6 ms·

It's an imbalance. I've never really needed more than 5mbps down, but I NEED 20mbps up or greater for my daily interest in the internet, mainly video and photog

It's an imbalance. I've never really needed more than 5mbps down, but I NEED 20mbps up or greater for my daily interest in the internet, mainly video and photography. Broadband is just another case where status quo has been maintained by lobbying and corporate bulling at the cost of losing our competitive edge and restricting our ability to grow. Cheaper isn't terribly exciting, it's just .. well, cheaper. As to more storage, memory and processing power, so what? My desktop still feels as sluggish and kludgy as it did a decade ago. The use case changed. Browsers are still awful, maybe not in direct feature for feature comparison, but how we use them now (flash, ajax, multiple tabs) they're just as slow and unreliable.

jacquesm 17y ago
Ask around, when I was living in Toronto I found out that a neighbouring company had pulled in fiber, they let me piggyback on to theirs for a relatively low fee. If you need it then I assume it's work related so you probably have some budget available. You'd be surprised how much fiber has been pulled in metropolitan areas. If you're in the sticks or some small town then it's a different matter, but you could conceivably do something with channel bonding, or ask your ISP how many dineros they want for a symmetrical arrangement.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  I live in SOMA. Downtown San Francisco. Twitter is across the street from me, literally. My best option is 6-30mbps down, and 1mbps up, or comcast which gives 10mbps up. I'd gladly pay $250/month to get 20mbps up. Unfortunately Comcast is allowed to force apartment building to sign exclusive contracts. Nobody is allowed to put fiber or coaxial into the building but comcast, and DSL just doesn't cut the mustard. After Microsoft made a mockery of the anti-trust system in the US, the fed has seemingly lost all interest in protecting the rights of the American people against monopolies. Innovation loses. Comcast wins.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    I used a short haul directional rig for high speed wifi (short haul being anything up to a mile or so) in another location, it cost me some money but it worked like a charm. I got it from these guys: http://www.star-os.com/ http://www.star-os.com/ They really seem to know their stuff. Using that trick you could likely jump from your balcony or window sill to any location in the neighbourhood that is in line-of-sight, to get you significantly more bandwidth than you have today. They also sell a transmitter that isn't entirely legal in all parts of the world that will do significantly longer distances.

jacquesm 17y ago

Ask around, when I was living in Toronto I found out that a neighbouring company had pulled in fiber, they let me piggyback on to theirs for a relatively low fee. If you need it then I assume it's work related so you probably have some budget available. You'd be surprised how much fiber has been pulled in metropolitan areas. If you're in the sticks or some small town then it's a different matter, but you could conceivably do something with channel bonding, or ask your ISP how many dineros they want for a symmetrical arrangement.

dnsworks 17y ago
I live in SOMA. Downtown San Francisco. Twitter is across the street from me, literally. My best option is 6-30mbps down, and 1mbps up, or comcast which gives 10mbps up. I'd gladly pay $250/month to get 20mbps up. Unfortunately Comcast is allowed to force apartment building to sign exclusive contracts. Nobody is allowed to put fiber or coaxial into the building but comcast, and DSL just doesn't cut the mustard. After Microsoft made a mockery of the anti-trust system in the US, the fed has seemingly lost all interest in protecting the rights of the American people against monopolies. Innovation loses. Comcast wins.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I used a short haul directional rig for high speed wifi (short haul being anything up to a mile or so) in another location, it cost me some money but it worked like a charm. I got it from these guys: http://www.star-os.com/ http://www.star-os.com/ They really seem to know their stuff. Using that trick you could likely jump from your balcony or window sill to any location in the neighbourhood that is in line-of-sight, to get you significantly more bandwidth than you have today. They also sell a transmitter that isn't entirely legal in all parts of the world that will do significantly longer distances.