I've jumped ship from my old ISP. I was paying a horrendous amount for 1MB down 256KB up, largely on the basis that a relatively small ISP would keep the contention ratio low and be easy to reach if there was a problem. And initially, that was the case - when you called the help line at 11pm of whatever, you'd get the tech support guy at home watching TV - which was cool. But now they've gone legit and have a proper redirect-to-voicemail help. Plus, 1MB, even with a low contention ratio, is pretty sucky these days.

My cable company was offering some cheaper, faster deals so I went with the 4MB one (350KB up).

This brings a new wrinkle to the Auznet (temporary name until Skynet is free) though. Previously I ran a phone cable from the DSL line into the 2nd bedroom and had my study there. A wireless bridge allowed the Xbox and PS2 in the living room to “go online” - as the kids say - through the DSL router/access point. With the new cable-oriented setup, I'd have to drag a cable across from the living room, or try and get both the desktops to go wireless - which would mean three machines possibly using the same wireless space.

Then a friend clued me into the MIMO stuff. This, which is part of the next wireless standard 802.11n, allows for better signal strength and speed - even in occluded buildings - and, most importantly, allows multiple wireless clients to use the same access point without bogarting each other's bandwidth (or, alternatively, have up to 250MB bandwidth for one machine).

That just left the tricky issue of getting the Linux boxes to play nice with the existing 802.11g cards I had. As things turned out though, all I needed to do was swap the Broadcom-based card into the Ubuntu box, whilst the Gentoo one preferred the Texas chip. So, now I'm all wireless and can cancel the old DSL and BT line.