Like DreadCthulhu, my college takes care of it. I imagine that all universities are going to have comparable connections, but is there a way to test my connection speed?
Optimum Online. Supossably the best cable modem service in the country…which I would agree with if you forget about the small usenet retention (even for non-binary groups) and slow email service. Speeds are incredible though, and no minimum cap.
Guess I might as well give my ISP history:
Prodigy 1992-1993: ah, the neon ads. Got out when it went to hourly rates
The Sierra Network/INN 1993-1994: pretty much just an online gaming community, but had live chatrooms, which were unheard of at the time on the other major ‘ISP’s’
AOL 1994: only kept it for a month, was my first introduction to the actual internet though
local ISP 1994-1998: a Connecticut-only ISP. Had great service, but prices started to get out of hand, so I left
Earthlink 1998-2003: service wasn’t as good as the local ISP, but it was $20/month and I was mostly away at college so it didn’t really matter for most of the year
College’s T3/OC3 1998-2002: fastest service yet, ability to run my own server, but eventually the college blocked many services (mostly the P2P programs…they always kept IRC open which is the only one that mattered)
Optimum Online 2003-: see above
Speakeasy DSL. Love it, love it, love it.
My best speed test at Broadbandreports.com was 518 kbps download, which is good considering I’m nearly at the maximum distance from my central office for ADSL to work.
Unfortunatly, Netzero.com at the moment. Actually, I have been with them for two years. They aren’t very fast, but it only costs me $9.95 per month. At this point that is all I can afford. I dream of the day when I can afford a cable modem.
MSN DSL.
Quite happy. It had a few quirks when the first few months (spring of '02), but now very rarely hiccups. Billing to Qwest phone bill is convenient.
Speed is pretty good. It’s not cable or T-1, but I can DL quickly, surf several windows, run through flash sites, etc. with ease.
Alaska Communication System (ACS) Dial-up.
Speed: A whopping 45.2 kbps
Since I don’t have anything to compare it to I’m happy with it. For some reason if I don’t have MSN messenger open I get booted a lot.
Whats funny tho’ is a friend signed up with them about the same time I did a little over a year ago and has NEVER got a bill! Everytime she gets booted she thinks oh-oh!
Usen/Broadgate.
100Mbps FTTH, baby!
Optus@Home cable internet here. 300K/128K. It has a 3Gb download limit, after which they throttle the connection back to the equivalent of 28.8K. Costs me $79.95 a month. I’ve had it for about 4 years now and it’s only conked out twice. Both times it was back up and running within 30 minutes.
Max.
Cox Cable (formerly of the @home network, now of the @Cox network)
Plenty fast. Regularly pull an honest 300k/s+ downloading things I shouldn’t be downloading. Service has been adequate. Its ok to have a router, but they won’t give you any support if you are hooked up to one, so normal up your connection before you call. No monthly limits yet, but there have been rumors that it maybe down the road. This has me concerned because apart from downloading we play a lot of FPS online, any idea how fast that will eat up my bytes?
Comcast and EarthLink. I use Comcast most of the time. It is fabulously fast. I did have some problems with it recently, but they’ve been (knock on wood) ironed out.
EarthLink is my “backup” ISP (and it came in handy when Comcast was giving me trouble). I still use my EarthLink email address. I come from the Mindspring side of things as well—I liked Mindspring better than EarthLink, and was dismayed when they merged.
Videotron cable. Their customer service sucks, but the actual internet service is pretty reliable, so I rarely have to deal with CS.