J. A. Powell, Jr.
Do you remember at the end of last summer when I said that DSL is the high speed internet service to get? I said that it would be available in a couple of months. Well, that will teach you to listen to anything I have to say about computers. As I type this on February 19 at noon, our DSL has been up and running for about two hours...months after I said it would be available. Getting DSL has been an experience.
I signed up for DSL in September, before it was even turned on in Macon. At first DSL was supposed to be available in late October, then in November, and finally, in December. I received several appointments to install the service only to have Bellsouth call the day before and tell me that they could not make the appointment for some unknown reason. After being on the phone for what seems like days trying to find out why DSL could not be installed, I was told that we were not Bellsouth customers. Our service was provided by a company called Access.
Bill Flatau and Rick Katz had the same problem. Bill and Rick tag-teamed the DSL folks at Bellsouth in a Texas Death Match until they gave up and agreed to give them DSL. Bill found the name of the vice-president for DSL in Georgia, Tony Connolly. Bill persuaded him that I wrote a big time article for a big time legal publication and it sure would be a shame if I had to write about the shabby way we were treated by Bellsouth. Tony was suitably impressed and he pulled out all of the stops to get our DSL up and running. Tony sent not one but two service guys to install our DSL modem. One of them spent 5 minutes setting up the equipment and the other talked to me. They made sure that I was satisfied with their service. Tony made sure I was satisfied with everything else.
Tony said that if anyone else needed his help getting DSL, I could tell them to give him a call. His number is 1-800-211-8377 Ext. 18743. It might help if you tell him that you are a reporter for the Atlanta Journal or the New York Times.
Our DSL is amazingly fast. I ran a test at http://interland.toast.net/perftest/ just to see how fast it was running. According to them, we are running at the same speed as a T1 line. That is about 30 times faster than the fastest modem. Web pages that took minutes to load before DSL, now instantly appear. That speed costs us only $59 per month.
If you will remember, DSL is available only for addresses about 3 miles from the switch. The downtown switch is on Cherry St. When the two service guys were installing our DSL modem, they told me that Bellsouth will solve the 3 mile problem by installing some 50 DSLAMS throughout the county by the end of the year. I nodded my head, stroked my chin and acted like I knew what they were talking about. Later I looked up DSLAM and found out that it is like a mini-switch. By scattering these mini-switches around the county, the 3 mile limit can be overcome.
Our DSL connection is shared throughout our office using a router. It is possible to share a connection using a computer connected to a network. The router has a few advantages that the computer does not. For example, the router is more likely to remain up and running at all times whereas a computer that is being used by someone will eventually need to be re-booted.
The router we are using, an SMC "Barricade," has a built-in firewall. A firewall is a device or software that prevents outsiders from entering your network. If you have a DSL or other full time connection, you need a firewall. If you are sharing your connection with a computer, you can install a software firewall such as www.zonealarm.com. This software is free but can be difficult to setup.
The router we bought is also wireless. It allows us to connect to our network and to the Internet without a wire connecting the computer. This is handy with our notebooks because we can roam the office and still have a connection to the resources we need. This is important to us because we use the conference rooms for work and being able to take our computers in the room is very useful. More importantly, it looks cool.