On Thu, 2013-01-17 at 12:56 -0600, Mike Miller wrote: > On Thu, 17 Jan 2013, Wayne Johnson wrote: > > > I had USI Wireless for a while. The secure connection is the way to > > go. The public connections are for their limited free access. > > I'm glad to hear a confirmation of what I thought I was seeing. Their web > pages didn't tell me to drop the public and switch to the secure after > paying, but they should have told me. It would have saved a lot of > trouble. Using the usiw_secure SSID is preferential for encryption/privacy reasons as well. When you sign up for regular service and get the modem, it will be set to associate onto usiw_secure as well. > > > > I used a laptop and monitored the signal strength to find the best > > location. Never found anything strong enough to keep a good connection. > > How do you monitor signal strength? Does that just mean looking at the > icon to see how many bars or wave lines you have? Or is there a way to > get numbers? On my ubuntu powered laptop I use the following command "iwconfig wlan0" It will give you some good info like signal strength in dBm (numbers), modulation rate, and other info. I would bet there are other graphical tools that could be used as well. I found a decent free tool for my android phone too called "wifi analyzer" The limitation with any of these 802.11 tests/analyzers compared to a true spectrum analyzer is they don't really have a way to show you non-802.11 RF noise from other things that produce radio waves in the relevant frequencies. > > > > After I dropped their service, they called and highly recommended their > > $49 professional installation to solve my signal strength problem. > > According to others I talked to, this included mounting an external > > antenna etc. Those other users highly recommended their installation. > > I'll bet it provides a consistent service, but I wonder how fast it is. > Do you know anything about that? Is it always 1 Mbps both ways? Upload is always 1 meg. Download there are 1, 3 and 6 meg options. Typically 6meg option will require an outside mounted antenna. > > > > By the time USIW called, I had already switched to Comcast Business > > Class broadband and have had 0 problems. Much better that USIW or Qwest > > DSL. YMMV. > > I dropped Century last month because they had failed to reconnect the wire > to my house after a truck had taken it down, and I was pretty fed up with > their bad service. But, when I called Comcast, I wasn't at all happy with > the guy I talked to and their price was higher for the bandwidth promised. > With CenturyLink I'm promised 40 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, a speakeasy.net > speed test (Chicago) is showing 39.3 Mbps down and 15.7 Mbps up with an > ethernet connection to the router. They want $30/mo first 6 months, then > $75/mo as a normal price, no contract. I don't think Comcast could match > that or better it. What did you find? > > They finally did get a guy out here last night, and he went to the trouble > of raising the wire high enough in the alley that a truck will probably > never take it down. So I think I'm going to be happy now. > > Best, > Mike I wish I lived in a area where FTTH is available. http://fiber.usinternet.com