Who here still has less than a broadband?

[Key West]

Even my parents are addicted to internet, they insist on broadband...

 

[Blayze]

A few of my relatives still don't have a computer, and probably never will (they see no need in one, or can't get a decent connection online).

 

[Jeff7]

Please, it's "woman" band.

 

[duragezic]

The way my TWC/Road Runner has been running the past hour, I'd say it's less than broadband. At first it wasn't loading pages, now it's sometimes loading them but like shit.

 

[DrPizza]

Satellite - I'd call it a little less than broadband.

 

[SunSamurai]

Please, it's "woman" band.

Its "American female" band.

Also, I was on dialup for years, bacj and forth from Cox 16down connection. Now ive haxxed my iPhone and am on an Edge network. Its about 8x faster that dialup at about 2x that ping.

 

[zinfamous]

Please, it's "womyn" band.

fixed again!

 

[Spacehead]

Dial-up here. I'm thinking of going with satellite though. The prices make me cringe but it's my only option.

Satellite - I'd call it a little less than broadband.

I've been meaning to ask, which provider are you with & are you happy with it?

 

[SunSamurai]

Spacehead are you sure you cant find a 3G method? It would be 1000x better than satellite.


While Satellite will have better download speeds (but HORRIBLE caps) dial-up will have MUCH better ping and I have heard of no caps on dial-up. I did extensive research in them for years and I could never bring myself to do it. The only real advantage would be large downloads upto about 10GB a month. They may have hightened that but that was the high teir maybe a year ago and on one of the better plans. ex. Ping around 1500-3000 whereas dialup is going to be 250-500. That delay happens several times per page load.

3G you can either tether an iPhone, or get a legit 3G net setup on a contract (gotta contract up with satellite anyway and you dont get a phone out of the deal). Downloads are about 125KBps-500+ down, ping is in the range of 100-300. I personally have no cap, but some do, and usually much higher than Satellite.

Even an EDGE connection (wider area of coverage) would be better than Sat. 25KBps down and 500-1500 ping. Dialup being 3KBps down.

 

[sonoma1993]

my grandma has ATT DSl, she on their 768kbit plan. Her internet is slow as hell. Two peoplle try to use her internet at the same time. It basically dies on you

 

[JEDI]

Even my parents are addicted to internet, they insist on broadband...

any free dialup services?
NetZero stopped thier free 10hr/month thing long ago

 

[JEDI]

Dial-up here. I'm thinking of going with satellite though. The prices make me cringe but it's my only option.


I've been meaning to ask, which provider are you with & are you happy with it?

move to Philly

free WiFiMAX courtesy of the city

my grandma has ATT DSl, she on their 768kbit plan. Her internet is slow as hell. Two peoplle try to use her internet at the same time. It basically dies on you

i consider 768k to be broadband. you dont?

i used to haave that at $15/month. now i convinced them to up it to 1meg for the same price

 

[x-alki]

AT$T says I have broadband. I disagree. Most days my Verizon aircard is faster on the down side.

 

[Spacehead]

Spacehead are you sure you cant find a 3G method? It would be 1000x better than satellite.

I tried a Verizon Wireless USB modem about a year ago but couldn't get a consistent decent signal. At it's best it wasn't worth the $60 a month they wanted.
Tried a couple of speed tests when it was getting a good signal:
Verizon Wireless (115 kbps)
Speakeasy (NY)
up - 70 kbps
down - 200 kbps

speedtest (Wash. DC)
up - 0.06 Mbps (61.44 kbps)
down - 0.27Mbps (276.48 kbps)

While Satellite will have better download speeds (but HORRIBLE caps) dial-up will have MUCH better ping and I have heard of no caps on dial-up. I did extensive research in them for years and I could never bring myself to do it. The only real advantage would be large downloads upto about 10GB a month. They may have hightened that but that was the high teir maybe a year ago and on one of the better plans. ex. Ping around 1500-3000 whereas dialup is going to be 250-500. That delay happens several times per page load.

