Friday, October 29

Internet connectivity and speed

As I was saying just two days ago, our internet connection has become very flaky indeed. Yesterday a technician went to the main connection hub for the area and did "something" and we had a really good connection for a little while. Maybe an hour, hour and half. Of course I called customer support (Centurylink) to tell them that once again our speed sucked (not in those words). He put in another work order for yesterday afternoon but more than likely it wouldn't be tended to til this morning. Probably some time between 8 AM and Noon. Overnight though, the outside temperature dropped to the mid 20's. Now ordinarily, or more like "normally" (?) that shouldn't affect our connection, but it did and is. Two days when the problem started it was completely overcast and cooler than it had been for a while. Happens every year! That's where we're at... waiting for help and hoping we can at least send and receive email, which is how I'm writing to my blog.
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As for accurately checking our connection speed online, we had previously been led to one for our state at http://bransonspeedtest.net, but when I was talking to customer support on Wednesday she asked me to go to http://speedtest.net cause they feel it's more accurate. While talking to the repair tech on the phone yesterday I checked the speed at bransonspeedtest and got about 1.3 megabits/sec, but each time I redid it, got slower and slower results, even slower at speedtest.net. So now I don't know which one to believe. The customer support, on the phone, told me yesterday that our "Margin (db)" should be a minimum of 8.0. This morning, as of 15 seconds ago it's at * 4.9* - whatever that means. Yesterday it was around 5.3. *shrug* Yes, they reminded me a few times that "you're right at the end of the DSL connectivity range". I was, "Yeah, we have been for a few years now and our speed has been mostly stable at 1.5 MBps". *sigh* Quite frankly I'm still baffled that NASA can communicate with a robot on Mars wirelessly, but for DSL 18K feet is the "limit"? Makes no sense to me!
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Anyway, today is my DD's 18th birthday. She got birthday pie for breakfast before heading off to work. It was pumpkin pie in case you're wondering.
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