If you have the ability and the means then consider treating yourself to an upgrade in your internet connection. I did and the difference is unbelievable!

For the past few years I have had cable internet connection. Lately the speed of this connection has been bugging me at how slow it takes to create BANS sites so I checked into getting a higher speed. In my case, I ended up paying less for a better plan because I have an internet account, digital phone, and cable account all from the same company. The person I spoke with found a plan that increased my internet speed while lowering my price (lesson learned - I should have called them two years ago to make sure I had the best deal but didn’t think about it).

My new plan is the turbo plan with RoadRunner. After getting the increase in speed I didn’t really notice a difference. Turns out, I was using a wireless router that had g technology and it wasn’t able to fully handle the increase in speed. (Also turns out the wiring to my house is very outdated and it, too, couldn’t handle the increase in speed, but I didn’t find that out until yesterday.)

So, I made the decision to upgrade our wireless router to the new n technology. If you make this decision be aware that it is still new and there are still bugs to work out. I did research and got the D-Link Extreme DIR-655 and, so far, it works great.

After following the installation instructions I couldn’t get it to connect. I spent over two hours with D-Link’s tech support, and was sent from one technician to another to another until I reached their highest technician. No one could figure out the problem. The last guy I spoke with thought maybe the router was defective and suggested I exchange it for another one.

Just before ending the conversation with highest level tech guy I asked him if I needed to reset my cable modem. He said, "No." As soon as the call was ended I did just that. I figured I had nothing to lose and this has worked for me in the past when I’ve had internet connectivity problems.

Well, what do you know? It worked! For the record, I also had a Local Area Internet Connection that I had previously disabled (it bugged me to see the inactive icon in my taskbar and disabling it was the only way I could figure out to remove it) and I had forgotten that I needed to activate this before I could connect my computer directly to the cable modem. I figured that out on my own, too. Take that, highest level tech guy!

It makes me cringe to think of all that time wasted but in the end I got the new router installed and it worked like a dream that first night. Before I added the new router I tested the speed of my internet connection at www.speedtest.net and found the download speed was ~1000 kb/s. After installing the new n router the speed was up to ~2500 kb/s. Woohoo! It was more than doubled and I could sure tell a difference.

Then, Monday morning, it stopped working like a dream and my connection was as slow as it had been with my g router. Huh? I called tech support again, and was told that every computer connected to the wireless router needed to have an n adapter. Otherwise, because the router is backwards compatible, if it finds a g adapter (which three of our four computers had because the guy at Best Buy didn’t tell me any of this) then it will slow down the internet speed for all computers to the lowest speed. The reason it had worked faster the night before is because my computer, which has an n adapter, was the only one connected to the wireless router. That next morning my husband’s computer, using a g adapter, was also connecting and this slowed down the router’s connection.

So I went out and bought n adapters for all the systems. While back at Best Buy I mentioned to the guy who was helping me what my new connection speed was. He said that had to be wrong, that it should be over 10,000 kb/s, not 2500. What? It was going to get even better? I couldn’t imagine.

I went home with my new purchases, called RoadRunner, went through a battery of tests, only to have them conclude something was wrong. A technician came over yesterday and fixed the problem (I needed a new cable modem and some outside wiring is bad). After he did whatever he did my speed is now ~15,000 kb/s. That’s an improvement of 14,000 kb/s!! And I had been happy with 2500 kb/s (ah, ignorance is bliss).

Regarding the adapters I bought, I think I’m going to take them all back. Seems my connection was so bad before the tech guy did his magic that I was running slow for the past few years but never knew it. I’ve tested the speed of our computers with the new n adapter and with the old g adapter and the difference is negligible.

Long story short, if you can, make the upgrade. You won’t believe the difference in time saved when creating new pages. But make sure you test your speed so you know it is where it should be. And you may not need to purchase new adapters as your current ones may work just fine, but you may need a new router.

Rochelle