Whenever you see a commercial for an ISP who make claims on how fast their Internet service is, what they are telling you are the maximum theoretical speeds which you will virtually never reach (if you notice in the small print on commercial says your actual speed will vary). But if you want to see h0w the ISP’s stack up overall then check out this article...

Yesterday I wrote about an new Sysinternal’s tool, so it is only fitting that today I write about a new tool released by Nirsoft, RouterPassView: Most modern routers allow you to backup the configuration of the router into a file, and then restore the configuration from the file when it’s needed. The backup file of the router usually contains...

With advertisements from ISP’s boasting new internet connection packages with faster and faster speeds, I have to wonder if you (presently) really need speeds exceeding ~4Mbps (~500KB/s). While it is hard to argue faster is not better, it is important to understand that while your connection may support ultra fast transfer speeds, your speed is limited by...

I received this email from my ISP, Brighthouse Networks: (click to see full size) There are some points of this sales pitch that are just outright laughable. For example, "open multiple sites and support multiple users simultaneously" – as if we all haven’t been doing that for years ever since we first started using...

Bandwidth restriction by the ISP directly is something most U.S. users don’t have to deal with – yet. But other countries have had to deal with monthly bandwidth limitations more or less since broadband was first introduced in their part of the world. Here in the U.S., Comcast is gunning to impose monthly data restrictions widely, however...

With ISP’s starting to be more aware of their customer’s rising bandwidth usage, many are imposing restriction. With this, the need for utilities which can help monitor your bandwidth can quite useful. One tool you might find interesting is NetWorx. The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such...

There are many of us (myself included) who remember the days when dial-up was the only way to get online, and there were two types of ISPs, the Corporate and the Mom n’ Pop. A few examples from when I was living in Connecticut: The locals were NECAnet and Cyberzone. The corporates were SNET and TIAC. All of them cost about the same price per month. (As a...

If you are currently a cable/DSL subscriber, you might currently be leasing/renting your equipment from your provider for a monthly charge. If this is the case, why not just buy one? One thing providers do not want you to know is you can buy both DSL and cable modems relatively cheap. You may hear the “we won’t support it” or “if we...

If you use a mail client installed on your computer to check your email you always have to configure the incoming and outgoing (SMTP) server. The problem I have run into often is actually finding SMTP server information on some of the ISP’s sites for when I need to do troubleshooting. Google is your friend in this case as I came across a page which offers...

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago. In this installment we’ll be taking a look at something you’re using...

If you are a customer of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who is monitoring your bandwidth usage, a useful tool for you is a bandwidth meter. While most of you out there will probably never run into issues with bandwidth limitations, inevitably some of you will. To help watch your usage, check out NetMeter. NetMeter is a free bandwidth monitoring tool which...

Verizon (for those unaware) is a humongous telecommunications company with a very large presence in the United States. It’s more or less guaranteed that anyone you talk to in the US knows what Verizon is and what they do. Verizon’s infrastructure is also humongous (obviously). This means they can offer anything to do with telecommunications. So, if...