Broadband Internet Access

Great to see this thread about connections. I have used choice DSL for the past year and have never had a problem. Likewise, whenever my innovative phone or cable go out (which is less often than it used to) We also get our bill por-rated without asking. It isn't always correct, but, hey.

My question is about speed. I am getting ready for the baseball season and want to watch games in streaming video. My first test tonight went poorly. So far as I could tell, I never used more than 2% of my network potential and recorded consistant download rates of 21 Kb/sec. Terrible, slower than dial up.

I removed my wireless router and get no change in speed. Does that strike anybody else as crazy? Perhaps somebody can tell me about some trick for optimizing my system? What do others get for transfer rates when downloading files.

While I have never paid this much attention to it before, I have never complained of slow downloads before with choice. Pages load quickly, I multi-task with several windows and all that. Now, with just one open (and this one) my transfer rate is still 21K/s.!!??

Thanks

Treeguy,

Send a private message to jnrhome, and I will also mention your post to him when I see him later this week. This is right up his professional alley, and he has offered before to provide assistance and advice to folks on this message board. He's a great guy, and extremely knowledgeable. In my now-biased opinion, you couldn't do better.

--HC

Not that it will make you feel that much better, but there are rare ays on my Earthlink dialup where I would be thrilled to get a 21 kb/s connection speed. *lol*

Perhaps you should look for another provider. I get excellent and consistenly higher speeds (1 meg) with BroadbandVI. I haven't tried streming video but both my VOIP phone and internet radio connections are usually very good.

All depends if you can get line of sight to one of their thirty transmitters.

Jim

Yawn I liked this site when people weren't advertising their own services.

Internet Cafe Owner,

I get annoyed with some of the shameless self-promotion that I've seen, too. Instead of making snarky remarks, DO SOMETHING if you think there's inappropriate advertising (i.e. posts that actually violate the Board rules, which does not include replies where an individual recommends a business in which they have no financial interest).

You can either send Islander a private message about TOS violations you've spotted or use the "Report this Message" link under each post. Both are very effective.

All of us will have a better experience if you become part of the solution instead of just griping about the problems.

Have a nice weekend!

--HC

I have posted a few time about it and my posts get taken down so all I can assume is ViNow must be associated or the new owners of ViNow know the people at Ackley Communications. I'm actually surprised my current post hasn't been deleted, and yes I've flagged them and even sent an email to the people at Vinow.

If you read the rules, you'll see that businesses are not totally prohibited from promoting themselves. The rules for this board state that businss people cannot use the name of their business as their handle, cannot provide contact info in their signature, cannot solicit business unless such information is requested, must post on all subjects and not just those related to their business, and cannot post replies promoting their own businesses more than once a month.

Every post that I've seen which violates these rules has been acted upon by the VINow staff appropriately and quickly (a recent one in which an individual used his/her business name as a handle and opened a new thread solely to solicit business comes to mind). Seems to me that your posts are only complaints, only appear in the Internet/technology threads and are triggered when regular users of the board make recommendations about a technology company other than yours.

Perhaps your protests are not acknowledged, Internet Cafe Owner, because they are made about posts that are not in violation of the rules of the Board, are not made appropriately (read: discreetly), and/or are made under ever-changing unregistered handles. I know that on sites for which I am the moderator/web master, violations that are reported by known, active, registered users sent through the correct channels (e.g. are sent to me privately) are given much more credibility than those made anonymously and in public. My experience is that most of the public grievances posted by unrecognisable sources tend to be motivated by sour grapes or personal issues rather than actual terms of service violations.

Again, try being part of the solution -- register a handle, and use it consistently to join in the discussions in a positive way instead of just sufacing from the lurkers' gallery to complain. And try not to let this ruin your weekend.

--HC

Being new here it is really hard to find out information or recommendations of and about businesses, locations, reputations; many businesses do not have ads in the yellow pages-many do not give addresses. And of course there's the street names both in F-sted & C-sted. I appreciate all the help I can get. Thanks to all who give aid to us newbies and don't let us flounder.