Holding Pattern Epsilon

Sorry for the lack of posting, folks, but again, the DSL here at Casa Jaquandor has been in and out, all weekend long. It's been enormously frustrating. I was willing to grant that the weather we had several days ago was behind the outages at first, but that excuse is getting harder to accept.

Now, our ISP is EarthLink, and has been since 2003. But I've noticed that since we switched from dial-up to DSL, when I view the blog from home, it shows up on my SiteMeter as a hit from Verizon.net. So my supposition is that EarthLink's DSL is simply Verizon's, rebranded in the same way that a lot of the store-brand merchandise at big stores like Target or Wal-Mart is name-brand stuff with a new label slapped on. If that's the case, then I wonder if Verizon is purposely letting their DSL go to hell in hopes that enough people will sign up for FIOS.

If that's the case, well...it may end up working. We have no interest in a cable teevee plan, so if we decide to ditch the DSL, our best option is to go with FIOS Internet on its own (perhaps also ditching our landline telephone). For now, I've been posting lots of nasty things about EarthLink on Twitter, to see if they pay attention to that. Calling their service number isn't an appealing option; I've gone that route before only to end up talking to a call center employee in Mumbai who very nicely talks me through the steps in power-cycling my modem. Which I've already done. Multiple times. Each day.

Oh well. We've had this problem with our DSL before, and it's always turned out OK after a few days. Hopefully that happens again now, but if it doesn't, I'm prepared to pull the trigger.