Broadbands at Dawn

[Unknown]

Wonder what will be next in the ad war between RR and HTel.

First, RR exaggerates the difference in cables between coaxial and DSL
with some lame ass analogy of a straw.

Then, HTel hits back with the legitimate claim that DSL gives you a
separate dedicated line while Cable is shared. But then it sneakly but
inaccurately implies that with shared Cable you are vulnerable to
viruses.

Stay tuned!

[Cortes Banks]

Post by Unknown
Wonder what will be next in the ad war between RR and HTel.
First, RR exaggerates the difference in cables between coaxial and DSL
with some lame ass analogy of a straw.
Then, HTel hits back with the legitimate claim that DSL gives you a
separate dedicated line while Cable is shared. But then it sneakly but
inaccurately implies that with shared Cable you are vulnerable to
viruses.
Stay tuned!

I'm waiting for a price war.

--

XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-UBE-TEST-EMAIL*C.34X

[Dan Birchall]

Post by Unknown
Wonder what will be next in the ad war between RR and HTel.
First, RR exaggerates the difference in cables between coaxial and DSL
with some lame ass analogy of a straw.

Heee! Very amusing, although the number of people who just blindly
accept cable company claims that they're much faster than DSL is
disturbing.

Is data over coax still limited to 10Mbps? At what point does the
coax hit something faster (fiber)?

Post by Unknown
Then, HTel hits back with the legitimate claim that DSL gives you a
separate dedicated line while Cable is shared.

Legitimate, yes, but ultimately what's on the other side of the cable
head-end or DSLAM is going to matter an awful lot, since *that's* where
saturation will be worst.

Post by Unknown
But then it sneakly but inaccurately implies that with shared Cable
you are vulnerable to viruses.

Do they say viruses specifically? I'd think a bus architecture would be
far more susceptible to sniffing and stuff like that than a switched star
one, but I could be wrong.

[Unknown]

If you've seen the commercial you've seen the guy in the middle sneeze.
LOL

..............

But then it sneakly but inaccurately implies that with shared Cable you
are vulnerable to viruses.

Do they say viruses specifically? I'd think a bus architecture would
be far more susceptible to sniffing and stuff like that than a switched
star one, but I could be wrong.

[Angela Kahealani]

At Tue, 2005-10-25 12:55 "Dan Birchall"

Post by Dan Birchall

Post by Unknown
But then it sneakly but inaccurately implies that with shared Cable
you are vulnerable to viruses.

Do they say viruses specifically? I'd think a bus architecture would
be far more susceptible to sniffing and stuff like that than a
switched star one, but I could be wrong.

It is not PCs which are vulnerable, but the Windows OS.
Cable shares a subnet in the physical neighborhood for up to 250
residential codecs, so you are vulnerable to your ever aloha'in
ahupua'a.

[MacClanahan]

Dan, I have almost no experience with DSL but have had cable for years.

From my extremely limited experience on friends DSL it is no where near

as fast as my cable (Earthlink through Oceanic).

Their speeds appear to be one third that of cable.

Are you saying that DSL is faster than cable here in Hawaii?

[Nai`a]

Post by MacClanahan
Are you saying that DSL is faster than cable here in Hawaii?

A Ferrari is faster than a Porsche.
A Porsche is faster than a Ferrari.

One's speed depends on a lot more than what state one lives in.

Aloha mai Nai`a!

[Angela Kahealani]

Post by Nai`a

Post by MacClanahan
Are you saying that DSL is faster than cable here in Hawaii?

One's speed depends on a lot more than what state one lives in.
Aloha mai Nai`a!

Everyone rates "maximum theoretical speed", but noone is guaranteeing
any kind of "minimum guaranteed throughput". The DSL cloud is spec'd to
be impingible by other users, and the Cable access is guaranteed to be
shared with a physical neighborhood, so your milage will vary, and your
maximum speed is an interesting number you may hit occasionally. My
current DSL hits maxima of 1.5Mbit/sec, one half the Oceanic advertised
max wire rate of 3.0Mbit/sec, but the Oceanic connection would share
with up to 250 neighbors. You do the math. When they don't play the
tape at twice speed, that "beep beep" sounds suspiciously like a busy
signal. Aloha, Angela

[Kirk]

Post by Angela Kahealani

Post by Nai`a

Post by MacClanahan
Are you saying that DSL is faster than cable here in Hawaii?

