Internet connection

I use Verizon’s crappy service for landline, internet (DSL), and cell phone. I’ve ranted before about their customer support. There’s more to that, but I’m too lazy to write it out. Here’s my gripe about DSL as I’m experiencing it here:

I tend to drop between 3 and 7 packets before any particular TCP connection gets going. This results in web based stuff requiring multiple hits of the “reload” button. From time to time I will keep a ping going to my work site rather than allowing the connection to die. Basically, it costs me between 500 and 1500 ms to set up a connection. That’s ONE POINT FIVE SECONDS for God’s sake. I could mail a letter in that time.

riptide:~/Desktop xxxxx$ ping xxxxxx.net
PING xxxxxx.net (xx.xx.xx.x): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from xx.xx.xx.xx: icmp_seq=3 ttl=45 time=554.153 ms
64 bytes from xx.xx.xx.xx: icmp_seq=4 ttl=45 time=49.309 ms

Traceroute gets :

traceroute to 128.101.101.101 (128.101.101.101), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  dslrouter (192.168.1.1)  1.746 ms  1.678 ms  1.616 ms
 3  * * *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 (...and so on up to 30 hops)

The first one is my wireless router (good router! Give away NOTHING about yourself!). The second is my DSL modem.

Inbound traceroute shows me in the freakin’ internet boonies:

terrie /home/xxxxx> traceroute xx.xx.xx.xx
traceroute to xx.xx.xx.xx (xx.xx.xx.xx), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  nowhere.towerstream.com (69.38.149.1)  0.340 ms   0.304 ms   0.318 ms
 2  69.38.149.97  0.394 ms   0.279 ms   0.713 ms
 3  wss3-mss.zion.ma.towerstream.com (66.228.66.65)  15.872 ms   15.297 ms   15.894 ms
 4  e2-core.zion.ma.towerstream.com (66.228.67.1)  16.373 ms   17.164 ms   15.332 ms
 5  et8-3-core.walt.ma.towerstream.com (64.119.143.237)  18.187 ms   18.406 ms   16.598 ms
 6  oc3-st1-core.prud.ma.towerstream.com (64.119.143.193)  95.987 ms   124.714 ms   128.501 ms
 7  g1.ba21.b002148-0.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.112.17.1)  129.180 ms   129.839 ms   130.107 ms
 8  g9-6.core01.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.112.36.141)  130.625 ms   133.688 ms   131.889 ms
 9  p5-0.core01.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.118)  142.223 ms   142.726 ms   143.253 ms
10  p15-0.core02.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.14)  141.433 ms   141.707 ms   144.838 ms
11  p6-0.core01.jfk05.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.166)  147.770 ms   148.294 ms   151.629 ms
12  so-0-0-0-0.PEER-RTR2.NY111.verizon-gni.net (130.81.15.13)  190.870 ms   188.820 ms   25.308 ms
13  * * *
 ... (and so on up to the max of 30 hops)

So Verizon is “helping” me by throwing away my trace packets, and I’m absolutely sure that it’ll be 10 flavors of joy to try to work with them to resolve this flakey connection thing.

Here’s my other option. Cox cable is willing to give me just internet (no Cable, dammit, XBox is bad enough) for $40/month. I’m currently paying $32/month for DSL associated with a land line phone ($80 for unlimited long distance). People have said that the cable internet is stable enough to trust it for a VoIP phone line. It looks like Vonage will do VoIP for $29/month.

So in theory, I currently pay ~$110 for phone ($80) and internet ($30). I could, instead, pay $40 (cablemodem) plus $30 (phone) for a total of $70. Plus, I would remove two instances of Verizon service from my life.

Am I missing anything here? This seems pretty obvious to me.