early 21st century DSL technology

[Tossica]

So, I'm moving and it looks like the only option I have for interweb is a 3mb down/640k up DSL connection. Is anyone else using this ancient technology? If so, are you able to stream Netflix, Amazon, play games, etc these days? I know what the "minimum specs" are for the specific sites but am wondering what the real world experience is like. I have 40/20 business class cable now so I think I'm in for a shock.

[Zanchief]

I have it and yes it sucks, but it's usable. I stream netflix with it and as long as I'm not doing anything else, it's fine. Some things are slow though.

[Tossica]

what kind of speedtest results do you get with it?

[Zanchief]

I'm downloading a torrent right now but I'll test later today. It's not very good though. I think 10 down 5 up last I checked?

[Tossica]

I'm downloading a torrent right now but I'll test later today. It's not very good though. I think 10 down 5 up last I checked?

That's a TON better than it should be if it's 3mb/640k... 10/5 would be a dream for this place.

[Zanchief]

Like I said, can't really remember. It could be much lower.

[Zanchief]

nm

4.6 dl
0.6 ul

Sorry to get your hopes up, but like I said, it's very functional. I could upgrade my service here, but would have to buy a new modem and I don't see the need for the extra cost.

[vonkaar]

Back in Texas I had a synchronous 50Mb pipe. Life was grand and I downloaded everything under the sun. A DVD rip would take a few minutes, songs were near instant... could have every device on my house connected and doing 'stuff'.

Then I moved to Portland and dropped to a 15/5.

Then I moved out of the city, up into the mountains and I have the "Up to 1.5Mbps" connection, which, in reality, averages out to around 768k down and OMFG forget-about-it up. Takes 5 minutes to upload a single pic to facebook. I'm also VERY satisfied when I get a 400ms ping, so online gaming is out. You feel it when more than 1 device is doing ANYTHING, and we have: my pc, my arcade, my media pc, my wife's laptop, the kid's iPad, the family android tablet, and two Android phones. Any system phoning home for updates = the house slows down.

I cope by doing my downloads one... slow... connection... at... a... time. We download our content a day before we want to watch it. It takes about 4 hours for a single DVD rip, 12-18 for blue-ray. Or, I abuse my verizon 4G unlimited plan when I'm at work; where I have full connectivity and can get around 10Mb/sec. But that gets distracting and I'm sure Verizon LOVED my 130Gb monthly hit the first few months I was at home.

Mostly, you just get used to it. We are less online than we used to be. We sort of have to be, but it's also less necessary than before. I'm sure I'm not staying here and a fast connection is going to be a priority in the next place. Maybe we'll move up to Seattle and get in on that Gigabit action.

[Tossica]

That's good infos. Thanks, sirs.

I can live with 3mb/640k if that's what it actually is. I need a sustained 128k up for my radio station music feed and just really need enough down bandwidth to stream netflix and Amazon. I don't download much except software patches, etc so not too worried about that.

There's a 4G tower not far away so if nothing else, I can use the data plan on my phone for some things.

[Arlos]

Well, I was about to suggest satellite internet to you people out in the sticks. I know you can actually get some decent data throughput values from that, as much as 15m down, and 2m up. However, what I did *NOT* know is that their service has some SERIOUS data use limitations. Even their top-tier service only gives you 20 gigs of data throughput per month during normal hours. (plus 20 gigs more that you can use between 2am and 8am). If you're planning on doing anything resembling streaming, 20g a month is laughable. So much for that idea.

-Arlos

[10sun]

Check and see if you have any 4G data only carriers in your neck of the woods. Friend of mine is doing that for his house instead of cable & it works well.

[Tikker]

.

[Tossica]

I don't hate DSL. 640k up is not gonna cut it but it's my only option.

[vonkaar]

lol, I don't hate any specific technology... facts are facts. I haven't had this slow of a connection since I was excitedly installing Ruins of Kunark.

Here you go, taken just now. That ping is actually the best I've EVER seen here, they must have done some upgrade recently. Yeah, I'm getting excited about 200ms latency.



I'm slower than 96% of the nation, and I'm positive a lot of people test this on dialup. Wheeeeee.

FIOS was amazing. Cable was doable. This DSL is shit. I'm sure it's better closer to the city, but holy hell this sucks.

