Where our office is situated, getting a high-speed connection to the Internet isn’t easy and the choices are very limited. We were excited to hear that fiber optic had come to our area a few months ago, though not at all excited with the company (CenturyLink) offering it. Sometimes in business you just have to take a leap of faith that things will work out and that’s what we’re doing with the new Internet connection. Just in case I’m keeping the old connection for a month! One of these days I’ll write about my many frustrations with CenturyLink.
As part of the transition, I’ve been digging around the office to make sure I have an adequate supply of Ethernet cables. It sure won’t be fun if I get the fast connection and find that I’m a cable or two short. If you are a technical geek like me, you probably understand having a stash of extra cables around just in case one goes bad or you have something new to connect.
Even though many of us use wireless connections for many of our devices, there is still a need to have at least a few wired connections among devices. For that, you need Ethernet cables with the most common being “RJ45 Cat5e.” If your network is really, really fast then you might need Cat 6 cables though it is overkill for the vast majority of installations.
It doesn’t cost a bunch to get some Cat 5e cables and one of the most cost-effective choices are the AmazonBasics versions. When I looked them up today, a 14 foot (4.2 meter) cable sells for $5.49, a 25 foot (7.62 meter) cable sells for $6.49 and a 50 foot (15.2 meter) cable sells for $9.83. Get them all from Amazon. At these prices, I’m going to get 2 of both the 14 and 25 foot cables so I’ll be all set for the faster connection I’m getting next week.
Hopefully, your new connection will be as good as mine. I’ve used CenturyLink (and their predecessor, Qwest), since 2004. I switched to the new fiber optic in January, and it’s been very good. My 20mb/s speed is always holding within the 80 percent range–and I’ve checked with several different download speed monitors. Just wish upload speed would be higher than 0.8mb/s.
Eric, part of my frustration with CenturyLink is what has been promised and what they later claim is available. When the fiber first became available, the tech who was onsite for a meeting about it said we would get 40 mb/s downloads. I questioned him heavily about it and he was rock solid on his answer. Yet when we sign up, the salespeople say that the fastest possible is 12 mb/s. As for uploads, they claim it will be 5 mb/s. If they fail to deliver the promised speeds, I am not planning on cancelling the old service immediately and I will simply cancel CenturyLink.