Finally, after over a month of no to poor home internet access, I'm connected again!
Man, what an ordeal. The house we were renting had continuous outages. When it was up it crawled, dial-up speeds it seemed at cable modem price.
So we move, the apartments we moved into forgot to tell us, or I forgot to dig, that their internet was satellite provided. Ideally. When it worked. Which it didn't half the time. Then they forgot to let me, who was waiting on a "good" cable modem, know that they had decided to terminate that part of the satellite contract.
At the same time, the neighbor moved. They had had an unsecured wireless network that we could just reach in one corner of the bedroom and office (while waiting for the never-to-be-supplied modem.)
So, with no cable access and trembling fingers, I ordered DSL. Having talked with the computer lab manager at college, I knew where the hub was, and it was fairly far from me. We were hoping that maybe they had run a fiber line out to our area.
I'll be the first to admit that I know little about DSL, mainly that its speed depends heavily on how far you are from the hub. So on Friday when the box came in (5-8 business days earlier than expected), I eagerly, and a bit fearfully set everything up.
%$&@# Bellsouth's installation disc tried to hijack my homepage immediately on launch (thank you Spybot's TeaTimer for halting that) and I'm still chasing down the junk it installed.
However, I tested the connection speed via Speakeasy and the thing pegged on 3mb download rate and stayed there the whole time. So I guess they have a new hub nearby, or the fiber connection, or whatever got me my advertised speed.
So anyways, after little-to-no activity on my part, I'm back!
