Infrastructure

I hate it. I really hate it, but after seven years with Speakeasy as my primary Internet provided, I ended up having to switch to Comcast. There was just something increasingly wrong with my old POTS-based DSL line. When I first moved into the new house, I was getting a solid and very reliable 5.1 or 5.2 Mbps. While not the best, it was sufficient for my home office and enough to reliably do Netflix streaming in HD.

But it was definitely expensive. I was spending about $105 per month for the service, which was a bit high. However, it was business class and was running on a dedicated loop, meaning it wasn't sharing the line with my current telephone service.

However, after. Year and a half of service, something went wrong and the speed and reliability began to drop. Toward the end, about the best I could reliably achieve was about 4.0-4.2. I'd lost about 20% of my performance. And that drop was just enough that I could no longer stream Netflix at HD. In addition, with Felicia quitting her job to take care of Alex, we had additional demands on the service.

So, in the recommendation of my brother in law, I looked into Comcast Business service. I ended up with the cheapest package for both Internet (10x2) and basic cable television as well as a telephone line. The true triple play as it were. Now, I did end up opting for the static IP address at $14/month, I think.

All of this together, even with the static IP, ended up being $50 per month less than what I was paying for my DSL line and telephone before. And just as important, it's been reliable so far. I've been with them for going on three weeks now and I can't really complain so far.

As time goes on, I'll try to report back if I see any throttling or bad traffic shaping.