Which DSL Package?

Finally my local phone company (SBC) if offering DSL in my area. At
least that's what their web site says when I punch in my phone number

Ok, they offer two packages - one is $19.95 and up to 1.5Mbps with free
activation and modem. The other is 29.99 and up to 3.0Mbps with free
activation and modem.

I am currently using Earthlink dial-up paying 21.95 a month. I have had
very very few problems with Earthlink dial-up and would recommend them to
anyone. But I desperately what to jump on the broad band bandwagon.

Ok, so how fast is 1.5 Mbps and how fast is 3.0Mbps? Are they worth the
19.95 and 29.99 respectively? How would they both do with watching live
video clips and live camera chat?

Also, what's the word on SBC Yahoo DSL? Do they have a decent
reputation? What kind of costumer support am I likely to get from them?

Thanks!

"Von Fourche" wrote in message
nk.net...


Finally my local phone company (SBC) if offering DSL in my area. At
least that's what their web site says when I punch in my phone number

Ok, they offer two packages - one is $19.95 and up to 1.5Mbps with
free
activation and modem. The other is 29.99 and up to 3.0Mbps with free
activation and modem.

I am currently using Earthlink dial-up paying 21.95 a month. I have
had
very very few problems with Earthlink dial-up and would recommend them to
anyone. But I desperately what to jump on the broad band bandwagon.

Ok, so how fast is 1.5 Mbps and how fast is 3.0Mbps? Are they worth
the
19.95 and 29.99 respectively? How would they both do with watching live
video clips and live camera chat?

Also, what's the word on SBC Yahoo DSL? Do they have a decent
reputation? What kind of costumer support am I likely to get from them?

Thanks!




Also, will I be able to use any home page I want? I currently don't use
any Earthlink software. I only use their dial up number and e-mail address.
I just use Internet Explorer with Google as my home page. Can I continue
doing this? Also, I have a lot of links on my desktop to webpages. I just
click a link on my desktop and Internet Explorer opens up and goes to that
page. Could I still continue doing that?

Finally, I currently have a second phone line for my dial up. Could I
get rid of this phone line and use the main talking line number? If so, my
computer sits in a corner of the living room. The main talking phone line
is across the room. Would it be safe to run a cable all across the room to
the main phone hookup?

Thanks!

"Von Fourche" wrote in message
nk.net...


Finally my local phone company (SBC) if offering DSL in my area. At
least that's what their web site says when I punch in my phone number

Ok, they offer two packages - one is $19.95 and up to 1.5Mbps with
free
activation and modem. The other is 29.99 and up to 3.0Mbps with free
activation and modem.

I am currently using Earthlink dial-up paying 21.95 a month. I have
had
very very few problems with Earthlink dial-up and would recommend them to
anyone. But I desperately what to jump on the broad band bandwagon.

Ok, so how fast is 1.5 Mbps and how fast is 3.0Mbps? Are they worth
the
19.95 and 29.99 respectively? How would they both do with watching live
video clips and live camera chat?

Also, what's the word on SBC Yahoo DSL? Do they have a decent
reputation? What kind of costumer support am I likely to get from them?

Thanks!



I just called SBC. Only the 1.5 Mbps is available. So, how much faster
is 1.5Mbps compared to regular dial-up?

1500kbps / 50kbps = 30 times faster -- in theory

Reality might be less, but you'll go from agonizing to really using the web.

Tom
"Von Fourche" wrote in message
ink.net...

"Von Fourche" wrote in message
nk.net...


Finally my local phone company (SBC) if offering DSL in my area. At
least that's what their web site says when I punch in my phone number

Ok, they offer two packages - one is $19.95 and up to 1.5Mbps with
free
activation and modem. The other is 29.99 and up to 3.0Mbps with free
activation and modem.

I am currently using Earthlink dial-up paying 21.95 a month. I have
had
very very few problems with Earthlink dial-up and would recommend them to
anyone. But I desperately what to jump on the broad band bandwagon.

Ok, so how fast is 1.5 Mbps and how fast is 3.0Mbps? Are they worth
the
19.95 and 29.99 respectively? How would they both do with watching live
video clips and live camera chat?

Also, what's the word on SBC Yahoo DSL? Do they have a decent
reputation? What kind of costumer support am I likely to get from them?

Thanks!



I just called SBC. Only the 1.5 Mbps is available. So, how much
faster
is 1.5Mbps compared to regular dial-up?

Go for it. 1.5Mbps is lightning fast compared to dialup. Use any home page you
want. Connect up one or more computers via Ethernet, i.e. do not use a USB port
to connect to the DSL modem... Ben Myers


On Sun, 08 May 2005 02:31:37 GMT, "Von Fourche" wrote:


"Von Fourche" wrote in message
ink.net...


