Innovative DSL

Well we finally got Innovative's DSL hooked up. The verdict: it's sub-par. As a backup connection, it's fine, so we will probably keep it around, but it has a lot of problems. We will definitely be sticking with Broadband VI for our primary service, as they still seem to be the best Internet connection on St. Croix, despite the random disconnects that I experience several times per day.

First off, we signed up for 1Mbps, but I'm only getting about 500kbps, according to www.speedtest.net. The sales person said this was possible and they would have to recondition the line to make it better. I'll investigate that possibility when I'm back from vacation.

The biggest problem, though, is that the latency increases dramatically as you use more bandwidth. So if I am downloading a file at full speed (500kbps), then my latency jumps to as high as 2500ms. That makes loading web pages and checking email painful. And it pretty much rules out any online gaming.

Also, the upload speed is pathetically slow, maybe around 256kbps. I routinely get 1Mbps uploads on Broadband VI. This is important to me because I use an online backup service (Mozy), which runs every few hours and backs up my computer.

The one positive thing I can say is that, even when the latency is huge, the packet loss is virtually 0%. Contrast this to an average packet loss of 0.5-1.0% with Broadband VI. So Innovative DSL may actually perform better for VoIP and gaming, as long as you aren't trying to download anything at the time.

We had a similar problem with Verizon DSL when we were living in Smyrna, TN for a few months, earlier this year. Perhaps this is a limitation of traditional DSL?