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Something else for Comcast to make a complete and utter mess. Oh, yay.

Is there anyone out there who was with another company that got taken over by Comcast that doesn't have a complaint about how terrible they are? Or witness the recent discussion on cable vs satellite TV, and how many anti-Comcast diatribes came out there. Or do you want another view?

If Comcast takes over Disney, be prepared for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck unavailability on a frequent basis. Mind you, at least they'll be able to put a spin on all the comments about their Mickey Mouse technical support, so maybe that's the reason they're going for this.

Linksys routers have had a simple version of this for a while that they call port triggering.

Same for me, I've been getting a very reliable 3000/300 connection since their upgrade and giganews runs anywhere from 340 kb/s to 400 kb/s. It looks like half the people testing on dslreports are getting that speed or better. Also, they're planning on 50 Mbit/s within two or three years.

That's true. It was discussed with a bit of heated debate here.

Interesting. Would be useful if you could post what you have somewhere on the web.

By the way, Netgear recently released a tool which allows you to recover from a bad firmware flash (since a lot of people were killing their boxes with the 1.03 update).

You can download a copy of the tool from this forum (see attached file on third post). No guarantees that it'd help you recover from a bad 'homebrew' flash, but it might!

Oo -- Time-Warner cable modem. I hope you don't download use more than 15 GB of uploads + downloads per month, or you'll hit the cap and get a nastygram demanding that you upgrade to the $80-90/month service (with its 40 GB cap).

Also, you can get a DVR from DishNet including a HD-DVR soon. It too lacks the inherent coolness of TiVo's ability to find shows for you.

RTFA, it's in the linked dslreports article. http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/408236~c5157 c5f2ecde8dae62b6b20c84644a3/UnlimitedUse.png

In the dslreports forums this has been a hot topic for a couple of months. If you want and interesting read, along with a lot of rants, check out this thread. I don't think I've seen such a long one before and it's the second one on the subject.

In the dslreports forums this has been a hot topic for a couple of months. If you want and interesting read, along with a lot of rants, check out this thread. I don't think I've seen such a long one before and it's the second one on the subject.

First of all, make sure you are not "powered by" anyone. Earthlink and AOL resell the service and most people quickly want to get out of that situation. Earthlink and AOL have really bad support and slower downloads speeds then DirectWay directly.

It is 128kbps up and 400kbps down peak (For reference a T1 is 1540kbps up and down). It's expensive. I didn't realize it was $100/month for the first year and $60/month after that, but it is a two way Satellite system and those are still expensive. Most users seem to get better than 400kbps down, but somewhere around 30-80kbps up. With the one-way (dial-up systems) most users get 18-28kbps up due to the overhead in their protocol.

No phone line is required with the two-way system. There are one-way and two-way services offered.

This is something I wrote when I had the system and using it over SSH:

"I am typing this e-mail over our new DirectWay system, and it is extremely painful. It is far worse than dial-up. Every character I type takes
about one second to appear. I have to count the number of backspaces I want, number of arrow keys, etc.

C:\>ping [My ssh box hosted at Hurricane Electric]

Pinging [My ssh box] [1.2.3.4] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 1.2.3.4: bytes=32 time=1012ms TTL=242
Reply from 1.2.3.4: bytes=32 time=861ms TTL=242
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 1.2.3.4:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 861ms, Maximum = 1012ms, Average = 468ms

Ignore the average, Microsoft apparently counts dropped packets as 0ms.

I seem to be getting about 900ms ping times on average to most fast sites. We are getting about 750ms on average to the first hop.

The speeds vary a lot. When I did a speed test earlier I got 252kbps down/18kbps up. Right now I am getting a lot better:

CA server:

Test running.........
**Speed 827(down)/25(up) kbps **
(At least 16 times faster than a 56k modem)

LA server:

Test running.........
** Speed 653(down)/51(up) kbps **
(At least 13 times faster than a 56k modem)

(For comparison to what I got when I was on cable modem:
2002-03-05 23:03:40 Speed test (la) 780/124 kbps
2002-03-05 22:58:28 Speed test (wc) 772/109 kbps )

I also did the toast.net speed test and got a bit worse results, you can
see them here:
My toast results

I disabled their proxy server to speed up Web browsing, but their software comes up with annoying pop-ups that tell me that I am not using their proxy. I will set it back when I am done. Speed tests do not work through proxies, so that is the main reason I disabled it.

It took me about 20 minutes to write this e-mail and the connection dropped once during writing it."

