It took us over 2 years to get cable. We kept hearing: it will be here in 6 months. 3 months. By summer. At the end of summer. By Christmas. Finally over 2 years later we finally got it!
We've had cable for over 2.5 years now and there is no way I could go back to dialup. I am completely spoiled, almost to the point that cable isn't fast enough
So why is it you couldn't get cable?
Did you not want cable? not available?
I hear people complain about cable being shared bandwidth, but in the over 2.5 years we've had cable, my connection has actually gotten better over time, not worse. Perhaps Time Warner just stays on the ball and makes the necessary changes to keep the customers happy, or maybe some cable co's just never get their stuff setup correctly in the first place. Who knows.
It depends on your market. On very high volume markets like New York City and Los Angeles, they cable companies introduce new technology more quickly. When I lived in New York City, with population densities in the thousands per square mile, my cable connection was screaming fast all the time.
When I moved down to Fort Bragg, I was able to also get a cable connection. This is atypical of most military installations, in that while nearly all have cable available, few have had their infrastructure updated to allow for internet cable accounts. The barracks I had moved into were relatively young, and so they had already been updated.
This cable connection was SLOW....dirt slow. So slow the connection would actually die from time to time, causing me to have to disconnect the reconnect the modem pretty often. The latencies were worse than 56K up in NYC before I had gotten cable.
As it turns out, the barracks complex, which houses about 5,000 soldiers, had been running off 2 nodes. The 2 nodes supported about 800 modems, theoretically more than enough for the numbers of soldiers who wanted broadband (there were only 500 or so active modems), but the bandwidth was being sucked up by soldiers using P2P programs like Kazaa, winMX, etc. Just within the last month, the cable company split the nodes, and now the speed is MUCH better. The company had been getting complaints from the soldier's commanders because their cable internet service was not meeting the advertised speed rates. So while the soldiers languished with massively laggy and unreliable connections the cable company continued to charge the normal rate with no refunds. The cable company's excuse was that it had not yet installed the infrastructure necessary to support the growing number of soldiers who wanted broadband. So while 3 or 4 years ago the available bandwidth may have been enough for 800 modems, today it was hardly enough.
According to the cable technicians around here, the cable technology and equipment in Fort Bragg and surrounding areas is about 5-10 years behind the technology and equipment used in extremely high volumes markets like New York City.
I first got cable modem service about five years ago. At the time I lived about two miles from Fairfax Hospital, which is one of the largest hospitals in the Washington DC area. I think we were in the first area of Fairfax County (Which I believe is the 3rd largest county in the nation) to be fully wired.
Since then I've lived in Arlington, VA, and now Charlottesville, VA, both with cable modem service. When my girlfriend asked me if I cared where she did her internship (she's a doctor), I said it didn't matter - as long as they had good broadband.:D
I'm about 20 miles north/north-west of Houston. No where near as dense as New York or LA I'm sure, but it's fairly dense as it's still the Houston metro area. I have no clue how many people live w/in one square mile, but I would not be surprised if it was in the thousands. My particular neighborhood has between 700 and 800 houses (740 I think), and it's smaller than one square mile.
panzerkw said It depends on your market. On very high volume markets like New York City and Los Angeles, they cable companies introduce new technology more quickly. When I lived in New York City, with population densities in the thousands per square mile, my cable connection was screaming fast all the time.
When I moved down to Fort Bragg, I was able to also get a cable connection. This is atypical of most military installations, in that while nearly all have cable available, few have had their infrastructure updated to allow for internet cable accounts. The barracks I had moved into were relatively young, and so they had already been updated.
This cable connection was SLOW....dirt slow. So slow the connection would actually die from time to time, causing me to have to disconnect the reconnect the modem pretty often. The latencies were worse than 56K up in NYC before I had gotten cable.
As it turns out, the barracks complex, which houses about 5,000 soldiers, had been running off 2 nodes. The 2 nodes supported about 800 modems, theoretically more than enough for the numbers of soldiers who wanted broadband (there were only 500 or so active modems), but the bandwidth was being sucked up by soldiers using P2P programs like Kazaa, winMX, etc. Just within the last month, the cable company split the nodes, and now the speed is MUCH better. The company had been getting complaints from the soldier's commanders because their cable internet service was not meeting the advertised speed rates. So while the soldiers languished with massively laggy and unreliable connections the cable company continued to charge the normal rate with no refunds. The cable company's excuse was that it had not yet installed the infrastructure necessary to support the growing number of soldiers who wanted broadband. So while 3 or 4 years ago the available bandwidth may have been enough for 800 modems, today it was hardly enough.
