It was nice while it lasted, but something better has caught my eye. I know we had some good times together, enjoyed some great(and not so great) movies, watched TV together on the couch and learned new things. The time has come for us to say goodbye. I’ve cancelled my cable internet, the order should process today, but I disconnected everything last night. I’m selling the cable modem and the router is added to my stack of spare hardware. I’m back to loving DSL, and hope I can stay true to it going forward.
Amusing writing aside, my 25/7Meg DSL is working great. I’m glad to have good, fast, internet on one connection. I cancelled the cable internet to allow me to save some money and sell my cable modem. Since the beginning of high speed internet in this city, I have always had DSL(The only interruption being when I didn’t live in town). The first 1Meg connections with Bell, the move to alternate ISPs(ie IGS) when Bell started to cap connections. The migration to TekSavvy and my dogged sticking with them as they grew. Even when I had cable, I still had DSL.
You might ask why I’ve been attracted to this technology so much. Initially it was speed/price. I could get a fast connection for a low cost. Later it became the static IP address. With my move to TekSavvy there was an option to have a static IP. With an always on internet connection, this made sense to me, so I paid the extra few dollars to keep my address the same. Over the years it’s been useful to access my hardware at home when needed. Sometimes to test if network issues were local, sometimes to get around mistakes in the firewall rules I just edited, sometimes to access content from my home systems. Mostly it has been as a toy.
Not that long ago, I added a routed subnet to my monthly order. I have a small, 6 address, subnet routed to my DSL connection and this allows me to run some test hardware with public addresses. As my home data centre has expanded, this has been useful(if electrically expensive) in my playing with new technologies.
Unfortunately, 6Meg DSL in our area does not live up to it’s name. Bell will not directly sell DSL around here because they know the signal is bad enough that it cannot be sure to get even 2Meg on a good day. Most of the stuff I have seen indicates that the loop length to the central office was over 5KM, which is generally assumed to be the reasonable limit for DSL of that type. I could use the internet, but streaming was bad off sites like YouTube and unusable on Netflix. I wanted to keep a static IP for testing a keeping my routed subnet would be nice, but I had to get faster internet.
Around this time TekSavvy started offering cable internet in the Ottawa area. I signed up rather quickly to try it out. I did not cancel my DSL. With the infrastructure that Rogers has in place for cable internet, you cannot do a static IP address easily. This limitation extends to resellers of their services. I could get fast internet, but no static IP. I kept the DSL and the Cable, one for playing, one for speed. It cost a bit, but I wanted it.
Now, that has changed. Bell rolled out FttN(Fiber to the Node) hardware in our area. The loop length from my house to the DSLAM(other end of the wires) is now about 850m, well within the reasonable values and easily able to achieve some very good speeds. My DSL was upgraded, but I got to keep my existing IP and subnet, and my speeds are great. Cable no longer had it’s advantage of speed, and was actually eclipsed by the upload capabilities of this new connection. Cable has been cancelled. I am back where I know I should be, with DSL.
As a side note, I have my Cisco 1811 setup and NATing(Network Address Translation) for my home network, routing the subnet, connecting to my Proxmox install on one of my servers. The Proxmox server is slowly taking on the roles that are on my hosted server right now, mostly sites and a few minor services. Once I have this all migrated, I will be retiring my hosted server. It has been a long time coming, I have had servers around the internet in various places for nearly a decade. Now, they will live in my house, and use my one connection to serve my needs.
While the faster DSL costs more compared to standard DSL, it saves me a lot of money in the long run, and that I can deal with.
Jared