Finally got a broadband upgrade

[Lynn]

Went from 15 MBPS on a DSL line to 1000 MBPS on fiber yesterday. I've been waiting on them to get to my area with the fiber optic lines for more than three years. My parents live less than 5 miles away and they've had fiber for two years while I waited. This is life in rural America.

I can finally stream video to two TVs, download game updates, and surf the internet at the same time without having to pause, buffer, and otherwise ration my bandwidth.

[TimothyEllis]

Went from 15 MBPS on a DSL line to 1000 MBPS on fiber yesterday.

Nice.

I'm on a top pay extra plan, and on a great day I get 270 mbps. And that is on cable.

One of our previous governments sabotaged the whole fibre roll out, and so only inner city get anything better. Plenty are still on DSL.

[Lynn]

The last time I talked to our telephone cooperative (who does the internet here), they were talking like it would take until late 2024 for my specific area to get fiber. But then we had a plea from them last year to fill out some survey so they could qualify for a grant, and I guess it worked. So I got lucky.

Now to get a UPS that I can hook up to the box so I keep internet when the power goes out.

Apparently, the landline will no longer work during power outages because the phone service is coming in through the fiber. I'd ditch it, but limited to no cellphone service here. It's been steadily getting better for about 10 years, but it's still spotty. Still, I used to not even be able to send text messages and now I can occasionally get a phone call on my cell phone that doesn't drop immediately. ;D

Of course, wi-fi calling is a thing now so that helps, but it sure won't help during a power outage unless I still have power to my fiber box and router.

[TimothyEllis]

Now to get a UPS that I can hook up to the box so I keep internet when the power goes out.

I did that when I went back to a desktop PC. Took me a while to research out what power I needed, and then figure out which box delivered it.

Getting solar with a battery on your house is better, but you still need the UPS for the PC to keep it from switching off when the grid goes down. If the router is not near your PC without solar, you need a second UPS.

Just make sure you add up the power usage of each device (inc monitor) before you buy a UPS. And you want to make sure the use value is in hours, not minutes, for that power load.

[Bill Hiatt]

Fiber is definitely an improvement. I especially like the improved upload speed. We think first of downloading and streaming, but it's nice to be able to upload a book manuscript at full speed. Now, it's done before I have time to think about it. On DSL, it was always way slower to upload than to download.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Went from 15 MBPS on a DSL line to 1000 MBPS on fiber yesterday.

Nice.   

I can finally stream video to two TVs, download game updates, and surf the internet at the same time without having to pause, buffer, and otherwise ration my bandwidth.

Just remember that you never get what they say you'll get.  They always find ways to throttle your bandwidth and otherwise shortchange you.  And, of course, Microsoft and other software companies are constantly using your bandwidth to provide you with updates and to spy on you.  So be careful about trying to do too much stuff at once.  You'll still have to ration your bandwidth, just not nearly as much as before.

I read a story once about a guy who had high-speed internet with hefty wireless routers, but he still complained about his wi-fi being slow.  Turns out he had over a hundred devices using his wi-fi.  Computers, television, tablets with streaming video for each adult and child, appliances, and so on.  That stuff all adds up faster than one might believe.

Having said all that, though, you'll definitely enjoy the difference in the upgrade.  It's like coming out into the sun for the first time after living your whole in a cave and being accustomed to only getting whatever little bits of ambient light manage to filter in.   

[Lynn]

Lol. Yes. I've noticed a great improvement already. But some things that you'd think would be faster are not that different. We average about 12 devices at a time using the router. With 15 MBPS it was not great. :D

[Bill Hiatt]

Remember dial-up internet? Of course, device sharing wasn't an issue because it wasn't possible, at least not that I recall.

[TimothyEllis]

Remember dial-up internet? Of course, device sharing wasn't an issue because it wasn't possible, at least not that I recall.

Actually, it was. To an extent.

I was running a Fidonet BBS and a fax machine off a single phone line back in the 9600 days.

You needed a splitter box which could detect which signal was coming in. But it worked nicely even with voice and modem.

[Lynn]

I had to have two phone lines back in the dial up days. I remember being so happy when I started getting a consistent 28.8k speed.

[Post-Crisis D]

Remember dial-up internet? Of course, device sharing wasn't an issue because it wasn't possible, at least not that I recall.

I had a LAN modem, which allowed dial-up Internet to be shared across the network.

[Bill Hiatt]

I hadn't thought about that, I suppose because I didn't have one. But during the time that I had dialup, I really only had one device, anyway.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Remember dial-up internet? Of course, device sharing wasn't an issue because it wasn't possible, at least not that I recall.

Back in the day, some friends of mine used to play "deathmatch" Doom against each other on 386 and 486 PCs hooked together with a serial cable.  That was when the fastest modem was the 14.4, so using the cable with two computers in the same room made a lot of sense. 

That was also my first exposure to "violent" video games that the scolds and old fogies would later blame for all sorts of social ills.  For the record, I preferred to play those FPS games with the "extra gore" option enabled whenever it was available.   

[LilyBLily]

"Apparently, the landline will no longer work during power outages because the phone service is coming in through the fiber. I'd ditch it, but limited to no cellphone service here. It's been steadily getting better for about 10 years, but it's still spotty. Still, I used to not even be able to send text messages and now I can occasionally get a phone call on my cell phone that doesn't drop immediately. ;D"

With any extended power outage, you'll lose your landline phone service with DSL. It sounds as if with fiber optic you'll lose it immediately, which is not cool. I'm not sure what's available to keep it going under those circumstances, but maybe someone has come up with a backup device. I used to have one for my desktop computer because we had so many mini power outages. But it died and we don't anymore, and that wouldn't recover a phone line. But there must be something.

[Bill Hiatt]

One would help. The telcos are slowly rolling out fiber and then switching landlines to it. In my area, I still have the option to use the old landline. But I know that will be gone eventually.