Mike and Frank--Re DSL. I promised a while ago to keep this thread updated on status of DSL in my neck of the woods. Well, it's finally arrived. I ordered my residential service ($50 per month, includes ISP charge). Bell Atlantic (I am in New Jersey) has apparently seen all the demand they can handle. Of course, it hasn't arrived everywhere around here. My neighbor can't get it at his office in Glen Rock, and it still isn't available at all in Franklin Lakes. Glen Rock is a prosperous suburban town with houses on fairly small lots. Lots of popultion density, but apparently not always close enough to the CO, The Franklin Lakes CO apparently hasn't been provisioned.
Installation took four trips by BEL. First, it was supposed to be turned on by the CO (no truck roll to be required) but I could get no signal. It took a couple weeks to get the repair guy here. He couldn't figure it out. The next morning, a second person appeared. He wasn't aware that someone had been there before. The second guy was much better, and got everything all set--and confirmed that there was a problem with the card in the central office. Later that day I had a decent signal. Guy 2 stopped by to put his tester on the line, for Visit 3 by BEL. A short visit.
Unfortunately, it still wouldn't work in my computer. BEL had sent out three installation manuals with the equipment. Plug-and-Play--NOT! One of the manuals was for the network card for my computer. The second one was to initiate service. The third one superceded a bunch of the second one. I went through the directions pretty carefully, but was unable to get it to work. At that point, I had to start worrying about taxes, and I'd decided to get a new computer so I set the effort aside for awhile.
When the new computer came, I didn't even try to install the DSL myself. A tech came, and had it up and running in half an hour. (It helped that I have a new, fast machine with plenty of RAM, apparently). Interestingly, the tech looked at one of my installation disks, and practically laughed. It was out of date, and apparently was the cause of a lot of calls.
My conclusions:
1. BEL is winging it with DSL. They are getting there, but they still are not dealing with a mature product nor do they have depth in the tech support side.
1a. An indication that we are dealing with an immature product: I can close down the browser and receive the prompt to disconnect from the modem. Clicking "Yes" will sometimes, but not always, prevent me from logging on again. I can reboot, and then quickly sign back on through DSL. Annoying, and something that will cause me just to stay on all them time, thus using up BEL's IP addresses.
2. BEL is very much interested in preserving their copper in this area. Thus, they should see a real benefit in moving users onto DSL, rather than say ISDN or even staying on analog.
3. Service so far has been excellent or non-existent. One of the problems BEL has always had with their internet service is unreliability of their servers. I seem to be going through those same servers now, and they are sometimes up and sometimes not. For instance, there appears to be a distinct log-on server farm that is accessed by both analog and DSL customers to initiate service at the start of each session. For BEL, this is sometimes down. Similarly, the analog service used to slow to a crawl after I was on for a long time. That appears to have happened with the DSL as well. I presume this is congestion on the back end.
All in all, of course, it is a huge improvement and a big boost to my productivity.
Best,
JS |
