Category → Internet
The Cloud
There is a phrase that is being used more and more these days with reference to remote data storage over the Internet called “Cloud Computing” or “The Cloud” for short. This phrase is often referring to images we have all seen when someone draws a computer network. They often draw this cloud in the corner where a person’s network connects. This cloud is the Internet. Why do they call it a cloud? This can be answered by the unknown quantity that the Internet represents. The Internet has matured to a point that people are looking for more innovative ways to use it. This just happens to coincide with the dramatic drop in the cost of data storage whether by hard drives or flash drives.
Today a person can buy a hard drive the size that no one could have imagined five years ago for less than $100.00 in some cases. I have seen two terabyte drives at Wal-Mart. For those that are unfamiliar with a terabyte, I will have to give you a bit of computer background so you can get some perspective. Most of us have heard the term “bit” or “bits”. This is a term referring to a binary digit. Binary is nothing more than a different numbering system that is based on two instead of ten. Most of us know that our decimal numbering system goes up to nine before carrying over to another digit making “10”. Well binary is the same way except it goes up to one before carrying over another digit. For example you would count. 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111 and so on. As you can see, it is based on two. Well a binary digit or bit is the means of measuring data. For each letter of the alphabet, or number to be expressed, it takes approximately eight binary digits of data, or a byte. One byte is eight binary digits and is the data required to store one letter of the alphabet, or ASCII character.
As you probably remember the metric system from high school a kilo is 1000 units of anything. A mega is 1,000,000 or one million. A Giga is 1,000,000,000 or one billion units. A tera is 1,000,000,000,000 or one trillion units of something. Since data storage is expressed in bytes, this storage of one terabyte is really approximately 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. This is an enormous number that is difficult visualize.
Now that data storage prices have dropped so much, there are companies offering data storage remotely over the Internet. In some cases they have services that back up your own data over the Internet in small increments while your Internet is idle. As we have seen with services like Google Docs, and Windows Live Sky Drive, these services are becoming mainstream. There are benefits to this because a person may have critical photos, music, or videos on their computer that would be a tragedy if lost. By storing things remotely, it helps keep them from being lost if a person’s house catches fire or hit by a tornado. I have been doing this for quite some time with my photos. I have more than 20,000 photos on my computer and currently over 7,000 of them are stored on Flickr.com.
They refer to this activity as cloud computing and has become a standard term. The problem is that I am not an ordinary person and have a difficult time seeing the Internet when people say “The Cloud”. I have two teenage sons that often do things like pass gas as they walk through the house and then tell you that you just walked through their cloud as you walk through the room. Since this has happened many times, I tend to think unpleasant things when people refer to the cloud. This is not a good thing because I am around computer enthusiasts on a regular basis. find myself reaching for the Febreeze every time they start talking about cloud computing. Am I too far gone? I still hold out hope that one day I will get passed the trauma. I would like to suggest changing the name so that I can engage in computer speak without thinking of toilets. How about calling it “The Internet”?
I know that most people from more refined backgrounds are thinking to themselves about a thunderstorm, or even a Spring day when someone refers to clouds. I guess I could use some more refinement but I am what I am. It was destined to happen when I was an aircraft maintenance person in the Air Force for many years. If you have ever been one you probably know what I am talking about. Being in the military requires you to have some thick skin and have a sense of humor to deal with the long hours of working on the flight line in less than ideal conditions. I guess I am doomed to being an unrefined Neanderthal incapable of rational thought. I need to accept who I am. Can I keep my computer though?
Cable Move
Back in December 2007 we had an ice storm that we will never forget. We lost electricity for a week and had a lot of damage to homes, trees, and power lines. During this ice storm the local power company discovered the pole in our backyard was old and fragile. A month later, they came out and installed a new pole as you can see on the right. They transferred all lines over to the new pole except for the cable television line. With all the cable Internet problems that I have been having lately, Cox Communications have been to our home on several occasions in an attempt to troubleshoot my Internet problems.
