I'm Back and Now back to work.... What about Internet speed?

Well, I'm back. 6 months in Afghanistan was pretty much what I expected it to be. It's one of those places I don't ever want to go back to. The people I worked with are the best and brightest I've ever worked with. I miss the people, but not the place..

Now, on to better subjects.....
I was asked almost a year ago to blog about "How do you decide which speed internet connection is best for your personal computer?" (Sorry Mary)

Unfortunatly the rural area we reside in has only one provider of DSL internet. There are options for sattilite internet, but that get's pretty expensive, so I'll stick to our COOP Telecom provided DSL. DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line. It's a fancy techno term for internet over your phone line.

The provider offers 3 packages of internet.
1. up to 768k for $39.95
2. up to 1.5mb for $59.95
3. up to 3mb for $99.95

Notice all 3 state "up to". That means you at some point during the 24hr day you may experience the advertised speed. Then again, you may not ever(I'll get to that)

There are a lot of complicated gizmos widgets and gadgets that allow you to send and recieve email and browse your favorite website (like this one ;^) ) But one of the most important pieces is the cables that connect you to where you want to go. The cables can be either copper like the cable that hangs out of the back of your phone or fibre optic being the fastest and most expensive.

Our provider has been working at there own pace the last few years to upgrade those cables. We don't have fibre optic lines going to our homes, we have copper lines. And if your house has not had the provider dig new phone lines in your front or back yard in the last 3-4 years, you have old phone lines that were probably put in back when we had party lines.

2 problems effect copper lines. 1 is age and the other is distance. The older the lines are, the harder it will be for your favorite website to travel on(Think of it like a old clogged sink drain). We've all seen what happens to copper when it age's. The pitting and tarnishing is what makes it hard for the information to travel. And the longer a cable is, the information starts to slow down, get garbled and lost before it can reach you, which starts around 300ft. So, if your within 300ft of one of the green waist high switching towers, you will probably get the advertised speed. Beyond that it starts degrading.

So, If you have older phone lines, and/or are more than 300ft from a switch tower, it doesn't make sense to pay almost $100 for something you probably won't even get half of. I have the #2 plan and I get a little more than the speed of #1 on a good day when the planets are all aligned right.

If the only thing you do is send and recieve email's with a few pictures and browse a few websites, then plan #1 is just fine.

If you do alot of sending and recieving emails with lots of pictures and view some online videos from time to time from Youtube, then plan #2 is okay. but some large videos like TV shows on CBS, NBC or Hulu with be a little jerky and you will have to wait a few times for your computer to store some of the video locally.

If you like watching online video alot and have zero patience like me, then plan #3 is the only choice.

95% of the people I talk to fit into plan #1. Then there's me and the other guy that make up the other 5%...LOL..

There is a brick wall when it comes to internet speed that has to do with how fast your computer is vs. the speed of the internet. If your computer was purchased in the last 7 years, you have nothing to worry about.