[BananaBoat @ Nov 21st 2007 4:19AM]

Me and my 6mbit/256kbps DSL will be crying over in the corner if you need us.

[Nathan @ Nov 21st 2007 5:36AM]

I'm not sure if everyone with this kind of speed is getting wallet rapes as much as I am, but I currently fork over $54.00 a month for 5mb/384kb from Time Warner. They are the only game in town (a small, small town) besides Verizon.

On the bright side, Verizon here offers an exciting 256k/256k DSL connection for 45 dollars a month (plus $20/month for the line, and 15 bones more for the "circuit connection" a month, oh and taxes and fees) so total I have the option of what I have now or something like 80 bucks a month for a land line I won't use and slow as snails internet.

If only the FCC would have maintained that internet connections were common carriers, we could have a cornucopia of small town providers cutting throats for customers. Instead we have a handful of nation wide telcos telling consumers what they are going to pay. So sad.

[Nathan @ Nov 21st 2007 5:38AM]

Make that "communication network providers were common carriers" as what I said up there ^^^ about common carriers makes no friggin' sense.

[mushrooshi @ Nov 21st 2007 5:52AM]

Time Warner needs to fix their damn service here!

I am getting ULTRA LOW speeds! After rush hour at around 7-9PM the internet connection, that runs at 8MBPS at 4AM dips to 500 KBPS at that time!

Either that or our 5 year old router needs to be fixed...

[Adrian Williams @ Nov 21st 2007 6:34AM]

@mushrooshi
Cable broadband tends to do that or it could be that you have a Broadband Hog in your neighborhood that gets off work at that time

[johnathon @ Nov 21st 2007 6:49AM]

Yea...mines too.

[DWells55 @ Nov 21st 2007 7:37AM]

Full duplex 20Mb for $65?!? I pay that much for 8Mb/768Kb Comcast cable that often fails to meet those speeds during peak hours. Terrible company, have had endless problems with them and they always blamed my equipment. They refused to troubleshoot our connection anymore until we paid them to require all the coaxial cable in our house. They stated that we "had noise on our lines" and that it was damaging the experience for other customers as well. Every time the technician plugged his line tester in, it reported abnormally high levels of noise. I suggested to him that it was possibly the cable on his device rather than ours, but he insisted that the device was fine and that they were "professionals."

Anyways, after rewiring the whole house, it still reported noise. Although this sounds too good to be true, I'm not lying: the lines still reported noise and the tech tried a different cable on his device. Surely enough, I was right. You have absolutely no idea how difficult it was for me to restrain myself at that point. Every part of me wanted to scream something along the lines of "IN YOUR FACE! Who's the 'professional' now? z0mg get teh own3d, etc." and then burst out laughing, but somehow I showed superhuman self-control I didn't know I was capable of.

End result was that there was water or something in one of the boxes on the cable lines (or so they told me) and that was responsible for my connection dropping out 3-5 times an hour for a couple seconds at a time - just enough to get me kicked out of whatever server I was gaming on, but not enough for casual users on my street to notice. To this day I still have unreliable speeds and terrible TV reception.

Oh, and to anyone who tells me to switch: I can't. Comcast showed up and bought out the previous cable company who we never had trouble with. So now we have no choice to pay their prices they set from being a monopoly. The only other internet options are 56K and 768Kbps DSL.

[johnzilla @ Nov 21st 2007 7:51AM]

My cable broadband connection is about 3Mbps down, 256Kbps up. And I'm paying through the nose for it, relatively speaking. On top of that, I live in a major city but due to a quirk of fate and lack of foresight on the part of infrastructure planners 60-70 years ago, I live so far from my CO that the best DSL I could ever hope to get is basically an ISDN line.

If Verizon (or anyone else) came to my area with FiOS, I'd camp out overnight to be their first customer if necessary.

[Mark Richardson @ Nov 21st 2007 8:46AM]

@DWells55
It's not "full duplex". Full duplex means you can send and receive simultaneously. Having the same upload and download speeds is called "synchronous".

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Nov 21st 2007 12:39PM]

@Mark Richardson

It's actually called "symmetrical". "Synchronous" is a different animal altogether. Don't worry, common noob mistake.

[Mark Richardson @ Nov 29th 2007 8:56AM]

@LikesGadgetsWillTravel
sDSL is known as both "Symmetrical Digital Subscriber Line" and "Synchronous Digital Subscriber Line". We're both right. Don't worry, common noob mistake.