[Update 1] Well that couldn’t have gone any smoother. For those that have just tuned in, we switched Internet service providers this morning. I’m happy to report that the migration went smoothly and without issue. I’m actually quite pleasantly surprised that this is the case, since I haven’t had the best of luck in the past when it came to dealing with ISPs. They almost NEVER deliver what they promise. The fact that I was dealing with two ISPs in order to make it all happen borders on a miracle.
Bell was scheduled to suspend my Sympatico DSL service at midnight, so I decided I’d stay up and wait for it to happen so I could connect my new Thomson SpeedTouch 516 DSL modem up in preparation for my TekSavvy DSL service to be activated in the morning. So I figured I’d get some last minute email and websurfing in and then settled into playing Call of Duty 4 online on my PS3. In other words, what I do almost every night. My plan was to play until I lost connection, then install the new DSL modem, then go to bed and reconfigure my router to connect to Teksavvy in the morning. Midnight rolled by and I was still taking out tangos. One o’clock AM came and went and I was still defending democracy from terrorists. By around 2:15 am, I decided that my tour of duty might never end, and called it quits for the night, Sympatico Internet connection still operational. In the back of my mind, I worried that Bell’s delay in disconnecting me was going to delay the activation of the new TekSavvy connection.
Looks like those worries were unfounded since when I got up this morning at 7:00 am, I found my AirPort Extreme router’s connection light flashing amber, indicating a connection problem. I connected the SpeedTouch modem to the phone line and was happy to see the DSL and Internet status lights turn solid green. A few minutes later, I had my AirPort Extreme reconfigured with the TekSavvy settings and was connected to the Internet with our new static IP. A quick trip to my domain registrar’s self-serve website to reconfigure the artofgeek.com domain to point to our new IP and disable dynamic DNS and I was done. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the change to propagate to Internet DNS servers around the world and we were back in business. Total downtime was under 6 hours.
First impressions? My web surfing seems a bit faster, and my wife said the same thing when I asked her if she noticed a difference, but the difference isn’t immense from the limited amount of time I had to test it. There’s not much else to say at this point. It’s an internet connection, and it’s working. If you have any questions about our transition or the service, post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Update 1 – 3/18/2008, 9:41 am: For those interested in performance info, here’s my results from Speedtest.net on three seperate tests:
As you can see, the download speeds seem pretty consistent around 4,270kbps. The upload speeds vary more, but solidly between 500-600kbps. I only wish I had done these same tests with my Sympatico connection while I still had a chance. Keep in mind these speeds may vary depending on the time of day. I’m fairly impressed since right now is near peak hours for internet usage (between 9-10pm). I’ll run the tests again at different times of day to see if it stays consistently fast or not.
wow, lower latency?
im on the verge of becoming an authorized reseller of teksavvy, so this article is quite important to me. and to be honest, the original article was the very thing that sparked the idea to resell internet services in our stores.
i know its a little early, but have you tested your speeds and various protocols yet ?
i would LOVE for you to confirm that this company is infact true to their word that they do not partake in traffic shaping. at all!
congrats on the smooth transition! cant wait to hear back from you.
@shtewps
Haven’t really had a chance to do any real-world speed tests, but I’ve updated my blog entry with the results from Speedtest.net. Hope that helps. If you want, register an account on the Art Of Geek Forums, and we can get into a more detailed discussion.
Glad everything went without a problem madgunde.
Nice, keep us updated on the service they provide, I’m highly considering switching my Bell to teksavvy. But I’m still concerned that there isn’t a large enough difference to make the jump yet.
I recently switched from Bell to Teksavvy. I was on a 512k plan with Bell and when I wanted to upgrade they told me faster service wasn’t available in my area. So I called TekSavvy and signed up for the ‘up to 5MB’ service without any problem. Makes no sense at all I know.
Now I’ve been with TekSavvy for a month and it is great. Today I got a bill from Bell for $100 early cancellation fee. I phoned them and tried to get it waived since I sure as hell don’t remember signing up on a contract and had been a customer for 3+ years at that address. They wouldn’t budge.
So today I switched my local phone and LD service to TekSavvy and cancelled Bell ExpressVu and signed up with StarChoice. If only TekSavvy offered television I would have signed up for them as well.