Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

This morning I woke to find my DSL modem reporting a speed of 1984/512. Reran the spectrum analysis tool at DSLreports. I shows a theoretical 35xx/818....wonder if I could've really gotten the 6.0/768 tier to at least get the much higher upsteam speed. It would've only been $5 more per month. (The tiers were 1.5/384, 3.0/512, 6.0/768 and the prices were $25/$30/$35).

I graph the SN margin/Line Attenuation along with up/down speed from the modem in cacti....so I see that my SN margin has dropped quite a bit, and Line Attenuation has gone up a little. So I see it started shifting gears around 5:20am.

Using the speed tool, I still can't get the reported speed. But, there is a proportional improvement. But, latency has dropped quite significantly. Better than cable now. Well under 100ms.

Don't know when the current DHCP leases expire, but I reconfigured DHCP to tell my Broadvoice VoIP service to use DSL as its gateway now. Wonder if there's anything else I want shift around....

Read more »

Back when I first moved here, I wanted to get DSL.... they offered 3 tiers (that I knew of...) 1.5/384, 3.0/512, 6.0/768. Of course, I wanted the top one. But, they said for my area they could only offer me the lowest. But, it was better than dialup (and, I was using AT&T BusinessNet service, at the time). So, I pursued getting Cox HSI at first....because I wanted cable TV more than I wanted a landline. But, I was having trouble getting Cox at the time (though I have it now). So, I did order the DSL.

But, once I did get it...they locked me at 768/384 (for a week I did get 1.5/384, but then there was a storm and service became slow and unreliable...I called in for service and the phone tech. said nothing was wrong at their end, must be my side. During that trouble shooting they lowered locked me at 768k down. Moments before the field tech. showed up service started working again. He said something about replacing a line card or something just before coming over....I tried to get the 768k lock removed, but I couldn't convince anybody by email or phone that they had done this....and kept saying that I should get 1.5 and that it must be my line)....and efforts to upgrade weren't available. Even though DSLreports technician report tool said I could do ~2.0M down (and 690k for up).

More recently there had been upgrades in my area...and technician report had been reporting that I could get better downstream rates. Suggesting the next tier could be fully achieved. This mornings quick check say 3.1M.

So, once again I was browsing the AT&T site to see if I could order an upgrade in my speed. And, this time they showed offers of the 3.0/512 and 6.0/768 upgrade options. I wasn't that daring...I ordered the 3.0/512 tier.

Wonder how long the upgrade will take, and whether it'll mean that I can finally do VoIP over DSL (it works good now over Cox). But, the for consistency in speed and reliability...DSL has been the winner.

Read more »

Had been putting off closing the card for a couple of years now.... I only used it once in the last year, and pretty lightly in the preceding years, ever since I got responsible with the my use of credit.

Especially since it used to be a FirstUSA card, with an affinity to an organization that it no longer has with (and I am no longer a member of). And, even more so now that it is a Chase Visa...and I'm happy with my Chase Mastercard (and it handles almost all of my needs and has a nice reward program).

So, I called the 1-800 number for 24-hour customer service on the back today....and found that I couldn't call it from my home number (out of the calling area?) So, I had to call it from my cell phone. Then after being on hold for a while, I got an agent and canceled. They didn't give me the hassle that I had gotten when I had canceled other cards in the past. I didn't mention that the reason I don't need it anymore is that I have a Chase Mastercard....didn't have to.

Though I did use it earlier this year, when my Mastercard information had been stolen and used for fraudulent charges, and I had to redirect an online purchase I had made to go to a different card....since I hadn't gotten the info for the new Mastercard yet.

It might be disturbing that this is the second time this has happened with my Chase Mastercard (and I can't recall the last time it has happened with any other card, though I seem to recall that it has happened once before...but the only other incident that is sharp in my mind involved a Visa check card...and I never got any of that money back. And, I didn't know then that I might have been able to use it as a deduction from my taxes....).

But, for now I'm going to stay with Chase for my Mastercard....though co-workers have been suggesting that I go with Citi (and none are the one that left to go work for Citi).

Last night a new credit card arrived in the mail, I dialed the verification number from my phone and got an intercept message to dial 1 first. I didn't think anything of it. The verification didn't happen instantly.....I then realized that maybe the SPA-3000 had routed my call out over landline.

After some reseting and checking things, I went onto the account portal where it reported they were having trouble in Chicago.

Not sure how long I've been without VoIP....because now that I think of it, it did seem odd taht I only got one call from my University on Jan 29th....they usually call daily for weeks when they start their campaign to get money from me.

I think there were other locations for Broadvoice, though I'd have to dig around to find out what those other servers are and find the one with the next lowest ping time. I think it was something like an east coast server and a west coast server....

Think I can remember how to change it....

Link: http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/204/p/1/pt/32/product.asp

Today's UPS delivery showed up...and among the items was a Xantrex PowerSource 400.

I acquired this to run the items in my 'network' closet'.

The items in there are my DSL modem, Linksys WRT54GS, Sipura SPA-3000 and the base for my Uniden cordless phone.

