Abandoning dial-up

cj iwakura

Rather than use my forthcoming refund on a new console, which is usually what it goes towards, I'm thinking I might just bite the bullet and finally get DSL/cable/whatever it's called.

I've had dial-up for as long as I've used the internet, so it's safe to say I don't know much about anything else.

What's a good rate, or a generally reliable ISP? (I live in South Florida, for whatever that's worth; Bellsouth/AT&T and Comcast reign supreme, among others.)

I'd also like to use it as a starter to get into online gaming. I don't have any major online consoles shy of the DC and PS2(and I'd have no idea where to start with either), though I have a few PC games like F.E.A.R. and Hellgate: London that I figure I can find something to do online with.

So firstly, what's a good way to move on? Secondly, how much should I expect it to cost?

And lastly, what should I expect to go through to play PC games online? I may get a 360 one day, but not any time soon.

Fizban140

I pay $40 a month for 8mb download, which is considered cheap for my area. Try to avoid comcast if you can, from what I hear they are terrible. Oh and don't sign up on the first person you call, call them a few times and see if you can get a better deal.

Deusfaux

check out articles on consumerist that cover ISP related stories often, and might have had a ranking of them within the past week or 2.

for a relative comparison (though this is in Canada) I get a 5 down 512 up connection for about $30 (bundle price from getting tv with them as well).

the other guy forces you into a contract for comparable prices - so those are not necessary.

you might want to take into consideration which ISPs are rumored or suspected to traffic shape (basically limit your torrent connection speeds)

or strictly enforce small caps (like 30GB / mo or something)

cj iwakura

That doesn't sound like a cap I'd have any problem with. Also, '8mb download'? How is the rate determined?

Not that it really matters. I'm sure any kind I'd get would be lightning fast compared to 56k.

Deusfaux

See, you might say that now, but when you soon have the ability to even consider large downloads like you couldnt before, you'll realise a cap like that might be very constraining.

example - you can now download PC game demos that are often a few GB a piece.

it's actually megaBIT we are describing when talking about speeds. so 5megabit would translate to about 625 kilobytes / second at BEST (your actual speeds will rarely get right up to that actual limit)

56k is 56 kilobits, for reference. so you could say a typical cable connection is 5000 kilobits.



edit: also, you're going to love it, I think. A broadband connection is one of the few things that would drive me crazy to live without if talkign about material things. it's just so essential to the modern internet/connected experience.

Dark Shroud

If you're in a monopolized area in the US with Comcast you're better off going with the DSL alternative. AT&T doesn't offer the speeds that comcast advertizes. But they actually deliver well and don't screw with your connection like Comcast does.

Steev

cj iwakura wrote: »

Rather than use my forthcoming refund on a new console, which is usually what it goes towards, I'm thinking I might just bite the bullet and finally get DSL/cable/whatever it's called.

I've had dial-up for as long as I've used the internet, so it's safe to say I don't know much about anything else.

What's a good rate, or a generally reliable ISP? (I live in South Florida, for whatever that's worth; Bellsouth/AT&T and Comcast reign supreme, among others.)

I'd also like to use it as a starter to get into online gaming. I don't have any major online consoles shy of the DC and PS2(and I'd have no idea where to start with either), though I have a few PC games like F.E.A.R. and Hellgate: London that I figure I can find something to do online with.

So firstly, what's a good way to move on? Secondly, how much should I expect it to cost?

And lastly, what should I expect to go through to play PC games online? I may get a 360 one day, but not any time soon.

As a fellow south Floridian, I can recommend bellsouth/AT&T. We used to have Adelphia for cable access, and it ended up being terrible. Tons of outages. As you probably know, they got gobbled up by Comcast, and I've not heard much good about them either.

We switched to Bellsouth/AT&T about 4 years ago and have had very few outages. Customer service has been friendly and understandable when I've had to call them about the few problems I've had. Pricing is here. We use the "DSL Xtreme 6.0" (ugh) package and we're happy with it. As far as I know, there's no cap. I don't really do any torrenting, though.

cj iwakura

That link's a lot of help, but is there any reason why the first ($19.95/month) option wouldn't work for everything listed with the higher priced options?

It says 'great for online gaming' under the third and fourth only, but that sounds like marketing jargon to me.

