Bye Pacbell

I'm getting ready to make the switch from Pacbell DSL to DirecTV DSL. I've put up with their crappy service for too long. I got sick of having to wait hours for an email to come in, ping times that take seconds instead of milliseconds, and 15-second delays between IMs.

After I have my Pacbell DSL line released, it's going to take a few weeks until DTV sends me the new hardware and coordinates with PB to open the DSL line to them. So I'm gonna have to go 56k dialup for awhile. I already configured and tested my server to use my 56k modem as a network device, so all the NAT sharing functionality remains. It's going to be fun sharing a 56k line between 2 computers. Ugh.

But, as I told Tracy last night, you know my DSL line is bad when I surf at 56k and think "this isn't as slow as I thought it would be."

So, what does this mean for Underactive.net? Well, it's going to be offline while my DSL is down (I will probably redirect it to a placeholder site). And for those in the know, my email address will change too. That said, I hope things with DTV DSL will be an improvement. I figure things can't get any worse than PB at this point.

Another thing is that DTV DSL officially supports Linux, and their DSL modem has a built-in router and supports Ethernet and USB connections. Pretty cool. Also my download rate should (theoretically) be much faster. My current PB account is capped at 384/128k, while DTV's is 1.5M/128k. I also get a static IP which usually costs extra for DSL accounts. (I joined PB while they were still giving out static IPs, and now they're dynamic).

Sooo, this might be the last post you'll see for a while. Next time around, I'll be up on DTV DSL...