Broadband Britain arrives. At my house.
In 2003 I set myself the new year's resolution of having broadband installed by the end of January. A mere 13 months late I finally got my connection up and running this weekend...and was, to be honest, slightly underwhelmed.
Firstly, my creaky old home PC resolutely fails to boot if there is a USB modem attached to it - thus the much vaunted "always on-ness" isn't quite happening here.
Secondly, I now have yet another e-mail address. I can barely keep up with the mail I receive now unless it is sent to my work account - as anyone who has mailed me at currybet.net will testify. One of my main previous ISP related addresses, which is still very much in use, requires me to be dialled in via their lines to pick my mail up, which means disconnecting from broadband and re-entering the dial-up world...
...and finally, it gradually dawned on me during the course of the day that the internet experience at home with broadband didn't add up to a great deal more than the internet experience I have in the office. Except still slightly slower.
Posted by Martin Belam, January 19, 2004
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About Martin Belam
I'm a London-based internet consultant and writer, with 8 years experience in product management, information architecture, and user experience design for global brands like Sony, Vodafone, The Guardian and the BBC. I specialise in advising on search, widgets, RSS, online news publishing and bulk email delivery.
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3 comments so far
dunno where you're sitting in the office these days Belam, but sometimes I get better conex speeds at 56k at home. . . . and there's no voice from above too.
webb
PS. my new years resso was to get a blog up and running, any chance of a link off yours?
The easiest way to get ADSL broadband to work is to buy an ADSL modem/router. They are really easy to set up - you just connect it to a network and then give the box your username and password. From that point on the box is permanently connected to the internet (it even reconnects if the connection is dropped), and all your computer has to do is send and receive TCP/IP requests via the box (which acts as a DHCP server).
There's no software required (even old PCs, macs and unix machines have the functionality built in) and it means multiple machines can share the connection without one computer having to be on all the time!
This is the one our flat uses
By the way - you should be able to dial up and be connected via adsl at the same time!
hmm, that looks a good idea. When I bring a work laptop home I can't even have my adsl modem plugged in on a different computer, let alone connected.