During these visits I guess they discovered that their line was still on the old pole. Well today a guy came out to transfer the cable line over to the new pole. You can see the new pole on the right now has a stand off brace on the left side of it. Also you can see where he connected some sort of a ratcheting device on the pole so that tension can be applied to the line to pull it over to the new pole. After being on the pole for nearly an hour, he came to my front door and told me that he will be back tomorrow with some help. He said the cable line has so much tension on the line that he cannot pull it over to the new pole without some help. You can see this pole is on a corner with tension pulling the other way. Also when the power company installed this new pole, they put it up behind the original pole. With the pole further back, the wires are too short. I sure hope he is able to pull it back tomorrow because I have been wanting to get rid of this second pole in our yard for a long time.
It is possible that our move to the new pole is a result of Cox_Will from Twitter. When he called me on the phone a couple weeks ago, I recall him mentioning that he would put a work order in to have the cable moved over to the new pole. It has been very unattractive for a long time to have two power poles in one backyard. It is hard enough to mow the back yard with only one pole back there. Also since the pole is on a corner, it has a guy wire anchoring the pole to counter the tension of the wires going in the other direction. I can hardly wait to get the cable moved over to the new pole. I will be calling OG&E the next day to have the power pole removed from the yard. Thanks again, Cox!
Back On My Router
I wanted to give an update on my Internet problems. You may remember that I posted on February 6, 2010 about how Cox came out to my house and worked to get my persistent Internet drop outs fixed. In the end, it was determined that my brand new expensive router was failing me. They brought me out a cheaper Linksys router and my Internet worked flawlessly for over a week. Yesterday we went back to the store and exchanged the router for a new one pictured above. Our Internet has been working on the new router for about 24 hours with no problems. My other router also worked great for two days before failing. Cox was willing to sell me the Linksys router and that is fine but I paid good money for the D-Link router. I am not opposed to Cox’s router so much as I am opposed to buying a new router and not using it.
I am hopeful that my router will continue to work long term and then I can let Cox have their router back. They worked with me diligently to find the problem. I do want to thank them for the assistance they gave me. That being said, I do think that when we are paying $50.00 a month for Internet, I do think it should be expected to have dependable service. Let’s hope that it continues to work.
Update Two Twelve Twenty Ten
What an amazing week. A week ago it was a sad day when I had my tower taken down and sold. The WIN System antenna was placed on my dad’s (W5QO) tower about 1/2 mile North of here. The 443.3 repeater is back on the air at this new location with the antenna mounted on the Southwest side of the tower. We were concerned how we were going to install the IRLP node on the repeater because there is already another node (3867). Since both repeaters are now at the same location, they are using the same Internet service. If you know anything about IRLP, Echolink, or any other streaming service, you know that audio and control commands happen on certain ports. The ports are the same on all nodes of like systems. Most people forward those ports to the node using a router. The problem is that you cannot forward the same ports to more than one computer simultaneously. This causes a unique problem because simply having a router will not be enough to have more than one node on one router.
We were left with either changing locations of the IRLP node and transmitting the signal to the repeater or getting another Internet account at the same address. Transmitting the audio to the repeater from a remote location is not the desired method for various reasons. For one thing the audio is not as clear by doing it this way. We prefer to have the IRLP node connected directly to the repeater. Secondly, having the node at a remote location makes moderating it more difficult. By having it connected directly to the repeater we solve these issues and others. We did some research and found it would not be that expensive to purchase another Internet Protocol (IP) address for the same Internet service. This eliminates the problem of forwarding ports to more than one computer. Now the 443.3 repeater’s node (8440) has its own IP address so that it does not require any ports to be forwarded. For the purposes of security, we have to block all ports except the ones that are needed.
As of last night, 11 Feb 10, both repeaters are back online with both nodes fully operational. We remain an affiliate of the WIN System so once the audio levels are set on the 443.3 repeater, the WIN System will return 24 hours a day. The antenna is currently not as high as it was before it was moved but we are evaluating our options to remedy this limitation. Either my dad, W5QO, Larry, KD5MAF, or myself will keep you up to date on the operation of the systems.
