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Speed Bumps I

Toronto Star Fast Forward column for August 10, 2000 

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2000

Don't ask why it's taken me so long, but I've finally begun the process of installing high-speed (or at least higher speed) Internet access for White's Skunk Works. 

Okay, go ahead and ask. 

It wasn't because I didn't know about it; I've been writing about cable access and xDSL (Digital Subscriber Line) for a couple of years. However, the first hurdle I had to cross – availability – wasn't hopped until earlier this year.

When both @Home and Sympatico were rolling out their installations, my East York neighbourhood, huddled around Toronto East General Hospital in the Coxwell/Mortimer area, was at the bottom of everyone's list. I even tried getting wireless access through Look Communications (formerly Internet Direct), but TEGH looms right over my house, blocking the signal from the CN Tower – and, frankly, I was also trying to see if I could find someone who would like to have me evaluate something faster than Sympatico's theoretical 1.28 Megabit per second (Mbps) offering – without much success. So, just before getting married and going on a two week honeymoon/vacation in early July, I put in an order for the Sympatico service.

Therein lies a tale. 

Why did I choose to go the phone line route? I get a lot of mail from readers – both to comment on my columns and to complain when they feel they've been treated badly. And, for some reason, people tend to bend my ear when they can catch me about their computer woes. 

Based on these contacts, a fairly clear picture emerged about both forms of high-speed access. When they work, they're wonderful compared to dial-up, "56K" access, but the key phrase here is, "when they work." Both have a tendency to be up (working) and down (not working) like yo-yos (so one of the first pieces of advice users of these services agree with is don't give up your dial-up account just yet; you may need it often to access your e-mail). 

Another point folks tend to agree upon is that customer service and technical support for both systems are about equal – miserable in both cases. 

Speed is the issue debated and used as a marketing tool in both schemes and here's where we come to the point that made my decision. For now and the foreseeable future, despite their assurances to the contrary, cable access is divisible by the number of people using it in the area serving you. So, while the top speed may approach 1.5 Mbps, you could find yourself downloading material at 28.8 Kbps if all your neighbours are online at the same time.

Sympatico's newest DSL modems offer a potential 1.28 Mbps downstream (and 320 Kbps upstream), but – and here's the rub – that speed is conditional on how close (or how far) you live to the central office feeding the service. One of the little known factoids about Sympatico is that it actually has 3 Mbps modems (from Alcatel) available, but they go to folks in the hinterlands who are far from an office and need the faster units just to get the basic speed that most city dwellers, with more and closer offices, expect.

Install Hell

Now, having been warned by people that the installation could be a nightmare, because I wanted to check it out, and because it was a free option the month I ordered the service – I chose to have Sympatico send a technician to install the modem, network card, and phone lines required for DSL service. 

Right off the top I should explain that the technician from RBA who showed up was a nice guy. After five months on the job, though, he'd never seen a residential setup like mine (with five computers and several printers all networked and with Microsoft's Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) already installed on one of the systems). Nevertheless, he was game to try and, once we disabled ICS and disconnected the phone line to the server computer, he was able to get the hardware issues all sorted out quite quickly. 

I figured that showing him how to disable the Windows log-in screen after he'd inadvertently turned it on was just being friendly. 

It's when we came to test the setup that all the rumours I'd heard about Sympatico service reared their heads again. In the first place, this installation took place over a month after I'd ordered the service, not within the working week advertised on the Sympatico Web site. 

"There's a problem with the node in your neighbourhood," we were told, "and it could take up to a month to get it sorted out." 

As we were off to vacation anyway and would have missed two weeks of our free first month if it had been installed before we left, this didn't rankle too much – and there would be the added bonus of a repaired node, too. I dutifully followed up on the phone message waiting our return and tried to book the install date. 

"We could come on July 25th," said the nice lady at RBA, "but your phone line won't be ready until the 26th, so we'll come that afternoon instead." 

So, the hardware is installed and the RBA tech (whose name I'll keep to myself, 'cause none of this was his fault) tries to check out the connection. "Authentication Denied" is the result. Apparently my account is locked. A couple of phone calls later, an hour of waiting and, finally, one of his colleagues transfers me to the Sympatico business office. 

"Julie" explains that although my activation date is correct, it could take up to midnight before the account becomes available. 

"Gee," say I. "That makes it a little difficult for the technician who is here to test the connection, doesn't it?" 

"Yes," she agreed cheerfully. "It does." 

"Isn't that inefficient?" 

"Perhaps," she replied, "but we always send out the technicians before the account is activated. You're lucky that the technician arrived the same day as the activation." 

Lucky me. 

After some quiet conversation with the RBA guy later, I discover that "always" means some days the accounts are activated already (most of the time, actually), but that sometimes people have had to wait up to three weeks for the account activation after the hardware installation. 

So, as I write this late in the afternoon, I'm still wondering how high-speed access will feel. This will be me at about a minute after midnight, checking it out. This may be the only chapter in this story, or it could be the beginning of a book. 

Stay tuned.

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