I forgot that I had to disable OpenDNS because it wasn’t playing nice with auto-discovering T-Mobile’s hotspot login page at Starbucks.

As soon as I turn OpenDNS back on, Google pages resolve just fine but speeds are way down to the point of being barely usable. I should note that this issue affects every Mac in the house, not just mine, and restarts don’t make a difference (modem or computers).

How bad? Let’s see, with only the browser running:

I switched over to my Sprint EVDO modem, changing nothing else (no restart, no configuration change):

The EVDO speed is nothing to write home about, but come on…it’s beating DSL?!?

I sit in Borders or Starbucks all day with this computer and never have these problems. So I have to believe it’s either the DSL modem (Westell 327W), the wireless configuration (I tried switching channels to see if that’s the issue) or something in how the connection is hitting my house. Verizon phone support is useless. They just ping and see that they can see my modem and call it a day. Looks like I need to spend some time in this forum or this one.

Oh, how I love Verizon DSL. Not.

Comcast didn’t work here due to poor neighborhood wiring in my condo development. Verizon DSL is well, Verizon DSL and it’s going to be a while yet until FIOS is here.

I’m running out of decent broadband options, short of sitting on my EVDO modem all the time.

Update: I think I fixed it.

This thread and this one pointed me to Verizon’s announcement that they had deployed a firmware upgrade for my modem. Would have been nice if I didn’t have to go digging for this information.

Okay, I’m going to say something nice about Verizon… I fully expected the firmware upgrade to be one of those have-to-run-from-a-Windows-PC things. But no! I was able to download the upgrade file, log in to the router configuration window in Firefox (connected to the modem via Ethernet, not wireless, of course) and upgrade the firmware without ever having to leave the Mac side of things and it worked exactly as expected. Pleasant surprise.

Now all the computers in the house are online and not dropping the wireless and speeds are in the acceptable range again. Here’s hoping that’s all it was.