Cable

The Story of The Great Internet Outage of 2018

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This weekend will forever be known as the great internet outage of 2018. My DSL went down and the provider ended up thinking its my router. Problem is my DLS goes down on average 3 times a day. I have the up and down notification emails to prove it. The provider is highly rated and I like them for their no filtering and no throttling approach to internet providing. The issue is this constant mini outages. Usually lasting a few minutes. This time it has been down for a day. It looks like it will be down till at least tomorrow when my new router shows up.

This incident has finally gotten me to decide to switch providers and sign up for Virgin. Two other families on my block have it and say the speed is pretty good. Reviews say depending on the block you may be good or bad. I opted for the high end 300+meg plan. It only has about 25mb upload but that is around what i get with DSL. On DSL my download is theoretical maximum of 70 something mb. This change should be significant. I am also happy since i didn’t realize i have a virgin cable jack already installed right by my media center where the BT jack is in the entry to my house and thus everything is a wireless connection.

I have about a month left on my DLS contract. If i cannot cancel it before the contract runs out the one month extra cost will be worth it to have a stable connection. M is suffering with a data connection on her phone and no iPad. I at least have some data on my ipad. I had to get some work done earlier and had to tether my laptop to my mobile.

Technical Difficulties

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My luck wasn’t going very well this weekend. I got home and started settling in and suddenly my cable modem died on me. That was the final straw on my decision to get a MiFi. Before being stranded in the Bahamas I was pondering the wireless broadband device the Novatel MiFi. After the day in the Bahamas airport I really wanted one even though I knew that it wouldn’t have worked in the Bahamas. When the cable went out I decided to head out to Manhattan before it started snowing to pick up one of the nifty devices. I didn’t want to spend an unknown amount of days in a blizzard without internet. I am brave, but not that brave.

Thankfully the store was empty and I was in and out in 20 minutes. Let me tell you the Mifi is really easy to setup and it works exactly as advertised. RCN claims they will be out tomorrow morning to look at my Modem but I tend to doubt it since it is still snowing.

New Cable

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I got a call from the cable company that provides service in the building I am moving to. They said that the management company sent them my name. I currently use Time Warner, and for the most part I am happy. This place uses RCN.

First impression is that they are more money for less services. I get 4 premium packages, digital cable and a cable modem for under $100. These new guys offer you digital cable, a cable modem, and 1 premium package for $101. I am loosing 3 premium packages. To get them, I need to pay $13 more per channel That is a racket. Extra cable box’s are also more money per box than I currently pay. The only plus side is that I can buy a static IP address for $4 per month. I don’t think I can do that now. Of course my current provider only changes your address if you leave your modem off for extended periods of time. I have had my same IP for over a year.

In a nutshell I think I am getting a worse deal than I currently have. Only time will tell, but as I like to say “i think this will end badly”.