One's speed depends on a lot more than what state one lives in.
Aloha mai Nai`a!

Everyone rates "maximum theoretical speed", but noone is guaranteeing
any kind of "minimum guaranteed throughput". The DSL cloud is spec'd to
be impingible by other users, and the Cable access is guaranteed to be
shared with a physical neighborhood, so your milage will vary, and your
maximum speed is an interesting number you may hit occasionally. My
current DSL hits maxima of 1.5Mbit/sec, one half the Oceanic advertised
max wire rate of 3.0Mbit/sec, but the Oceanic connection would share

Dear Sasquatch/Modern Marvel Of Plastic Surgery,

Oceanic has been supplying their customers with a 5Mb connection for
the past year, which makes your "maxima of 1.5Mbit/sec" look like
dialup connection. Please compare those figures with your shoe size,
which is a freakish 14-15 and a normal member of the human race who is
female by birth.

Post by Angela Kahealani
with up to 250 neighbors. You do the math. When they don't play the
tape at twice speed, that "beep beep" sounds suspiciously like a busy
signal. Aloha, Angela

[Nai`a]

Post by Kirk
Oceanic has been supplying their customers with a 5Mb connection for
the past year, ...

So I hear from some.

Post by Kirk
which makes your "maxima of 1.5Mbit/sec" look like dialup connection.

Others, however, compare their RoadRunner connection to a dialup
connection, but not in a favorable sense.

Based on what I hear, again, from some, and this is almost certainly
location-dependant, some places are not seeing anything like 5.0 Mbps
in a consistent manner.

Aloha mai Nai`a!

[Kirk]

Post by Nai`a

Post by Kirk
Oceanic has been supplying their customers with a 5Mb connection for
the past year, ...

So I hear from some.

Using a Q-Tip and swabbing those ears once in a while works wonders.

Post by Nai`a

Post by Kirk
which makes your "maxima of 1.5Mbit/sec" look like dialup connection.

Others, however, compare their RoadRunner connection to a dialup
connection, but not in a favorable sense.
Based on what I hear, again, from some, and this is almost certainly
location-dependant, some places are not seeing anything like 5.0 Mbps
in a consistent manner.

If the unfortunate few are unable to communicate with Support
to get their issues resolved, it is not the provider's fault. For they
were not trained in the Clairvoyant and not equipped with a
Crystal Ball.

haveaniceday.

Post by Nai`a
Aloha mai Nai`a!

[Jason Forester]

Post by Kirk

Post by Nai`a

Post by Kirk
Oceanic has been supplying their customers with a 5Mb connection for
the past year, ...

So I hear from some.

Using a Q-Tip and swabbing those ears once in a while works wonders.

<snip>

Post by Kirk
If the unfortunate few are unable to communicate with Support
to get their issues resolved, it is not the provider's fault. For they
were not trained in the Clairvoyant and not equipped with a
Crystal Ball.

Well Kirk (you don't mind if I call you Pat I hope), there's a few
things to consider here.

First off, I'm both a Lava.net DSL subscriber on Oahu, and now a
Hilo RR subscriber. I've also been a network performance engineer
for a Tier 1 backbone. So I have both knowledge of the subject
matter and personal experience with both technologies.

And I see it like this. Speed is comprised of a couple of things,
I see we're only talking about throughput here so we'll confine it
to "how fast Pat gets his goat porn^W^Winstructional videos."

RoadRunner, from my personal experience with my network connection
and that of other people who I am called to assist, peaks in the
3-5 mbit/second range. However, it's variable and often prone
to packetloss. Packetloss becomes retransmissions, which becomes
a slower download. After working with RR in Hilo for a period of
nearly a month, I finally got a tech onsite who got me down from
3% to .5% packetloss, a number I find acceptable for 'consumer' net
like cable modems. It's low enough that I can average a solid 3mbit
on my downloads, but most importantly it allows me to do quality-
dependant things like VOIP and net gaming.