Thank you,
Cox Did Help Me
My Internet problems may be fixed and I owe it all to the employees of Cox communications. I have posted about my Internet connectivity issues on many occasions so much so that I am sure people are getting tired of hearing about it. I am still not for sure why things turned out the way they did but I am very happy. I signed up for Cox High Speed Internet about three months ago and have been plagued with dropped connections every few minutes. Those of you that know my family also know that we are heavy Internet users. When this started out we were using a Belkin F5D7230-4 router that we had purchased from Wal-Mart a couple years ago.
This router cost about $39.99 and was clearly on the low end of the spectrum. The Internet was dropping about every 30 to 40 minutes on this router and the only way to get it back was to reboot the modem and the router. I lived with this for about two months before finally getting so mad. I thought I should change routers before calling Cox just to make sure that it is not my equipment. In January my wife and I went to Office Depot in Moore, Oklahoma and spent $180.00 for what we thought was going to be a good router.
This router is a D-Link DIR-825 and is an “N” router with dual band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz capability. I did some research to see if it was a good product before buying it. This router had some very good reviews and seemed to be liked by many. I thought with all the positive reviews, this router would be a good choice because one of the advertised features was heavy use on multiple computers. We came home and hooked up this new router and it worked wonderfully for about two days. I was amazed at how good it worked when it was working. After about two days the drop outs started again. This time they would fix themselves after about five minutes. The dropouts became so bad that at one point it was down five minutes and came back on for about 40 seconds before going back down.
I was becoming more angry by the minute. I reluctantly called Cox technical support just knowing they were going to say it was my router. I have found that many times when you call tech support for any organization they always blame it on your equipment. Well just as I thought, they went through the troubleshooting process and within minutes came to the conclusion that it was my router. Of course I did not believe them and thought they were just “passing the buck” so they would not have to take responsibility for my issues. In my mind there was no way it could be my router because after all, I just bought a brand new $180.00 router with hundreds of positive reviews. At this point I was not only angry but indignant. In my frustration I started posting on Twitter about my persistent Internet problems. I made a point to mention Cox by name because in my mind it was their poor infrastructure that was causing my issues.
To my surprise, my Twitter posts were recognized by several Cox employees. The couple that I remember off the top of my head were Cox_Will, CoxNicky, and DonaldOhse. These employees went out of their way to contact me directly to help come to a resolution. It was Cox_Will that called me on the phone, did some tests, and had a local Cox representative contact me. I posted a story on my blog that listed my symptoms. I then sent this link to Cox_Will over Twitter. The person he put me in contact with was Debbie Chaffee from Oklahoma. They had a couple technical support people come out to my house and spent over four hours on a cold rainy evening. I really wish I could remember their names so they could get the credit they deserved. They replaced the drop line to the box on the back of my house. They installed a new cable coming from the box into the house.
They even installed a brand new white wall plate that better matched the paint in the house. They went up on the pole with some sort of tester to see if the line was good coming to our home.
They even communicated with some tech support people at a remote site using their Nextel phones.
In the end, they discovered that by pinging various servers both of my routers the latency was terrible and inconsistent. They were showing me the results going from 7 ms all the way up to 184 ms. When connected directly to my computer they were consistently less than 10 ms. It was hard for me to argue with that. Then they brought in a cheaper Linksys WRT54G2 router to try on a temporary basis.
With this router installed my Internet was working very nicely but I was still skeptical. Like I told the two gentlemen, my other router worked great for two days before dropping out again. The guy told me that he would leave their router at our house over the weekend with the instructions to give it a real workout. He said that he wanted us to put it under as much stress as we could to force a malfunction so we would have peace that it is indeed the router that was the problem. I grudgingly agreed to the terms convinced that it was going to fail before long.
