On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:28:35 -0700, Don Bradner <don@arcatapet.com>
wrote:

>On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:02:49 -0600, David Ball
><davidbemail-1q04@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Is the upload speed decent? What kind of up/down speeds are you seeing
>>in real life when uploading/downloading zip/tar.gz files of about 25
>>MBytes?
>
>I don't have a lot of contact with folks on the $59 home plan, but for
>the $69 pro or $79 pro-plus plans (listed as 200/1000 and 200/1500)
>most get 100/700 or higher. Note that there are very few getting
>better speeds on pro-plus vs pro.

The pro plan sounds right for me. On dial-up, downloads are about 4500
bytes per second (40Kb to 44Kb) and uploads or even DNS lookups are
usually hopeless while downloading. It acts like it's half-duplex.
Uploads on dial-up top out at about 2400 bytes per second (20Kb to
24Kb). It seems like software assumes you have broadband these days
and times out on dial-up. I get a lot of timeouts on DNS lookups if
anything else is going on.

>
>>How's the reliability?
>
>I would rate it fair-to-good. Uptime in the 99% range, with a couple
>of slow hours most days during peak periods.

That's better uptime than I expected. It might even average out better
than the uptime on dial-up here. I don't know for sure but I suspect
that the local dial-up provider reboots their DNS servers, and
possibly some routers, a couple of times a day during non-peak hours.
I'm in a very small town so the peak times can be a problem here, even
on dial-up. That's probably caused by the lucky people closer to town
that have DSL.

>
>>Should I get the larger antenna?
>
>Very little advantage unless you are planning to get a business
>account that needs a 2-watt transmitter (I'm on a 500/2000 plan that
>runs about 300/2000 typical). They have 10 birds up there now with a
>lot of footprints, so it is unlikely that you will be put on one
>marginal for your area.

I didn't realize they had that many birds. I'm in northern Alabama, so
I would expect them to have a bird with a decent footprint here.

>
>The FAP for a Pro account is 350MB, so that should cover most
>scenarios you have talked about.

I agree. It should be very rare that I get close to that in a day.
Even if I did get FAPed, I'd probably be better off than I am now on
dial-up.

Unless someone posts a very different experience, it sounds like I
should give the phone company one last try for getting DSL and if they
say real-soon-now again, I think I'll go for it.

>
>Don Bradner
>donb (not don) at arcatapet.com
>Posting today by Satellite from
>Quartzsite, AZ

Thanks for the great info,

-- David