I've finally decided to make a move to broadband and this column will serve as a bit of a record of my experience that I hope will benefit others.

The Motivation

I have friends with DSL or cable and for the most part, I'm not sure I really see an advantage unless you do a lot of downloads. Since, as I begin this column it's not yet installed, I'm speaking from my limited experience of working on systems that already have broadband. In my case, I'm a beta tester and often have to download huge files, 500MB or more and on a 56K dial-up, that can take as much as three days, two if I don't disconnect. I found I could just about complete such a download in 3 eight hour sessions.

Of course, when you are beta testing you're anxious for the next build or iteration if, for no other reason, you simply are hoping the next build will resolve issues in the previous build. Also, as the beta nears completion, new builds are often released more frequently so the faster you can download the more information you are likely able to provide, hence the greater value of your input so broadband does have value to me.

This all began as a series of coincidences and I must say it's not without some trepidation I make this move. I've read all the horror stories so I am forewarned.

Nonetheless, my dial-up ISP does not allow two computers to be connected to the Internet on the same account at the same time. That's no problem for me because I don't do that and don't need to do that.

However, for some reason, I'd periodically receive a notice that I was doing precisely that. I'd call and they'd give me the times their records indicated the offense was occurring, often at 4:00 or 5:00 A.M. a time that I was not even awake let alone connected and I protested. They'd tell me "No problem," and assure me I wouldn't be charged only to end up charging me. It was a small amount but I wasn't doing what they said.

I really have no other complaints about my ISP but this was the third time it had happened and I was becoming annoyed. Hence, it was a fortuitous coincidence that my local phone company, Verizon, sent me a letter offering a break on the price of DSL if I used them for both local and long distance service. In the letter they were offering a "Starter Pak" for $19.95 a month.

However, that plan only provided 256Kbps downstream and while considerably faster than my current 56K dial-up, I was prepared to pay a little more for somewhat better speed. I checked their web site and they had a plan that provided 768Kbps downstream for $34.95 a month. Further, if I agreed to sign a 6 month contract, they'd wave the $49.95 deposit for the modem.

To me, this was the sweet spot, more money than the "Starter Pak" but considerably less than their primary plan of $49.95 with 1.5Mbps downstream speed. I thought $34.95 delivered the most bang for the buck and was worth the premium over my current dial-up price of $19.95 a month.

The Preparation

One of the things people worry about when changing ISPs is the change of e-mail address because they then have to alert all of their contacts. I took care of this a few years ago by using a forwarding service. When you use such a service, you only need to alert your contacts once. After that, any time you change your e-mail address, you only need to make the change with your forwarder, usually a simple process that goes into effect immediately.

Using an e-mail forwarding service is enormously empowering. I can't tell you the number of people who feel chained to their ISP because they don't want to go through the hassle of having to alert all of their contacts. When you use such a service, that hurdle or barrier for many, is eliminated.

There are a few such free services around and even the pay services are relatively inexpensive, perhaps as low as $40 a year. Go to any search engine and do a search for e-mail forwarding. Two of which I'm familiar are Bigfoot, www.bigfoot.com and Mail.com, www.mail.com. Both offer free and premium services.

By the way, it can take about 72 hours for the change to take affect at mail.com. They first send an e-mail to the new address requesting authorization. That's a good security precaution but you sometimes don't receive that request for a few days. That leaves you in a bit of limbo until the authorization request hits your inbox. I've done it twice and I must say, both times I felt a bit anxious until that authorization request arrived.

Aside from that, I prefer mail.com. Bigfoot's free service requires you to accept periodic mailings. Also, their free service limits the number of messages that can be forwarded each day. Mail.com has no such limit.

As you can see, even with a forwarding service, there's some planning involved. You also need to consider any mailing lists to which you are subscribed. First, usually, you can only unsubscribe to a mailing list from the address to which your subscription goes. This is one reason why you need to hang on to your old e-mail address for a short period of time after changing ISPs, even when moving to broadband.

The move to broadband only exacerbates the reasons for holding on to your previous e-mail address, hence, your previous ISP for a short period of time. Plan for about a month. That will give you plenty of time to be sure your e-mail is coming to the new address, allow for any glitches in that regard as well as allowing for any technical problems that might cause some delays in getting your broadband service up and running.

