Brian's Blog

Well, I'm finally fed up with my idiotic ISP. I've had multiple issues usually stemming from them (SECTV/Penteledata) not being geek friendly in the slightest. I loose E-mail due to spam filters that they won't let me adjust. They bitch about me using to much bandwidth from time to time. One month I went on a Linux distribution download binge, aka using my bandwidth that I give them money to use, and they sent me a stern letter. And now I've just gotten another one so enough is enough. I've placed a call with Speakeasy, who it seems finally has a chance of being able to give me service. I'm on the hairy edge for ADSL service so the only thing I can do is get it installed and see if it works. I have a month to decide if I want to keep it before the one year contract kicks in.

I've been wanting to get on Speakeasy for ages. I've heard nothing but raving reviews on their service and they are absolutely geek friendly. Geek friendly being things like no blocked ports and it being OK to run your own web/mail server if you wish.

The only down side is that I will be taking a step down in my bandwidth. Currently I top out at a theoretical 7 Megabits per second. But, I must admit, that I've been falling far short of that. The most recent speed test coming up somewhere around 1.5MB to 2.2MB down. So, now that I think about it it's not that much of a step down as long as I can get the DSL line at about 1.5MB.

We'll see I guess. If Speakeasy can't provide sufficient speed I'll have to fall back onto Plan B which is to switch to RCN. RCN recently (finally!) ran fiber in my area so they can (again, finally!) offer Two-Way cable. I checked their Internet Usage Policy on their website and it doesn't look nearly as limiting as SECTV/Penteledata but I highly doubt RCN will be nearly as geek friendly as Speakeasy.