Re: [PLUG] and now, the more mundane

[bergman@merctech.com]

In the message dated: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:45:22 EDT,
The pithy ruminations from Floyd Johnson on 
<[PLUG] and now, the more mundane> were:
=> I was originally going to call this "bleeping residential DSL".
=> 
=> Once again, the Verizon DSL experienced a weather-related line protocol
=> failure (10:27 AM), said firm's recent and past labor issues being

	[SNIP!]

=> 
=> For those of you living in the city limits: 

	[SNIP!]


I considered DSL, but I don't have viable copper running to the house (no
land line, old wiring, etc.), and Verizon has been "less than helpful"
about providing info about dry-loop DSL, which I believe is a required
offering under their municipal charter.

I had Comcast cable for about 2 years. Intermittent outages (~1x/month,
from minutes to hours, often correlated with weather conditions).

=> (2) Have you generally thrown in the towel on DSL and shelled out for
=> fiber to your premises? 

Not available in my area of Manayunk.

=> (3) Given its atmospheric nature, is that WiMAX thing hawked by Clear
=> even relevant to you as Linux geeks?

I've been fairly happy with Clear for the last 13+ months. It's 80% as
fast as Comcast (residential), has had fewer outages, has had shorter
duration outages, never required a service call to resolve an outage,
and is significantly cheaper than Comcast.

Having said that...I carefully researched Clear before committing and
checked Google maps of local broadcast towers. Our Clear receiver is located
with a line-of-sight angle to a Clear broadcast tower that's about 2 blocks
away. We almost always get "5 bars" of signal strength. IIRC, we typically get
about 8Mb/s down and 1.25Mb/s up.


=> (4) Which observation works better?
=> "2010 has come and gone, and the state of residential data
=> communications fares little better than two tin cans and a string."
=> 
=> or
=> 
=> "Even in the future, nothing works." (ascribed to Mel Brooks,
=> director/co-writer, "Spaceballs", ca. 1986)
=> 

I'll take what's behind door #3, Monty.


Mark
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