I use SSH so much that I went back to dial-up before the trial period ended. I get about 150ms over a 56K connection so SSH is about 6 times slower. Web browsing wasn't improved enough to make the service worth it. Some sites seemed slower even. I believe it was any HTTPS sites like checking my bank account were terrible.

DSL reports has a FAQ available. It is a good site to check out when looking at new ISPs.
DSL Reports Satellite FAQ

Some of the things covered here are correct. Ping times suck (800-1000ms), upload sucks, downloads rock. BUT, there is FAP More info can be found at the Broadband Reports Sat. Forum and a guide for tweaking your network is at tweakhound An example of a statstics someone is getting today, 2004-01-26 07:15:03 EST: 1726 / 32 Your download speed : 1726359 bps, or 1726 kbps. A 210.7 KB/sec transfer rate. Your upload speed : 32325 bps, or 32 kbps. Your upstream result was very slow! .. not good Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!

It is in the Ku band (14-14.5 GHz up/11.7-12.2 GHz down). I would tend to disagree with the parent poster - the path attenuation on a CLEAR day can be on the order of 200dB each way, and atmospheric moisture over either your antenna or the SOC's antennas can screw your link budget no matter how dry your antenna is.

DSL Reports maintains a DirecWay forum as well.

dslreports.com has a specific forum for DirecWay.

Dslreports.com

This will be using licensed frequency blocks, and won't interfer with the 2.4GHz unlicensed frequences used by 802.11.

All this really is, is warmed over MMDS. MMDS was going to be the next big thing in the 90's - Sprint, in particular, was active in MMDS (you might remember it was called Sprint ION). As with a lot of new technologies, it was rolled out into a few markets, lost a lot of money, and was shut down.

Flash forward a couple of years - 802.11b/g (WiFi) is hot (hence the name - WiMax), broadband Internet usage popular, and the equipment is better/cheaper, so wireless companies are going to give it another go - except this time it will be sold as broadband Internet + VOIP, instead of a replacement for cable TV and also broadband Internet.

From browsing the user reports in the DSL Reports forum, it looks like, despite Sprint's best efforts to feck it up, most people really were happy with their ION performance, and very sad to see it shut off.

Here's the actual story missing in the slashdot blurb: Blacklisted.

Is this the link to the aforementioned forum thread?

I think he meant http://www.dslreports.com/.

Troll huh. Ok I'll bite.

I own:

Linksys WAP11.
No connections with broadcasts turned off: firmware Random reboots with firmware

2 WUSB adapters: constant signal loss and even locks with drivers.

2 WMP11 cards: random signal loss.

WAP54G: slow inconsistant speeds, even right beside the WAP.

Take a look at DSL Reports Linksys forums and see for yourself. Their firmware and drivers suck.

A lot of people are saying speakeasy is great, and I've got a friend that's used them forever, and they have treated him well.

I've personally been using megapath (SDSL 1/1) for around 4 years now, and I've found that my experience matches the speakeasy folks. Megapath's tech support is astoundingly good (3 rings, phone's picked up, first line tech is working on the router checking things for you, etc, usually). It doesn't go down, and the speeds are what they say they are and don't get bogged down. No nasty usage letters.

I recognize I sound like a shill, but you can check dslreports.com and see their rating - they really are good.

Judging from your letter it sounds like you are using comcast. I havn't had a letter to sent to me, but I do read over the interesting threads at DSL Reports forum.

It seems Comcast is targetting people only on high use nodes. There really isn't a consistent amount of bandwidth that you have to be lower than to avoid it. Comcast has not said how they determine whether or not you are violating TOS. Instead, they throw out statistically useless comments such as "100 times over the national median" or downloading "over 50 full length movies a month".

I personally believe that if you advertise unlimited service, you should provide unlimited service. If your infrastructure can't support that, you shouldn't have advertised it. Comcast may also try to get you to upgrade to business cable. The same ToS provision is in the business level cable, so don't bother.

See here for one of the more interesting threads on this subject. (Warning: it's long!)

Judging from your letter it sounds like you are using comcast. I havn't had a letter to sent to me, but I do read over the interesting threads at DSL Reports forum.

It seems Comcast is targetting people only on high use nodes. There really isn't a consistent amount of bandwidth that you have to be lower than to avoid it. Comcast has not said how they determine whether or not you are violating TOS. Instead, they throw out statistically useless comments such as "100 times over the national median" or downloading "over 50 full length movies a month".