The Installation

I called to order my service on a Wednesday and they set up an appointment for that Friday between noon and 5:00 P.M. I ordered a self-install package and purchased my own Ethernet card the day before the installation. My provider wanted $50 for a card and once I ascertained with their tech support that any such card would do, I elected to buy my own. Even though I had ordered a self-install package, a technician must come out in order to test the lines.

I purchased a Netgear FA311 Fast Ethernet Adapter for $19.99. Since I already owned two Netgear cards, the FA310TX with which I've had no problems I elected to stay with a brand I knew was working for me. I made a quick check of the Microsoft Hardware Compatibility List, ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/services/whql/hcl/winxphclx86.txt and determined the FA311 was compatible with Windows XP and I purchased and installed it.

The technician arrived on time, very close to noon. He made a cursory check of where the phone jacks were located, checked out the location of where the DSL connection was to be made and went to work. They look for the primary connection in you home as other jacks are considered extensions. In my case, the whole process took about two hours.

I live in a three tower apartment complex. My tower has 25 floors and 10 units on each floor. It didn't take long for the technician to test the line at the junction box on my floor but it took over an hour for him to check the line at the main box in the building. When he returned, he commented, "That's quite a tangle of wires you have in the basement of this building." Hence, in terms of installation time, your mileage may vary.

If you have a choice of Ethernet or USB Modem, go for Ethernet even if you need a technician to install the card on your PC. The first thing I noticed is these modems, cable or DSL, draw a lot of power. If you connect to a powered USB hub or directly to your computer, this modem may draw power from your system or other USB devices connected to it. Also, anything that takes power away from the modem might retard the speed.

One last thing you might want to check when looking into broadband. Inquire as to whether or not your provider offers backup dial-up access in the event there's a temporary outage. If not, I suggest looking in to a service such as Juno. Juno has a free service option that has a limited number of hours per month but should serve you well as a backup for brief outages.

Aftermath

All in all, I'm more than satisfied. All speed tests I've run have shown me running close to or even exceeding my rated bandwidth of 768Kbps on the downstream side and very close to my rated upstream speed of 128Kbps.

My one big complaint is Verizon's lack of documentation. The technician verbally gave me the e-mail servers and setup in my e-mail program, Outlook XP, was a bit intuitive. While I did find their e-mail domain online I did not see the POP3/SMTP servers. I consider that a major failure and I believe all such information should be provided in writing with your modem.

Their over the phone tech support seemed quite good. Other than documentation, If UUNet newsgroups are important to you, Verizon doesn't offer a news server at least not at the moment though they told me they are working on it. Verizon has a number of plans and your area may differ.

My one and only technical glitch has been when I checked my other e-mail accounts when online with Verizon. There's been no problem in receiving that mail but when I attempted to reply, the reply would come back to my inbox almost immediately with a notice that it was "Undeliverable, prohibited by the administrator." ***Note, this applies to trying to respond by hitting the reply button as opposed to creating a new message.

I've heard others complain of this issue when switching to broadband. The problem has to do with the header on the e-mail that was originally sent to their previous address. Even though they were able to check and receive e-mail through their new ISP, when they hit reply, their computer looked for the old ISP and couldn't find it.

Some people get around this by temporarily setting their old ISP as their default e-mail account when trying to reply. However, this did not work for me. I discovered, if I changed the outgoing (SMTP) server on my old account to the same SMTP server I use at Verizon, I'm able to reply to that mail with no problem. If this doesn't work for you, you can always log on to your old dial-up ISP and reply. This, after all, is only a temporary issue until you've completed moving your mail to your new address.

If interested in checking out Verizon and seeing if it's available in your area, go to www.verizonvoyager.com. They have several packages, one of which might just fit your needs. For more information about DSL, other providers in your area as well as customer ratings of and experience with the various providers, check out www.dslreports.com.

Conclusion

At the outset, I said I felt the primary benefit of broadband is file downloads. While that is still largely true, I must say, having had DSL for around 48 hours it really adds to your online experience. You no longer have to worry about graphic intensive sites or something embedded in a page dramatically slowing you up at a site. Also, you don't have to worry about tying up your phone line and missing calls.

If you've been holding back because of the bugs, now it's close to a plug and play experience. In fact, while my account came with special software, I was able to set up a native connection without any special software and it was no different than setting up any dial up connection. Connected my modem ran the setup in Windows XP's New Connection Wizard in Network Connections and I was online in less than 5 minutes. Again, as with most other things with computers, your mileage may vary but if it works as well for you as it did for me, I can only wish you, "Happy Surfing."