internet service

[franksolich]

This is getting really irritating, and so I've got to think about alternatives.

I have wireless internet service, and have had it since March 2006.

Before then, while living in Lincoln and then Omaha and then in town, I had dial-up internet service.

The current internet service provider (ISP) is a good company and all that, but their service seems to be going downhill, from what it was two and a half years ago.

I had discussed with Wretched Excess one time, about how to tell if interruptions on the internet are due to one's own computer, or if they're the fault of the ISP.

Following Wretched Excess's guidelines for diagnosis, thus far every single outage has been due to the ISP.

The outages, which can last anywhere from a couple of minutes to a whole half an hour, generally occur circa 3:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. central time.  I assume this is perhaps because those are the hours when most of the customers are using the ISP, causing a traffic congestion or something.

But then this morning, I got up early, and much to my surprise, the ISP was out from circa 4:00 a.m. until 5:30 a.m. (central time).

The ISP gets its service from some sort of bigger service, and early on, I noticed that the weather in southern Minnesota and western Utah seems to affect the "reception," causing more interruptions than usual during the dead of winter and the height of summer.

I had dial-up internet service from July 1996 until March 2005; I do not recall a single instance where the ISP was "down."

Of course, the deal with dial-up is that it's slow, sometimes very slow.

I'm way out in the country, and the only current option is wireless, and my contract with the ISP runs through April 2009.  However, with the recent death of one heir to this property, and the impending demise of the other heiress, sooner or later this property will pass on to the ancient elderly gentleman and his children and grandchildren, which means sooner or later franksolich and the cats will have to move on.  The current lease is through September 2009.

I can't do anything at the moment, but I'm thinking ahead here; other than dial-up, is there any other sort of internet service offered, that doesn't get interrupted?

It irks me because twice yesterday (Tuesday) when I tried posting lying titty bonfires, in both instances, I had to wait because the ISP was "down;" once for about ten minutes, the second time for 45 minutes.

It's no fun sitting here twiddling the thumbs.  While waiting, I do constructive things such as vaccuuming the floor or washing the dishes or changing the cat-litter boxes, but yesterday that had already been done, and so all I could do was sit and wait.

And wait and wait and wait and wait.

[thundley4]

I had dial-up years ago, and not only was it slow, I also lost the connection at times. I have cable now, (ComCrap) and there are times that I still have to reset the  modem, because of a lost connection. I doubt that any type of service is completely free from outages.

[Thor]

The most reliable service I had was a DSL service from a very small, local telephone company. They offered telephone, data, & video, all over the phone lines. The only problem was their speed wasn't quite as good as cable. As an ex-cable tech, I can tell you, data over rf cable is very problematic. It gets better if one is very close to a fiber optic node. The smaller the RF node, the better the service is, too. When I worked for Continental Cable/ Media One, I was responsible for a city data network that was 58 RF amplifiers deep in the furthermost direction and had RF ingress throughout the plant. It was a veritable nightmare to maintain. This was before the average consumer was offered cable internet.

[Texacon]

frank, there is satellite service out there but it is a real crap shoot from what I saw.  We had Hughsnet for about a year.  When it first got set up it worked fine but slowly petered out to a very, very poor connection with a very, very high price tag.

The technicians those companies use are complete idiots .... at least the ones that came to our office.  One guy came out and sat at my computer to determine speed of connection.  Instead of going to a speed test sight like speedtest.net he pulled up some guitar site and told me the picture of the guitar on the front page should take 16 seconds to load.  I asked him to leave then I called for another tech.  They never did get it back up to speed and when DSL finally made it to our area we paid our 'fine' for cancelation and switched. 

KC

[Thor]

We need to get these companies that fail to provide their service, AS ADVERTISED, punished instead of them being able to levy a "fine" against a person for early cancellation.

[Zeus]

Lot's of these ISP and mode of connection problems I suspect are a territorial phenomenon. I started with dial-up and never incurred any realproblems. Actually usually got about 52K speed on a 56k hookup,

Then switched to Sprint/Earthlink DSL. Again no real problems except when they first started around here they had a bunch of Modems that couldn't handle the speeds.

Currently Have TM cable. Also no major problems /complaints in 3 yrs.

Because of the proximity to fort hood and a fiber optics network I supposed that helped with dialup & DSL,dunno if it would affect cable though.

[Texacon]

We need to get these companies that fail to provide their service, AS ADVERTISED, punished instead of them being able to levy a "fine" against a person for early cancellation.

I agree.  I argued with those folks endlessly but in the end I ponied up the extra $300 and told them it was worth twice that to be done with them!

KC

[Thor]

I lived in Hastings, MN and had awesome dialup (53K normally) I moved to Becker, MN and I was LUCKY to get a 26K dialup connection, usually it was 19.2K. Since the telcos are only OBLIGATED to provide a 9600 connection, there was nothing I could do. The telco in Becker was CLOSER than the telco in Hastings, too!! 

[Texacon]

I lived in Hastings, MN and had awesome dialup (53K normally) I moved to Becker, MN and I was LUCKY to get a 26K dialup connection, usually it was 19.2K. Since the telcos are only OBLIGATED to provide a 9600 connection, there was nothing I could do. The telco in Becker was CLOSER than the telco in Hastings, too!! 

When I talked to our current DSL supplier they told me they were obligated by law to provide 75% of the speed we were paying for.  We get better than that but it was dropping off there for a bit right after we signed up (the service was new to the area and had some bugs).  Right now we get around 2.8 mg down and about 316 k up.  We pay for 3 mg down and 300 k up.  That's fast enough for what we use it for.

KC

[Thor]

I was referring to dial up connections only.

[Texacon]

I was referring to dial up connections only.

I put that on there more in connection with the satellite company we used for internet.  They wouldn't budge no matter what I told them.  I was even running 10 speed tests per day from their own site so they could see I was telling the truth.

The contractors they used were absolutely some of the dumbest folks I had ever had come to look at my computer equipment.  I am no guru but I do alright around a computer.  The stuff they tried to tell me whenever they came out was absolutely the dumbest shit I had ever heard from a tech of any kind.

KC

[Thor]

Well, don't even get me started on "contractors", ESPECIALLY when it comes to the telecom industry. 

[franksolich]

We need to get these companies that fail to provide their service, AS ADVERTISED, punished instead of them being able to levy a "fine" against a person for early cancellation.

I just got back from the big city.

About 11:30 a.m. I tried to post something here, and it wouldn't take.

The ISP was down again.

I cleaned the living room, scrubbed the ceiling, did the laundry, put out new food dishes for the cats, changed the air in the tires of the automobile, put new shingles on the house, while waiting for the ISP to get up again.

Which it didn't.

About 1:00 p.m., I figured, oh, Hell.

I was told there's "issue problems" with the supplier to the ISP, and they've been having those "issues" since Monday (which I had already guessed, based upon my observation), and they HOPE it's all resolved by tonight.

They were nice and all that, and I'll probably get $5 or something off the December service (monthly charge is $35), but damn.

[Thor]

If you complain enough, you MIGHT be able to get a free month out of the deal. That doesn't ALWAYS happen, though.

[Wretched Excess]

there is such a thing, frank, my friend, as living so far out in the country that the modern world has a hard time getting in touch with you.  my folks have the same problem in rural mississippi.

the bottom line is that dial up may be slow, but it is dependable.

PM me your exact location, and I will check out the wireless coverage areas for where you live.  beyond wireless, nothing else seems really realistic.  satellite is really expensive, cable is out . . . . .