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The phone company checked my line and did not find any thing major wrong with it.

They have a plan for $10 a month for a year for their low-end DSL that uses my existing phone line(copper), their modem, a DSL Filter and my Ethernet connection on my computer.

With it, I can receive calls on my regular phone line while I am online.

Looks pretty tempting. :-)

Andy

Once you move away from dial up you will never look back to it. My advice: Take up the offer.  ;)

Umm...

Modems (whether dialup, DSL, ADSL or cable), come in two flavors.
Ethernet, and USB.

Please, please, avoid USB modems!!! EEEEEEBUL !!!

USB devices share the same serial data line, and must wait for suitable gaps in the traffic, similar to how ATM Frame Relays (internet backbone) operate.
The problems are exaggerated when using band-hungry devices like modems, for example your network speed might suffer while you use a printer or scanner, or move your USB mouse really fast (ok, I am kidding about the mouse).

If you get stuck with a USB modem, call your ISP and tell them that you don't have a working USB port and ask them to replace it BEFORE you go online with it, otherwise you'll either suffer under it, or end up paying for another modem out of your pocket (ebay is full of them).

And note that your connection speed WILL suffer when simultaneously using the telephone - and that, despite the filter, you WILL endure the odd (rare) networking disruption when the phone rings - in my case, the modified dialtone I get when theres voicemail on my telephone can cause a reconnect when someone picks up my phone to call out!! At least you won't be paying for reconnection fees anymore - there's no dialup number, and reconnection is automatic, and fast enough that you won't notice it under most circumstances.

I mostly agree with this. If your DSL provider is AT&T then you are good to go. The standard modem they use is a Westell Dynamic Link modem. It's a hybrid modem which supports both CAT5 and USB connector cables. If your DSL company tells you that they only carry the USB based modems tell them to sign you up for the service but that you will get your own modem. They companies won't admit it but you don't have to use their modem anymore than you have to use their routers for your internal network. Any stock DSL modem will work. You'll need the VPI number, the VCI number, your username and your password.. from there it's about as easy as setting up your standard router. You can find a decent general purpose DSL modem for around $100 bucks (which is interesting because your DSL company will usually charge you around $200 or more for theirs) at most vendor stores like MicroCenter or Staples. Keep in mind though, if you don't use their modem then they won't support it if anything goes wrong with your connection, which can be a nightmare when dealing with tech. support people because they almost always blame any problems on your custom modem. But truthfully it's better than having a USB based modem. With the innumerable amount of external devices having converted over to USB, it is just foolish to run your modem connection over USB.

I make a lot of money fixing connection speed problems due to people using USB based modems and not realizing that all of those external devices they have are slowing their connection down. A basic $100 modem and about 30 minutes time clears it all up. <rant>It just gets me to see how everyone wants EVERY device now-a-days to be USB so they can just plug it in and start using, but they never think about how USB works. When they run out of device slots they get USB hubs out the wazoo until eventually none of their devices are working.</rant>

The only thing I (sorta) disagree with is your use of ATM as an analogy. Just poor choice IMHO. USB works by checking the data ports in a cycle then blocking on data transmission as needed. ATM is quite different. ATM does work in a sort of polling fashion like USB but it is more than capable of transmitting data along multiple outbound data paths as needed. What it doesn't do is broadcasting multiple data paths or handling bi-directional requests on the same line. Which I think is what you were getting at it but it just seemed a bit of an odd choice for an analogy since it can communicate on two channels at once and USB can't (which is where the stall on USB comes in).

OFF TOPIC:
Speaking of ATM, you may remember a conversation we had not so recently when I explained to robert that my DSL company has us on an internal network which gets proxied out to the Internet. Which is why my IP never technically shows up on the Internet. It turns out that AT&T's DSL service does this because their internal network (the one we connect to) is actually just a band-limited ATM network. The proxy is used for filtering out datalink information used by their intranet management utilities before sending it out on the Internet. They actually have a pretty interesting setup, I spent almost 3 hours talking to a support engineer at BellSouth about their setup during my "visit" (my CIS advisor sent several of us down to Atlanta to talk about "employment opportunities", I wasn't interested but I didn't mind going.)

skywalker,

Next time you go looking for a mouse definitely think about getting a track-ball style mouse. Yes I know, they are big, ugly, and kinda awkward to use at first. But once you get used to them you'll love them. They have much better accuracy than your optical mouse does and you don't have to clear a space on your desk to use them... I wonder why laptop makers dropped the trackball mouse in favor of the touchpads... touchpads are horrible, I don't know what BDSM madam came up with the idea but god knows it wasn't a computer user :lol:

I used to have an optical trackball mouse and it was great. I believe it was made by Logitech.
The wifee couldnt get used to it, so it had to go :cry: