Sympatico / modem upgrade / service upgrade

[James Knott]

Alex Beamish wrote:
> 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.

When I set up someone on ADSL with a router, I also set up a connection 
to connect directly from the computer, just to help resolve problems 
such as this.
> 
> 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).
> 

Rogers has increased my speed a couple of times, without even asking and 
at no extra cost.  I my current modem was originally running at 6 Mb and 
I now get 10.  Upload bandwidth tends to be 10% of download.


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