I personally believe that if you advertise unlimited service, you should provide unlimited service. If your infrastructure can't support that, you shouldn't have advertised it. Comcast may also try to get you to upgrade to business cable. The same ToS provision is in the business level cable, so don't bother.

See here for one of the more interesting threads on this subject. (Warning: it's long!)

There is a giant thread about this abover at BroadbandReports' Comcast Forum

It seems to be a common misconception that WOL doesn't work across the internet. WOL works across the internet just fine. I've used DSLReport's web based utility here and it works perfectly.

There is a good write up about how one person deals with this here:
How to run as non admin

There was also a discussion about this on Broadband Reports
Runing as admin

Yes, the levy is simply a cash-grab.

I've had SpeakEasy for 3 years now

I had Speakeasy for two years and it was great, though expensive. Then I saw what for me was a better offer. No caps, no port blocks, static IP, no limit on servers, 1500 down and 768 (!) upload.

All for $50/month. $40 with a fixed-term service agreement. 768K upload is great - I can stream all my audio no problems, and lots of moderate bitrate DIVX. I have on occasion maxed out my upload for several *weeks*. In 18 months I've had a single outage that lasted more than 8 hours.

I got it from Cyberonic, who are basically a reseller of UUNet. I have been as happy with them as I was with Speakeasy. There are other resellers.

I've had SpeakEasy for 3 years now

I had Speakeasy for two years and it was great, though expensive. Then I saw what for me was a better offer. No caps, no port blocks, static IP, no limit on servers, 1500 down and 768 (!) upload.

All for $50/month. $40 with a fixed-term service agreement. 768K upload is great - I can stream all my audio no problems, and lots of moderate bitrate DIVX. I have on occasion maxed out my upload for several *weeks*. In 18 months I've had a single outage that lasted more than 8 hours.

I got it from Cyberonic, who are basically a reseller of UUNet. I have been as happy with them as I was with Speakeasy. There are other resellers.

I've had SpeakEasy for 3 years now

I had Speakeasy for two years and it was great, though expensive. Then I saw what for me was a better offer. No caps, no port blocks, static IP, no limit on servers, 1500 down and 768 (!) upload.

All for $50/month. $40 with a fixed-term service agreement. 768K upload is great - I can stream all my audio no problems, and lots of moderate bitrate DIVX. I have on occasion maxed out my upload for several *weeks*. In 18 months I've had a single outage that lasted more than 8 hours.

I got it from Cyberonic, who are basically a reseller of UUNet. I have been as happy with them as I was with Speakeasy. There are other resellers.

Speakeasy does nice things like have a truly "unlimited" policy. For around US$60 a month, I get a 640/128k pipe

I had Speakeasy for two years and it was great, though expensive. Then I saw what for me was a better offer. No caps, no port blocks, static IP, no limit on servers, 1500 down and 768 (!) upload.

All for $50/month. $40 with a fixed-term service agreement. 768K upload is great - I can stream all my audio no problems, and lots of moderate bitrate DIVX. I have on occasion maxed out my upload for several *weeks*. In 18 months I've had a single outage that lasted more than 8 hours.

I got it from Cyberonic, who are basically a reseller of UUNet. I have been as happy with them as I was with Speakeasy. There are other resellers.

Speakeasy does nice things like have a truly "unlimited" policy. For around US$60 a month, I get a 640/128k pipe

I had Speakeasy for two years and it was great, though expensive. Then I saw what for me was a better offer. No caps, no port blocks, static IP, no limit on servers, 1500 down and 768 (!) upload.

All for $50/month. $40 with a fixed-term service agreement. 768K upload is great - I can stream all my audio no problems, and lots of moderate bitrate DIVX. I have on occasion maxed out my upload for several *weeks*. In 18 months I've had a single outage that lasted more than 8 hours.

I got it from Cyberonic, who are basically a reseller of UUNet. I have been as happy with them as I was with Speakeasy. There are other resellers.

Speakeasy does nice things like have a truly "unlimited" policy. For around US$60 a month, I get a 640/128k pipe

I had Speakeasy for two years and it was great, though expensive. Then I saw what for me was a better offer. No caps, no port blocks, static IP, no limit on servers, 1500 down and 768 (!) upload.

All for $50/month. $40 with a fixed-term service agreement. 768K upload is great - I can stream all my audio no problems, and lots of moderate bitrate DIVX. I have on occasion maxed out my upload for several *weeks*. In 18 months I've had a single outage that lasted more than 8 hours.

I got it from Cyberonic, who are basically a reseller of UUNet. I have been as happy with them as I was with Speakeasy. There are other resellers.