Well it has been three days and I have been running multiple video streams simultaneously 24 hours a day. The Internet has not dropped even one time leaving me to admit that it was my brand new $180.00 router that was failing. I guess it is possible that I could have purchased a lemon. I am sure these routers are mass produced and there are bound to be a few that fail. This post is an attempt to fulfill a promise I made to all parties involved. That promise was to post a glowing review of Cox Communications if they could get my persistent problem resolved. I am not only doing this because I gave my word but also because they really do deserve the praise.
This company had the foresight to to put employees on Twitter and other social networking sites to monitor the keyword “Cox”. None of these people were contacts of min so they had to be searching for the word “Cox” to have stumbled on my posts of frustration. These individuals did not sit there and ignore my please but took the initiative to contact me directly. They stayed with me until the problem was fixed. I never thought that Cox was doing me wrong before, but was convinced that because I live in an older neighborhood that the infrastructure was old and frail. I knew that Cox was capable of delivering a quality service because I have many family and friends that are customers and they were very satisfied. I just wanted to give credit to them and tell them that I am very loyal to those that treat me right. I will stay with Cox and tell others how they were patient and just as persistent to get this intermittent problem resolved. Every one of them deserve a pat on the back in my eyes. Thanks Cox!
Cox, Help Me!
We had Cox High Speed Internet installed a couple months ago and at first the performance was outstanding. After about a month my Internet started dropping constantly to a point that it was really getting on my nerves. It was very strange because it was not losing connection completely but only the web. I could still use Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger etc. but the web would be off. Every time I would reset the modem and router, I would get my service back but only for a short time. I would find myself resetting them four or five times a day. What I was using was…
Motorola SBV5222 Cable modem with phone service.
Two desktops hard wired to the router and up to three laptops on the wireless portion of the router.
The router was set to clone the MAC code of the primary PC. The router had wireless security set to WPA. As I said before, the Internet worked very well for a while. After several weeks of dealing with this, Two weeks ago I bought a new, higher quality router with the hopes that it may fix the problem. This new router is a D-Link DIR-825 Extreme "N" and was set up in the same configuration as the Belkin was. After this change, the service was once again very reliable for a couple days. Once again I started losing connection again and again to the point that I was losing connection every five minutes. This time it is not just the web but all Internet on all computers. The good thing is that with this new router, it would start the Internet back up without any intervention from me after about a minute. Today I became so fed up that I began to believe that it was the wiring coming into the house. I stood out in the pouring snow today installing a new cable from the gray box into the house. This change made no difference. The dropping out was consistently about every three minutes.
I was about to scream I was so mad. I finally broke down and called Cox and followed their automated system. It had me go through the reset process again and then asked me if I was able to load my web site and I said yes. It came to the conclusion that it was my router just as I thought they would. I finally gave up and reinstalled the old Belkin router after that. I have now had a non stop streaming video playing for more than two hours of http://www.twitlive.tvand it has not dropped yet. I am still very skeptical that my problem is fixed because I have not done anything to fix it. I am using the same router that I was fed up with a few weeks ago that was losing web connection resulting in me buying the new router. I am also very skeptical the problem is ONLY my router. I know it is easy for those to jump to conclusions that my service issues are related to the ice/snow storm but this has been happening long before that.
One important piece of information that may be of help. The photo below shows the cable line behind my house during the ice storm of 2007. Since this was taken, several branches were broken off the tree to the right breaking this cable line in two. Cox came out and replaced the stretch of cable between the two power poles with a black cable. The older wire on both sides of this patch are silver cable. This patch is still there today. I have since had this massive tree cut down because these ice storms are becoming a regular occurrence.
Another thing to point out is that OG&E came out and replaced this power pole with another one right beside it. They cut off the top portion of the old pole that you see in this picture. They left the bottom half of the pole in my yard with the Cox cable still attached. You can see this in the photo below. If you look to at the short pole on the left you can barely see the Cox line still attached to the old pole. This was taken September 2008. The cable is still in this configuration to this day. The new pole has a brand new transformer on it.
This neighborhood was built around 1948 so we have issues with other utilities as well.
