How I increased my Internet Speed by TEN TIMES! Upload & Download!!!
D.J. Cool M.D.
This is a short story about a devot Bell Sympatico DSL subscriber for the
last 5 years,
actually was on dial up with sympatico for 4 or 5 years before that. So
almost a 10 year
subscriber, I believed in the DSL technology and was quite happy to see Bell
come out with
a competitive product to Cable modems 'Back in the Day'. Actually, a couple
of years ago,
one of the most important things when I bought my house was that that it
could be serviced
by Sympatico DSL and I could transfer my account to my new home from my
apartment.
My first dissapointment was last summer when we were all supposed to get
upgraded to 1.5
meg down, guess what? Everyone in town got the upgrade but me! I'm not
dummy when it comes
to DSL and I get into the 'EXPERT' mode it my modem so I could take a look
at the line stats
with my own eyes and they looked pretty crappy. First inspection gave me an
attainable line
rate of 1778 kbits but @ 1.5 I would have to agree with the sympatico
'techs' that 1184 down
was a good sync rate and anything higher would have been pretty unstable.
I ran around my
house, disconnecting and reconnecting phone lines here and there and I got
my attainable rate
up to 2780 kbits, I called back sympatico to have them take another look at
my phone line and
they refused to, they didn't even bother, they said they did but I know how
long DSL diagnostics take,
So, at this particular point in time I pretty much make the educated guess
that they were just trying
to blow smoke up my ass and not really interested in improving the quality
of my service, anyone in this
situation that is half way technically oriented after a 1/2 hour on the
phone knows that just by
the tone of the techs voice or how they try to summarily discount your
claims 'because it costs too much to
get BellNexxia involved' knows what I mean.
*2004* the 3 meg upgrades are here!
I guess sympatico really shot themselves in the foot with this one, Mid
March, I'm visiting friends
in the town where I live and I had a rude awakening. The were getting THREE
times the speeds I was
getting for the same price. As the crow flies, they were actually alot
farther away from the
Central Office than I was!
So I played around with my house wiring again got back into the 'EXPERT'
modem in my alcatel modem too
see what my attainable was, and it could have been worse for all I knew but
now I was up to 3850.
I thought for sure Bell would atleast give me the 1.5 upgrade but I called
them again, sat on the phone
for an hour with tech's that definetly were'nt 'from around these parts' but
who were again well
trained in the art of 'blowing smoke up subscribers asses!'
**Had Enough**
If I wanted smoke up my ass I'd be sitting here with a pack of Players and a
short length of plastic
tubing.
I called Cogeco and got their deal on the 'Pro' Package, 44.95 for the first
two months, 70 bucks
after that. (10MBit Down/1Mbit Up) (30 Gig Softcap I've never heard of
them enforce)
After I got hooked up, my cable modem was too fast for my SMC router, glad
it has a 100 Meg WAN Port!
I had to reflash the firmware on it to the latest version or hook it up to
my computer directly,
otherwise I was loosing about 400K/Second. But the new firmware works
great!
So to make a long story short, I can now upload faster then I was ever able
to download with Sympatico
DSL. I used to download stuff at 115 Kilobytes/Sec, a typical ISO image
would take 2-4 hours, depending,
I now can download at 1250 Kilobytes/sec and get downloads done in minutes
rather than hours. Keep in
Mind I had to add more hard drives and ram with those speeds!!!
So I called Bell and cancelled, that was a run around in itself since
sympatico could'nt downgrade my account
due to the fact that I'm on the long distance bundle. Called 310-BELL but
they are closed after 5PM.
I finally called them and downgraded my highspeed to the 10 hr dial up plan
to retain my email until I
get everything sorted out (I've had that email since 1995) and I cancelled
the cell phone that I never use
and it more that pays for my super highspeed! Unless you saw it and had a
good source to download from,
I guarantee you wouldn't believe it! Downloads from giganews take longer to
decode than download!
On 8 sockets!
I have so much bandwidth now, I'd really like to cut to cord with Bell if I
can and go with a IP phone
gateway or even a product like http://www.cellsocket.com since I rarely even
use my land line.
The problem with IP phones in Ontario is getting a incoming number for it,
if anyone has any suggestions
I'm all ears!!!
If you get a chance to give Cogeco a try I would recommend it!! I realize
how bad Rogers and Shaw and
Videotron suck with 3 meg download pitiful uploads and network loads and
after being in the cable internet business this
long you would have though they would have figured it all out by now but as
a Cogeco 'Pro' user who actually
takes adavtage the bandwidth they offer and can live on the edge, I'd say
Cogeco definetly has their act together!
From what I understand this is the fastest residential cable connection
avaiable in North America.
I drooled a couple of years ago when I heard they had 8 meg connections in
Tokyo Japan.
There's no way in hell they had a PC or servers to pull from that that
speeds to take adavantage of it.
I tried to push the limits at all hours of the day and can consistently pull
1250+ KBytes/Sec any time
of day!
All I've got to say is a Gig or more an hour ain't too shabby!
This is one guy who's converted from twisted pair to coax!
EDIT:Looks like it only took two days to blow thru that 30 gig cap!
Thanks for Reading