Finally my local phone company (SBC) if offering DSL in my area. At
least that's what their web site says when I punch in my phone number

Ok, they offer two packages - one is $19.95 and up to 1.5Mbps with
free
activation and modem. The other is 29.99 and up to 3.0Mbps with free
activation and modem.

I am currently using Earthlink dial-up paying 21.95 a month. I have
had
very very few problems with Earthlink dial-up and would recommend them to
anyone. But I desperately what to jump on the broad band bandwagon.

Ok, so how fast is 1.5 Mbps and how fast is 3.0Mbps? Are they worth
the
19.95 and 29.99 respectively? How would they both do with watching live
video clips and live camera chat?

Also, what's the word on SBC Yahoo DSL? Do they have a decent
reputation? What kind of costumer support am I likely to get from them?

Thanks!



I just called SBC. Only the 1.5 Mbps is available. So, how much faster
is 1.5Mbps compared to regular dial-up?

On Sun, 08 May 2005 02:31:37 GMT, "Von Fourche"
wrote:


I just called SBC. Only the 1.5 Mbps is available. So, how much faster
is 1.5Mbps compared to regular dial-up?

The actual speed you get is likely to be limited by the server
you connect to. The only time you are likely to see the full
1.5 Mbps is when downloading a big file from a lightly-loaded
FTP site.

Yes, you can use one phone line for DSL and voice service.
Bear in mind that a DSL connection is always on, so whenever
your computer is on, it is subject to various attacks. Get a
gateway router from Linksys or D-Link, get a copy of ZoneAlarm
and use it instead of the weak Windows XP firewall, and get a
better browser than Internet Exploiter. The Mozilla suite is
free, combines browser, email client and newsreader, and isn't
as malware-friendly as MSIE. I use Opera for browsing and mail
and read Usenet with Free Agent.

The best defense against many attacks is to break out of Windows
entirely. Once you get your DSL line working, you can download
Knoppix from www.distrowatch.com and burn it to a CD. A 600
megabyte file is big, even for DSL, but you can start the
download and go to lunch. This CD will boot into a running
Linux system without installing _anything_ to your hard disk.

The K Desktop Environment feels a lot like Windows, except for
the single-clicl-to-launch convention. Opera and Firefox under
Linux look just like they do under Windows. Open Office
(included with Knoppix and most other Linux distributions) does
what Microsoft Office does, including reading and writing MS
Office file formats, and is free. If you don't like what you
see, remove the CD and reboot and you're back in Windows.

You can have it both ways. My Presario R3010 laptop dual-boots
Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP. The boot menu was installed by the
Ubuntu installer, which includes a partition resizing tool that
can safely shrink the Windows partition without losing anything.

wrote in message
news
On Sun, 08 May 2005 02:31:37 GMT, "Von Fourche"
wrote:


I just called SBC. Only the 1.5 Mbps is available. So, how much
faster
is 1.5Mbps compared to regular dial-up?

The actual speed you get is likely to be limited by the server
you connect to. The only time you are likely to see the full
1.5 Mbps is when downloading a big file from a lightly-loaded
FTP site.

Yes, you can use one phone line for DSL and voice service.
Bear in mind that a DSL connection is always on, so whenever
your computer is on, it is subject to various attacks. Get a
gateway router from Linksys or D-Link, get a copy of ZoneAlarm
and use it instead of the weak Windows XP firewall, and get a
better browser than Internet Exploiter. The Mozilla suite is
free, combines browser, email client and newsreader, and isn't
as malware-friendly as MSIE. I use Opera for browsing and mail
and read Usenet with Free Agent.


I think I'm going to give a call to SBC Monday and sign up. I also
think I should be able to save some money. I have a separate phone line in
the house in the corner of the living room for the dial-up. I will call and
switch that phone line number to the regular phone line number. Then I will
have only one phone number coming into the house so I will only have to pay
for that number. Then sign up for the DSL package.

The DSL runs over the phone line? A person talking on the phone will
not hear the DSL data, right? Do people ever hear the DSL data while on the
phone? Are problems common?

Also, you need an Ethernet card. My computer is about five years old
now. It did come with a
10/100Mb PCI NIC. Is that an Ethernet card? I've never used it. Will it
work even tho I have never used it since I got the computer five years ago?

DSL and voice share the same line, and, when set up properly, one does not
interfere with the other.

The 10/100 Ethernet NIC is just what you need. As long as the drivers are
installed for it, it should work right away.