If I didn't have my background, and ability to debug the system
and provide data to the techs, I would not have been able to get
the net fixed to the point where i could use it for anything *but*
downloading. And there are a lot of places (Kaneohe suburbs for
example) where the quality varies wildly. Some of that is really
poor infrastructure of the cable system, and some of that is
oversharing. I personally don't feel that sharing is the issue
the majority of the time, it seems to have a lot more to do with
how old the cabling is in the region, but until I got to Hilo I
never had to debug it. (My problem, btw, had to do with noise
and signal attenuation which the tech was able to tune around
for hte most part).

Now a quick comparison to lava.net DSL: I think I dropped a packet
back in '01. Maybe. Yes, I'm getting 'only' 1.5 mbit. Yes, it's
more expensive. But in 3 years of working out of my home, there was
never a day that I couldn't log in, and there was never a time when
the resource I paid for was anything but 100% perfect. That's
better than consumer net, hell that's a better record than many
OC192 circuits I've dealt with.

So here's the analogy - RR is a supercharged 72 Nova, that backfires
from time to time but certainly averages a high speed. And DSL
(especially Lava) is a Honda Accord, starts every time and runs fine
whenever you need it.

Where does Verizon fit into this? Well, Lava is using Verizon for
Layer 2 (wire). So I'd have to say that Verizon's plant is pretty
robust. The question then becomes 'how's their layer3', peering
and upstream, etc. And I don't really know. It's not relevant to
the argument here really, which is 'what tech is better for Layer2
local loop connection to the home'. And the answer, as always, is
'it depends on what matters to you.' But I'll stick with DSL
whenever I can, personally.

Oh, and Pat? Can I assume you do phone support for RR? Just
curious.

- j

[Kirk]

Post by Jason Forester

Post by Kirk

Post by Nai`a

Post by Kirk
Oceanic has been supplying their customers with a 5Mb connection for
the past year, ...

So I hear from some.

Using a Q-Tip and swabbing those ears once in a while works wonders.

<snip>

Post by Kirk
If the unfortunate few are unable to communicate with Support
to get their issues resolved, it is not the provider's fault. For they
were not trained in the Clairvoyant and not equipped with a
Crystal Ball.

Well Kirk (you don't mind if I call you Pat I hope), there's a few
things to consider here.

Dear Gaylord,

Didn't know that this newsgroup was holding a Typing Contest but
please learn to condense the nonsensical thought and get right to the
point if a reply is expected. Save the 80-90 lined discourses on World
Injustice, for someone who really cares.

haveaniceday.

Post by Jason Forester
First off, I'm both a Lava.net DSL subscriber on Oahu, and now a
Hilo RR subscriber. I've also been a network performance engineer
for a Tier 1 backbone. So I have both knowledge of the subject
matter and personal experience with both technologies.
And I see it like this. Speed is comprised of a couple of things,
I see we're only talking about throughput here so we'll confine it
to "how fast Pat gets his goat porn^W^Winstructional videos."
RoadRunner, from my personal experience with my network connection
and that of other people who I am called to assist, peaks in the
3-5 mbit/second range. However, it's variable and often prone
to packetloss. Packetloss becomes retransmissions, which becomes
a slower download. After working with RR in Hilo for a period of
nearly a month, I finally got a tech onsite who got me down from
3% to .5% packetloss, a number I find acceptable for 'consumer' net
like cable modems. It's low enough that I can average a solid 3mbit
on my downloads, but most importantly it allows me to do quality-
dependant things like VOIP and net gaming.
If I didn't have my background, and ability to debug the system
and provide data to the techs, I would not have been able to get
the net fixed to the point where i could use it for anything *but*
downloading. And there are a lot of places (Kaneohe suburbs for
example) where the quality varies wildly. Some of that is really
poor infrastructure of the cable system, and some of that is
oversharing. I personally don't feel that sharing is the issue
the majority of the time, it seems to have a lot more to do with
how old the cabling is in the region, but until I got to Hilo I
never had to debug it. (My problem, btw, had to do with noise
and signal attenuation which the tech was able to tune around
for hte most part).
Now a quick comparison to lava.net DSL: I think I dropped a packet
back in '01. Maybe. Yes, I'm getting 'only' 1.5 mbit. Yes, it's
more expensive. But in 3 years of working out of my home, there was
never a day that I couldn't log in, and there was never a time when
the resource I paid for was anything but 100% perfect. That's
better than consumer net, hell that's a better record than many
OC192 circuits I've dealt with.
So here's the analogy - RR is a supercharged 72 Nova, that backfires
from time to time but certainly averages a high speed. And DSL
(especially Lava) is a Honda Accord, starts every time and runs fine
whenever you need it.
Where does Verizon fit into this? Well, Lava is using Verizon for
Layer 2 (wire). So I'd have to say that Verizon's plant is pretty
robust. The question then becomes 'how's their layer3', peering
and upstream, etc. And I don't really know. It's not relevant to
the argument here really, which is 'what tech is better for Layer2
local loop connection to the home'. And the answer, as always, is
'it depends on what matters to you.' But I'll stick with DSL
whenever I can, personally.
Oh, and Pat? Can I assume you do phone support for RR? Just
curious.
- j