Last note, just to give you a feel for the lag I'm getting. When I previewed this post, I had a half-second delay so that NT could deliver the gif to me. It's like that on every single webpage, wait and watch every single element queue up and download.

[Drem]

How much you gotta pay for stellar speeds like that?

[vonkaar]

$50 /month

seriously

[Drem]

Good lord

[Lyion]

I'll never gripe about Buckeye Cable again lol...


Testing on my local speed test
Download Speed: 62944 kbps (7868 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 3548 kbps (443.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 10 ms


I have a friend of mine who lives in the boonies in Colorado and has DSL that rocks for latency. I guess YMMV for providers.

Sounds like Verizon 4G is the way to go. Huzzah, team.

Toss, check AT&T's site and see if they have any plans for deployment. Their DSL is supposedly decent. Verizon offloaded most of their non urban ISP DSL to Frontier who has no plans to upgrade it. I've heard a lot of bad things about Satellite, but maybe it's gotten better. I'm amazed so many places still have shit Internet. I can understand the boonies, but not somewhat suburban areas.

[leah]

this is a fun game guys

here's my speeds at work:

[vonkaar]

Yeah, my Verizon 4G kicks the shit out of all my coworkers who have similar coverage on other networks.

If I had decent coverage at my house, we'd just use that for our connectivity. But living in the sticks means I'm lucky to make phone calls. Even text messages have a 10% success rate. We can get pockets of 4G at various areas on our property, which means we'd be candidates for a repeater (booster). But to carry 4G, it'd be a $1,500-2,000 investment. That's not something I'm willing to do. My wife's Sprint phone gets a better signal out there, but it still isn't sufficient for a reliable data connection.

Living out here has been cool, but we're definitely not staying past the first year. And that sucks because I really wanted to make this adventure work. I love the land and the unbelievable view. My daughters and I picked a bucket full of blueberries last week, a couple early plums this week, a few pints of mulberries yesterday, and ate a few thousand strawberries that sprouted up all around us. The plums will be in next week, the (seriously) 200 yards of blackberry bushes will be the week after that, and then we have 3 giant fig trees and quince trees coming in another month. Also, the people who planted all of this (previous owners) were local trophy-winning marijuana growers, so we have a fucktown of wild weed growing all over. Our neighbor usually comes by to 'harvest' most of that.

Anyway... I didn't want to hijack the thread. I was just trying to expalin WHY I moved out here. It's a badass place, but we're too young for it. My wife can't put the kids in the stroller and go for a walk. We can't walk down to the store for a gallon of milk. Everything requires a 5-minute car ride down a very steep hill. Back on subject - the internet fucking SUCKS out here. So, we're in & out in 1 year. Lesson learned.

[Tossica]

You're renting?

This is a rental as well but a god damn amazing one. We're not as far out in the sticks as you appear to be but the 1/2 mile long private drive has made it so no one wants to run cable for anything decent.

[Lyion]

Dude, there are like 4 active people on this board. Figuratively speaking, it's also still mostly your board. Hijack away.

Also, just to add for fun that connection kicked the snot out of my Coppell, TX Internet DSL in the 90s.

It's tough to live in the boonies, especially if you're used to civilization nearby. I live in suburbia but it's fairly easy for me to get to awesome secluded areas, but I'm also a block away from Kroger and a few miles from our local mall. The pictures you put up on Facebook are pretty cool, though, so I can see the allure.

Have you started investigating school districts? That to me is the most important thing when one has small kids. While I loved Dallas, honestly I was glad to get out of it when I did due to the sshools there being so much worse than Ohio.

Also, are you considering buying yet?

[vonkaar]

The wife isn't completely sold on the Pacific Northwest yet. She was born in San Diego and moved to Texas when she was 13, so she lives by John Denver's, "sunshine on my shoulders, makes me happy." Gray skies TOTALLY affected her. We're looking at one more year, one more winter here. If it's as bad as last year, or worse, I'll have to move. We'd likely look at California first, though I'm even open to leaving the country. The only real requirement is: good climate. She wants plenty of sunshine, I want to never experience Texas-style summers again. A vibrant seafood scene would also be lovely. Is San Diego our only option?

