A TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY. It’s unusual for this blog to get technical, but here and now, as a public service, I offer a note about a potential problem with getting DSL to function smoothly. Perhaps it will help others. So here goes:

If you have attempted to install DSL but your Ethernet connection is performing slowly or not at all (like a slow dial-up on a line filled with static), the problem might be that your MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) has not been properly modified. I’m told that the default setting on Microsoft Windows XP for Home is for a cable modem, not a DSL modem. The MTU can be changed for DSL using a TCP optimizer, which your ISP tech support people might be able to send to you.

I’ve had first-hand experience with this issue. The fix took minutes, but the diagnosis took hours and hours and hours over the course of about 16 days! I was surprised by the generally high quality of attention I got from Verizon (where, ultimately, a Level 2 technician got a Level 3 technician to cough up the solution) as well as Toshiba, AOL, and CompUSA. I say “generally” because it took a long time to get the right answer, and it was becoming more and more likely that I would have to take the unnecessary steps of reinstalling the software and sending the computer back to Toshiba. The patient but often scripted phone service I got from Toshiba and AOL was not nearly as good as onsite attention or the use of Verizon’s “sharing” software, which enables the Verizon techs to use the Internet to “take over” your equipment…once we got said software to work!

The one company whose service was really disappointing was Microsoft. Customer service there recommended that I talk things over with some other company (which I’d already done, ad nauseum), look things up on the Microsoft database (which I’d already done, finding a nightmare of tech documents that weren’t always clearly written), or cough up $35 to get person-to-person advice (about a problem that, I’m told, is technically Microsoft’s in the first place). After I asked to talk with a Microsoft supervisor in an attempt to decipher a tech document that I was trying to use, I was put on hold for about 45 minutes before I gave up, feeling more inclined than ever to make the leap to Apple.

And now...back to the regular programming!