My Kill-A-Watt meter had reported the load at 11W, but it doesn't even register on the load meter on the Xantrex PowerSource 400. Wonder just how much life I'll get off of this?

The manual says 8W load will give 55h of run time, while a 25W load will give 15h of run time. Nothing in between...so hard to say how long it'll last really...but it'll be over a day, eh?

I wonder if I'll invest in additional units, to cover my online activities during an extended outage.

Link: http://www.netzero.net/support/voip/pvt-ph-faqs.html

Got a voice mail today, that my private phone service is being discontinued -- February 19th, 2008.

I have the option to keep the number by transferring it to Packet8 for $19.95/month + whatever hidden unfees, etc.

Not sure what I'm going to do yet....finding local numbers was a problem when I moved here, but I don't really need another VoIP service. If I could port to Vonage, that would be one thing. But, not really interested in adding Packet8 service.

Plus its just the Voicemail service that I was useing....since I have issues accessing the voicemail for my Broadvoice service using their service....

I suppose I could go back to a regular answering machine...seems the new cordless phones come with these whether you need them or not. Though don't know if getting off of 2.4Ghz is such a high priority. And, I would lose out on getting an SMS at work when somebody leaves me a message....though the WAV file attachment is useless, since the audio is so low and the Blackberry won't play it back natively.

Guess this'll need some more research and thought....

When I first moved into this place, I ran into a problem where I wasn't able to put all my computer equipment in one room. And, then it was further compounded by the fact that there is only one cable jack.

Though the room where I had intended all the computer equipment to go is where the demarc is located, so it probably would've been possible to add a splitter for the the cable modem there.

But, what I did was reconfigure my Linksys router to do WDS bridging and participate in the WDS bridging I was doing with a pair of Belkin F5D7130s.

So I had the cable modem and a pile of stuff at the front of my living room connected to it...and the Linksys router. My computer with one of the Belkins in the opposite corner of the living room and the other Belkin in my 'computer room'.

The VoIP ATAs at the front of my living room....

And, all was adequate.

But due to the SNAFU of getting cable service, I had gotten DSL service and I got out what was my spare Linksys router and set up the 'computer room' with that. So far I've kept the dual gateway home network....

Pages: 1 · 2

Today marks the end of a phone number.

When I moved to Manhattan, KS....I couldn't get a local number for my Vonage account (nor my Lingo account). I opted to cancel my Lingo account, I had mainly been using that to make calls to the UK (part of the 500 minutes a month I got) and for faxing. But, I didn't set up my fax machine after I moved and my cousin no longer lives in the UK.

But, I kept the Vonage account because it works pretty good (better than the VoIP account that does have a Manhattan, KS local number) and I still make calls to Canada regularly. The problem is I get many telemarketing calls to the number, even though its on the DNC. And, worse I still get lots of calls from headhunters....even though I had changed the voicemail greeting to even tell them to stop calling me. Of course, they don't care that leaving me a message is also costing me money....since I got the voice-to-text service. And, the job search ended over 18 months ago!

Wonder what my parents will think that my new number is in the Oxnard, CA local calling area?

Read more »

Sometime before my move to Manhattan, KS....I had been researching the idea of getting a WiFi VoIP phone. And, once I knew that I was headed for KSU, it seemed like a really nifty thing to try out.

As things drew near, one of the problems I found was that neither of my VoIP providers, of the time, offered Manhattan, KS numbers. Just before the move, had come across an banner ad for NetZero's private phone service, and did get a Manhattan, KS number. So at least people could make local calls to leave me messages, though it continues to be useful....

Anyways, I found that Broadvoice was a VoIP provider that could give me a Manhattan, KS number. And, they had the option of allowing me to use my own device. I got the D-Link DPH-541....

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6

Apparently, they just don't care that they are unreliable....and its not just consumers, it hits KSU. (though it is especially bad because both primary and secondary DNS for the university go down, so not only are on campus sites down...but all name lookups fail, so off campus hosted sites are also unavailable).

Though KSU does kind of have an AT&T backup....actually, so do I.....but my living room is on Cox and my bedroom is on DSL....should come up with some way to do automatic failover or something

Because, line monitoring looks something like this (bottom is obviously Cox):

Too bad I can only get 768k down from AT&T/Yahoo! DSL (I'm paying for the 1.5M tier).

Now granted...it is partly my fault. I had been advised numerous times from people in this area before and after I moved here to stay away from Cox, etc. Even had somebody mention that KANREN is Cox, and its what the University....

Guess I had been spoiled by the service I had gotten from Time Warner's Roadrunner in Dublin, Ohio. Never had the choice of DSL back there, since the phone company uses linesharing in the apartment buildings (even though they were the ones that offered DSL when I ordered service from them, and said it was available, etc.)

Hopefully, there won't be any more outages like last Wednesday afternoon/evening....were everything digital was out, and analog was snow ridden. Hard to call during outages when it also takes out your phone service.... The only stuff I could watch was WIBW-DT using my OTA HDTV receiver.....