apple juice

On Friday, my new DSL modem arrived in the mail. I climbed up on a chair and re-wired the outside Qwest line to my shiny new ActionTec. After a bit of futzing around with my network setup, I pulled the plug on my Comcast cable modem.

Back when we signed up for Cable Internet service, Comcast was Time Warner in these parts, and we enjoyed decent service with steadily rising speeds for a couple of years. Then Comcast rolled in, and so began the wildly varying speeds (time of day), random disconnections, and really poor Vonage calls. Standard cable modem complaints, all of them. I would’ve switched sooner, but that top speed download of 7mbps is pretty dang seductive. When you’re pulling down a huge file, I have to admit it is pretty nice.

But it finally got to me, and I pulled the switch to DSL. One of the reasons I waited so long is that by some quirk of geography, the top line speed we are qualified for is 1.5mbps. On the plus side, the upload is speed is doubled over the cable modem.

Vonage, in my limited testing, has performed much better since making the switch. The faster upload is surely helping there. Yes, the download speed is slower, but honestly, this connection “feels” as fast when browsing the internet. I don’t know what it is, but it seems to respond faster.

I actually went with a local company for the ISP, VISI. Admittedly it is a bit more expensive than going directly with Qwest, but I was trying to limit my involvement with major corporations. And I when I asked the representative why I should go with them instead of the cheaper Qwest, he said “well, with us, you get actual human service and support, instead of MSNbots”

Works for me.

So to sum up:

Comcast for super basic cable (HD Locals)
VISI for an ISP (it is a Qwest line)
and Vonage for the “landline”