So I'm still waiting for our new DSL connection to be setup, which should be anytime now. istop.com emailed to let me know that they've decided to offer us the 6MBit service for the same price as the 3Mbit service, since we're only 400 meters from their POP. And they decided that since we're so close, they'd like to connect our loop directly to their POP instead of going through Bell Nexxia's equipment. Not sure I even understand that fully, but it sounds really good. :) Should be later this week, or early next week.


Been busy lately, working, spending time with the women in my life, and writing a new MP3 engine for enfusion-group.com. vFolders are neat, read about them here.

Lucy's doing well at puppy school, she's done her third week, and she's getting much more confident and nice around other doggies.

Been working on the MP3 Engine a lot, adding some new features:

So I waited around today for my DSL activation; the Bell technician arrived around 11:00, and it took him about an hour and a bit to wire up a new data jack. After doing that, and then calling the central office to make sure that it was working, he left. In the meantime I called istop to find out where the modem was, and they said that they'd forgotten, and that I'd have to go pick it up. But their DSLAM is down today anyways, since a card inside it fried last night. They don't expect it back up until tomorrow morning.


Picked up the Alcatel DSL modem from istop, and plugged it in, but I can't tell if it's working or not, since the "line sync" light won't go solid until their DSLAM is fixed. Plus, istop thinks that Bell wired our place incorrectly, or didn't finish.


After all this, and waiting almost a full month for activation, they still haven't assigned me IP's, although last week, they claimed that they had them on file. So even if I had "line sync", I wouldn't be able to do anything anyways.


Not impressed.


To be continued tomorrow...

The 'sync' light is still flashing. The DSLAM was back online Thursday night, but somehow, given 4 days, they haven't managed to get me connected into the DSLAM yet. Would have been nice to have it connected for this weekend, but I guess it'll wait till sometime next week.

Updates on rogue today:

DSL is here! Ralph Doncaster from istop.com and Doncaster Consulting came by last night to wire an RJ-11 cable off of the jack that Bell left. After doing that, and wiring me into the DSLAM, the modem finally sync'd.

Only trouble is, the Alcatel SpeedTouch Home modems don't seem to play perfectly with istop's DSLAM, and so my sync levels had to be locked in at 3Mbit for the time being, until istop installs their new DSLAM in a couple of weeks.

Getting close to 300kB/s inbound, and 85kB/s outbound, plus, reverse DNS records have been updated, and should propagate within the next few hours.