It fucking SUCKS living like a god damned gypsy. I have a really nice home office - with a giant panoramic window view overlooking the entire valley. But I'm totally unmotivated to REALLY set up my various workstations (electronics tinkering lab, etc) because I'm just going to have to pack it up and move again. Bullshit.

Schooling is way more scattered here than it was in Texas. In Texas, it was largely based on your district. Take the mid-cities (DFW) for example. If you lived in North Richland Hills, you were in the Birdville school district, which put you in one of 3 high-schools (all exemplary), all of which had very decent middle-schools and mostly good elementary schools. If you lived in Keller, HEB, Southlake, etc; you went to one of a few high schools, with the same story. Fort Worth - your chances go down terribly. Dallas, you're almost certainly fucked.

Here in Oregon, you could be in the same district and have completely different levels of schools. In my town (Scappoose), we have 3 elementaries, 2 of which are total shitholes. The other one (which we're closest to) gets high scores on GreatSchools.org, has a low teacher:student ratio, and has the best (and newest) facilities. This great school, however, is full. Sorry, we're all closed up, no more students can fit here. Back in Texas, they'd just hire more teachers and set up portable buildings outside until more facilities could be constructed. Here, they just say, "sorry, we're full... go further away." In my case, that means driving 15 miles further, to a school which gets a 2 (out of 10) on Greatschools. Bullllshiiiit.

When we were in Portland, we were in an amazing neighborhood (Eastmoreland, if any of the 1,000+ regular NT viewers know Portland), which contained a perfect elementary: Duniway. It scores a 10, which is one of the few K-5s in Portland that scored that high, has an amazing, beautiful old stonework building (looks just like the Astoria school in Kindergarten Cop), and is totally loved and supported by the local community. One example: the owner of a large landscaping firm lives in Eastmoreland, went to Duniway as a kid, and so volunteers all of the groundskeeping duties from his company. The school looks like a garden of eden year round. To be succinct, it's a fucking amazing school. The problem? The kids leave that school and go to a middle-school that gets a 3, has a 1:27 teacher:student, and last year featured a pregnant 7th grader. So most of the rich parents send their kids to Duniway through 5th, then private school thereafter. That right there is a perfect example of Oregon public schooling.

So Jen is actually talking about homeschooling. It's an open discussion right now. More on that on another thread, I figure. But if we left and moved to an area with great schools, we'd go for it. Or if we had good private schools nearby, there's that. We'll see how it goes.


Apropos DSL, it was my first broadband system and I was very happy to play Everquest and Diablo 2 over it. I tried to play Project1999 over my current DSL and saw 800ms pings. At least Diablo 2 has 'offline' mode :D.

[Lyion]

The wife isn't completely sold on the Pacific Northwest yet. She was born in San Diego and moved to Texas when she was 13, so she lives by John Denver's, "sunshine on my shoulders, makes me happy." Gray skies TOTALLY affected her. We're looking at one more year, one more winter here. If it's as bad as last year, or worse, I'll have to move. We'd likely look at California first, though I'm even open to leaving the country. The only real requirement is: good climate. She wants plenty of sunshine, I want to never experience Texas-style summers again. A vibrant seafood scene would also be lovely. Is San Diego our only option?

Good climate is completely subjective. The pacific Northwest is the absolute worst area in the world for someone who wants lots of sunshine. I can see why your wife wouldn't want to stay there. How averse are you to cold weather? The absolute best seafood scene in the world would be in Maine. Summers there are moderate, but the winters are much tougher than anything you've most likely ever experienced. I enjoyed Winter Harbor immensely and thought of moving there when I was younger. If you are more interested in career, VA near the beltway is always booming and has a ton of career opportunities. It's fairly close to the ocean and smack in the middle of the East Coast. Baltimore is also booming but more of a crappy area.

Stateside San Diego is your best option for climate, but generally worst for jobs, taxes, cost of living, and schools. I grew up in San Diego, also, and love it. That said climate in Cali isn't as good as Hawaii.

I really like Ohio. I'm near the lake, a quick drive to DC or Myrtle Beach or NYC. Cost of living is good. There are a decent amount of good jobs. Last winter sucked, but generally they aren't too bad. My next stop however will be Gulf Side of Florida in 15 to 20 years though, give or take a few on each side.

[Drem]

Sounds like hawaii would fit the bill, vonk. Rarely a day over 80, sun every day, and some of the best seafood in the world