Our house is now filled with the sweet, fragrant glory of wireless internet. Comcast finally showed up yesterday to get everything hooked up. Just in time for the second half of the rather glorious England-Croatia match we had cable TV and internet. Those two-plus weeks without them seemed a lot longer. Only 33 days from initial request until completion of installation.
Less than 24 hours into our Xfinity lives, we’re pleased with it so far. Then again, we would be happy with just about any connection at this point. Our internet is way faster than at the old house. We are paying for the speed boost, so it better be. It was pretty cool to watch stuff that used to download over the course of several minutes shoot down the pipe in a matter of seconds. I haven’t tried streaming any video yet, but I imagine that’s going to be better than our old experience, too.
I also figured I would have to set up several wireless access points through the house to make sure we had a strong signal throughout. I bought one, and a Raspberry Pi to control it, so I could at least get started as soon as we had service. But I was pleasantly surprised at how the Xfinity router gets a strong signal throughout the house. Looks like I’ll have to unload the WAP on someone else and find another project to use the Raspberry Pi for.
I spent yesterday afternoon getting everything in the house connected. It’s nice to be able to control our thermostat from my phone again. I need to get our Nest cam installed so I can monitor the outside of our house. I’m debating whether to dive into the world of other home automation devices as well. Right now a lot of them seem to have a higher cool factor than actual functional value, but while S gets to spend hours looking at furniture online, I can research smart light bulbs, DIY home security systems, etc.
Anyway, it’s good to be back in the world of the real internet, where I’m not burning through my phone’s battery to get a weak connection that won’t load anything that contains graphics in less than three minutes. Now I just have to keep the mowing crew and the construction guys next door from destroying our cable, which is currently sitting on the grass until another Comcast contractor comes out to bury it eventually.