Being stuck with (kind of) slow dsl

    Having high speed internet these days has been a necessity, and many times you would expect everything to load instantly. Often times (especially in technology blogs) some would think 1 megabit internet would be slow.To me, that would be fast and I mean it. Some others would agree.
      The DSL connection has been the main household internet since 2004 (I think) and it costs 20 dollars a month which is nothing to complain about. The speeds are in the neighborhood of around 0.3-0.4 megabits. The ping is about 75-85ms. It is the first broadband the household has, dial-up was painfully annoying(blocks landline calls), and there are better choices.

     Web browsing is no problem with one computer on the good old DSL with most sites loading in a few seconds under google chrome. Online gaming is smooth on both the wii and xbox 360. Spotify plays music with only few instances of buffering between music, only on the interface loading on screen information. Now, to the bad side. Streaming any videos through the DSL will, for sure, require buffering. Using any of the above services (web browsing, gaming, music streaming) at the same time and when someone else is using the above services would send the connection into a crawl, resulting in longer waiting and buffering times.

     Cost is low and there is no other DSL plan that is faster. I assume Sbc when we first had it covered the area but later on, at&t does not serve DSL in the area I live in. At&t does have U-verse available in the area but it costs $38 for 3 megabit speeds and add an additional $5 the higher the tier. And since every home network  around me has a network name with 2wire in the beginning of its name. Comcast serves and for the first few months, $15 or $20, then the price increases to more than $40 after the few months according to the fine print. Clear serves and provides 4g home service for $45, max speeds should be in the area of 8-12 megabits depending on the time and conditions of the day.

    In conclusion, the internet can barely meet the demands of a home network with multiple devices and computers. And waiting for it to buffer when compared to someone else's 3g mobile internet modem can do many of the tasks faster and less buffering. I may switch to any of the other services above as alternatives, but i would have to wait until I can be able to migrate the sbcglobal.net email address to a gmail address for some of the people in the household.

 Do you have any comments on internet and your service provider? Go ahead and tell them in the comments.