On the matter of DSL

[jhetley]

Do any of the assembled sages have experience with the functional difference between 3 Mbps and 768 Kbps service to the person sitting in front of the screen? I don't anticipate a great appetite for streaming video here, or other really intensive surfing stuff, and ten bucks a month difference adds up.

Also, we're dealing with longish runs of cheap phone wiring to reach the household computer center, and I wonder how fast our antiquated infrastructure will propagate those bits and bytes.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

We switched to Verizon DSL from the local cable service a few months ago. It's been spotty. The phone lines are old by our house, and that has meant that we frequently lose the connection. It comes back in a few minutes, but it makes for a low level annoyance. When we had cable, the losses of connectivity were much fewer, though of far longer duration. Verizon keeps saying that they're rewiring the neighborhood with fiber optic line sometime real soon now. I'm not so patiently waiting.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

These will be Verizon wires, whoever we choose as a "provider." At least the public wiring is relatively new -- they didn't have much choice, after the Great Ice Storm took out a bunch of Alex Bell's personal work. Still copper, I believe, rather than fiber.

The antiquities referred to in our infrastructure are internal to the house. Some of that stuff still shows fabric insulation.