I have many friends and family that have Cox Internet and are very satisfied. They all tell me they are using multiple computers also but not having the problems that I am having. They say they are using multiple computers but I wonder if they are really using them the way we are. We use them simultaneously with streaming video on a regular basis. It is a completely different thing to have two computers on a network while only using one at a time. I am convinced that my service will drop again and that it is only a matter of time. I am at a total loss as to what the problem is. I am not a total novice with computers but I am willing to concede that I am lost.
I am very loyal to people that treat me right as I have been a T-Mobile customer since 2000. If you can help me fix this problem I will see to it that I spread the word far and wide what a great company Cox is. I just want reliable service, that is all. If you can help me fix this nagging issue, I would be grateful.
Thanks,
Paul
UPDATE: The Internet lasted until the next morning when I started uploading six pictures that I took of the icicles this morning to Flickr. I managed to get two of the six uploaded before I lost connection. I reset the modem and router six more times before getting the remaining four pictures uploaded. This is very irritating though I do know this time it was triggered by my uploading pictures.
Internet Driving Me Crazy
Man! I am so fed up with these Internet issues. I have had DSL and Cable service, four routers, wired and wireless, new modems and my Internet continues to drop out again and again and again. We have two desktops and three laptops and we have dropouts on both wired and wireless. Every piece of hardware in our network has been replaced, even computers. This problem has been going on for several years. Tonight is a particularly bad night with my Internet struggling to stay on for five minutes at a time. The only thing that I can think of is that my old house and power lines are flaky. Our wires are above ground and have been through countless thunderstorms and ice storms. I have a power transformer on the power pole in my backyard. I just noticed this evening that my cable Internet line coming from the pole has no ground on it.
I am so tired of this ongoing problem. Last week we bought a brand new expensive router and the dropouts continued. At least with the new router, the dropouts are able to fix themselves after a few minutes. Before I had to reboot the router and the modem just to get it to come back on. I can tell you I just want to scream like a little girl. When we pay $50.00 a month for ten years for service, you would hope that we could have decent service. It looks like moving out of here is the only way we are going to get it fixed. I just needed to vent some more.
Thanks for listening.
At a Complete Loss
I have posted about my Internet connection problems several times and nothing seems to fix the problems. Over the last several years I have been plagued with losing Internet connection repeatedly. In some cases I would not lose connection completely but I would lose connection to the web. All other Internet applications would remain connected while the web would lose connectivity. My wife and I with frustration have changed Internet providers from Cable to DSL and then back to Cable. We have been through four routers and six computers. There has been eight computers if you count the laptops. The problem is the same in every configuration. I am becoming convinced that my problems are infrastructure. I live in a house that is 60 years old and in a neighborhood that has many large trees that have grown out of control into the above ground power lines. Both Cable and phone lines are on these same power poles that are among trees. We live in an area that consistently has high winds most of the time. I am beginning to think that many of our connectivity issues are a direct result of these aging power, cable, and phone lines being exposed to large trees and high winds.
I have a moderate level of experience in trouble shooting computers and the Internet. When Internet is lost, most technical support will encourage you to turn off your router, modem, and all connected computers. They will have you turn on the modem, then then router, and then the connected computers. This is good advice and almost always works as most people that have had this problem will attest. Our problem is intermittent in nature but consistent in its repetitiveness. Over the last few years, we have changed modems, routers, and providers and the problem is never ending. I am hopeful that our move next year will help to alleviate these connection issues. Right now we are using a brand new cable modem and router. My router, D-Link DIR-825 802.11(n) Gigabit, is not even a week old. Our modem is a Motorola SBV-5222 and we have only had it for six months.The one noticeable improvement this router has resulted in is the auto reset. The Internet still loses connection but no longer seems to need us to restart the modem and router. It seems to restart itself within two minutes. When I am streaming video, the lost Internet is very annoying.
