High Speed Internet

[Wingnut]

I'm lucky, I guess. My second phone line is paid by my employer. And since I'm a Sam's Club member, I get Earthlink for $19.95/mo. I usually manage to get 42k connections .... but most servers are so slow that it really doesn't matter all that much.
I've changed my viewing habits to avoid long downloads ... if someone has a huge picture ... well, I'll either view it from the office or ignore it ... not enough patience to wait for a long download. When I'm uploading, well, I remember how few people have major bandwidth ... and that I'm not in a biggest-picture-of the-year contest and limit the size.

Never have to fight for the line ... if the wife wants to use one of her computers fo remail (never hads yet ... waits for me to print it off for her) ... she can use the main line ... I only have the second line run to my computer room.

works for me .... YMMV

 

[Mike_Dumond]

768 down, 256 up. The extra cost for my DSL, (ADSL, to be exact), is just about what I was paying for the second line and internet fees. Love the speed. If I had to go back to 56, I think I'd cry.

 

[Mrwurm]

David, thanks for the Directway links. I called them and it sounds pretty good. $10 a month cheaper that StarBand and no usage restrictions. I also talked to a local computer expert and he told me that dial-up and satellite are the only options in our area and their's nothing on the horizon. So now I must pay-up or shut-up.

 

[DavidInNH]

Your welcome. I'm not sure what they told you about no usage restriction, but they still have a Fair Access Policy (FAP). Some seem to have run afoul of it and others haven't. FWIW - one of my colleagues just checked it out and thought it was very liberal.

<font color=blue>...dial-up and satellite are the only options in our area and their's nothing on the horizon</font color=blue>

I know what thats like. I'm too far from the CO for ISDN. My local cable provider was apparently in the process of rolling out internet service, but their contract doesn't require them to provide service if the population density on a street is too low. To top it off, the cable provider is Adelphia - who knows what is going to happen now that daddy and the boys got arrested.

 

[jwstewar]

My sister works for Adelphia, at this point they have stopped all new builds. Gotta try to save that all important capital. Too bad for folks like us that would like to get it though (of course I would also want cable so I could get rid of my DirecTV).

 

[Mrwurm]

When I spoke about usage restriction I was talking about StarBand Satellite service. They told me that I could not use their system to do music downloads such as Kaza or any other 'Peer to Peer' file sharing networks. They also said that I could not host my own web page. DirectWay said that these things are no problem as long as its not excessive and the fair use policy comes into play.

 

[Kelvin]

Re: High Speed Internet - Extra Home Phones

I realize that most of this discussion is on the availability of high-speed access, which has the side benefit of not needing a second home phone line. I would like to address the issue of not needing the 2nd home phone line if you already have a cell phone.

Here is the setup that I have.

(1) My local phone company (Bell South) has a feature called "Call Busy Call Forwarding" which costs probably $3 per month if you don't have the $29 "Complete Choice Plan" which includes about 12 or 14 of the popular features (Deluxe Call Waiting, 3-way calling, Call Forwarding, etc).

(2) I turn off "Call Waiting" when I go online and have the "Call Busy Call Forwarding" feature set to forward phone calls to my cell phone. If someone calls, I can answer the call (if desired) and if it is important or may last longer than 2 or 3 minutes, I'll get offline and use the home phone to complete the call.

I bring this up because most people aren't aware of this option.

Granted, I am still interested in getting a faster connection (cable or DSL) but for now my usage does not justify the extra cost.

Kelvin

 

[DavidInNH]

Ah. As I look to my left, my 18 year old is downloading something from Kaza. I don't know about hosting a web page - the upload bandwidth would be kind of restrictive. Hmm, I just realized that it is configured with a static IP address, so at least you don't have that problem.

 

[Mrwurm]

David, thanks for the update. I am intrigued by the fact that DirectWay can be networked and shared by two PC's. We have two computers set up in my house and we are constantly bickering over who is using the dial-up. Our phone (single line) is busy more often than not. My parents are in poor health and it concerns me that the phone is always busy. They have our cell phone number but it is often turned off and forgotten.

 

[RanchMan]

Mrwurm -

<font color=blue>I am intrigued by the fact that DirectWay can be networked and shared by two PC's.</font color=blue>

A lot of services are capable of allowing multiple connections through the "same line" even if they claim they are not (there are some exceptions of course - like just about anything else in the world.) Some providers actually offer the capability (for a price most of the time /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif) but you can “take care” of it without ever bothering them if you choose by getting NAT (Network Address Translation) hardware/software. I believe the easiest/simplest way to implement NAT is with a router (you can get NAT software to run on your PC, but that leads to some other downfalls). If you are REALLY curious, <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.howstuffworks.com/nat.htm>here's a link </A>that explains it in a bit more detail.