According to the cable technicians around here, the cable technology and equipment in Fort Bragg and surrounding areas is about 5-10 years behind the technology and equipment used in extremely high volumes markets like New York City.
Well, another update.... We **finally** have our phone service hooked up.. I am posting this from a *yuck* 56k dialup... Better than nothing at all.. But slow compared even to ISDN..
Anyway... If all goes well, I *should* be getting my DSL hardware package sometime next week, and we should have our DSL service connected by the 30th...
I'm not holding my breath, but I am crossing my fingers and hoping it goes well...
Right now, the central internet access on most bases are on copper wires, and the Air Force plans on updating that to Fiber Optics.
As for now, at Barksdale AFB, I don't know how old the cable infrastructure is for the dorms and housing. But the base's network is very unstable and slow during the day, and hopefully when they update the system to fiber optics it will be much faster.
Internet access via the LAN here on Fort Bragg very slow. Just like 56K. It depends on the buildings though. The Special Operations units are all in modern buildings, so their networks are fast. But most of the 18th Airborne Corps units (18th Soldier Support Group, 82nd Airborne, garrison units) are in buildings at least 35-50 years old, with infrastructure to match. The network usually stays up but the connection is dirt slow. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where all the money goes in Fort Bragg.
We're a 18th SSG unit that does customer service for the SF units, but our automation is probably among the oldest in the Army. The most modern machine there is a new Dell Pentium 4 system that the commander uses. Almost all the other machines are original Pentium machines on Windows NT. Most of the machines are P200, a few P75. A couple of the machines have Windows 2000. Our unit is MTOE'd for one computer per soldier (a computer is required to do our job) but right now there are only 8 computers for 15 soldiers, so those have not soldiers are left with little to do; they can't do anything without a computer! And no one knows when we'll get new machines (PLEASE..like they're gonna be new...just some ancient machines that Special Op units would have otherwise thrown away.)
I went over the Psychological Operations units once (they're part of USASOC) and it's like going forward in time 20 years compared to my office. They all have nice new Dell machines with flat screen monitors, Windows 2000, all updated, fiber optics connections, kinda made me depressed about where I worked (a dilapidated 47 year old building that use to be a TMC for the SF students across the street).
Bummer... I had ISDN. Just canceled it and ordered phone servcice from another vendor first. Took a day. Then ordered cable. My friends with normal residential DSL are getting half the download speed I get off my cable internet.
There's one interesting thing that I can see by looking at the networked drives (apparently we can only have 8 network drives per account - Windows 2000 limitation, or just them saying that) is that they have an excel file with all the machines on the base network, IP address, setup, and Windows key for most of the newer machines.
They range from a P54C 75MHz w/32MB of RAM to a P4 2.4GHz with 1GB of RAM (our server) - there are at least 1000 computers on base - there are 600+ people just in the 2MXS alone, and in out building, our flight that is, Avionics, there are 9-10 (3 are for the flight office) computers with about 15-20 people on days, except for 464, they are civilians, so Swings and Mids there are about 10 people each.
Hey Tex, remember when I was bitching last fall about there not being any cable service available out here? We ended up getting DSL from SBC, same package as Xyphus ordered (384 - 1500 Kbps / 128 Kbps) and the measured speed on a test server in California is 1296Kbps. I expected it to be a lot slower due to the fact that they only guaranteed a range and the low cost, but it's really good, smooth service. Getting it up and running was a bit of a pain, the lines needed to be updated on our street, but they did it pretty quickly.
Been a while, but finally another update... We got our DSL hardware on Tuesday, and even though our scheduled install date was not until the 30th, on a whim I hooked everything up on Wednesday. And wouldn't you know.. We had DSL service... So I went ahead and registered, set up the accounts, etc... And of course, my next stop was to www.dslreports.com to test my line speed... I'm getting approx 1278 down, and 109 up. Not too bad... Although the 109 up did concern me a bit. We are supposed to get 128 up, but I guess with overhead, etc. the 109 might be pretty much on par...
The 1.2Mbps down is a nice surprise though... We were guaranteed anywhere from 384-1.5 down... So I'm doing pretty good I would think... Almost T1 speeds down... Whee!
Glad to hear it finally worked out for you. Must have felt like the quest for the holy grail.
