OMG no internet OMG NOES

[darkoshi]

This is the 2nd night in a row my internet has gone down. Yesterday it was from about 12:30am to 1:07am. Today it was from 12:20am to 1:30am.

You might think that would be a good nudge to get me to go to bed a bit earlier than otherwise. But no, it leaves me too distraught to want to go to bed. I end up staying up even later than I might otherwise. I was in the middle of looking stuff up! How can I just drop everything and go to bed? Why isn't it working? Trying to see if rebooting the modem will fix it, etc. I hadn't even gotten to the point where I could relax by reading some LJ pages, before it went down.

Without the internet, I can't even play Words With Friends, like I sometimes do while brushing my teeth.
Without the internet, I can't even look up what the weather will be tomorrow, to decide what clothes I'll wear. Though I could have brought it up on my phone.

Pondering whether I should buy an external phone modem to use when the cable modem goes down... do ISPs even still have back-up dial-up modem numbers?
Pondering whether I should open accounts with both TWC and AT&T, just so that if one of them goes down, hopefully the other one would still be up. Bah, no. Are there any other affordable options?

I suppose I could get a cell phone plan with more data, and use that for backup.

Now that the internet is working again, reading reports from other people that it must have been a fairly widespread outage, and that their internet went out yesterday too, is soothing. It's not just me. It will get fixed. Hopefully it won't happen again tomorrow.

I put that outage website link in my phone so that I can at least check it if the house internet goes down again.

Comments

[marahmarie]

LOL yes, AOL still offers service in most areas of the country. And what a question to ask knowing I'd probably be reading. NetZero and PeoplePC are still in business, as well. AOL will actually provide you the best service - the most phone numbers, most reliable connections, but they'ill also swallow you whole by never letting you cancel even once you're long dead and gone, so good luck with that.

Before you added the part about going with a phone-based ISP I was thinking to ask if you could hotspot off your smartphone, same as I did during the storm? I have two phones - a dumb phone and a smartphone - so I'd kept the smartphone on wifi only until the storm hit, then just bought a plan to get through our time without power (12 days).

Well, that was the plan, anyway. I kept the phone on a plan through this month but might turn it off again next month to save money. I can get everything I want and need through the dumb phone and over wifi on the smartphone, I just don't like replying to dumb phone messages in t9.

Dial-up will be the same as always...56k, very slow. It will probably choke on today's webpages, which are much heavier than when I last used it maybe ten years ago (and dial-up was starting to choke on many webpages even then thanks to increased JS and JSON usage).

I would think a hotspot off a smartphone (or a plan from NetZero - http://www.netzero.net/start/landing.do?page=fd/plans-mobile-static-s) might give better speeds, more reliable page loads and be less headaches for you. FWIW, NetZero costs more for the data plan than my carrier (AT&T). I pay $10 for every 500MB, which is outrageously expensive, but still cheaper than NetZero's comparable plan.

Also-also, I can't surf normally and hotspot. I was using a data-limited free VPN last week just to see what that was like. It gave 2GBs free. I blew through it in less than 3-4 days (and I'm not a heavy video watcher and don't use Facebook or other data heavy sites like tumblr or Instagram, and I didn't even update my blog, which normally requires dozens of edits and previews per post, at all). :)

And yes, late-night Internetlessness, it really *does* blow...

[darkoshi]

NetZero! I had forgotten about them, though I used to use them as backup a long time ago, and I even still have a pretty much unused email address with them. Back then, all the ads they showed on their free version made things pretty slow. But that might have only been on the initial sign-in page. I wasn't even thinking of AOL; I was actually wondering whether TWC still provided backup dial-up access for their cable internet customers. It turns out they stopped doing that back in 2009. But I actually do have a dialup option, as I'm only indirectly through TWC. So if I get a cheap external modem, I will try it out to see what it is like.

A phone plan with more data would be more usable though. It would mean switching from my current provider, as their data plans are no longer very cost effective, and getting a different phone. I plan to do it someday, but it hasn't been a high priority. Yesterday and today have been fine internet-wise (yay), so it will probably stay low priority for a while.

[marahmarie]

I'm kind of happy not switching providers myself, but not so I can keep the provider - AT&T does little to impress me and is kind of pricey compared to many other options - but for the phone. The longer I'm on Windows instead of Android the happier I am. The Windows phone doesn't get hacked, has no critical bugs I know of, and just feels safer overall. Android is a hot mess these days bug-wise, in terms of hacking, and in a few other ways, plus I can do without the emphasis on Google-everything, as I'm not a Gmail or Google Maps user.

On my Nokia I keep Cortana shut off, minimize the amount of apps I run or use, minimize the amount Microsoft can intrude on me based on available settings and just breathe a little easier than I think I would on any Android phone.

Good luck with finding a plan...