DSL Back Up to Speed at Last

On the morning of Wednesday November 15, my DSL slowed to a crawl. I mean, like molasses. I mean, like sub-dialup speeds. This is nothing new with our small local mom & pop Internet Service Provider, alias Stupid-ISP.com. Well, they usually have these problems ironed out within a day or two, and at any rate I was quite busy, so I just suffered with it and went about my business.

Only Stupid-ISP didn't fix the problem. Six days later, things were still slow as molasses. Two weeks later, still the same. And it wasn't just me, I have neighbors on DSL who were experiencing the exact same problems as me. It took a minute or more to load even the simplest webpage.

I phoned Stupid-ISP. Their help person was courteous and genuinely trying to be helpful, but I don't think they were quite convinced there was really any problem; and if there was, they thought it must be in my computer.

More time went by. Almost three weeks of molasses-DSL. Last Tuesday I called Stupid-ISP again. Got a different help person, I think he was technically more astute; at any rate, he didn't blanch when I mentioned my computer is running under Linux. Convinced him that, yes, there is a problem. At any rate, Stupid-ISP was supposed to call me back and set up an appointment for a service call.

Yesterday morning, going on four weeks after the problem arose, my DSL connection was still running like molasses on a subzero January morning. Then I took off and was gone a good chunk of the day. When I got home, mid-afternoon, I discovered that my connection was running at normal speed again. For the first time in almost a month.

They musta fixed something. Out there. Me, I was just sitting there like a slaphappy fool, loading Slashdot, Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, the Weather Underground, Sports Illustrated, and other fairly heavy duty sites. Each of them now loads within seconds. I'd almost forgotten what it was like for sites to load this fast.

Unfortunately, in these parts there is no realistic alternative to Stupid-ISP. But at least things are now running normally again. Until next time.