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shirenomadBut a decade into the Internet Age, this house is turning out to be a frustration.
I had always thought my parents simply never bothered getting a high-speed Net hookup for the house, but it turns out that in the five years I've been gone, they've made more than a couple attempts. But for starters, DSL was finally supposed to be available at our location last month, emphasis on "supposed to." No cable company providing to this location handles Net access either. And just to add insult to injury, we've discovered that something about the phone lines here (just this house or the entire area, we don't know) doesn't allow modem access at speeds greater than 28.8. Mom and Dad were baffled as to why the 56K modems didn't seem to be helping much.
To complicate the matter further, a little quirk of this neighborhood I forgot about: the border between Campbell and San Jose runs right down the center of the street. We're technically within San Jose limits, everyone across the street is a Campbell resident. Guess what; a DSL company provides to that section of Campbell, but our section of San Jose remains unclaimed...
This might actually be good news, though. Dad and a family friend, Ron, are seriously looking into the possibility of getting our neighbor directly across the street to let us set up a wireless network. We're pretty sure that a broadcast sent from their living room will envelope most if not all of our house. The only problem is that it's going to be frightfully expensive to get the gear for that, so we're double-checking all other options before going for it.
Meanwhile, at least the house LAN is running smoothly. Dad and Ron got that put together a few years ago. My computer still has no connection, modem or otherwise, but I can make my Favorites a shared folder and have instant access to them from the main computer whenever I go online. Also I can listen to my entire music collection.
I had always thought my parents simply never bothered getting a high-speed Net hookup for the house, but it turns out that in the five years I've been gone, they've made more than a couple attempts. But for starters, DSL was finally supposed to be available at our location last month, emphasis on "supposed to." No cable company providing to this location handles Net access either. And just to add insult to injury, we've discovered that something about the phone lines here (just this house or the entire area, we don't know) doesn't allow modem access at speeds greater than 28.8. Mom and Dad were baffled as to why the 56K modems didn't seem to be helping much.
To complicate the matter further, a little quirk of this neighborhood I forgot about: the border between Campbell and San Jose runs right down the center of the street. We're technically within San Jose limits, everyone across the street is a Campbell resident. Guess what; a DSL company provides to that section of Campbell, but our section of San Jose remains unclaimed...
This might actually be good news, though. Dad and a family friend, Ron, are seriously looking into the possibility of getting our neighbor directly across the street to let us set up a wireless network. We're pretty sure that a broadcast sent from their living room will envelope most if not all of our house. The only problem is that it's going to be frightfully expensive to get the gear for that, so we're double-checking all other options before going for it.
Meanwhile, at least the house LAN is running smoothly. Dad and Ron got that put together a few years ago. My computer still has no connection, modem or otherwise, but I can make my Favorites a shared folder and have instant access to them from the main computer whenever I go online. Also I can listen to my entire music collection.
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Hey, look on teh bright side.
Date: 2003-09-10 12:54 am (UTC)Wireless networks...
Date: 2003-09-10 05:11 am (UTC)Re: Wireless networks...
Date: 2003-09-10 12:39 pm (UTC)It cost somewhere between $25 and $30 for my good old wired ethernet network. NIC cards are just about free (both PCI and ISA versions), the cable was cheap, and the switch was the most expensive piece of it all.
Re: Wireless networks...
Date: 2003-09-10 01:21 pm (UTC)ZerodotJander