6/16    What the minimum you can get away with paying for cable modem,
        in the South Bay?  Slowest available speed should be ok.
        Everythings seems to go to +$40/mo after teaser rates end.
        I need something faster than 56k modem but nothing really fast.
        Wondering if possible to keep under $20, since I'm out of town
        maybe 25% of the time.
        \_ Why not dsl?  If you don't have a phone line it's 5 bucks more
           a month, but the 1.5Meg down is still only 20/mo.
        \_ Can you use DSL? The rates for these things are what they
           are, there is only one service provider for each type of
           high speed net. You can move to Mountain View and use Google
           WiFi for free.
           \_ I called dslextreme and they said "DSL not available on
              your line."  Maybe I'll call AT&T an some others.
        \_ Satellite?  High ping times but sounds like you're not gaming.
           Works ok for surfing and email.
        \_ What about ISDN?  Does such a thing still exist?  I've never used
           it.
           \_ ISDN is a *bad* idea if you want to keep things below $20/mo.
              When I had ISDN, while there was a flat rate for usage, there
              was a charge for each time your ISDN router called up the telco.
              And each channel counted as a separate call. So if the telco's
              router started having some issues and your router kept calling
              back, the cost of having ISDN became very expensive, very
              quickly.
        \_ Steal your neighbor's wifi (or pay him $5/mo for low usage).
           Aside: I just got DSL after having cable for a long time.
           My cable was ~10x faster than this stupid DSL. (but the price
           sucked).
           \_ What dsl do you have?  I can get dsl that is almost the same
              throughput than cable for 1/2 the price.  However it does
              have noticable higher latancy, so online gaming kinda sucks.
              \_ AT&T. I am only getting like 1.6 Mb. My Comcast cable was
                 much faster than it was nominally supposed to be... maybe
                 few others in my neighborhood used it. I forgot exactly
                 what it was but it might have been like 18 Mb and that
                 wasn't any special plan. And yeah, ping times were great.
                 However, I didn't want cable TV anymore and without that
                 the standalone internet is a ripoff.
                 \_ 1.6?  What level of DSL service are you paying for?
                    \_ "up to 3.0" (needless to say I'll most likely drop
                       it down to a level)
                       it down a level)