There are many reasons why I believe our problems are infrastructure. Over the years we have lost electric power many many times because trees have grown into the power lines and the wind has blown them into the wires. I have lost a monitor from a power surge that was a result of a loose ground wire on the power line behind my house. The local power company came to my house and narrowed the issue to that connection. To give you an idea of how this works I will explain. When that wire comes loose it is akin to turning on the water faucet and putting your thumb over the hose. When you take your thumb off the hose you will get a sudden surge of water pressure that shoots the water with a higher force. The same can be said of your power lines. The voltage is the pressure that pushes the electricity through the wires. The actual electrons (current) flowing through the wire is like the water going through the hose. When the current is slowed, it increases pressure (voltage). This sudden surge of voltage can be reduced with surge protectors but those do not work in our old neighborhood. Surge protectors rely on using the home’s ground. These old homes only have the old two wire power wires in the home and do not have a good ground for the surge protector to use.
I may be way off on my assumption but this is what I have narrowed it down to. We have changed every piece of hardware in the home network. The only thing left is infrastructure. I really hope that when we move, it can fix this problem. I talk to others and find I am the only one that has these problems, at least to this extent. If anyone can think of other issues that I failed to think of, please, by all means, let me know. We have had this problem intermittently over the last ten years that we have lived in this house. I am not too proud to accept assistance that can fix this problem.
Internet Issues (cont)
You may remember last week that I posted about my Internet Issues with losing my connection all the time. The strange thing about my problems is that I would lose ‘web’ access while my other applications would stay connected. I was with AT&T using DSL on a network with a wired and wireless router. The wireless router is being used as an access point set up as a pass through. I am now using Cox Internet with the same configuration. I took a picture above of my current system after the changes. The big difference in the above system is the new cable modem on the left. I checked the speed on Speakeasy’s Speed test and the download speed was 23847 kbps and the upload speed was 3644 kbps, fairly impressive.
Unfortunately my problem has not gone away. I have more than one router and I have tried both of them with the same results. When the system is working, it works very well. The problem is that I have times where my web access just fails to load after timing out. When it happens, it does it to all connected computers. It is clear that my problem is with the router because it works smooth with the computer connected directly to the modem. I am just not sure what is wrong with the router settings. If anyone else has had this problem before and has any suggestions, please let me know. You can either post here, or email me directly at paul [dot] mccord at gmail (dot) com. This is quite frustrating and I am very confused. The router is set up with default settings for a cable modem with the exception of certain ports being forwarded to specific computers. This is absolutely necessary because I have a ham radio linking system that uses several ports. I also have several programs that are used on specific computers that use special ports. All of our computers are set to static IP addresses so that port forwarding is possible.
I guess the single characteristic that makes this so interesting is that we do not lose Internet connection on our other applications such as Skype, and other audio streaming programs. It is only the web that is being affected. Also this seems to happen when we are accessing the web simultaneously on more than one computer. I know the web uses port 80 and so I am inclined to think that multiple accesses to the same port are confusing the router. Usually if I stop all web access for about two full minutes, the problem goes away. I do not even have to reboot the router, or the modem. Does this sound familiar? I am very interested in any suggestions others may have. What really gets me is that it happens on two separate routers. Also it does not happen all the time. For example at this moment I am trying to put stress on my system by streaming IRLP audio, watching Hulu.com on another computer, watching TWiT on another computer all at the same time. It is running flawlessly at this moment. I am very concerned about what is causing this because when it happens, my web is stopped cold. There is no access at all and in some cases, it is very slow. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
Internet Issues
In an all too familiar game, I am stuck playing the card that I do not wish to play. This morning I called in a work order to have my Internet service provider (ISP) changed from AT&T Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) to Cox Cable. Before you get too excited that I have finally seen the light and come over to the cool side I should explain this is not the first time I have been with Cox. I have been around the Internet since I was on bulletin boards back in the early 90’s. My first direct Internet experience was through Telnet in 1994 when we were stationed at Luke AFB in Phoenix, Arizona.