Prof
PS: If you haven't done so already, please give us your input in the “Utilities Discussion – Week2” thread under General Software!!! This week we are asking for your recommended programs in these categories: HD Speed benchmark, CD Drive Speed Benchmark, Video Performance benchmark
After *FINALLY* getting the DSL service, and rather enjoying our speed and reliability, we have yet another setback...
Everything was working just peachy Friday morning when I left for work... Had a pretty standard day, and was looking forward to some online gaming over the weekend...
Well, when I got home and was firing up the PC I noticed the green "DSL" light on my modem was not lit. Hmm.. I thought maybe they might be doing some maintenance. They said they would do that from time to time and thought nothing of it. My wife and I were going over to the in-laws for dinner anyway. It should be back up by the time we get home.
Whulp, we got home around 6:30pm or so and the DSL light was still not lit. We called the customer service line and an automated voice said that they did have a scheduled maintenance around 6pm and that if you were not getting a DSL signal to turn off your modem, wait 30 seconds, and then turn it back on... We hung up and proceeded to follow the directions.
Still no light...
We called back, and this time elected to talk to a real live person... The tech had us do various things.. Switch phone jacks, unplug everything else from the line(s), etc. etc..
Finally, he pulls up our account and says, "Oh, here we go... It seems your service was scheduled for cancellation today. That is why you don't have any signal, you cancelled your service."
I reply, somewhat surprised and quite shocked, "Umm.. No, we just had the service installed, why would we cancel our service. We just got our first bill in the mail yesterday..."
He again states, "Well, right here on your accout, it says that a 'Michelle L. Gygla" requested a service cancellation for July 18th."
Getting a bit irratated, I respond, "There is no one at this address with that name, nor should anyone with that name have access to our account. My name is Stephen, and the phone line is under my wife's name of Kimberly..."
A little confused, he asks, "So you don't know a Michelle L. Gygla?"
I respond with a resounding "NO! There is NO ONE with that name at this residence, nor is there anyone with that name who has athority to access this account..."
The representative says that there is nothing he can do since the billing and tech departments are empty, everyone has already gone home. We will need to call the billing department in the morning.
Fuming, and quite a bit agitated, we decide that we'll call back in the morning...
*fast forward to the next morning*
We call, finally get a representative after waiting on hold for a while, and several rounds of "Menu-go-round"
To make a long story a bit shorter.... It seems that our account isn't fully terminated. In their computers, it shows that we still have service. This Michelle person is one number off from us, and she in fact did cancel her service. When they were typing in the number to disconnect, the person at the keyboard had her account pulled up, but typed in our number... SOooooo, she still has service and is not paying for it, we *don't* have service but are paying for it, and we can't do a damn thing until the disconnect fully goes through their computers (Supposedly by this coming Wednesday).
Then, we get to re-order our service, which shouldn't take more than 7 to 10 days to have re-connected...
(meanwhile, in the billing department... since we *supposedly* cancelled our service before our year's contract is up, we now will be having to fight a bill for $200 early cancellation fees, $100 for the hardware we recieved, and of course, still have to pay our normal monthly charges for the DSL service we are still being billed for, but actually can't even access...)
Oh, and while this is all going on, of course we will no longer have any e-mail access since our account has to be terminated, then re-ordered, then re-connected...
(all because some dufuss was in a hurry to get out of work on a Friday night and had some sloppy typing skills... and WE have to be the ones to pay for it...)
I am *REALLY* starting to *HATE* SBC/Ameritech...
Anyway... If I *ever* get service back, I'll see you folks online then... (I am typing this from my in-law's PC at the moment...)
In the mean time... I hope everyone has a great week...
Finally got back online with DSL... Ugh... Torture I tell you... Nearly 2 weeks without internet access... It's SOOooooo good to be back online...
As for logs and stuff, we've been keeping one. (My wife works for a Law Firm as a Legal Secretary, so she's used to keeping track of all this stuff...)
Anyway... We're planning on fighting any bills that come our way that are out of wack due to the FUBAR we suffered through...
when i got DSL installed from bellsouth down here, they were charging me for two, yes two accounts on the one phone line. FOR SIX MONTHS!!!!!!!!!!! every month i'd call and ask them if they didn't find it weird that I'd have two accounts on one phone line, but even better than that, two times they actually disconnected my entire phone service because they said I was overdue even though I'd spoken to someone who'd told me not to pay the whole balance..... anyhow, I feel your pain.
Whulp, my wife just got an email from SBC (the line is in her name) asking her to fill out a servey regarding the "service" we recieved in dealing with our call to them on July 19th. (which was when this all started... also my wife's birthday... what a wonderful present for her...)
