I was using SBC for a DSL connection for the longest time. DSL was never the best but it it did work. When we moved into the house we just transfered the connection to save the hassle of looking for a better deal. That was a bad decision. Little did I know that DSL service for my area is sketchy at best and with the network I run that was a huge hindrance on my productivity. With 3 hard wired machines and a wireless connection to about 2 other computers, DSL was not cutting it. I should have known and done something about this earlier but I was trying to make due. I love my internets and the inconvenience of having my network go down 2-3 time a day for a half hour or more was weighing on my patience.

Everything I do is online

From my multitude of websites to email. I live on my computer trusting in my internet connection. Sure I can get email on my iPhone and Twitter works great too but getting things done for work or other ventures was grinding to a halt by the lack of service I was getting. Frustrating as it was, I dealt with it as best I could. I was locked into a contract and though I’d call customer service at SBC every few weeks and complain, there was nothing getting better.

Get out of your contract

I was told by customer service after my last call that with the number of issues I was having I would be able to get out of the contract if this wasn’t resolved. Then I would be free to shop around for a better plan. As it turned out I was only a few weeks away from the contract ending and that gave me some time to look into my options. I knew I wanted to get out of DSL and move to a cable internet connection and there are a few providers in my area that had service plans to look at. I did some research into Astound and Comcast to see what would work best for me and chose to go with Comcast Internet Service.

Addicted to speed

The tech that came out made easy work of the hook up. The office was already wired for cable so all he had to do was hook up the modem and make a couple calls to get everything working on the backend. He said that my existing wireless router would work so I wouldn’t have to buy another and once the modem fired up and I connected the machines it was like angels started singing out of my computers.

To test out the connection I fired up all the computers in the house. Yes…I am a geek with a mini computer lab. I call it my Batcave. ok. I’m weird. All of the computers found their connection and I started testing out the speeds I was getting. I should have taken a screenshot of the connection speed before but it was really depressing to see my download and upload speeds on DSL so I never did. I use a site called SpeakEasy that can test out the connection speeds and I got all giddy when I saw the results.

I ran two tests to see how fast I was connected. One was a hard wired connection and the other through my wireless router. Here are the results.

Hardwired

Through the router

There was a good size drop once the wireless router was used but I must say that this speed is still over twice the connection I was getting with DSL. The difference was very evident when I started working online. From accessing databases and doing work on the web everything was loading faster. Videos from my peeps with MeTodays on Viddler play like I was watching tv and not a skipping record. Uploading and downloading from my hosting server used to take several minutes based on file size, now takes only a fraction of the time. I am extremely happy with the choice to move to a cable internet connection.

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