Gaming What are you Using to get Here? (Internet connection thread)

[The Spectacular Professor]

Hello, Ace here. I finally got DSL. I've had it for about a week now, and it's been great. However, it does tend to occasionally disconnect itself at the most inopportune times (like when I am doing homework online.) I called the hotline to see if they could fix it, but it turns out that not only is outsourcing alive and well with the Qwest company, but I need to give them the last 4 digits of my social security number to get any answers. I dunno about you guys, but I don't feel very socially secure giving away my social security info. But I digress.

What are you running on? How's it treating you? Any horror stories?

[Goodbye, Face]

[font=arial][size=1]I run Roadrunner Lite, which is done through AOL. Yes, I know. It's a cable connection that is supposedly super fast, but I've never seen a download above 100kb/s. I have wifi in my house, which is good because there's two laptops in the house now, this computer, my Xbox 360, and sometimes my DS sucking up bandwidth.

Setting up my router was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I've seriously never been more frustrated. I still can't get port forwarding to work, despite having a really detailed guide on it for my specific router. It's a piece of crap that I have to unplug it then replug everyday to get it to work. Leave it to my dad to get the cheapest one he could possibly find.

The wifi at my college is amazing, though. I've gotten something like 600kb/s on it once.[/font][/size]

[Andy]

[FONT="Book Antiqua"][SIZE="2"]I use some weirdo DSL and telephone service called TDS Telecom. Their basically a so-so company in my opinion, mainly because the internet tend's to slow down dramatically sometime's, for absolutely no apparent reason. So yeah, I don't know what the hell is up with that. And the connection is 768/kbps, but I am usually only downloading at about 86/kbps. So I guess you could say my internet isn't the slowest in the world, and it certainly isn't the fastest, lol.:p[/SIZE][/FONT]

[Zidargh]

[quote name='Goodbye, Face'][font=arial][size=1]

Setting up my router was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I've seriously never been more frustrated. I still can't get port forwarding to work, despite having a really detailed guide on it for my specific router. It's a piece of crap that I have to unplug it then replug everyday to get it to work. Leave it to my dad to get the cheapest one he could possibly find.

[/font][/size][/QUOTE]

Ah don't even [i]go[/i] there.

I unfortunately use a Netgear router which is a pile of crap in my opinion. Not only is it a temperamental device but their customer support line is, like many other companies, situated in somewhere like Bombay and it's impossible to extract information the first five times. Not only that but my mother had to wait literally two hours on hold before some 'expert' came to the line only to read some step-by-step guidelines on how to tackle [i]'our'[/i] problem.

And Port Forwarding's a *****. I can hardly play any games online, or if I can at all, I have to keep trying to join a game, for example, if I'm using the Dawn of War: Dark Crusade server.

It's weird how the internet's still a relatively new consumer invention, and as much as we complain, we devote so much time to it.

[Red]

I'm on good ol' British Telecom 2mbps down/256k up. It used to be 512k/256k, but most of the ISPs in the UK have upgraded everyone to speeds that their networks can't handle.

[quote name='Zidargh']I unfortunately use a Netgear router which is a pile of crap in my opinion.[/quote]

Give an update of the firmware a try.

[Aaryanna]

[COLOR="goldenrod"][FONT="Comic Sans MS"]We have Internet through our cable company, Comcast. It's suppose to be as fast as 8 megabytes but I've never seen it go faster than about 1.5 megabytes for downloads. Not that I'm complaining though. That still works beautifully. The only problem we seem to have is every year when school starts back up, for the first couple of weeks we'll have times that it doesn't work at all since they are always too cheap to upgrade to handle the capacity before school gets going. And of course there are other times it doesn't work, but most of the time it does. [/FONT][/COLOR]

[Red]

[quote name='Aaryanna'][COLOR="goldenrod"][FONT="Comic Sans MS"]We have Internet through our cable company, Comcast. It's suppose to be as fast as 8 megabytes but I've never seen it go faster than about 1.5 megabytes for downloads. Not that I'm complaining though. That still works beautifully. The only problem we seem to have is every year when school starts back up, for the first couple of weeks we'll have times that it doesn't work at all since they are always too cheap to upgrade to handle the capacity before school gets going. And of course there are other times it doesn't work, but most of the time it does. [/FONT][/COLOR][/QUOTE]

It could be that your internet connection is 8[b]mb[/b], which denotes megabits rather than megabytes. 8 megabits = 1 megabyte (MB).

[Nony]

No, I'm pretty sure it's advertised as megabytes.
I have the same connection, Comcast High-Speed. As with Aaryanna, it never seems to go much higher than 1.5 MB, but I'm not complaining. In fact, I don't know how I was even able to deal with dial-up before!

The only times it gets super-slow is when my brother has just been playing WoW. Usually a good Restart will fix that though.