Ridiculously high speed doesn't matter much to me, as long as it gets the job done. If online gaming can't be done with "up to 768 Kbps/128 Kbps", though, then that's a different story.

MaichinShin

test post, sorry!

Fizban140

cj iwakura wrote: »

That link's a lot of help, but is there any reason why the first ($19.95/month) option wouldn't work for everything listed with the higher priced options?

It says 'great for online gaming' under the third and fourth only, but that sounds like marketing jargon to me.

Ridiculously high speed doesn't matter much to me, as long as it gets the job done. If online gaming can't be done with "up to 768 Kbps/128 Kbps", though, then that's a different story.

Only gaming can't be done like that, My connection would drop to 1.2mb and I wouldn't be able to play Halo. You want something about 3.

Steev

cj iwakura wrote: »

That link's a lot of help, but is there any reason why the first ($19.95/month) option wouldn't work for everything listed with the higher priced options?

It says 'great for online gaming' under the third and fourth only, but that sounds like marketing jargon to me.

Ridiculously high speed doesn't matter much to me, as long as it gets the job done. If online gaming can't be done with "up to 768 Kbps/128 Kbps", though, then that's a different story.

One time I was playing World of Warcraft and noticed I was lagging badly. I'd try to cast a spell and it wouldn't even start casting until about 2 seconds later. Eventually I noticed that webpages were loading slowly, so I ran a speed test and found it was down to about 600 Kbps. I'm not really sure why this happened, but it lasted for about a day. It made WoW unplayable; I'm not sure about other games.

You'll also want to keep in mind that you won't necessarily get the maximum advertised speed. My connection's highest speedtest clocked in at about 4500 Kbps after upgrading, although I tested it just now and it's at 6400 Kbps.

I guess what I am saying is that you definitely don't need the most expensive package there, but you probably want something better than the basic one. It's not a big deal to upgrade or downgrade to a different package, so you could probably just try the DSL lite and see how well it works and upgrade if you need to. I'd confirm with AT&T on that first, though, because we upgraded when they were Bellsouth.

mooshoepork

I hate you Americans with your decently priced internet... Here in Australia, I live 15 minutes from our largest city, about 4 million people, and we don't even have ADSL2.

I pay 70 dollars a month, for 1500k down, 256 up, with 84 gig limit. 36 on peak, 48 off.

Seattle Thread

Man, I've been using Comcast for almost three years, and aside from one incident where the entire block was down for two hours I've never had a single complaint with them. My connection is always fast and stable, without fail. I don't understand where the hate for Comcast is coming from.

Dark Shroud

I live in an Area where Comcast is almost a monopoly and was for a few years. They've been proven to mess with traffic. Comcast is currently being investigated by the FCC for this. They also have moving invisible usage caps and oversell their network.

I do heavy BitTorrenting, only I download legal files. Comcast doesn't care what I'm doing is legal. They also have been busted for messing with Lotus Notes as well. So their traffic shaping software (sandvine) is indiscriminate in killing connections.

My upload speed isn't what I'm supposed to be getting. And I've never been able to reach speeds even half of my download limit. And they charge a lot for this. I'll be switching from them soon as I'm tired of this garbage.

Tomanta

You might want to look into whether or not a FIOS connection is available for you instead of just DSL/Cable, as well. Don't know all that much about FIOS (not available here) but I like what I've read so far.

JaysonFour

I have Comcast here in MI. It's true, their service leaves much to be desired (as in: could suck less), but they're really willing on the credit thing- if you call up and complain, they'll give you a bit off your bill just to shut you up.

...of course, there WAS the day the TV and Internet both went out and remained offline for about seventy-two hours. I'm just happy for the dozens of seasons of stuff we had on DVD.

Deusfaux

http://consumerist.com/361430/worst-company-in-america-2008-preliminaries-2nd-try

Divebommah

I live in northern California, so you mileage may vary, but I just signed up for naked DSL (meaning no land-line) from AT&T a couple months back -- working great. $25/month buys you 1.5MBit down and something really pathetic up. Good enough for downloading iTunes MP3s that I purchase in 30 seconds or so, or for streaming TV shows from TV network sites at a reasonable clip.

Before this I paid $15/month for 756kbit/down and 350kbit/up which was also perfectly adequate.