Sympatico / modem upgrade / service upgrade

[Alex Beamish]

Good morning TLUG,

Last night my Sympatico service was getting sluggish and DNS wasn't
working for my wife, so I checked out the equipment and found it was
really hot (I have the modem and the router stacked on top of each
other, which is probably not the best layout). I put two high tech
separators in (blocks of wood) and called Sympatico tech support.

A gentleman with an Indian accent answered, told me his name was John
(!) and asked me if closing the browser would help -- I explained that
I'd done a ping test that had dropped 4/10 packets, so he abandoned
that page of the standard Q&A. he asked what operating system I was
using and I explained I had a Linux, a Windows and a Mac system all
exhibiting the same problems. Another page of the standard abandoned.
He then ran a test to my modem and declared that he was getting 8Mbps
to my modem, so the problem was definitely my router, an old NetGear
RP614 which we got something like six years ago. It's always worked in
the past.

So, as soon as he had finished his diagnostic tests, he moved swiftly
into Sales Mode and explained that I was currently getting 5Mbps and
paying $44.95, but for two dollars more per month I could get bumped
up to 7Mbps. Bell could also sell me a wireless/wired four port router
with capacity for ten connections for $45.

I told him I'd think about it, and powered off the modem and router
for half an hour and let them cool off. After that, I powered them on
again and everything worked fine. (Good thing -- the alternative was
to use dial-up and set up my Linux machine as a DHCP server. Doable,
but irritating.)

But I was left wondering about the Bell pricing scheme. Only another
$2/month for a bandwidth increase of 40%? That doesn't seem right. I'd
rather have increased upload speed (limited to 600-800Kbps these
days). And does anyone have the Bell router? I think I'd trust a nice
unit from Sonnam more than something from Bell (OEM'd, no doubt).

-- 
Alex Beamish
Toronto, Ontario
aka talexb
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