[Leica] OT: Fast DSL service for image uploads?

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

Most residential DSL is "Asymmetric": higher download speed than upload. If 
you get "Business DSL", you can get an upload speed that is as fast as your 
download speed. (You mentioned speakeasy.com; you probably meant 
speakeasy.net, which is a Business DSL vendor.

The first thing you should do is some careful measurements and computations 
to find out two things:

   1) How many bits per second are you actually achieving to pictage.com?
   2) What is the upload "sync speed" of your current DSL connection?
   3) What is the measured upload speed of your DSL connection?

The "sync speed" is the speed at which you can send data to the phone 
company central office that is at the other end of your DSL line.

Use something like http://speedtest.dslreports.com/ to measure item (3).

The reason you want to do these tests is to look for two possible 
discrepancies:

a) If there is a big discrepancy between items (1) and (3), then the problem 
is not with your DSL connection but with pictage.com's connection, and your 
spending more money on a faster connection will not help.

b) If there is a big discrepancy between items (2) and (3), then the problem 
is that the ISP delivering you service over your DSL line is sluggish; your 
data is moving just fine over your DSL line but then has to wait to be 
transmited from the central office to the internet backbone.

Business-class DSL is going to cost you about $130/month, and you need to be 
quite sure that it will solve your problem before you make that level of 
commitment to it.

Brian Reid