Tweet
For the past several years I've had a 25mbps dsl connection SaskTel. They've been promising us a fiber internet "any time now" for the past couple of years and even had a couple of work crews here to install all of the wires for that in the alleys throughout town this spring. But after doing that, the work crew vanished before they installed the service connections to the buildings, and that project seems to have stalled. As far as I know, nobody in town actually has a fiber internet connection at this time.
The 25mbps service has been good enough for whatever I've needed to do to this point, but lately I've been downloading about half of my movies from Cinesend and the speed is turning into an issue, in that downloading a movie takes a long-damn-time to accomplish. Usually somewhere between three and five days, in fact.
I phoned SaskTel to ask what's up and was advised that I can now get 50mpbs dsl service. I guess they're trying to keep people happy in the meantime since nobody seems to know when the fiber service will be available. "Any time now" continues to be the answer, just like it has been for the past few years.
Okey dokey, then. I signed up for the 50mbps dsl service and got it installed last week. I thought they could just flip a switch on their end but the woman on the phone told me that they had to send a technician to set it up. I thought he would show up to a new modem, plug it in and say "Here you go, bye", but that sure didn't happen. He installed new filters on the pole in the alley, did something with the wiring in the junction box in the basement and now I have a tiny white junction box that the new modem plugs into that wasn't there before either. What I thought would be a walk-in and walk-out job turned into pretty much a whole afternoon affair, but now it works fine.
But.
I have a Dlink DI-604 router that's about 15 years old. Running a speed test through a computer directly connected to the modem shows 50mbps. Hooking the router to the modem and running a speed test through my network gets to 30 and that's as fast as she goes. Which is interesting since that router is supposedly a 10/100 router. Apparently it's not, or maybe it's just old and tired. This was never been a problem and I never noticed before since I was just feeding it 25mbps but now that the input is 50 it can't keep up. But after 15 years I guess that old router doesn't owe me anything.
I ordered a new router on Amazon and just got it yesterday. This one is a TP Link ER605 gigabit router, and that's solved the problem. The technical services guy at Cinesend told me to send him an email when I had the new router installed so he can test the connection and he told me this morning that he got 51mbps out of it. So that's now a solved problem and that's the speed that I'll have here until SaskTel finished installing the fiber. A day or two to download a movie will sure beat having it take the better part of a week.
The moral of the story here is that if you're not getting the speed out of your network that you should be getting, maybe there's an old router that needs to be yanked and replaced.
The 25mbps service has been good enough for whatever I've needed to do to this point, but lately I've been downloading about half of my movies from Cinesend and the speed is turning into an issue, in that downloading a movie takes a long-damn-time to accomplish. Usually somewhere between three and five days, in fact.
I phoned SaskTel to ask what's up and was advised that I can now get 50mpbs dsl service. I guess they're trying to keep people happy in the meantime since nobody seems to know when the fiber service will be available. "Any time now" continues to be the answer, just like it has been for the past few years.
Okey dokey, then. I signed up for the 50mbps dsl service and got it installed last week. I thought they could just flip a switch on their end but the woman on the phone told me that they had to send a technician to set it up. I thought he would show up to a new modem, plug it in and say "Here you go, bye", but that sure didn't happen. He installed new filters on the pole in the alley, did something with the wiring in the junction box in the basement and now I have a tiny white junction box that the new modem plugs into that wasn't there before either. What I thought would be a walk-in and walk-out job turned into pretty much a whole afternoon affair, but now it works fine.
But.
I have a Dlink DI-604 router that's about 15 years old. Running a speed test through a computer directly connected to the modem shows 50mbps. Hooking the router to the modem and running a speed test through my network gets to 30 and that's as fast as she goes. Which is interesting since that router is supposedly a 10/100 router. Apparently it's not, or maybe it's just old and tired. This was never been a problem and I never noticed before since I was just feeding it 25mbps but now that the input is 50 it can't keep up. But after 15 years I guess that old router doesn't owe me anything.
I ordered a new router on Amazon and just got it yesterday. This one is a TP Link ER605 gigabit router, and that's solved the problem. The technical services guy at Cinesend told me to send him an email when I had the new router installed so he can test the connection and he told me this morning that he got 51mbps out of it. So that's now a solved problem and that's the speed that I'll have here until SaskTel finished installing the fiber. A day or two to download a movie will sure beat having it take the better part of a week.
The moral of the story here is that if you're not getting the speed out of your network that you should be getting, maybe there's an old router that needs to be yanked and replaced.
Comment