As the culmination of many moons of thinking, I now have DSL up and running.

Ever since DSL started dropping their pricing I had been considering switching. I’ve been using a cable modem for about 5 years now, and have been relatively pleased with it. But, it is expensive. It costs me about $46 a month to have the cable modem. I’ve been watching the DSL prices drop and drop and drop, and I eventually decided to take the plunge. When DSL is $14.95 a month, and they give you 3 months free for sending in a cable internet bill…. I had to jump on it.

I had a few people that I know get DSL, and I carefully monitored their thoughts on the subject. I knew that the price was appealing, but if the service was bad, it just wasn’t worth it to me. I wanted a reliable method of connecting to the internet. Speed isn’t that important to me. I don’t download tons of large files, so max speed isn’t as vital as simply having the connection. Having an always-on connection is a wonderful thing, and I didn’t want to give that up. So, when I would ask people, and they would tell me that they were happy with their service.. I listened.

So, late last week (Friday afternoon) I decided to sign up for SBC DSL. I filled out the form and clicked Submit. I chose October 13th as the day that I wanted to have the service turned on, and, after submitting, they felt compelled to tell me that it would be up to 6 business days before I had the DSL modem. So, I was a bit worried that I might not get the modem in time.

My worries were in vain, though. My DSL modem was waiting for me when I got home on Monday. How it got here so fast, I’ll never know… But I can’t complain about their speed when it comes to shipping that thing out.

I didn’t have a phone line back where I have the ethernet router, so I had to buy some phone equipment (cables, ends, crimpers.. standard stuff) and ran a new line for the DSL. I put the DSL filter down underneath the house, so all of my normal phones look just like they always have. The DSL filter is totally hidden. Kinda neat. I did the wiring last night.

Then, I hooked the modem up… But resisted the temptation to see if they had turned it on early, and waited until tonight.

When I got home tonight, I plugged everything into the system (It is a Siemens SpeedStream 4100 DSL modem) and crossed my fingers and hoped that it would just work.

It didn’t.

So, I rebooted my machine into Windows and put in their install CD. I went through the process and it told me that it couldn’t find the server. I went the IP for the modem (192.168.0.1) and the modem seemed happy. But, the router wasn’t picking up the DNS entries from the modem. And, it still isn’t. For some reason their is a miscommunication going on there. I was able to manually enter the nameservers into the various computers and it is now working as it should, but it gave me fits for a little while. So, go figure.

Other than that, the install went ok. I told the CD to not install any of the programs. It looks like it still littered my desktop with a few icons. Oh well.. that’s what recycle bins are made for.

Speed wise.. it almost feels a little snappier than cable. I downloaded a 5 meg file, and it seemed to be converging on 1.5Mbits/s just like it should have. On the cable modem I could easily get 5-6Mbits on a good day from a fast site. But, like I said, I don’t need that high of a max.

So, I’ll keep things like this for a while… and if it continues to work as it seems to be doing right now.. I’ll be calling up the cable company and getting rid of their service. And save myself a bunch of cash.

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