Needless to say, she had a lot to say in that servey... I'm curious to see how they handle that one... Woooh, but she had some scathing comments in there...
Comments
We've had cable for over 2.5 years now and there is no way I could go back to dialup. I am completely spoiled, almost to the point that cable isn't fast enough
So why is it you couldn't get cable?
Did you not want cable? not available?
I hear people complain about cable being shared bandwidth, but in the over 2.5 years we've had cable, my connection has actually gotten better over time, not worse. Perhaps Time Warner just stays on the ball and makes the necessary changes to keep the customers happy, or maybe some cable co's just never get their stuff setup correctly in the first place. Who knows.
When I moved down to Fort Bragg, I was able to also get a cable connection. This is atypical of most military installations, in that while nearly all have cable available, few have had their infrastructure updated to allow for internet cable accounts. The barracks I had moved into were relatively young, and so they had already been updated.
This cable connection was SLOW....dirt slow. So slow the connection would actually die from time to time, causing me to have to disconnect the reconnect the modem pretty often. The latencies were worse than 56K up in NYC before I had gotten cable.
As it turns out, the barracks complex, which houses about 5,000 soldiers, had been running off 2 nodes. The 2 nodes supported about 800 modems, theoretically more than enough for the numbers of soldiers who wanted broadband (there were only 500 or so active modems), but the bandwidth was being sucked up by soldiers using P2P programs like Kazaa, winMX, etc. Just within the last month, the cable company split the nodes, and now the speed is MUCH better. The company had been getting complaints from the soldier's commanders because their cable internet service was not meeting the advertised speed rates. So while the soldiers languished with massively laggy and unreliable connections the cable company continued to charge the normal rate with no refunds. The cable company's excuse was that it had not yet installed the infrastructure necessary to support the growing number of soldiers who wanted broadband. So while 3 or 4 years ago the available bandwidth may have been enough for 800 modems, today it was hardly enough.
According to the cable technicians around here, the cable technology and equipment in Fort Bragg and surrounding areas is about 5-10 years behind the technology and equipment used in extremely high volumes markets like New York City.
Since then I've lived in Arlington, VA, and now Charlottesville, VA, both with cable modem service. When my girlfriend asked me if I cared where she did her internship (she's a doctor), I said it didn't matter - as long as they had good broadband.:D
Prof
Anyway... If all goes well, I *should* be getting my DSL hardware package sometime next week, and we should have our DSL service connected by the 30th...
I'm not holding my breath, but I am crossing my fingers and hoping it goes well...
As for now, at Barksdale AFB, I don't know how old the cable infrastructure is for the dorms and housing. But the base's network is very unstable and slow during the day, and hopefully when they update the system to fiber optics it will be much faster.
We're a 18th SSG unit that does customer service for the SF units, but our automation is probably among the oldest in the Army. The most modern machine there is a new Dell Pentium 4 system that the commander uses. Almost all the other machines are original Pentium machines on Windows NT. Most of the machines are P200, a few P75. A couple of the machines have Windows 2000. Our unit is MTOE'd for one computer per soldier (a computer is required to do our job) but right now there are only 8 computers for 15 soldiers, so those have not soldiers are left with little to do; they can't do anything without a computer! And no one knows when we'll get new machines (PLEASE..like they're gonna be new...just some ancient machines that Special Op units would have otherwise thrown away.)
I went over the Psychological Operations units once (they're part of USASOC) and it's like going forward in time 20 years compared to my office. They all have nice new Dell machines with flat screen monitors, Windows 2000, all updated, fiber optics connections, kinda made me depressed about where I worked (a dilapidated 47 year old building that use to be a TMC for the SF students across the street).
Tex
They range from a P54C 75MHz w/32MB of RAM to a P4 2.4GHz with 1GB of RAM (our server) - there are at least 1000 computers on base - there are 600+ people just in the 2MXS alone, and in out building, our flight that is, Avionics, there are 9-10 (3 are for the flight office) computers with about 15-20 people on days, except for 464, they are civilians, so Swings and Mids there are about 10 people each.
The 1.2Mbps down is a nice surprise though... We were guaranteed anywhere from 384-1.5 down... So I'm doing pretty good I would think...
(we have a T1 at work and get 1.5 up and down...)
Anyway... Just thought I'd post an update.
