Welcome to the 21st Century, Howard

Finally. I am no longer limited to fax-machine-speed internet. The new service is not the fastest in the world - not even close - but it's a huge improvement.

This morning:

This afternoon:

The installers were very disappointed with the speed - they wanted at least 100 Mbps. I need to buy a newer modem, and I need to trim a couple of trees about thirty feet up (this is a wireless connection).
When they were testing the site, we got over 150 Mbps Download, but the locations were not good for permanent installation.

Anyway, I am pleased with the improvement.

Congratulations! Not the best numbers, but a world apart from what you had.

I’m curious. How could dish installation locations be SO BAD that you would willingly reduce your connection from 150 mbps to 44 mbps? Can’t you, I dunno, pay some kid to shimmy up a tree and mount it 15’ in the air?

I mean 44 kbps is a lot better than what you had — and Howard no fax machine has operated at 2.25 mbps since the 1970s — but it’s still a far cry from modern speeds. What do I get, 332 mbps?

There are too many details to explain why the antenna cannot - or will not - be put in its best location. Every characteristic of the topography, the vegetation, and the house location are against me. The removal of some branches from a couple of large trees may help, but that ain't a cheap or easy undertaking. To place the antenna in the location where it was giving higher readings would require installing a post on a hillside, which would require drilling into rock, as the soil is very shallow there. Then we would need to bury the cable until it reached the driveway. Trenching under the asphalt driveway would be nasty. On one side of the drive the electrical conduit is buried. On the other side of the driveway, there are water and gas pipes buried. There are also some rocks along the side of the drive, some of which are probably two tons. After that, it is a piece of cake. Of course there will be near a thousand feet of CAT 5-E cable to be run. So I don't think I care enough to go through all that hassle. You are fortunate in living in an area with some of the best internet service in the country. Your service speed is outstanding even for Seattle, which has an average speed only a fraction of yours.

This morning, my connection is a bit better (about 50% better).



If you read about the mean and average internet speeds in the USA, I'm not doing to badly: about average, or maybe even a little better.

And there has never been - to the best of my knowledge - a fax machine with a 2 Mbps speed. 9600 baud was about the best they had then, and many of today's fax machines run at the same speed.

Is this acceptable?  A little tweaking works wonders.