I've worked with DSL self-install kit which includes the DSL modem, filters for
the voice phones, and a CD which you run in your computer. Pretty easy.

Your costs should be almost the same, with the elimination of one phone line.

I endorse the recommendations in another posting:
Linksys router
ZoneAlarm firewall (disable the brain-damaged Windows firewall)
any browser other than Internet Explorer
any email instead of Outlook or Outlook Express

.... Ben Myers

On Sun, 08 May 2005 18:51:45 GMT, "Von Fourche" wrote:


wrote in message
news
On Sun, 08 May 2005 02:31:37 GMT, "Von Fourche"
wrote:


I just called SBC. Only the 1.5 Mbps is available. So, how much
faster
is 1.5Mbps compared to regular dial-up?

The actual speed you get is likely to be limited by the server
you connect to. The only time you are likely to see the full
1.5 Mbps is when downloading a big file from a lightly-loaded
FTP site.

Yes, you can use one phone line for DSL and voice service.
Bear in mind that a DSL connection is always on, so whenever
your computer is on, it is subject to various attacks. Get a
gateway router from Linksys or D-Link, get a copy of ZoneAlarm
and use it instead of the weak Windows XP firewall, and get a
better browser than Internet Exploiter. The Mozilla suite is
free, combines browser, email client and newsreader, and isn't
as malware-friendly as MSIE. I use Opera for browsing and mail
and read Usenet with Free Agent.


I think I'm going to give a call to SBC Monday and sign up. I also
think I should be able to save some money. I have a separate phone line in
the house in the corner of the living room for the dial-up. I will call and
switch that phone line number to the regular phone line number. Then I will
have only one phone number coming into the house so I will only have to pay
for that number. Then sign up for the DSL package.

The DSL runs over the phone line? A person talking on the phone will
not hear the DSL data, right? Do people ever hear the DSL data while on the
phone? Are problems common?

Also, you need an Ethernet card. My computer is about five years old
now. It did come with a
10/100Mb PCI NIC. Is that an Ethernet card? I've never used it. Will it
work even tho I have never used it since I got the computer five years ago?

On Sun, 08 May 2005 18:51:45 GMT, "Von Fourche"
wrote:

I think I'm going to give a call to SBC Monday and sign up. I also
think I should be able to save some money. I have a separate phone line in
the house in the corner of the living room for the dial-up. I will call and
switch that phone line number to the regular phone line number. Then I will
have only one phone number coming into the house so I will only have to pay
for that number. Then sign up for the DSL package.

The DSL runs over the phone line? A person talking on the phone will
not hear the DSL data, right? Do people ever hear the DSL data while on the
phone? Are problems common?

Also, you need an Ethernet card. My computer is about five years old
now. It did come with a
10/100Mb PCI NIC. Is that an Ethernet card? I've never used it. Will it
work even tho I have never used it since I got the computer five years ago?

Any network interface labeled as "10/100 Mbps" is the sort of
Ethernet card that your DSL modem expects. The jack looks like
an oversized version of the RJ-11 telephone jack. The modem
installation kit may include both Ethernet and USB cables. Use
Ethernet. Connecting a broadband modem through the USB requires
another layer of software that's something else to go wrong.

The DSL signal occupies a wide band of frequencies above the
voice range. To make sure that you don't hear interference in
phone calls, you plug a little filter between the line and each
telephone. The modem installation kit will include at least
one, and you can get more at places like Radio Shack.

Two non-obvious things about broadband:

When you establish your account password, write it down and lock
it up somewhere where you won't forget where you put it. With
an always-on broadband account, you don't enter your password
unless service is interrupted. By then, you will have forgotten
it.

While you are downloading a big file, you can continue surfing
the Web. Each page you jump to steals a only few hundred
miliseconds from the download. You can even start two big
downloads at once. They will share the available bandwidth, so
the total time won't be any longer than if you'd run them
sequentially. The total time might even be shorter, if both
servers are too slow to use all of your DSL bandwidth. As I
mentioned, I regularly download Linux distributions that fill an
entire CD-ROM. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes, but I can read my
email or newsgroups while I'm waiting, and the Internet protocol
stack will take care of routing the various data packets to
their proper destinations in my system.

wrote in message
...

The DSL signal occupies a wide band of frequencies above the
voice range. To make sure that you don't hear interference in
phone calls, you plug a little filter between the line and each
telephone. The modem installation kit will include at least
one, and you can get more at places like Radio Shack.


Each phone? So, If I have one phone in the kitchen, one in the livign
room, and the other dial-up phone jack without a phone, and hook DSL up to
the dial-up jack without a phone, then I will have to put filters on both
the two phones?