Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Thunderbolts and Lightning, Very Very Frightning

We had a nasty storm here in the Raleigh area late last night. A big one struck really close to us.

And along with lightning was a thunder BOOM that made my teeth rattle.

We've still not figured out where the lightning touched down. We went out today looking for damage, but saw none.

The only real consequence was that google fiber went down. No tv, no internet.
Called up the goog ... try this, reset that, blah blah. The usual routine ... but no dice. And the next available appointment for on-site service was for Thursday.

Wife without tv or internet for five days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

You remember the possessed little girl in the Exorcist film?
My wife plus no internet turns her into a beast that would make that devil-possessed girl seem like a cute little puppy dog.

Called the goog back early this morning. They have different people on during the day, and they have better ability to schedule service.
"Would you like 8 AM Monday or 12 PM Monday?"
I chose noon. We'll have only one day of net isolation.

Well, at least the electricity is still on, so the piano works.

Wifey, of course, isn't happy.
But then later ... "the router light is blue", says she. Is it back up?
She turns on the TV ... and gets pixellated color splotches (which look like a quilt on acid) on every channel.
And "Oh no, now the router light is flashing red again!"

Still later ... "It's blue again! Let's try internet." Well, it works. Kinda. Speedtest says 0.17 Mbps. Not good.
Then it's back to flashing red, which yields approximately 0 Mbps.
So we resigned ourselves to the outage.

But then after a couple more hours: "It works", she says.
Yeah, yeah ... I'm dubious. I've had my fill of flashing reds and blues.
But this time it seems that it's really up.
It's only giving 75 Mbps instead of the advertised 100 Mbps. But I think that'll be good enough to fend off the green vomit.

Gallileo Figaro - Magnifico

I think I saw piano being mentioned somewhere in the story...

But ultimately you just have to decide yourself if 75 Mbps is enough to keep you happy. We could offer our opinions, but it's such a personal thing in the end. You should go to local internet stores and try out different internets yourself and then decide. And stick to the internets from reputable manufacturers. The noname cheap internets are not worth it.

I guess 75 Mbps is at least enough to load Piano World Forums and post a message.

It's been my experience that as little as 5 Mbps was enough for me to stream Netflix on my smart phone.

I have 200 \ 20 Mbps only because that's the rate I'm provided. I'm certain that 30 Mbps would be more than fine for the vast majority of folks.

My first broadband (c2000) was half a mega bit per second (theoretical maximum) and that was absolutely wonderful: the beginning of the second generation of online experience where you could stream audio and even video and download stuff quickly. That's 0.5 Mbps. Coming from the dismal world of 56k modems that never even came close to 56k (usually 1-5k) it was sheer heaven.

Nowadays, a 50M hub feeding several devices and computers gives us all we want. Having them on wi-fi cuts the speed down anyway. No point in having a deal with over 50M ....no point at all.

Have a 400/20 mbit line and getting 430 out of it.

Sure here it is!

Yeah, I remember the times when I used a 56k modem, barely being able to load google or send/receive emails... And had to use it only for short intervals, not to block the phone line for too long.

Nowadays, 300mbps, and a gigabit router and network card give me all the speed I could possibly want. All that for 7$. But just in case that's not enough, 500mbps is 8.5$ and for 9$, I would get 1000mbps. I know the differences in price are dismal, but hey, I'm as happy as I could possibly be with the 300mbps

PS. Max_Forte, what sort of hybrid piano thingamajig is that?! Gotta get me one of those.

I thought it was about Mac’s thunderbolt and lightning. I mean Apple’s Mac.

Not MacMac?!
Actually I thought so too..

No. Not even MacMacMac! Just Mac. And not the Big Mac either!

Wow, where do you live to get such low prices for such fast speeds?

I'm in the country, so I'm forced to use Hughesnet. $120 a month for 80 GB at 40mbps. Once you use up the 80 GB, you're throttled to 1mbps.

Once you're out of data, don't even bother trying to watch Netflix.

Wish they would put a cable out here...

Fun stuff, CG. When I started this thread I hadn't given any thought to the connection between Mac and Thunderbolt.
Anyway ... the network came back on line yesterday at "only" 70 Mbps. Then it dropped to 8 Mbps. Then it went out completely. And the TV went to patchwork-speckle mode.

The goog-dude came out today, replaced the network box, and all's well.