This is the part that ticks me off the most, and get it quite often.


Failure To Connect To Web Server


When we had Comcast, I was on You Tube a lot. Now won`t even down load it.


Charlie

We've got gigabit Ethernet speeds here at Tech usually. I've seen as high as 850 Mbps up and 900 Mbps down. I've uploaded 750 MB videos to YouTube from my phone over WiFi in less than 25 seconds.

However it can get very slow and goes down frequently. Everything sorta just stops and everyone panics when that happens.

I remember the days of dialup and find it sad that there are Americans out there who still can only get dialup or similarly slow services.

Its very rare for us to have a complete failure. Only had a service problem like that maybe 4-5 times in like 15yrs. Had to replace the modem once. Really foul weather will stop it once in a while, like severe thunderstorm and torrential rain right over head. Usually loose our TV sat before internet drops, but its usually very brief. Its been pretty good really, just wished it was as fast as the best of the cable systems. I can still Youtube all day if I please;)

I recently talked to friends who are now traveling in a motor home. The RV consensus is "satellite six". They use Verizon. I hate Verizon but they seem to have the best coverage.

I pay $49.99 per month for satellite connection that will handle U-tube without buffering. No sell phone service available at this location.

Charlie,

I use satellite as well. No cable, Skybeam, Cirro Networks, U-verse available here. Even cell reception, like yours, is marginal in parts of the house. I live in a small valley so line-of-sight becomes an issue.

Maybe switching satellite carriers would help. I'm using DishNetwork, who aquired Viasat and SkyBlue, and have been real happy with their reception. YouTube, and other videos, load just fine and rarely does weather take it out more than just a few minutes.

Another factor that comes to mind is the router between the computer and your satellite receiver. I found this was slowing things down considerably. Currently, my laptop is connected directly to the satellite rcvr but am planning on purchasing a better router for security reasons.

Charlie,

I feel your pain! We just got off dial up about 4 months ago and moved to some sort of wider band. Not real fast, but at least fast enough to watch youtubes with some patience. I never watched one before, as life was too short to wait for them to load. When I needed band width better than dial up, I ended up taking a laptop to the library.

Regards,

W.

I didn't know Gardnerville was that rural. You are just over the ridge from Lake Tahoe. When I did an MBA project on it 8 years ago, WiMax was launching and was said to be the solution for rural areas, even a mobile version you could access while driving. They quickly setup towers around Banda Aceh after the tsunami so relief agencies had high-speed access. Not sure why it floundered.

Life was sweet for us when SureWest rolled out their fiber-optic network in selected Sacramento neighborhoods ~5 yrs ago. Even my brother from San Francisco was amazed at the speed. Fairly cheap $105/mo for the triple-play. Then, they were bought out and the price jacked to $180 when I had to say goodbye.

The President was pushing an initiative several years ago to bring broad-band to rural areas, similar to the Rural Electrification Act of the 1930's. City slickers were to fund modernization for Ma & Pa Kettle. That seems to have died. He might have been pushing for votes and no longer cares, especially since rural areas voted against him. Regardless, nothing will get thru Congress for several years. Tea Partiers would vote to cut off their own toes rather than assist the "enemy". You'll be scratching in the sand with sticks for another decade.

I'm out in the sticks. When we used satellite, it had a loooooooong ping time but once the page loaded it loaded fast. Was just fine for Youtube. If you're having trouble, I'd have the installer come out and double check everything. A half-degree of misalignment of the dish down here means the signal misses the satellite by miles up there. If you're right on the edge of alignment, the sending and receiving station might be having to send packets multiple times before you receive them, which would slow things down a lot.

Also keep in mind that the weather where you're at is only half the weather affecting the signal, there's also weather on the other end of the signal bounce too.

Once another cell tower got built out here and 4G became available at the house, I dumped satellite. Cell tethering works no matter what the weather is doing, and I can buy cellphone data for less than the same amount of satellite data cost me. $55/mo for 3 gigs of data at 4g speeds, unlimited above that at 2g speeds, and I can purchase additional gigs at 4g speeds for $10/gig. It's prepaid, if I don't pay ahead then I don't get the service, so no danger of losing track of data used and then having a surprise $900 cellphone bill. After years of dialup, 2g really doesn't seem that bad.

Fast internet is the only part of living in town I miss.

I don't think that Charlie gets 4G at his place... am I missing something?
Out of curiosity, who is your service provider?

I live in Gardnerville, Nv now, too.
I met Charlie once at the South San Jose Pick N Pull.
Some parts of our County have no cell phone service. NONE.
I have 4G Verizon since I am 1/4 mi off I-395.

All we can get is Hughes with 5mbps max speed. Can't stream, loads slow, etc.

Just the way it goes.

Chris

I'm on Verizon. I adjust my plan monthly if I use more. I always explain my situation and ask for a little free data. One time I got a text that said "would you like to add 15gb of data for $10?" Ummm, yes. Now I pay $100 for close to 20 gb I think.

4G rules require you can tether for free.

Line of sight is great, but the topography here presents some challenges. Once before I lived in a big long valley, and organized everyone to put up a radio tower. We put it on our property, so we didn't pay, but everyone shared the cost of some 10+ grand for the equipment and solar to run it.

It felt pretty old fashion, knocking on all the neighbors doors trying to talk them into the project. Kinda like a monorail.


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I just got lucky. I just signed up for uverse, 3mbps. So much for them alerting me when it was available. I was at my neighbors last night and she had just gotten Uverse. Only internet is available (fine with me) and only 3mbps max. Its 29.95 for the first year and you have to rent a modem for 7.00 a month. Then it goes to 50.00 a month.

I have supposedly 3mbps dsl but it is not stable and doesn't steam well and doesn't handle big downloads without stalling. And if more than one person uses the internet it starts lagging. Forget about watching surfing the net while someone else is watching netflix.

I tried my neighbors uverse and youtube started playing instantly and it really seemed snappy. I'm excited. It will be switched over in a week.