Prof
PS: If you haven't done so already, please give us your input in the “Utilities Discussion – Week2” thread under General Software!!! This week we are asking for your recommended programs in these categories: HD Speed benchmark, CD Drive Speed Benchmark, Video Performance benchmark
After *FINALLY* getting the DSL service, and rather enjoying our speed and reliability, we have yet another setback...
Everything was working just peachy Friday morning when I left for work... Had a pretty standard day, and was looking forward to some online gaming over the weekend...
Well, when I got home and was firing up the PC I noticed the green "DSL" light on my modem was not lit. Hmm.. I thought maybe they might be doing some maintenance. They said they would do that from time to time and thought nothing of it. My wife and I were going over to the in-laws for dinner anyway. It should be back up by the time we get home.
Whulp, we got home around 6:30pm or so and the DSL light was still not lit. We called the customer service line and an automated voice said that they did have a scheduled maintenance around 6pm and that if you were not getting a DSL signal to turn off your modem, wait 30 seconds, and then turn it back on... We hung up and proceeded to follow the directions.
Still no light...
We called back, and this time elected to talk to a real live person... The tech had us do various things.. Switch phone jacks, unplug everything else from the line(s), etc. etc..
Finally, he pulls up our account and says, "Oh, here we go... It seems your service was scheduled for cancellation today. That is why you don't have any signal, you cancelled your service."
I reply, somewhat surprised and quite shocked, "Umm.. No, we just had the service installed, why would we cancel our service. We just got our first bill in the mail yesterday..."
He again states, "Well, right here on your accout, it says that a 'Michelle L. Gygla" requested a service cancellation for July 18th."
Getting a bit irratated, I respond, "There is no one at this address with that name, nor should anyone with that name have access to our account. My name is Stephen, and the phone line is under my wife's name of Kimberly..."
A little confused, he asks, "So you don't know a Michelle L. Gygla?"
I respond with a resounding "NO! There is NO ONE with that name at this residence, nor is there anyone with that name who has athority to access this account..."
The representative says that there is nothing he can do since the billing and tech departments are empty, everyone has already gone home. We will need to call the billing department in the morning.
Fuming, and quite a bit agitated, we decide that we'll call back in the morning...
*fast forward to the next morning*
We call, finally get a representative after waiting on hold for a while, and several rounds of "Menu-go-round"
To make a long story a bit shorter.... It seems that our account isn't fully terminated. In their computers, it shows that we still have service. This Michelle person is one number off from us, and she in fact did cancel her service. When they were typing in the number to disconnect, the person at the keyboard had her account pulled up, but typed in our number... SOooooo, she still has service and is not paying for it, we *don't* have service but are paying for it, and we can't do a damn thing until the disconnect fully goes through their computers (Supposedly by this coming Wednesday).
Then, we get to re-order our service, which shouldn't take more than 7 to 10 days to have re-connected...
(meanwhile, in the billing department... since we *supposedly* cancelled our service before our year's contract is up, we now will be having to fight a bill for $200 early cancellation fees, $100 for the hardware we recieved, and of course, still have to pay our normal monthly charges for the DSL service we are still being billed for, but actually can't even access...)
Oh, and while this is all going on, of course we will no longer have any e-mail access since our account has to be terminated, then re-ordered, then re-connected...
(all because some dufuss was in a hurry to get out of work on a Friday night and had some sloppy typing skills... and WE have to be the ones to pay for it...)
I am *REALLY* starting to *HATE* SBC/Ameritech...
Anyway... If I *ever* get service back, I'll see you folks online then... (I am typing this from my in-law's PC at the moment...)
In the mean time... I hope everyone has a great week...
Why can't you have cable, again?
We don't have year contracts and that crap, so you would have less to fight over.
Oh well, sorry you're having such a difficult time. Get them to give you a complimentary month or two for your headaches.
Damn it, that's worse service than some of the ISP's here. It's their mistake, it's their problem.
Don't pay, log all of this, make notes of the times you called and names of who you spoke to. Anything and everything.
No way should you have to pay! :banghead:
As aj2 just said there, freebie time to keep you quiet, should be in order.
As for logs and stuff, we've been keeping one. (My wife works for a Law Firm as a Legal Secretary, so she's used to keeping track of all this stuff...)
Anyway... We're planning on fighting any bills that come our way that are out of wack due to the FUBAR we suffered through...
Off to catch up on all that I've missed!
Oooh, soooo good to be back! (GROUP HUG!)
If I was knocked off the 'net for two weeks I would need years of therapy.
Come to think of it, I probably do anyway...
Glad you're back in business.
Prof
Needless to say, she had a lot to say in that servey...