<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Well,<div class="">I unbundled from phone and cable tv as I don’t use them much. I use cox business internet here with guaranteed bandwidth (according to contract). At $86 monthly, it gives me access to anything else I might need (like streaming services, voice over IP, etc).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">For the cost of cable tv, I can have 3x the channels with chromecast from google at about 1/2 the cost. As far as phone goes, magic jack still works and it’s interface is easy for us blind hackers.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Oh, and I don’t have caps on downloading or bandwidth usage on business class either.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">-Eric</div><div class="">From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, Business services dept.<br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Feb 2, 2021, at 1:07 PM, George Toft via PLUG-discuss <<a href="mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org" class="">plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class="">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" class="">
<div class=""><p class="">I've had CenturyLink and now have Cox. I would still have
CenturyLink if they would have given me a discount when my
promotion was up - they refused, so I switched to cox. When I
called up to cancel the service and return equipment, they
suddenly found a 50% off for 2 years discount code. Too late -
that ship sailed.</p><p class="">Cox has me so bundled up that to split the video from the
Internet from the phone and just go with Cox video and CL internet
will cost me more than what I'm paying now, and the Cox video
features were better than CL at the time I switched. It was
literally like stepping from the 20th century with CL into the
21st Century with Cox.</p><p class="">In the end, in my opinion, bandwidth is good, but latency is
king, but QoS trumps everything. I have a co-worker who has been
having problems with his provider in Prescott Valley. They
implemented "a fix" that drops him offline for 23 seconds at
10:00am every day (sounds like rebooting a router). I also know
Cox' service seems to vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, and
I got lucky as I have had no problems, except bandwidth from my
gamer kids who have to download 25-100GB of games every week.<br class="">
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Regards,
George Toft
</pre>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/26/2021 6:16 PM, Stephen
Partington via PLUG-discuss wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:CACS_G9ytU7E5LkY-Pep5QTFRy--kSc9bsR6KsfyqoHT+Zhuazw@mail.gmail.com" class="">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" class="">
<div dir="auto" class="">Streaming media is indeed a set bandwidth, but the
headroom that a faster connection gives will hel offset the more
bursty downloads without stalling or impacting the streaming
content.
<div dir="auto" class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div dir="auto" class="">Having had cox and century link gig fiber
century link has been the better experience so far. And for
concurrent streams fiber has been far more graceful and I
think that the latency was a portion of it. </div>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 4:54 PM
AZ Pete via PLUG-discuss <<a href="mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class=""> <font face="Calibri" class="">I would think hard about upgrading
to a "faster" plan.<br class="">
The Wall St. Journal did a study that basically said you
gain no advantage for streaming media by upgrading to a
faster plan. <br class="">
The WSJ article is behind a pay wall, but this article
summarizes the results.<br class="">
<a href="https://medium.com/gowander/quick-take-wsj-the-truth-about-faster-internet-its-not-worth-it-c73d79a616b9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">https://medium.com/gowander/quick-take-wsj-the-truth-about-faster-internet-its-not-worth-it-c73d79a616b9</a><br class="">
<br class="">
I've been working from home since last March when Covid
started. I have two kids. One is in high school who is on
Zoom all day for school. The other is streaming
Pluralsight/Youtube/Coursera all day doing self-learning
to become a software dev. I'm a DBA and am on all kinds of
video calls/meetings throughout the day as well as
transferring large files to/from my local network. My wife
works remotely as well (altho not very many video
meetings). In the evening the kids are streaming
movies/Youtube/video games/Discord/etc. With all this
streaming going on I've never experienced any noticeable
lag/dropouts in streaming or video conference calls.
However, we consistently *almost* reach our 1.25TB cap
each month. I have the Cox "</font><font face="Calibri" class="">Internet
Preferred" plan (100Mb down/10 up). Since we are using a
lot more data I'm considering upgrading our data cap (but
not the speed).<br class="">
<br class="">
As far as the redundant ISP idea, I too worry about this.
But my plan in the event of an ISP outage is to use my
mobile phone as a hot spot. It'll work in a pinch to get
me by until the outage is resolved. I've only ever
experienced short outages with Cox, so having a backup ISP
seems like a lot of wasted money in my opinion. But, you
have to assess you're own situation and make the decisions
that work for you.<br class="">
<br class="">
Something to consider....<br class="">
Peter<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
</font>
<div class="">On 1/26/2021 3:49 PM, der.hans via PLUG-discuss wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">Am 26. Jan, 2021 schwätzte Mike
Schwartz so: <br class="">
<br class="">
moin moin Mike, <br class="">
<br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">OT: Off topic ... Hi from an old
timer ... plus, a Question <br class="">
<br class="">
Please forgive me if I have been "out of radio contact"
for too long. <br class="">
</blockquote>
<br class="">
Yeah, it's been a while :). <br class="">
<br class="">
I believe both CenturyLink and Cox are offering Gigabit if
you're in the <br class="">
right part of town. At least Cox puts a data maximum on
it. I believe <br class="">
someone pointed out that a true gigabit connection can hit
the monthly <br class="">
maximum in a few hours. <br class="">
<br class="">
I was switching ISPs about the time that the pandemic
started, so just <br class="">
kept the old connection. I'm on one connection for dayjob
and the family <br class="">
uses the other. <br class="">
<br class="">
Since the pandemic has started both ISPs have had
multi-hour outages, so <br class="">
it's been handy to have a spare. Paying for two
connections is a lot <br class="">
cheaper than not getting paid due to overloaded bandwidth
:). <br class="">
<br class="">
ciao, <br class="">
<br class="">
der.hans <br class="">
<br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">(as in ... the "Wolf Brand chili"
slogan) <br class="">
(see, e.g., <br class="">
<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Wolf+Brand+chili%22+slogan&t=h_&ia=web" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Wolf+Brand+chili%22+slogan&t=h_&ia=web</a>
<br class="">
OR ... just click over to the "[[Slogan]]" *section* of
the Wikipedia <br class="">
article about "Wolf Brand chili" ... at <br class="">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Brand_Chili#Slogan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Brand_Chili#Slogan</a>
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
* * * Question: * * * <br class="">
We upgraded our ISP service (at home) when my wife
started working from <br class="">
home ... around the beginning of the pandemic. It is
still "DSL", -- <br class="">
through "CenturyLink" -- but supposedly it is now FOUR
times faster than it <br class="">
used to be, (it "had been" ... for * * * *years. ** * *)
<br class="">
<br class="">
I think we need something faster now. (We have 3 adults
... and make use of <br class="">
[either Zoom or "Google Meet" or something similar] a
lot lately. <br class="">
<br class="">
Any advice? <br class="">
(including, whether or not we should have more than one
ISP, just to be on <br class="">
the safe side?) <br class="">
<br class="">
Thanks in advance, ... <br class="">
<br class="">
Mike Schwartz <br class="">
[elderly] timer <br class="">
I may be in the Plug-Discuss archives ... if they
[still] go "WABAC" <br class="">
... <br class="">
Glendale AZ <br class="">
<a href="mailto:schwartz@acm.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">schwartz@acm.org</a>
<br class="">
<br class="">
</blockquote>
<br class="">
<br class="">
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