> From: Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> >To: TCLUG Mailing List <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> >Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 12:56 PM >Subject: Re: [tclug-list] using USI Wireless in Minneapolis > >On Thu, 17 Jan 2013, Wayne Johnson wrote: >> 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? My wifi card has a utility that shows more than what Windows will show you. It actually (as I remember) showed # Db. >> 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? I believe they also have faster levels (for greater price). But with all providers, they can't guarantee anything other the maximum cap. Like I said YMMV. With cable, your sharing bandwidth with any of your neighbors on that wire. With DSL, you have a private pipe up to the CO and then share whatever bandwidth that exits there. USIW uses a mesh network which forwards your data from transmitter to transmitter until it hits the network interface. USIW had lots of fun locating their transmitters in areas where they could see the upstream transmitter. Some of them are hung out on street light arms in the middle of the street to see around trees. >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? I originally had been promised and I was paying for 4Gb at one point. Apparently they found my lines couldn't handle 4Gb and snuck it down (and didn't tell me). That's why I dropped them as a provider.