Here's a link.

Happened to me after I signed up with a smaller ISP expecting more personal service. I got personal service alright after they threatened to cut off my service for exceeding their bandwidth "guarantee" of 500MB a month. I posted a review of the ISP and got a letter back threatening legal action. Even angrier that the company would attack me posting my opinions online, I decided to post a snippet of the threatening letter they sent on my website and the ISP backed off. Now I'm with SBC. 1.5 down, 365 up and they've never bothered me once.

You can boost the signal strength of the Linksys WRT54G with this "undocumented feature". Basically it's a back door will let you up the transmission strength to the maximum output. Find details at this thread: WRT54G Increased transmission strength. People's comments there indicate pretty good results.

Check out great deal on electronics and computer at Retail Retreat. Do your Christmas shopping online!

They have an example and a bunch of IE users going "woah" in the comment section that a bug is in the holy microsoft code.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/36359

FAQ...etc.

CC.

They have already started to upgrade to 3Mbps down in certain areas. All I had to do is reboot my modem and it received the new settings.
Check DSL Reports for reports in your area.

This is a week old news item. The discussion on the security forum of Dslreports brought up some good points. (See this post.)

What happens if the user hoses a system using one of the tools? HijackThis will allow you to 'fix' items that shouldn't be fixed. Spybot can do the same. In my opinion, a spyware killer in a novice's hands can be as damaging as some spyware.

Dell is also covering themselves against lawsuits, as the article pointed out. This should ultimately keep the prices down anyway. Come on folks- Dell support has ceased to be good. You buy a dell for a good price on a great computer, and then you hit up your neighborhood geek if you mess something up.

On a different topic, I wonder just what preinstalled spyware the article was talking about?

This is a week old news item. The discussion on the security forum of Dslreports brought up some good points. (See this post.)

What happens if the user hoses a system using one of the tools? HijackThis will allow you to 'fix' items that shouldn't be fixed. Spybot can do the same. In my opinion, a spyware killer in a novice's hands can be as damaging as some spyware.

Dell is also covering themselves against lawsuits, as the article pointed out. This should ultimately keep the prices down anyway. Come on folks- Dell support has ceased to be good. You buy a dell for a good price on a great computer, and then you hit up your neighborhood geek if you mess something up.

On a different topic, I wonder just what preinstalled spyware the article was talking about?

Pennsylvania already tried this type of mega-giant fiber plans, but got screwed by the telecoms. Hopefully the Morons with their genius city planning (seriously, they plan cities better than any one, well on a grid) will do this better.

What they paid: $2.1B + $3B extra by 2015
What they got: crap
What they paid for:
"This capability falls short of Verizon's commitment; Verizon committed to providing two-way broadband capability of at least 45 Mbps," noted Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission member Terrance J. Fitzpatrick in a statement. "The Commission accepted this commitment, and approved the Plan based upon that commitment."

That being said, I don't really mind the problems with packet8, my phone bill is $20.55/month every month. The thing works good most of the time, and my calling needs are generally flexible. My wife and I both have cell phones for 911/emergencies and other calling. For me, the VoiP phone is more of a security blanket for the wife. We don't need a home phone in my opinion, and she's resistant to change.

BTW, from everything I've heard & read on places like dsl reports VoiP forums Vonage is MUCH higher quality than packet8. Packet8 uses like 8k/sec (I am not sure if it's kbits or kbytes, but I suspect bytes), and Vonage can use well over 40k/sec.

Here's an article about it from about 7 hrs ago.

Here's an article about their stupid response.

Here's the original Slashdot article.

I like to check on dslreports.com to hear about rural communities that ORGANIZE politically to roll out fiber.

• Static IP is the default.
• They not only allow but encourage running servers. They're even reasonable about secondary DNS and MX pricing.
• Free reverse lookup changes.
• Encourage sharing your connection.
• Don't block ports.
• Provide NTP services on all their local POPs
• Heck they even host game servers on the local POPs

I would see what just writing a letter to them, asking what they plan to do to rectify their mistake brings.

Then start looking into suing them. They helped another person steal your property. It doesn't really matter that they thought they were being helpful. I might be inclined to file a police report. It's new, you read slashdot, experiment. I'd find out as much as I could about this area of law, and try to sue them in my jurisdiction in small claims. I'd write my representatives at every level, my state attorny general, and maybe the occasional newspaper. Even bring it before a city counsel, they pass all kinds of crazy crap from time to time. There's no reason they couldn't have an irrational ordinance added to the books which might be used to lend a quixotic weight to your cause.

