GeekForce

Well,

I’ve been getting 192kbps both ways over a DSL connection for about 2 years now. Even with that bandwidth, this site gets about 25,000 hits a month.

But, I wanted more…

I called up SBC, and told them that I was sick of the speed problem, and I wanted it fixed.

There was lots of talk, and then a technician was rolled to my house to examine my phone line. The decision was that I could not sustain any better throughput until something was ifxed on the physical line itself.

Electrically, my house tested at 18,000 feet from the CO. So you’d expect pretty piss poor performance. Another engineer was dispatched to my house. He removed about 600 feet of phone line from my local loop. I theory a better connection as possible.

I have an OLD Speedstream 5660 modem this modme is not recognized by any techs when you call in for support. So, I bought a new modem. My friedns recommend a Zoom 5554 X5. I bought one.

Then I finally asked the right question - “Is there an RT in range of me?”
Tech: “Hmmm… Let me check.”
Hemming and hawing…
Tech: “Why yes there is.”
Me: “Well, wire me over to that bitch, and lets go.”

And that was the beginning of Dave’s DSL upgrade saga.

Firstly, I was told that I cant just be wired over, all sorts of work needed to be authorization had to be obtained, all manner of switches had to be flipped.

So, a customer in a bad situation cant just get fixed by telling SBC what they want - I think this is a major problem…

After much histrionics, and asking of questions, and talking, and arguing, I was finally authorized for the change. SBC would do a CORT (Cut Over to RT) on my circuit.

What switching to an RT entails on SBC’s part is ten days of down time. This is because the phone company has to do the wiring, then the ISP has to provision their end of things. If I understand what the DSL techs were saying, once all that is done, I have two local loops from my house going back to the CO. And all they have to do is switch me differently. then the new connectivity is enabled.

So, that costs you 10 days of down time.

During this whole procedure, you want to know whether your IP addresses will change. Of course the techs on the phone tell you that wont be a problem.

The whole deal is that we wait 10 days. When the install date comes up, The modem lights are all green - But there’s no connectivity. I used to be albe to plug a box into the switch, assign it an address and away we go.

Nope, SBC has switched us over to PPPoE. For two days I couldn’t get anything to connect.

And the SBC techs are no help unless you are running windows. Some of them know alot of stuff, but they dont support Unix, and Mac very well. Not to mention the fact that I’m dumb below layer 7…

Anyway, I get my modem manufacturer on the phone (I bought a Zoom X5) and they walk me through the config. I was really impressed with this!

After about three days, we are finally connected, and so I start playing around. I haven’t had any real bandwidth to play with in about 2 years. So, I’m firing off multiple Bit Torrent sessions, and streaming audio - to test the limits of the connection.

It looks like we’re getting about 300k down and 300k up. Not what I’m expecting.

When I call tech support, they tell me to wait ten days for the modem to train up. I bite.

Ten days later, we are still getting the same speed. I call in and insist that everything is not right.

Turns out that when they created my new account, they set me up for a symmetric connection 300k both ways. But wait! I never asked for that, nor was I told that that was the option I was going to get. The whole idea here was that I wanted better then 192k, and 300k is not that.

According to SBC, the only way to get a higher speed was to create a new order to increase the speed. And that would take until Jan 6th.

So here it is…

January 6th.

Where’s all this speed I’m supposed to be getting?

I called SBC, and they tell me to wait AGAIN…

Fun.