[Unknown]

What are all of the factors that are significant, then?

Speed, reliabiltiy............?

In Kaneohe, RR can range from blazingly fast to slow to dead pauses to
sometimes down.

What about other issues?

Newsgroup access on DSL providers v RR

RR has lame inclusion and retention. Downloads can be corrupted.

[Nai`a]

Post by Unknown
What are all of the factors that are significant, then?
Speed, reliabiltiy............?

Having staff who know what they're doing, and fix misteaks in a timely
fashion. Hosting options. And a reasonably-well-run Abuse desk.

Post by Unknown
RR has lame inclusion and retention. Downloads can be corrupted.

We gave up on running our own news server, and started using SuperNews.
It's very good, and has retention times that are ... Very Good.
Perhaps a touch Too Good, from time to time.

Well-connected as well.

Aloha mai Nai`a!

[Dan Birchall]

Post by Nai`a
We gave up on running our own news server, and started using SuperNews.
It's very good, and has retention times that are ... Very Good.
Perhaps a touch Too Good, from time to time.
Well-connected as well.

Yes, but that throttling of NNTP connections to 128kbps each, and
allowing no more than 2 simultaneous NNTP connections, is a real
pain for dealing with binaries.

[Nai`a]

Post by Dan Birchall

Post by Nai`a
We gave up on running our own news server, and started using SuperNews.
It's very good, and has retention times that are ... Very Good.
Perhaps a touch Too Good, from time to time.
Well-connected as well.

Yes, but that throttling of NNTP connections to 128kbps each, and
allowing no more than 2 simultaneous NNTP connections, is a real
pain for dealing with binaries.

Agreed.

Of course, with static IP addresses, one could in theory set up one's
own NNTP caching server.

Some day, when I have more free time....

Aloha mai Nai`a!

[Dan Birchall]

Post by Nai`a

Post by Dan Birchall
Yes, but that throttling of NNTP connections to 128kbps each, and
allowing no more than 2 simultaneous NNTP connections, is a real
pain for dealing with binaries.

Agreed.
Of course, with static IP addresses, one could in theory set up one's
own NNTP caching server.
Some day, when I have more free time....

Some day, when I have more free disk space and a higher monthly bandiwdth
quota? ;)

[Jason Forester]

Post by Dan Birchall

Post by Nai`a

Post by Dan Birchall
Yes, but that throttling of NNTP connections to 128kbps each, and
allowing no more than 2 simultaneous NNTP connections, is a real
pain for dealing with binaries.

Agreed.
Of course, with static IP addresses, one could in theory set up one's
own NNTP caching server.
Some day, when I have more free time....

Some day, when I have more free disk space and a higher monthly bandiwdth
quota? ;)

Yeah, it's really too bad that it's so hard to differentiate between local
and mainland traffic; it would be an economic motivator to form a local
networking community if local traffic were unmetered. It would also give
people a good reason to make use of local webcaches if cache traffic were
unmetered (or able to be billed at a fractional rate perhaps). Oh well.

