshooting to determine if it is fixable or not.

I'll let you know if my move to DSL is as smooth as I hope it will be.

I started to feel a small "dry patch" in my throat last night, which has grown into a full-fledged, but mild, sore throat today. As this is my only symptom (although perhaps I am more tired than normal), this feels like a cold.

Another indication that this is just a cold is that I am especially hungry. For some reason, I get hungry when I have a cold. It has been that way for as long as I can remember. I packed leftover macaroni and lasagna for my lunmch today. I ate my macaroni at 8:00 AM and my lasagna at 9:00 AM. I guess I'll have to buy my lunch when I get hungry again.

Amanda complianed about having a tummy ache and a headache this morning (although she does this rather frequently so I didn't really pay any attention to it, especially since she continued to play rather vigorously), but her forehead felt a little warm. Her under-arm temperature was 98.2°, which is technically a fever, but not high enough for us to do anything about it just yet. It may be that she'll stay home from VBS with me tomorrow if her fever gets worse.

I installed the AT&T DSL modem on Saturday, with the end results about what I expected. The download speeds are a little slower than Comcast (15% slower) but solid. it surpised me that the upload speeds, while still much slower than the download rate, were about twice as high as with Comcast.

There were a few minor glitches, though. As you can see from the Speakeasy speed test results, below, I initially had really bad download rates:

I called customer service, and they identified the problem quickly, Within 10 minutes, I had download rates appropriate for my High-speed Elite service. I also have pretty bad static on the phone next to the computer, so they're sedning me a replacement dual line filter to keep the DSL traffic from interfering with the voice traffic on the phone lines. Overall, I was quite impresssed with their efficient service, especially since I felt they could tell I was a computer person who generally knew what he was talking about, so they didn't drag me through an endless series of basic questions.

The wireless router worked great. I connected my Wii without any problems, so now I can look up the weather and news from the Wii. I don't know yet why that's exciting, but I hooked it up just in case it is.

So in a few days I'll call to stop our Comcast internet service. I expect to save $20/month by making the switch. So unless the AT&T service becomes unreliable, it will be a very worthwhile change.