[SunfallE]

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"][quote name='Red']It could be that your internet connection is 8[b]mb[/b], which denotes megabits rather than megabytes. 8 megabits = 1 megabyte (MB).[/QUOTE]No, I have the same service and this is exactly what it says on their website for customers here in Utah:[quote name='Comcast']With its incredible speed of over 8 megabytes per second, Comcast's high-speed Internet is a much better option for accessing the wealth of information and entertainment available online.[/quote]Like Aaryanna says, most of the time it works beautifully. Though the capacity issue is still giving me grief as well. I got kicked off twice this evening already. XP[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Odin M Yggdrasi]

I use Hughesnet, it's a satellite fed internet since I am too far from town to get any highspeed by cable or DSL, in fact the RoadRunner cable ends at the end of my road, a full mile down the hill.

They advertise 768 kb/s down, 128 kb/s up, which wouldn't be overly awful if they didn't have a "Fair Access Policy" that reduces me to sub-dialup speeds if I download more than 200MB in one day. Highest download speeds I have recorded are around 100 Kb/s, which isn't too horrible, but I normally am running about 60kb/s because of other users on the same satellite.

What really gets under my skin though is the way they implemented it. The modem has a typical ping time in excess of 3000 ms, it times out almost constantly for that reason. They are also using a transparent proxy in their network, which while it does allow reasonable access speeds and web browsing it efffectively blocks any and all attempts to port forward since I have no control over that proxy or the internals of the modem. They also have no method of indicating how much you have used in a given day, I ended up having to find a development group that made a tracker program to monitor usage so I don't throttle constantly.

As for routers, I use a Netgear and never have any trouble with it. Though it is different for me since I know the technology quite well, having built the computer that I am writing this from myself and having installed the entire network in my house except for the satellite modem and dish.

I usually end up doing my own techsupport, commerical techs probably find me to be about 800 times more annoying than the average person who knows nothing about computers because I tend to actually know more about the technology their company uses than they do.

Maybe in a few days I'll make a computer helpdesk thread somewhere, since from the way it sounds there might be a good bit of people that could benefit from it.

[2010DigitalBoy]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]I use SFS*. i think it's sattellite or something - Verizon, I think? I know we use sattlite for the TV and the router is wireless, though when a storm takes out the satellite (we are VERY stubborn) it doesn't take out the internet. For the most part, pages load instantly and videos load quick as hell. But lately I only really use my brother's mac for internet and it's wirelessly connected to my mom's computer, so sometimes the mac gets a weak signal while the other comp's fine. the only dramatic effect is waiting 5 minutes for a youtube video to load.

* Some ****ing ****.[/COLOR]

[Red]

[quote name='SunfallE'][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"]No, I have the same service and this is exactly what it says on their website for customers here in Utah:[/FONT][/COLOR][/QUOTE]

Fair enough, I guess the contention ratios are much higher than they are here in the UK =s

How much does it cost you a month?

[SunfallE]

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"][quote name='Red']Fair enough, I guess the contention ratios are much higher than they are here in the UK =s

How much does it cost you a month?[/QUOTE]Well the monthly fee is $55, however, since I share it with three other people... I only pay $14 a month for it. Though since I do data entry work from home, I'd pay the $55 anyway, even if I wasn't networked with others, since I rely on the Internet for work. Especially since I end up being required to download material for work running around a full GB at a time. So having a connection that never takes more than 10 to fifteen minutes to download that when needed is nice. [/FONT][/COLOR]

[Gavin]

[SIZE="1"]At the moment, I'm using a local wireless high-speed LAN provider called Premier Broadband and it's been mostly a very positive experience, despite some hiccups that I need to sort out in the near future.

Compared to the 26.4 kbps dial-up service I was using before, well it's a whole different experience. I don't know whether we're on the 512 kb or 1 mb service as it just gives the overall LAN speed as being 100 mb from the connection menu. It's something like ?24.99 a month though, it doesn't really make any difference, as I was paying the same for 120 hours of dial-up per month.[/SIZE]

[Odin M Yggdrasi]

Once you taste highspeed you never want to go back.

I'm using my school's highspeed at the moment, I think they are running a high-end roadrunner package, but might also be using an actual business class T-series line like a T3.

Only reason it sometimes lags here is because of the number of people using it, but it is still an entire order of magnitude faster than the hughesnet I use at home.

[Rachmaninoff]

I have the same service that Aaryanna and Beth do. And other than the capacity issue she mentioned, most if not all of the time it works great. I pay about the same for it as she does since I split the cost with my roommates. I also have access to the Internet at school, but most of the time it's not worth the trouble to find an open spot at the computer labs since I don't have a laptop. Only a desktop.

[SaiyanPrincessX]

[SIZE="1"]Psh, I had DSL, and it was great. Fast, and with Wifi. However, my dad cut it out so for the last few months my brother managed to get some temporary dial-up. Which means it expires after 20 hrs. each month. So I'm currently on Juno dial up, and I should be about up with my time. :/

I could afford to get the DSL back up myself but I have other bills so I really don't want to spend the money.[/SIZE]

[Gunslinger]

Dial up. I download mods for oblivion/halo/etc. at about 1-3 Kbps. Suxor!:animesigh but i live. rank 2 in Guild Wars, major gamer, and i would do almost anything for teh high speedout here in "the sticks" as my fellow classmates call it. 3 miles outside of town wtf :animeangr