That first taste of broadband

Anyone who has spent any length of time using a dial-up modem remembers their first taste of the sweet nectar called "Broadband".

I can remember downloading the original Doom shareware demo from a BBS back in Lansing, I think it was the Abacus. I had myself a 2400 baud modem. Someone had taken the time to break up the install program into about 5 or 6 chunks I think. I remember that it took me a couple of days to download it all, the Abacus only gave you so many hours a day to be connected and well the file size to download speed meant that it was going to take all of my allotted time.

But when I went to MSU I got my first taste of broadband. Not during the summer program, SUPER, they had us out in Sny-Phi (Snyder-Phillips) and older dorm, I had a 28.8 modem at this point (pretty sure it wasn't a 56k yet, I think those had just hit the market).

But when I got into the Holden dorm, I had an Ethernet outlet in my room. It was unbelievable. I could download game demos quicker than I ever imagined. That was my first real taste of broadband.

When I first moved down to Austin (TX) I was on dial-up again, with a 56k modem this time. I remember playing online games and bitching about the lag or having to download patches in the 1MB range and how long it took to do so.

Broadband for the home was still in the form of T1 and ISDN lines. Both of which were well outside my pay scale. I mean a T1 would easily be about $2k/month and a 128K ISDN line was I think like $400 or $500 dollars.

I don't remember which came first to town. But I think it was cable modem. I signed up for the RoadRunner cable modem service from Time Warner as soon as I could. It was great. It was like being back at MSU.

Not to mention it was nice to be able to be on the phone and the Internet at the same time (I didn't really use my cell phone much back then.)

I had heard horror stories about DSL. The wait times, the constant failures (for days, not hours or minutes). So I stuck with cable modem for quite a while.

I think it was around August of last year that I made the switch to Yahoo!-SBC DSL. I figured that they had to have it stable by now. Plus by bundling the DSL, Phone and Sattelite together I was spending about as much as I was for just the cable portion of my bill to TimeWarner.

So I made the switch. The DSL has proven to be fairly stable. There were some moments where I would have to reboot the modem and router. But I figured out that this was some sort of strange session conflict between my modem and router, so I made the router login to the DSL network and told the modem not to. No more problems since.

What made me think of all of this.

My Mother did.

Last night she finished hooking up her DSL modem and got her first taste of Broadband. Now, she had an Ethernet connection on her computer when she worked for the State of Michigan, but being as it was the State, not supposed to be downloading music or pictures or what not.

I congratulate my Mom on her problem solving skills. Stand up and take a bow Mom, you earned it.

The DSL modem was not working correctly it was intermittently flashing red and green. I was afraid I was going to have to call tech support, not a fun thing, AT&T (formerly SBC) outsources it to India.

However, she made the keen observation that one of the phones in the house didn't have the DSL filter attachments they provide. She installed the filter and the light when to a steady green.

She completed the registration process and was able to pull up my blog.

I ordered them the slowest speed DSL of 768 Kbps download vs what would occasionally be a 56 kbps modem connection (usually I think I connected in the 40 Kbps range). So I expect her to have at least 10 times the speed. If they really get into photo sharing or what not, it is only $5 more a month for the 1.5 Mbps speed.

Again, Mom take a bow. You were able to handle a fairly technical setup without any real help from me. And also, I think ATT-Yahoo DSL deserves a round of applause for being able to provide a decent set of instructions and a relatively pain free product.

And I am sure my Mom will always remember her first taste of Broadband. Because you will miss it when your without it.

Back to the grind, Laterz.