Most of the service providers don't "allow" home hosting of web-sites due to bandwidth issues. The networks are simply not designed to be utilized in that manner, hence if they were used that way, they'd start running in to a bunch of bandwidth issues. (Upstream issues as David cited, but utilization as well.) Additionally, a lot (not all of course) of providers use dynamic IP address allocation, and to establish a web site, you need a static IP.

Now, there is a way to host a web-site while using a dynamic IP (contrary to what a lot of "experts" will tell you), but suffice to say it can be painful and expensive. For the most part it is simply easier and cheaper to pay a hosting service (which your service provider may offer as well. Hmmmm /w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif)

 

[Wingnut]

Jerry,

you ARE aware that (assuming you're running Win98 or newer) you can share your modem? I do it all the time with my home network .... I have 5 boxes in my computer room and I frequently am using 2 online at the same time to access different stuff off the net (one will be doing a NAV update and another checking my websites for problems).

pete

 

[Mrwurm]

Pete, it is not safe to assume that I am aware of anything computer related. I've got a real good tech support guy that upgrades my two pc's once a year for me. I talked to him this morning and he said he can network my computers to work with DirecWay. He told me to run a cat5 cable between the two pc locations and he would do the rest. Does this sound right to you?

 

[Wingnut]

well, yes .... as long as you have something to hook the cat5 cables to /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif. It you have network cards in both PC's ... then Win98 (or newer) will allow you to easily network the 2 pc's. The "magic" part is then setting one up as the proxy "server" ... and viola ... you can both play on the 'net at the same time (of course, you'll be sharing the same pipeline ... so their MP3 downloads will walk all over your TBN reading ...

 

[DavidInNH]

Jerry,

Microsoft calls it Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). ICS is Microsoft's label for NAT, DHCP and some ease of use extensions. DirecWay explicitly acknowledges support for it. I used a FreeBSD system with NAT to share my dialup line for several years. I recently converted to ICS to share the modem. It worked fine. I'm now using to share the satellite link and so far so good (only one day so far...)

 

[radman]

I recently moved to an area without cable or DSL capabilities. I am for the first time using a wireless system with a local provider called Microlnk. It requires direct line of sight with a small dish to their reciever antenna. Connection speeds can be 256, 512 or 1025k depending on what level of service I desire. $35 for 256, $60 for 512/month. I currently can be connected to my work VPN and still allow others in the household to use the internet as desired. Today is the first day of use. So far no problems. The Dish and Direct satellite systems reportedly don't work well and usually not at all with a VPN. You might see if a similar system is available in your area.

 

[wasabi]

We got a duo-dish (Direcway and Directv) installed last week at our mountain place. The upload time is a multiple of the download which is over 500, sometimes over 1000! /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif

We have phone line, but DSL is two years away. No cable in the foreseeable future. This, with phone and fax, seems like the best answer.

I'm impressed, perhaps too easily, but for me it works!

 

[Mrwurm]

Thanks Doug, Pete, David, and others. I think I've learned enough to now make an informed decision. Your help is greatly appreciated /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

DirecWay may be in my future. (Their is something really cool /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif about owing your own satellite transmitter)

BEAM ME UP SCOTTY

 

[Mrwurm]

Did a little more checking and it turns out that several providers can hook me up with an ISDN service. They claim that this is about four times faster than a 56k dial-up, but nowhere near as fast as DSL.

1) The two providers that I talked to said that I needed to call my phone company and upgrade to an ISDN line. I'm not sure what this involves, if its possible, or what it will cost.

2) They also told me I would have to purchase ISDN modems. I've never heard of such a thing and can't find pricing on these.

$39 a month for service plus and extra phone line at $40 a month puts the cost at $79 a month.

Still leaning towards the Direc Way satellite at $59 a month.

 

[MDNY]

One quick thought about ISDN. it can get costly long term. Depending on how they set up the service or how it is billed, you can be billed on a usage level.

Most of the higher end high speed connections ISDN, T1, T3 etc are for major users and have major expenses.

I too am leaning towards Direcway (no cable or cable internet) where I am building and the phone company won't offer DSL either. One problem I have is we are putting in a home network and will have two computers. But I checked out their site and you have to run a MS app to share your usuage and bandwidth. No connecting at the router/firewall in your basement, but only at the USB port on the computer.

Not happy and checking out the options.

 

[Nuru]

Direct TV is only TV, you want Directway, which is the same company (HNS), but it is broadband service, can be both TV and internet.