The Davis Square Community

DSL is a hack developed by the phone companies to play catch-up with the cable companies when they figured out far too late that they were about to lose the Internet access business completely. For years they had bet on their monopoly control of this business and suddenly the rug was pulled out from under them. It's a technology that was antiquated and unreliable from the day it was introduced, but pushed aggressively by the phone companies because they thought it would get them out of having to lay a single inch of new cable (they were wrong since, as it turned out, most of the wire was so old it was impossible for it to carry data). Get rid of it if you possibly can, it's a rip off. Get a cable modem instead. They're bad too, yes, but *infinitely* better than DSL.

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Umm, well thanks for the rant and all, but I've had Verizon DSL for nearly six years with nary a single problem until this week, so I would kind of like to at least try to figure out what the issue is and how to fix it, before I go through all the pain and inconvenience of switching.

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houlette.livejournal.com

I've noticed a lot of slowness lately as well. I used to be able to watch streaming video, but recently it's been so slow that it's almost impossible.

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squirrelitude

If the only area cable provider is Comcast, I'd rather have Verizon DSL.

(Luckily, I currently have RCN cable. :-D)

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mattdm.livejournal.com

Does Verizon cut off your connection if you download more than 250GB? I was using my parents' Comcast connection for remote backup and ran into that. "Unlimited" in a very specialized sense of the word....

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emcicle.livejournal.com

yeah, that is incredibly annoying

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I don't usually download 250G/month...

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Ugh. No way.

Firstly, even in the best case scenario, DSL costs about five times as much per megabit as cable, and is really no more reliable (and often much less).

Secondly, Verizon has basically stopped maintaining/improving their DSL network because they are now focusing on FiOS. I had a great deal of direct experience with this when I was a DSL customer in East Cambridge. The service worked fine for a year until one day when it didn't, but since Verizon basically never runs new pairs (too expensive, not worth it to them, also paying to run a new set of copper wires would basically defeat the purpose of selling DSL to begin with, since the whole point of the technology was to allow them to transmit bits over the existing copper wires). Once you start having problems, they often go on forever, since the phone company will just keep switching you to different pairs until they find one that will just barely support the level of service they sold you in the first place (or they will silently downgrade you--this is what happened to me, much to Speakeasy's chagrin), and there are more bad pairs than good ones, of course, since they aren't adding any new ones.

As someone who for years stuck with DSL so as to avoid becoming a Comcast customer, I have to say it's not worth it. Even if you are one of the lucky ones with reliable service (you probably live close to a central office) it's still a huge ripoff.

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talonvaki.livejournal.com

This.

Cable Modem > DSL

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ron_newman

But according to the article that was posted here just a couple days ago, Verizon is no longer "focusing on FIOS". I still see lots of promotion for their DSL.

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Oh they're definitely promoting it, especially in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville where they have steadfastly refused to sell FiOS under the local terms, but that doesn't mean they're actually investing a single dime in DSL's underlying infrastructure.

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I've been happy with Verizon DSL, but perhaps I was lucky. At least, things don't slow down to snail pace like it happens with cable, when my neighbors download tons of crap.

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The bottleneck is at the central office, not the neighborhood network (which the cable companies have generally overbuilt by about ten fold). Thus your speed is affected exactly the same way by other people's downloads regardless of which technology you use to get your Internet access.

And I can corroborate this from my personal experience. My cable service has had more than its fair share of reliability problems usually resulting in slow-downs, but they've never had any direct correlation with times of peak usage.

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Hmmmm, OK...

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Besides, given the difference in price per megabit, even on a bad day when things are not running even close to the advertised speeds, it's still faster than the advertised speed of the DSL line available for the same price.

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vanguardcdk.livejournal.com

I've been having the same problem with Earthlink DSL (which I believe uses Verizon as it's backbone). For the last week or so the speed has dropped until finally it's barely usable.

I'm going to swap out the modem today, if that doesn't solve the problem I'm off to Comcast.

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ringrose.livejournal.com

At least for us, Earthlink is leasing Verizon lines. We've been considering punting Earthlink to get it directly from Verizon because they don't actually add much which is useful to us.

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ron_newman

So far I seem to be doing fine with Galaxy DSL (which still uses a Verizon phone line).

I've had several LJ and Facebook friends complain of Internet problems over the past day or two, but I don't know what services they are using.

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mycrust.livejournal.com

Yes, I've been having problems exactly like what you describe.

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theodosia.livejournal.com

My roommate's Verizon phone service was out for about a week here -- I'm not surprised to hear their DSL is also having trouble.

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Went down a month ago. No dial tone. Yet, my DSL was just fine. How is that possible?

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It was fixed within 48 hours. Guy came with a truck and worked outside for an hour or so.

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And you noticed no change in your DSL performance, either before or after the guy fixed the phone line? That does seem odd, but what do I know.

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I don't think so. Try this http://www.dslspeedcheck.org/ and report. Just curious to know. There are other applications that help you check DSL speed...

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sonofabish.livejournal.com

Clearly, you didn't read page 1725 section 3621 clause 143 line 7 of the health care bill- "WE'RE NAO IN UR DLS SCREWIN WIF UR CONNECSHUN nom nom nom."

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What!!! You mean having functional DSL doesn't count as a pre-existing condition?!

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sonofabish.livejournal.com

No, it was overridden by "if you have an existing DSL connection, you can keep it------ NOT" Al Gore is now Official IntaWebz Lawd Gawd and will dispense IP packets as he sees fit.

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I cannot access some academic sites in Europe that used to be fine just a few days ago. I can access them from computers at work. I think it may have to do with domain name resolution, somehow. I'm using two DNS Verizon servers, and they seem to be up and working. But something is odd...

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yagagriswold.livejournal.com

We're having the same problem!

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hashi808.livejournal.com

From what the automated phone system is saying, there's an outage in Somerville, MA. I've corroborated this with the tech call center, who recommended retrying connection in about 8 or 9 hours. This was yesterday...

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Yes, the actual outage (as opposed to slowdown) started after I made this post. It was down for two days. It's back up again now...

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Oh wow, you were without DSL for two days?...

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It was not pretty. ;) On the second day I brought my work laptop home and made use of my neighbor's wireless (with permission - he gave me the password).

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stiltwalker.livejournal.com

Yep, we had the exact some problem. This is the first time I've managed to get online at all since sunday night! Rrrrrrr...

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