The Uber-Net

Gwen and I were relegated to call this past weekend; I stuck on nights and she on all the time, so we just took it easy. We made into town on Saturday, cruising around the walkplatz to do a little shopping, beg T-Mobile for insight into the German internet, and get some lunch.

The internet (as well as the actual phone line itself itself) at my house works poorly, at best. I finally got the internet to connect at all (meaning I deciphered the German paper with my account number and password - this, as well as applying said knowledge specifically to be able to connect on my laptop, was a nightmare) a few weeks back. And it - the internet - chugs along OK for a spell and then will suddenly disconnect. No amount of tinkering with routers, cable modems, or my computer and PlayStation 3 seem to be able to fix this. It will hum along at decent if not spectacular speeds for a time, and then abruptly cut out, disconnecting because of an "error communicating with DNS server". Its been driving me nuts, and I now have nightmares of some hulking DNS server in my dreams that I run and run towards, only to never get closer.

So we went down to the T-Mobile (called "T-Punkt") store to see what we could find out. The local employee - a typical humorless German - was actually fairly helpful if not full of witty repartee. He asked for my phone number, which allowed him to access my account, and then grunted at the computer for a few moments while typing and clicking things. I'm not sure if he explained the problem with the disconnecting, but by the time I walked out of there I had purchased a new cable modem and upgraded my speed to the highest available for the low price of just 54 Euros a month! And with the current strength of the dollar, that can't be more than 172 dollars a month, right? Point - me.

Of course in two weeks (October 29th - some sort of internet "Judgement Day" at my apartment) when this new connection takes place and my phone line still sucks and the internet still periodically disconnects, it will be all worth it, right? Right. Did I mention I got the highest speed available?

More to follow.