-j

[Nai`a]

Post by Jason Forester
Yeah, it's really too bad that it's so hard to differentiate between local
and mainland traffic; it would be an economic motivator to form a local
networking community if local traffic were unmetered. It would also give
people a good reason to make use of local webcaches if cache traffic were
unmetered (or able to be billed at a fractional rate perhaps). Oh well.

I have been a proponent of exactly that for some time.

Only problem is, the only real way to do that would be to sniff every
packet coming out of certain routers at 100mbps speeds. Granted, you
just have to do sums at about < 1mpps on average, but that's still a
lot of packets.

But it would allow the decoupling of "Local" and "Remote" traffic.

Aloha mai Nai`a!

[Jason Forester]

Post by Nai`a

Post by Jason Forester
Yeah, it's really too bad that it's so hard to differentiate between local
and mainland traffic; it would be an economic motivator to form a local
networking community if local traffic were unmetered. It would also give
people a good reason to make use of local webcaches if cache traffic were
unmetered (or able to be billed at a fractional rate perhaps). Oh well.

I have been a proponent of exactly that for some time.
Only problem is, the only real way to do that would be to sniff every
packet coming out of certain routers at 100mbps speeds. Granted, you
just have to do sums at about < 1mpps on average, but that's still a
lot of packets.
But it would allow the decoupling of "Local" and "Remote" traffic.

Well, I would probably use NetFlow instead of a sniffer - it can provide
all the traffic flows by src/dst, and it's possible to do this at pretty
high rates - we actually captured every flow on the Digital Island
network for billing purposes (traffic was billed per bit, per country
of destination). We used cisco's flow collector, and aggregated it
via some custom software.

The problem is more one of dealing with people (no, i downloaded that
locally! you can't bill me for that!) and in the case of webcaches,
figuring out how to bill traffic that may or may not have resulted
in off-network traffic (which is why i figure it's simpler just to
bill webcache traffic at a fractional rate equivalent to the % of
mainland bandwidth expense saved).

Technically possible but difficult, potential billing headache.

- j

[Jason Forester]

Post by Unknown
What are all of the factors that are significant, then?
Speed, reliabiltiy............?

The three big ones are Bandwidth, Packetloss, and Latency.

They can be compared to a road between two cities. Bandwidth
is number of lanes. Latency is length of the road. And Packetloss
is the quality of the road (potholes, etc). All three contribute
to network quality, and can impact Throughput (aka 'download speed')

Those three quality measures apply both locally, and to connections
between providers. We're only talking about local connections
for the most part.

Locally, RR is a wide, short road that often has a lot of potholes.

That packetloss results in retransmissions - you have to send the
information again, because it got dropped on the way. This takes
extra time, and the connection slows itself to try to compensate.
If packetloss is bad enough to make RR seem really slow
then you have a serious problem. Tools like ping and traceroute will
help you find out if you have this problem.

Post by Unknown
In Kaneohe, RR can range from blazingly fast to slow to dead pauses to
sometimes down.
What about other issues?

Yeah, like I said Kaneohe has really bad physical infrastructure
for cable. Your best bet is to try to prove that you have a network
problem by doing a traceroute to www.hawaii.rr.com, then looking
for * (dropped packet) marks. Then you call RR support. Be aware
that interpreting traceroute can be tricky for a number of reasons,
so be persistent but polite. Remember also that it will only
show you Latency and Packetloss, but if those two are okay your
downloads will normally be okay.

'Sharing' in a neighborhood *is* a possible source of RR problems
but I haven't seen many examples of it.

Post by Unknown
Newsgroup access on DSL providers v RR
RR has lame inclusion and retention. Downloads can be corrupted.

Corrupted downloads would normally point to problem with your
local cable infrastructure, as detailed above. Again, try to
get actual performance data from traceroute and follow up with
RR support.

- j

[Angela Kahealani]

At Thu, 2005-11-03 16:40 "jasonf at lava dot net (Jason Forester)" <>

Post by Jason Forester
Now a quick comparison to lava.net DSL: I think I dropped a packet
back in '01. Maybe. Yes, I'm getting 'only' 1.5 mbit. Yes, it's
more expensive. But in 3 years of working out of my home, there was
never a day that I couldn't log in, and there was never a time when
the resource I paid for was anything but 100% perfect. That's
better than consumer net, hell that's a better record than many
OC192 circuits I've dealt with.

