Internet Connectivity & Access

I've been on the Internet since 1993 or so. Back then it was obviously significantly smaller and far less spamtastic. My father was able to requisition access for me through the University of Cinncinnati network called UC SLIP. I remember using Gopher before Mosaic/Netscape, and connecting via PPP/SLIP through a 9600 dial-up modem. These were the days of Trumpet Winsock, Terminal/VT100, VAX systems, BBSs, and more. I knew nothing about anything and was just starting to understand Windows. I had only been using computers at this point for maybe a year or so I believe, after I had received my first self-lessons on an old computer with DOS 3.x. Connectivity back then was obviously much slower, but it was hard to complain given the new-found access to information.

After UC SLIP and 9600 baud modems, 14.4k speeds came into being for me along with access to America Online. From there, it went onward to 28.8k, 33.6k, and 56k. Many-a-night did I dial into BBSs, which were obviously dying off quickly at that point, as well as Prodigy, CompuServ, and the local ISP. Since it was still via modem, line noise greatly affected surfing speeds, but it was still pretty great. My local computer shop with whom I was friends had ISDN toward the mid-to-late 90s, which made me greatly jealous of their 128k speeds. I still remember 2xBRI channels, 1xD channel :)

Next came my great breakthrough by getting ADSL through the local telco, the ILEC of the area. This was my first personal broadband access. Playing games online as well as reading technical papers and articles became a much smoother experience. At the same time I had entered high-school already, where we had access to a T1. My home ADSL could compete with the T1 on a downstream basis, but the upstream was still much smaller. However, it didn't make much of a difference because I wasn't really hosting anything myself at the time.

Since then, over the subsequent 5-7 years, it was a back-and-forth game of going between the local telco Cincinnati Bell and Time-Warner Cable, the cable television provider. I've settled on using Time-Warner Cable, and despite the negativity the brand sometimes invokes, I'm pretty happy with their service. The sign up process was very simple and fast. I got a business account, and as such receive separately dedicated technical support number. Getting the connection was as simple as calling them, tell them what I wanted, agreeing on the package and pricing, and then signing the contract and sending it in. The sales and tech support people were on time and cordial. Contrast that with inquiring about a business ADSL package from the local telco. I called two times, both times of which I was asked for a long list of what I felt was superfluous information (TWC did not ask for it), and the sales person did not get back to me on time. When I was finally contact by them a week later, I simply told them I wasn't interested and had already signed a contract with their competitor. I've had the TWC business package now for over two years and have been very pleased with it. Connectivity has only gone down a couple of times, and the technical support people helped a quickly as they could to expedite the process to reestablish my connection. I have 15mb/3.5mb down/up, with 13 usable static IPs. It's also much more important for me to stay connected as I host my own services. Overall, I'm pleased with my current Internet service provider.

The next step will be to upgrade to the top-tier package of FiOS when it gets out here (or I move to an area where it's offered). This post was initially prompted by the loss of my Internet connection, and so while I waited for it to be fixed, I figured I'd write about my experiences thus far. I just checked and my connection is back up. I'm looking forward to the future.