Three Weeks with Wild Blue

From John Powers

It's been three nearly-mellow weeks with AT&T Wild Blue. It started with a call to AT&T who took my credit card number and put me in contact with an approved, independent installer for my "free installation" service. It takes a week to get the installer to come all the way to rural Nevada County and when he showed up it was "Oh, oh. This is a 'non-standard installation'. We can't install the dish on your house, the trees are in the way. You'll have to put the dish on a pole." Not just an ordinary pole, mind you. This is not Echostar DISH where they bolt the dish to a tree and run the coax over the ground. Wild Blue has much, much stricter specifications. I asked the installer to show me exactly where to put the pole and told him to come back the next week. It took a 2-3/8-inch galvanized, thick-walled corner fence post, a 3-foot-deep hole, 300 pounds of concrete, and 50 feet of 1-inch buried conduit to prepare the site for the Wild Blue installation. The next week, the installer installed all the hardware and brought the cables into my home office. I insisted that he bring them up inside the wall and install a connector plate on the wall. He connected the cables to the special Wild Blue modem and the modem to my iMac. The next steps involved a toll-free telephone call and some interaction with the Wild Blue web site. I expected the installer to then connected the Wild Blue modem to my router and make sure it worked with my internal network, but that's not part of the package. He'll connect it to one computer of your choosing (I have several) and verify that it's working, but networking is not included. Okay, so it's working with one computer. So far, so good.

I have Windows PC's (running XP) and an iMac with Mac OS-X 10.4.9 connected to a LinkSys WRT54G wireless router. There's a plug in the back of the router for an "Internet connection" and that's what I plugged the Wild Blue modem into. It took several toll-free telephone calls to LinkSys to get the Wild Blue modem and my network working together. It seems that the WRT54G wireless router has some problems that LinkSys is learning about and I helped them learn. Several calls over the next week or two finally got everything working smoothly. LinkSys tech support was excellent. In the meantime, Wild Blue was working smoothly. The only problem was the router.

I use a local ISP, NCWS, for email and web sites. They are my dial-up host and still are. My Apple Mail worked with Wild Blue without any changes. The change-over was completely transparent. Very nice.

Performance is good, but don't expect zippy browser interaction.Once a download or refresh is started, it's quick. I got the lowest tier, 512kbps, for $49.95 a month and am happy with it. It's 10 times faster than v.92 dial-up and feels like it. I haven't used the "accelerator" software that Wild Blue offers because I don't understand what it really does. If anyone can shed light on whether or not the accelerator software really works, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

So far, so good with AT&T Wild Blue.

--john

Comments

[Bryan]

I have a Linksys router hooked up to my Apple G4. It works great. I am trying to hook up a Linksys Wireless WRT54G to my Apple and can't get anything to work at all. F#@K! The router is my gfs and she wants to set it up and use her laptop running Windows XP around the apt. Can you advise me on what you did to get yours working?

[John Powers]

Bryan, I feel your pain and will try to help you off-line.

[Jordans 4]

everytime you hear the rolling thunder
You turn around before the lightening strikes
does it ever make you stop and wonder

[Linksys Router Support]

I have a linksys router and it's working fine. Sometimes it creates problem in connection but restarting it solves the problem most of the times.

[wine gift bags]

The boxing bag needs to be really strong as it needs to keep taking repeated blows.