You may be asking yourself why I switched in the first place. Well as you all know we have very few choices when it comes to broadband Internet. We have our phone company or our cable company and that is it. If one of them makes you mad, you only have one other place to go. I live in an older neighborhood where the infrastructure is crumbling beneath us. Our phone lines are 50+ years old and our cable lines date back to the 1980’s. This is just another reason we plan on moving in the next two years. Back to the subject. When we moved to the Oklahoma City area in 1999 we had then Southwestern Bell DSL. The service was decent most of the time but then when they would go down, we could never get in touch with technical support because of their terrible automated phone system. A person wants to scream about 15 minutes into the circle of death pressing 1 for English and 2 for Spanish and so on…
What is a person to do? Switch to the competitor, Cox Cable. I did this around 2002 and again I was pleased for a while before we have the same failures. Again, we have some very old infrastructure both inside the house and outside. After losing connections over and over again, we switched back to AT&T in 2006 knowing what we were getting ourselves into. I must say this time the service was much better than before and hey! My old phone number was available that I had when I was a kid so I chose it. The service was outstanding up until a couple months ago and now we are losing service left and right. Before you say anything, I know the problem is outside my house because I disconnected all wiring from inside the house and then connected the modem directly to the box outside the house.
Once again, what is a person to do? Go to the competitor Cox Cable. This is the only recourse that we have when the system is not working. I know many of you are saying… Why would you ever go to DSL when you could have cable? Cable is faster than DSL in almost every case! Well, this may be true in theory but for the average user, you cannot tell the difference in performance.
I have six computers on my network and one of them streams audio 24 hours a day. There are three hard wired desktops and three laptops. Heck there are seven if you count my phone that also uses wifi for my unlicensed mobile access (UMA). My son uses Bit Torrent (legally) because he has a band with his friends. In addition I have tested my network running Skype video on two computers, and streaming video on Ustream.com at the same time.
With all this running simultaneously, our network runs flawlessly on the AT&T Elite DSL. This Elite plan is supposed to supply up to 6 mega bits per second (Mbps) and I have tested around 5.4 Mbps at the best. The cable plan that I am subscribing too is a 12 Mbps and I have had the 10 Mbps before. My dad already has the 12 Mbps cable and it is very good. One thing that is worthy of pointing out, it does not matter if you have 8,000 Gbps fiber optic cable going to your house, if the web site on the other end is bogged down, the page is not going to load any faster. This is something that some people do not understand. If you are sharing files (legally) and 100 people are downloading the same file, you are going to get a slow download even if you have broadband. The point in all this is that for the average user, the difference between DSL and Cable is negligible. I came to this realization years ago so the supposed improved performance of cable is barely even noticeable to the average user.
There was another reason this time for the switch. The telephone number that I now have is the same number that my parents had when I was a kid. Unfortunately these numbers are assigned a three digit prefix that are assigned to AT&T for Del City. If I were to move to another suburb in the Oklahoma City metro, I could not take this number with me. By porting it over to Cox telephone, then I can take it with me as long as I stay within the 405 area code. This means if I move to Midwest City, Moore, Oklahoma City or anywhere else in the metro, I can keep my childhood phone number.
And finally there is one more reason for changing. In December 2007 we had an incredible ice storm as you may remember in my post on December 11, 2007. This storm damages power lines all over the metro including cable lines. The last couple of months I have noticed Cox cable running brand new lines in my neighborhood. I am not sure if this has anything to do with repairing the old and damaged lines or if there is an actual upgrade that would enhance the performance. In either case, it is certain to be new infrastructure that will help eliminate connection drops. The old lines were silver, likely aluminum lines while now there are black thick lines.
I hope this helps to explain my reasoning for the switch this time. The change will not actually happen until next week. This is one of the reasons that I use my own domain and a web based email as my email account. This way, if I change, it is transparent to those on the outside. I never give or even use the email given to me by my ISP. I am anxious to see how well the new service will work. I am pretty sure that it will be more dependable if for no other reason the new cable lines being installed. They have already upgraded the ones behind my house. I look forward to trying some bandwidth tests with some of you online.