I am currently a 100% satisfied LavaNet DSL customer.
I have been in the past a customer of both Verizon and RoadRunner.
Yes, I pay more $ this way than either of the alternatives.
There's far more to internet SERVICE providing than raw bandwidth.
For me, the most important feature is THE CONTRACT!
LavaNet places the least restriction on what I do with my bandwidth.
They couldn't legally get away with NOT placing these restrictions
into their contract, but these are their ONLY restrictions:
(well, YOU should read their current contract on their website,
as I have had no need to visit it in a long time :-)
No kiddie pornography
No Warez
No SPAM.
They don't interfere at all with the servers I run on my DSL line.
Further, if I wanted to resell a part of my bandwidth to my neighbors,
that also is permitted, but instead, I give it away for free to them.

Now, anyone care to top that level of freedom with another solution?
Can you do all that with a Hawaiian TelCom or RoadRunner connection?

[Dan Birchall]

Post by Kirk
Oceanic has been supplying their customers with a 5Mb connection for
the past year,

...and DSL providers (like Verizon, now morphing into Hawaii Telcom and
re-striping the trucks) have been offering theirs 7Mbps DSL for at least
that long.

I'm just wondering what the cable companies will do when the arms race
hits 10Mbps, since unless they're using some funky protocol, that might
be the "speed limit" on coax. If the telcos manage to push DSL beyond
10Mbps, or manage to bring the price down on other copper-pair
technologies, having a very large amount of installed coax isn't going
to be particularly helpful.

(And yes, I know, there's 100baseSomething over coax. Does anyone _use_
it?)

[Kirk]

Post by Dan Birchall

Post by Kirk
Oceanic has been supplying their customers with a 5Mb connection for
the past year,

...and DSL providers (like Verizon, now morphing into Hawaii Telcom and
re-striping the trucks) have been offering theirs 7Mbps DSL for at least
that long.

"Offering" potential customers an option of 7Mb with ridiculous rates
which most people can't even afford, is not the same as "supplying" or
furnishing subscribers with an inexpensive service that almost matches
the speed, my dear child.

Post by Dan Birchall
I'm just wondering what the cable companies will do when the arms race
hits 10Mbps, since unless they're using some funky protocol, that might
be the "speed limit" on coax. If the telcos manage to push DSL beyond
10Mbps, or manage to bring the price down on other copper-pair
technologies, having a very large amount of installed coax isn't going
to be particularly helpful.

The existing electrical wiring that is already installed in houses is
the future of high speed access.

Post by Dan Birchall
(And yes, I know, there's 100baseSomething over coax. Does anyone _use_
it?)

[Nai`a]

Post by Kirk
The existing electrical wiring that is already installed in houses is
the future of high speed access.

It's a part of the future, yes.
I look forward to its wide-spread deployment.
That, and minicipal wireless.

Aloha mai Nai`a!

[Dan Birchall]

Post by Kirk

Post by Dan Birchall
I'm just wondering what the cable companies will do when the arms race
hits 10Mbps, since unless they're using some funky protocol, that might
be the "speed limit" on coax. If the telcos manage to push DSL beyond
10Mbps, or manage to bring the price down on other copper-pair
technologies, having a very large amount of installed coax isn't going
to be particularly helpful.

The existing electrical wiring that is already installed in houses is
the future of high speed access.

Yep. I wonder how much HECO will charge Oceanic for sending data over
it? ;)

[alohacyberian]

Kirk wants you, angela
He's tired of keith martins little pee pee and wants a woman with a
long schlong

[alohacyberian]

"alohacyberian" <***@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:***@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
<snippage>
"One wants to be loved; failing this, to be admired; failing this, to be
feared; failing even this, to be hated and despised. One wants to arouse
some sort of feeling in people. The soul shrinks from the void and wants
contact at any price."
~ Hjalmar Soderberg

[Kirk]

Post by alohacyberian
Kirk wants you, angela
He's tired of keith martins little pee pee and wants a woman with a
long schlong

Greetings, LuLuBelle -

Thought you were still on that God-forsaken island named Malaysia