ADSL Arrival
The self-install ADSL kit finally arrived yesterday. I say finally because Verizon said the kit would arrive in three to five days (yesterday was just short of one week). They even sent me an e-mail prior to yesterday saying I should have received the kit and they hoped I was enjoying the increased speed of their service.
In either case, the Westell Wirespeed ADSL modem, along with five phone line filters and assorted cables was left on the floor of our garage by the UPS person. I opened the box and read the three steps required to install everything: 1. Plug in the filters on all phone lines except the one to be used for the modem; 2. Plug in the input cable from the wall outlet to the modem, plug in the Ethernet cable from the modem to my router/firewall, plug in the power; and 3. Turn it on and reboot the router/firewall.
If I were using a Windows box step three would have been to install the software they have but since I'm running a Linux router/firewall the software would not work nor was it needed. As soon as I plugged in the power to the modem I got a sync on the ADSL side and as soon as the router/firewall was finished booting I had Internet access.
I love it when things work that easily. Nothing to change (other than the outgoing SMTP mail server address in my mail client). It just works.
However, the speed is not as fast as RoadRunner. The Verizon service is supposed to be "up to 768kbits/sec" down stream but, of course, that's not what you actually get. What I measured last night was a little over 600kbits/sec versus a little over 1000kbits/sec for RoadRunner (I used the service here to measure the speed, but there are others that would work probably just as well). This is consistent with what I reckoned I would get. In my location, RoadRunner is clearly faster. Much faster in fact. The speed difference is easy to see. But the purpose of getting the ADSL in addition to RoadRunner is to have a broadband failover service available when RoadRunner is down. As slow as ADSL is, it's still many times faster than dial-up at about 50kbits/sec.
Is it worth it to pay for two broadband connections? It is to me because Internet access is no longer just a nice thing to have, it is essential. But wouldn't it be cheaper to have a regular dial-up account for back-up rather than broadband? Yes, but the price difference between $25USD for dial-up versus $40 for broadband is so small yet the speed difference is so large.
In addition, at some point, I will get the Nexland Pro800turbo which provides load balancing between the lines. That is, downloads are split between the two lines such that it appears your connection speed is doubled. It's not, of course, but it has the effect of being so. And having the effect of a T-1, while paying much less, is a Good Thing. YMMV.