Switching DSL Providers

I finally bit the bullet and took the big switch. After more than 2 years of using Bayan DSL at our house, I finally gave up and switched to PLDT MyDSL. While Bayan's service for the most part of the first 2 years was satisfactory, the last 3 months or so have just been awful. The IP link keeps going down intermittently, sometimes almost every minutes. I was originally planning on getting a PLDT DSL when we first moved in. But at that time, PLDT's DSLAM at our subdivision is already full and could not accomodate new connections until they migrate the entire network into their NGN (Next Generation Network).

As far as I can tell, it was not a physical problem as the modem stays "green". Viewing the router status shows that the IP addresses also look fine but the router is in a "disconnected" status. I'm not sure exactly how Belkin determines that status. Its probably doing a ping to an ip address on the other side of the link. But to restore connection, I have to do a disconnect/reconnect cycle on the router everytime this happens. It has gotten to a point that it was a major pain already.

PLDT's MyDSL implementation is a lot simpler than Bayan's. The Zyxel modem connects to their DSLAM and generates a dynamic IP which you can directly plug to a PC or a router. Bayan's implementation is over PPPoE. So a login process is required. Much more cumbersome.

Our PHP 899 Bayan DSL can supposedly burst to 1.2 Mbps during off-peak hours. But that feature is practically useless if the link keeps going down anyway. The new PLDT MyDSL is PHP 990 inclusive of our landline already for a 384 kbps. So far, the performance seems the same though for regular browsing. PLDT's upstream link seem to be slower though. When I tried uploading images of more than 300 MB to TransferBigFiles.com, I left it overnight and by morning, it was still not halfway done.

As a side effect of the PLDT migration to NGN, we had to change our home phone number just to avail of this DSL. Sigh... too bad there is no number portability in the Philippines even within the same telco.