OT: was Facial Hair... now New Speeds available

[John Esak]

>
> I just hope the transition works out for you, really.  And smoothly!
>


Me too. don't see how it could be a problem... we will keep the T1 for
awhile until the optical pans out okay.  The 1400/mo is from a 1200 service,
600 for isp, 600 for local loop... and negotiated almost 3 years ago now,
maybe more. Then add 200 because we opted for managed care, and that has
been the best thing we ever did. 1 minute response time and it is all on
them to fix things quickly.  Is it worth 1400/mo... no, but on the whole it
has been really good not to worry about the main T1... sor of a real hassle
when it goes down, which it has for like 8 hours at a time, 3 times...

> Am I jealous over the numbers?  A little, but not really.  The reality
> is that my DSL 1.5mbit is damned fast compared to modem that I was used
> to, and a year plus later I'm still not wholly used to it coming in that
> fast, and a lot of sites that I get large files from are throttled for
> QoS anyway, so it doesn't even fill my pipe unless I "abuse" them and
> use a multi-segment download program (which I can...I have GetRight).
> Wouldn't mind a symmetric line for the uplink, but that costs more than
> I can afford or justify even if I could.  I don't do anything intensive
> enough to actually use much more than I have very often.  Work doesn't
> usually use more than 56kbit worth, and even with -both- of us gaming, I
> can allocate 80% of the bandwidth to background downloads and we see no
> ill effect both gaming and loading web pages simultaneously.  I just don't
> -need- more.  But would I love it if it was there just for the hell of it
> to be used whenever?  Sure!  But in reality, I'm going to be waiting on
> the other end, who likely doesn't have that large a pipe and who throttles
> anyway, so I'm still not going to see the full benefit of it in
> many cases.
>



True, everything waits on the "other" ends capabilities... but you are
mostly thinking in terms of "speed" and then also in terms of just you alone
or just you and Kelly.... I'm not so much interested in the "speed" side of
30Mbs downolading and 10Mb uploading as the "cpacity". We have 30 or 40
people banging on the T1 pipe all the time... and a measly 1.5 symetrical
just isn't great anymore.  I can not but believe that multiplying this by
about 20 times won't help a *real* lot. :-)

John


P.S. - Oops, almost forgot.  It is Verizon offering the new full blown
Optical service.... and that is what I will move the T1 to.  The local cable
company is, however, also offering the 30Mb service and so I will put it in
place of a spare DSL line we have in the place. At least Rick and I can fool
around for a while testing and getting a feel for what the huge bandwidth is
like.


As for being tied to the "other" side.  I get lots of books from Audible.  I
now have a 5Mb download cable service in my home..... They just recently and
I mean like in the past few weeks started letting me use more than about
756k.  Don't know what they did, but I cn now break up about 10 downloads
into 500k each which is great.