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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Internet Access Updates: DSL (Roughly) Doubles Downstream

Continued from 'Internet Access Updates: Bandwidth Boosts and Price Cuts'...

After receiving the automated phone call yesterday, I excitedly jumped back on the BroadbandReports bandwidth test site, and got:

Whaa? Upstream bandwidth was certainly higher (which will be nice for VoIP, among other things), but all-important downstream bandwidth saw no improvement. Power-cycling the DSL modem several times instigated new WAN IP address assignments, suggestive of successful AT&T network disconnect-and-reconnects, but didn't provide the speed boost I was expecting. Next, I rang up AT&T's technical support line, suspecting that something in the neighborhood DSLAM hadn't yet been activated (a problem I've had before). After a quick assessment of my line quality, the technician confirmed my suspicion, thereby also allaying my concern that I'd need a modem upgrade, or that the DSL filters or some other aspect of my home's internal telephone wiring topology caused the bottleneck.

Shortly thereafter, I received another automated phone call indicating that a maintenance call ticket had been opened and that a repair truck would be dispatched to inspect the situation and make any necessary fixes. Since this was a Saturday night, and since I was in the midst of another heavy snowstorm forecasted to last through Monday morning, I sadly concluded that I wouldn't be seeing any speed boosts for at least a few more days. But then I got an email notification of a WAN IP address update, from the DynDNS client running on one of my spare laptops.

Since there'd been no power outage, and since I'd done no more manual rebooting of the DSL modem, the DynDNS update suggested that AT&T had instigated the restart. On a hunch, I re-ran the BroadbandReports test, three successive times in fact:

Much better! Impressively, the company's response to my support inquiry took less than an hour, and AT&T seems to have been able to remotely tweak the DSLAM. Trust me, given the snow and wind I was experiencing last night (and am still experiencing), no technician truck got called that quickly. And the speed improvements have 'stuck' through this morning (including surviving a brief premises power outage last night).

So I'm now paying $5/month more than I did before, and six months down the road I'll be paying $5/month more than that. I'm still quite content. Why? Look back at my initial DSL experience of less than a decade ago. Now compare it to today's service. At half the price per month I was paying back then, I'm getting:

Twice the downstream bandwidth,
Twice the upstream bandwidth, and
Free access to a nationwide Wi-Fi network

And it also came with free DSL hardware. Granted, it's not a 50/50 Mbps symmetrical fiber connection. Then again, I'm not paying $250/month for it, either ;-)

Kudos, AT&T. Consider me content. Now please just remain network neutral, unlike your cable competitor.

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