Even if you don't get your way, you might make their lives a little more miserable.

But since they stole your domain, it should be reasonably easy to track down who they are. If they move it to another registrar, file a police report charging them with recieving stolen goods (if an mp3 or a program is a good, a domain is too). Get in their face too.

I bet for a few bucks in stamps, a ream of paper, and free time, you can cause a lot of trouble. Spread the anger around, don't hog it all for yourself.

Who knows what you'd learn and other opportunities would avail themselves as you pursue another expertise.

Oh and those broadbandreports people would probably be a hell of a lot more useful than goobers like me.

You didn't indicate what router you have, but the Linksys WRT54G has a "hidden" command where you can boost the transmission strength. Check out this thread at dslreports. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7925552~roo t=equip,16~mode=flat

The EFF has taken on defense of another alleged filesharer. Here is a snippet:
Los Angeles, California - EFF today announced that it will defend Ross Plank of Playa Del Rey, California, against a wrongly filed complaint, among the 261 copyright infringement lawsuits the recording industry has filed against individuals.

The federal lawsuit filed against Plank in Los Angeles accuses him of making hundreds of Latin songs available using KaZaA filesharing software earlier this summer. Plank does not speak Spanish and does not listen to Latin music. More importantly, his computer did not even have KaZaA installed during the period when the investigation occurred.

More articles on Ross Plank and his 'wrongful accusal' at Wired, The Reg, The Inq, DSP Reports, and p2pnet.net.

Here are the programs you need to have a k-133t windows system.

1. AOL- DUH, they are the greatest ISP ever.

2. Webshots - Impress your friends with your changing wallpaper!

3. Hotbar - Skin Internet Explorer and Impress your friends!

4. AOHell This program will make you l33t!

5. Incredimail This makes your e-mail look k00lah then everyone elses.

6. Microsoft Outlook because all the anti-virus tools work with it. You don't want to use another e-mail client, you might get a virus!

7. Comet Cursor. Makes your cursor R0x0r.

8. Intruder Alert 99 You need a firewall, the internet isn't a safe place!

9. Gator Gator is an awesome program that helps u remember ur passwords. This way u don't have to fill out stupid forms!

10. BO Server The guys in my gaming clan sent me this, they said it would improve my FPS, and make windows run faster. I think it did!

I completely replaced my home phone with packet8's VoiP product. I have wireless internet where I get 384k/384k for $50/month with a steep $700+ setup fee. I pay $19.95/month for unlimited calls to any phone in the US/Alaska/Hawaii/Canada. That's the POTS (Plain Old crappy Telephone Service) network. If anyone I knew had a packet8 phone we could call back and forth unlimited for free.

Now, Packet8 uses considerably less bandwidth than a Vonage (like 8k/sec), but sounds pretty good usually. Sometimes I'm amazed at the clarity, and sometimes there's echos. Sometimes there's bad distortion like a choppy cell phone call, but not normally. Sometimes the thing stops receiving incoming calls and needs a reboot.

I dont use my home phone that much, but going all cellular seemed like we were missing the essentials, so this is a happy middle.

We dont have a few features, like the Caller ID only works for the number, no names. Vonage apparently has names both ways (in/out). It's not a big feature for me, so I'm ok with it. The voicemail light stays on if I get a message until I reboot the device (which takes about 5 seconds). Sometimes I try to dial out and get a busy signal, rebooting the device usually fixes it.

What did I do to switch? Sign up for service, at packet8.net or vonage.com. Wait for your device to come. Test it with 1 phone, once you're happy it works good enough to ditch the phone company, call & cancel the phone service. Make sure your home line is dead, disconnect the incoming line from your phone system, and plug in your packet8/vonage box in like a normal phone. Now ALL YOUR HOME PHONES WORK using VoiP!

How much money did I save? Well I was paying $120/month average. Barely using long distance, but I did have DSL which was $40 for just the line and I paid another isp $20/month. So I went from $80/month with limited long distance to $19.95/month with no surprises and no stupid Spanish-American war leftover taxes.

Screw you Qwest! Screw you Sprint! Screw you MCI! You ripped me off one time to many, and your customer service SUCKED! :P

Here is a comparison of some VoiP features. He's wrong on some things, and ignore the VoicePulse entry, they're only available in like 3 states, unless you live in one of those states.

Also, read the VoiP forums at dslreports.com for good info on VoiP.

Try this clicky. I know it doesn't look easy, but there is a chance you could cancel your phone service after you get DSL and get away with it.