Hooking up broadband service is generally pretty painless these days — usually you just plug everything in, and it works. So I was expecting our switch from Cable ISP back to DSL to be easy. And it sort of was, although there was one big hiccup. It seems that the DSL modem we were sent used local IP adress 192.168.2.1 — the same address that most common broadband routers default to.

Once I figured out the problem and changed my router’s address to 192.168.10.1, all was good. However, this isn’t something the average (non-geek) customer would have been able to resolve without help. It’s worth noting that I could find no mention of this issue in the telco’s quick start guide or any other documentation. This has to be a common issue, and one that results in a lot of expensive phone support. Don’t a lot of average users have WiFi routers these days? No wonder high-speed access is so expensive.

And why am I switching back to DSL? In my area, it’s a better deal — more speed for less money. According to speakeasy, I’m now getting a solid 3 million bits per second. It’s still not fast enough for our household’s multiple computers, but it will do for now.