Faster connection rate

[ishmael]

I'm not much a computer person. Interesting tool, but the intricacies don't interest me a whole lot.

The increasing number of vids, and large picture posts have me a bit frustrated by this dial up. I've looked into the faster phone connect, but it's not out here in the boonies yet. I am wired for cable, which I don't currently subscribe to.

What's the best option? Cable may be the only option, eh? What are the ins and outs? The service I'm on has been quite reliable, and not too dear, but it is starting to creak.

[Kaa]

Your basic choices are DSL (from the phone company) or cable (from the cable company). Call both and ask them if you can get it. If only one says yes, there you go. If both say yes, then you can start to compare costs, etc.

Kaa

[Norman Bernstein]

Cable is reliable.... more so, in my experience, than DSL.

Prices obviously vary.... but you can expect to pay anywhere from $14 to $50/mo, depending upon a whole bunch of parameters.

For example, I pay for cable TV at my boat slip... $38/mo. To add limited 'broadband' internet (768K download), it's only another $14. Full speed access would make that $30 instead of $14.

Here in my office (a commercial address, so prices are higher), I pay $95/mo for both basic cable TV as well as 6Mbps Internet access.

You need to check with the cable company, but they may have limited bandwidth plans for relatively short bucks. 768K is good enough for casual use, downloading music, and short video clips.... but if you plan to do big downloads, you'll want faster service.

[TimH]

he said he doesnt have DSL out in the boonies, so his choices are cable and satelite ( like StarBand ).

[Bruce Hooke]

Not really too much in the way of ins and outs with cable. The Cable company should send someone out to hook up your computer.

Just make sure you are running a good firewall or have a router (not just a modem) between you and the outside world. An high-speed connection is much more vulnerable to attack than a dial-up connection.

However, the first step is to call the cable company.

You might also be able to get a good bit of information from the cable company's website.

[Nicholas Carey]

One thing to bear in mind with cable is that it is basically a party line. The throughput you get is dependent on what other users on the local circuit are doing. If the teenager next door is downloading massive quantities of porn, bootleg video and music and saturating the wire, your throughput suffers.

[ccmanuals]

If you decide to go with cable I would recommend you seriously consider VOIP for your telephone. I don't know what your phone bills are but you can completely eliminate ma bell and her monthly bills with VOIP.

[S.V. Airlie]

I went to Comcast.. a cable network which you may not have in Bangor..

$33.00 each for cable, high speed, and telephone combined. Figured, I could not beat that..

No trouble yet.. but it is still too soon to know.

[adampet]

Rats just lost the whole post!!
Bangor Yellow pages list these ISP's in Bangor
http://www.magicyellow.com/category/Internet_Service_Providers/Bangor_ME.html

These guys seem a little steep nut are local
http://www.gwi.net/

http://www.tdstelecom.com/Residential/ME/Bangor/Internet

find out if it can work for you here
http://www.eticomm.net/cgi-bin/readcsv2.pl?state=Maine

http://prexar.com/

there are lots more if you Google

[Hwyl]

I tried Jack's number on the GWI DSL site and got this message


GWI Broadband is currently not available on (207) ###-####. You may consider subscribing to GWI's premium Dial-Up Internet service - now up to five times faster than 56k Dial-Up with our Dial-Up Booster technology.
For more information, please contact us at 1-866-494-2020,

I've no idea what "booster technology is, I use GWI they're responsive.

[Nicholas Carey]

I tried Jack's number on the GWI DSL site and got this message



I've no idea what "booster technology is, I use GWI they're responsive."Dial-up Booster Technology" usually means they have packet sniffers that identify things like audio and images and apply a lot of lossy compression to the data stream. It appears faster, but at the expense of data loss.

[geeman]

We use Comcast also.It gives great service and is plenty fast enough for us.We both are on our computers at the same time a lot and it doesnt seem to matter.I vote cable if you can get it.It is true that the more people using it it may slow it down some but we've been using it for over a year now and havent noticed the 1st problem other then when a neighbors house burned down and it burned out the main cable.The cable company was out and had it working again early the next morning.