What's that mean? Just typical web pages will load slower with a satellite connection than with dial-up?

 

[Jumpem]

You have to remember that large areas of the country only have dial up as an option. I have cable available because I am near a main road, but just a mile or two from me it's not available.

 

[lxskllr]

What's that mean? Just typical web pages will load slower with a satellite connection than with dial-up?

It's a delay. That's the time it takes something to even start happening when you click a button. Ping is stated in milliseconds. 250 ping means it takes 1/4 second for information to go to the foreign machine, and back to you. 1500 ping would be 1.5 seconds.

 

[SooperDave]

Aircard here. No DSL or cable broadband available out in the country. I've been thinking about satellite, either HughesNet or Wild Blue. I've got an aircard at the house and a Treo I connect with via bluetooth when I travel. I've been using cellular internet for travel since 2001 when the only thing available was thru Nextel at 19kb/s. Way slower than dial up. What a miserable bastard that was.

 

[DrPizza]

Dial-up here. I'm thinking of going with satellite though. The prices make me cringe but it's my only option.




I've been meaning to ask, which provider are you with & are you happy with it?

WildBlue. For the most part, happy with it. VERY VERY unhappy from hitting the cap a while back when my kids were home. Supposed to roll me back to dial-up speeds. The effectively turned off my connection. And, it doesn't turn back on until I'm back down to 80% of my max.

I'm pretty careful now; but then again, I'm not paying for the top tier that they have for the highest bandwidth & highest cap (20GB, I believe.)

Personally, if I could do it again, I might go with hughesnet for the sole reason that from 3am to 5am (or something like that), the bandwidth doesn't count against your cap. I'd be able to set up software to automatically download stuff like a fiend during that time slot each night. Instead, I go without.

 

[woodie1]

No DSL or cable in my area. Thought about satellite, either HughesNet or Wild Blue, but the cost is really too high to me. I got used to dial-up and FF.

 

[Ken g6]

any free dialup services?
NetZero stopped thier free 10hr/month thing long ago

They did? Then what's this? ^_^

 

[Fritzo]

We still have over 20000 dialup users at my company. Dialup isn't going away anytime soon.

 

[nageov3t]

I haven't used a modem since senior year of college (my college provided free dial-up for students living off campus and my roommate and I used it during our first week in that apartment while waiting for cable to get hooked up).

I don't think I even own a modem anymore... my old 56K external us-robotics might be kicking around my parents' attic somewhere. that thing was a beast. I think it used a serial connection?

 

[SunSamurai]

WildBlue. For the most part, happy with it. VERY VERY unhappy from hitting the cap a while back when my kids were home. Supposed to roll me back to dial-up speeds. The effectively turned off my connection. And, it doesn't turn back on until I'm back down to 80% of my max.

I'm pretty careful now; but then again, I'm not paying for the top tier that they have for the highest bandwidth & highest cap (20GB, I believe.)

Personally, if I could do it again, I might go with hughesnet for the sole reason that from 3am to 5am (or something like that), the bandwidth doesn't count against your cap. I'd be able to set up software to automatically download stuff like a fiend during that time slot each night. Instead, I go without.

have you looked into 3G or even EDGE as well? Even on an EDGE connection you wont see much of a difference (things like forums will load faster on even edge than Sat).

I'm sure youve already made a pretty good investment into Sat, but its worth the effort to look into those alternatives as your contract comes to an end. The lower ping of Edge and esp 3G really make casual browsing much more pleasant. Plus caps are usually much much higher.

 

[SunSamurai]

We still have over 20000 dialup users at my company. Dialup isn't going away anytime soon.

Mainly due to telecommunication companies being slow as fuck when it comes to wireless access programs. Edge could reach a huge portion of those people in rural areas and I'm sure thats not even the best solution. Most of they pay 20$ a month or less for their access, and would sell their dog to pay twice that for speeds that most of us would scoff at. (sub 1Mbps down etc).