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I think the problem is that COMCAST is just plain lame and they are doomed to failure in any market where they have competition. In my area we have COMCAST and WOW (Wide Open West) which offers tierd service, everything from 128k up/128k down to 3Mb down/500k up and WOW just released the 3Mb last week in my area. (I immediately jumped on the bandwidth bandwagon and upped my service and monthy charge.) COMCAST on the other hand offers one take-it or leave-it plan and they are always playing with the service.

Hey COMCAST, check out the WOW Speeds

1. The telecomm companies have a vested interest in making the current infrastructure generate as MUCH revenue as possible for as long as possible.
   This is just common sense business. You've made a capital investment in infrastructure - how much you make on that investment is directly proportional to the length of time you can use that same infrastructure without having to upgrade it.
2. The telecomm companies have to deal with a mass market in addition to and/or not only with a cutting edge market. If you don't believe that the mass market dictates these sorts of trends, explain why AOL has been so wildly successful with dial-up for almost the same cost as broadband. I think AOL, Earthlink, MSN and others make a pretty strong, if anecdotal, case that dialup is still a viable option for many people. If the common market doesn't demand, or see a need for cheap fiber to the curb, then companies won't provide a service. (This assumes that the company is there to sell to a market, not create a new one.)
3. Most people really don't need broadband.
   Going back to the mass market mentality. Most common users don't need a fat pipe. I'm going to hazard a guess that if you called up even those people that have broadband access, that 50% of them couldn't tell you the type or speed of their broadband connection. I think you'd be lucky to get "DSL" or "Cable" out of the majority of users.
4. Simple Economics.
   Ignoring the possibility that economics is rarely if ever simple for just a moment. We can blame the "free market". If i have a market that will pay more money for less service, than by all means that is exactly what my shareholders/board of directors will expect me to do. Innovation is driven by competition in addition to other factors. If someone could run fiber to the curb, and offer converged data, video, and voice AND do it with a business model that was effective, well I think that company would already be in business. So far, no one has been able to get the whole enchelada.

I stand corrected, it was only 5 streams at a time, here's the DSL Reports Link.

Here's what Comcast Notice looks like.

If enough of us request this here, perhaps their online techs will spread the word to SBC NOC/management to do so.

After scanning through the comments it struck me that one of the most important settings for security seems to be left out. On my Linksys there is a setting to make the router not pingable. This setting is one of the first and best defenses against hackers. Most will move on if they can't ping an address. I have run several security scans from Broadband Reports and have always come up clean. While not fool proof, nothing is, it's an important setting if you want to hide yourself from the rest of the net.

After scanning through the comments it struck me that one of the most important settings for security seems to be left out. On my Linksys there is a setting to make the router not pingable. This setting is one of the first and best defenses against hackers. Most will move on if they can't ping an address. I have run several security scans from Broadband Reports and have always come up clean. While not fool proof, nothing is, it's an important setting if you want to hide yourself from the rest of the net.

I believe I was following directions from http://www.dslreports.com. Just search for your model number (I assume 7004WBR--if it's not that, it isn't the same Amit hardware). I really wouldn't remember what all I did, it's been months. It involves cross-grading the firmware from SMC to an earlier version of Amit, then upgrading from there to 1.96h3, and also involves hard resetting the router to perform crash recoveries. Anyway, dslreports is a great resource to know.

Ohh, let's!

Gates Foundation - Charity or Strategy?
Microsoft Marketing Brings New Business and New Skeptics
Microsoft Donates "State of the Art" NT Systems To Mac Stalwart, Dartmouth
Defying a Microsoft World View
Special Report: MS Settlement under fire
COMMENTARY ISSUED ON OPEN SOURCE AND THE MICROSOFT DONATION IN SA
Your taxes are paying for the pricing practices of a proprietary monopoly.

I hate to break it to you, but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation isn't Microsoft. They are completely different entities.

And a change of pace:
SuSE Linux Donates Software to Allentown, Pennsylvania Schoolchildren

SBC is already doing this. And they are targetting only those affected, which is nice. They've had to do this in response to upstream issues due to all the worm traffic.

2003-09-03 17:28:34 EST: 746 / 814 Your download speed : 746318 bps, or 746 kbps. A 91.1 KB/sec transfer rate. Your upload speed : 814995 bps, or 814 kbps.

So, looks like beaming data between two PDAs or phones is safe, for now.

(Quote from DSLreports via syates21.)

It's incredible, politicians will always try to come up with creative, yet convoluted ways of taxing their constituency. But they never stop for one millisecond to consider ways of CUTTING taxes.

HEY look at all these other fun filled taxes the state of Florida has!

Check the ZIP file links at the bottom of this report for the actuall bill here, it actually describe the insanity and absent mindeness of the beauricrates that are proposing these laws. Is this really real???

Hmm, after a little further digging, it looks like rule the are referring to governs taxes on operating costs, not purchase.

There's a nice blurb at DSLReports about it.

A worm is usually a standalone program (runs on it's own) and is self-propagating. A virus is a much more general term. In fact, some might argue that a worm is a type of a virus. But in general, a virus infects other software (so it isn't necessarily standalone) and often requires some other application (or human) to transfer it from one location to another.

