DSL vs. DSL Pro

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I have had a DSL connection for three years and am reasonably happy with it, but it sometimes seems pretty slow. That’s probably because my expectations increase as time goes by. I have a one year (as opposed to month to month) contract with my ISP and it’s coming up for renewal. The month to month rate is $40, compared to $27 for the one year contract. My ISP, SBC, is offering an upgrade to DSL Pro, and says it will increase my speed to “1.5Mbps – 3.0Mbps downstream and up to 416Kbps upstream, up to to 2 times faster than your current service”. For a one year contract the price would be $37 a month. Does anyone have experience of this faster connect speed? Is it really as good as SBC says? I’d be willing to pay the extra $10 if I’d get value for money.

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I did this upgrade with SBC in September, and am pleased with it. Running around 2.5Mbps down, compared to 600Kbps on the old service. Software downloads scream, and Internet radio/music is finally smooth and almost pause-free. Well worth the extra $7/month, to me at least .

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I did this upgrade with SBC in September, and am pleased with it. Running around 2.5Mbps down, compared to 600Kbps on the old service. Software downloads scream, and Internet radio/music is finally smooth and almost pause-free. Well worth the extra $7/month, to me at least .

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Such an upgrade depends really on what you do/want to do with the extra speed, and whether you’re getting any problems with what you’re doing at the moment. If you do lots of heavy downloading you may find it worth the extra money, but that’s a subjective decision.

It’s probably worth meauring the actual download speed you’re getting at various times of the day. If these are all high and consistent, then fine, but if there’s a reduction at busy times, that may mean that the other people you’re contending with are also heavy users. In that particular instance you may not see that much of an actual improvement should you upgrade to the supposedly faster system.

John

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Such an upgrade depends really on what you do/want to do with the extra speed, and whether you’re getting any problems with what you’re doing at the moment. If you do lots of heavy downloading you may find it worth the extra money, but that’s a subjective decision.

It’s probably worth meauring the actual download speed you’re getting at various times of the day. If these are all high and consistent, then fine, but if there’s a reduction at busy times, that may mean that the other people you’re contending with are also heavy users. In that particular instance you may not see that much of an actual improvement should you upgrade to the supposedly faster system.

John

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I had a DSL connection for 4 or 5 years from Verizon/Alltel at 768 down-384 up. I finally dumped it in favor of cable, but not because of speed, rather reliability – too much downtime! Actual downloading of stuff, rather than surfing, doesn’t occupy that much of my use, so 768 was always plenty for me. If you’re getting 1.5 Mbps for $27 I don’t think I would spend another $10 for the “additional” speed, but that’s one man’s opinion. By the way, in case you don’t have one, here’s a link where you can check your current real-time speeds. Good luck with the decision.

P.S. This sounds so crazy that I like to tell people. My DSL complaint to Alltel was that I seemed to lose connectivity whenever we had a pretty heavy rain – sometimes only for minutes but other times for more than an hour or two. I think they thought I was a nut case! Edited to add: Earlier this year in my area, we had almost constant rain for 4 or 5 months, so I was experiencing downtime almost every day. Since I switched to cable, I’ve not been down at all…

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I had a DSL connection for 4 or 5 years from Verizon/Alltel at 768 down-384 up. I finally dumped it in favor of cable, but not because of speed, rather reliability – too much downtime! Actual downloading of stuff, rather than surfing, doesn’t occupy that much of my use, so 768 was always plenty for me. If you’re getting 1.5 Mbps for $27 I don’t think I would spend another $10 for the “additional” speed, but that’s one man’s opinion. By the way, in case you don’t have one, here’s a link where you can check your current real-time speeds. Good luck with the decision.

P.S. This sounds so crazy that I like to tell people. My DSL complaint to Alltel was that I seemed to lose connectivity whenever we had a pretty heavy rain – sometimes only for minutes but other times for more than an hour or two. I think they thought I was a nut case! Edited to add: Earlier this year in my area, we had almost constant rain for 4 or 5 months, so I was experiencing downtime almost every day. Since I switched to cable, I’ve not been down at all…

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>> but it sometimes seems pretty slow…

Could this be a contention ratio issue? (See A beginner’s guide to contention on ADSL which may or may not apply to your area of the world.)

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>> but it sometimes seems pretty slow…

Could this be a contention ratio issue? (See A beginner’s guide to contention on ADSL which may or may not apply to your area of the world.)

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