Comcast fired!

Verizon was by yesterday and installed fiber.  The Internet is definitely faster, although not dramatically so.  I did have to reconfigure some of the house network.  The router I'd been using to run DHCP had a reservation feature that allowed me to assign static IPs.  I needed these to support some of applications I run across the local net.  The Verizon provided router, a generally much more advanced device, doesn't have an explicit static reserved IP feature.  It does seem to create the same effect by always using the same IP for a given MAC address.  The net was that I had to do a bit of reconfiguration of some software that for whatever reason needed a real IP instead of a host name.

With everything running again properly, I called Comcast to terminate the remaining service.  There was some entirely needless fuss and bother over verifying my identity.  It seems that calling from the registered phone number, identifying the account holder, and verifying the address isn't enough.  We finally got past that and Comcast service is now terminated.

We are still having a bit of issue with the USB disk drive I'm using to hold downloaded media.  From time to time it gratuitously dismounts.  That's a bit frustrating when watching something.  I'd like to replace it with a 2TB internal drive but sadly drive prices have skyrocketed with the flooding in Asia.  I'll put up with the dismounts until prices return to a sane level then replace it.

Bottom line now, though, is that I no longer pay for TV, have cut my Internet bill by 1/3, and my phone bill to 1/8 of what it was.  Well worth the couple of hundred I spent on equipment!