There's a good answer on Broadband Report Forum, or you could try Google.

For the love of man and everything holy, USE A DAMN HREF and stop putting a space in root!

click

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7652257~roo t=security,1~mode=flat

<a href="http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,76522 57~root=security,1~mode=flat">link to the article</a>

Well Sympatico High Speed Edition has always been ~1 Mb/s, and recently (this month) they reconfigured the DSLAMs to run at ~1.5 Mb/s.

OLD
Download Sync Rate: 1184 kilobits/second
Upload Sync Rate: 160 kilobits/second

NEW
Download Sync Rate: 1728 kilobits/second
Upload Sync Rate: 384 kilobits/second

broadbandreports.com notice
Bell Sympatico bulletin

Enjoy your service while it lasts, eventually you'll get a phonecall from Sprint saying 'Mr. So and So, you have three options, we can cancel your vision outright, you can purchase a monthly service plan (20MB for $$, 40MB for $$$, etc) for business connections, or you can pay a per kilobyte charge on your data.

reference 1 reference 2

Verizon has 2 networks in our area, one is a T1 (fijitsu)based, the other is T3 (westell) based dsl modems.

I was on the fitjistsu on the 768/128, about a 33ms ping to the seattle bbnplanet backbone, I moved down the street, and they put in the new higherspeed network. 1500/384 and 10ms to the bbnplanet backbone.

USwest back in Spokane was about 15ms on a 768/768 cisco modem.

While I find Verizon and other telcos to be better bandwidth and ping, smaller mom and pop ISP's tend to oversell. Speakeasy was would be choice if the telco is oversold, and earthlink if ISDN is your only choice. Thou small ISP's do re-sell ISDN cheaper, and ping is good enough for multiplayer games, 20ms+. (Remember its different for each user and location!)

I'd check out dslreports and ask other people in your area. And networks change from city to city, cable/dsl/isdn/frame all depend on the routers and hop count. Plus if your ISP is a peering partner with local ISP's, they connect all major ISPs locally, thats a plus. Sometimes you notice crazy routing, like Seattle to California and back to go across town to an ISP without a local peering agreement.

Also, you call your ISP, and ask them to do a traceroute from their network to a gameserver and email it to you. I've asked this from hosting services, and who they having peering agreements with. Some will even give you a network diagram or have them posted on the site, like Verio. (Who while expensive, does seem to have good peering agreements.)

"IT SEEMS THAT SOMEONE HAS BEEN DIPPING THEIR HAND IN THE COOKIE JAR! BEHOLD THE MASK HAS BEEN REVEALED!

Do DoS Attacks equal SPAM??"/blockquote)

In next weeks episode will he accuse Ameritech of having the "keys" to the internet? Stay tuned.

I thoroughly enjoyed your take on those RIAA blood-sucking bastard assmonkeys (I'm not a journalist, and if I call them that on my website I am projected by the "22 year old college student" defence as HardOCP has dubbed the weblog freedom of speech ruling).

I would like to point out a little something that, although not very relevant to the US, is a thorn in our side up here in Canada.

I'm talking about a little legal wonder called SOCAN Tariff 22. SOCAN (The Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada) is pretty much like a Canadian RIAA, except controlled by the government (we're almost socialists up here, in case you didn't know, but don't hold that against me... I didn't vote for those bastards either). Anyways, Tariff 22 is currently being appealed and for good reasons. It introduced liability for ISPs for caches of material which violats copyright, specifically copies of musical recordings of SOCAN artists.

(What is SOCAN:
SOCAN is the Canadian copyright collective for the public performance of musical works. We administer the performing rights of our members (composers, lyricists, songwriters and their publishers) and those of affiliated international societies by licensing the use of their music in Canada.)

This means that your distributed user-controlled cache-reliant webcast radio scheme would (currently) land ISPs subject to Canadian law in hot water. Sucks, doesn't it?

The appeal is getting into full swing as factum are submitted, etc. The Tariff 22 ruling was based on the appeals court blatantly misunderstanding caching technology, the nature of the Internet, and the role that network infrastructure plays in communications, so things look good for those of us involved in protecting the ISPs' ability to provide service to Canadian consumers (I'm involved from a technical standpoint), however the act remains that Tariff 22 is currently on the books as Canadian law.

Here are some online resources you may find interesting on the subject:
Tariff 22 Intellectual Property laws meet the modern age

SOCAN's Tariff 22 will be the death of Canadian Internet Radio

I hope that the rabid RIAA legal minions don't pay too much attention to us up here, because that would be a way for them to go after litigation targets with really deep pockets... if Verizon thought they had problems with Court Orders to hand over customer data, wait until they get sued for merely being an ISP.

-Placing icons on the desktop that launch ad-filled web pages
-Adding itself as a favorite or a home page to the browser
-Adding shortcuts to the Start Menu

All without permission of the user. Granted, those who are security-aware will have unsigned ActiveX and Scripting capabilities turned off (discussion of this can be found here, but then again, the crowd that is more concerned with these types of exploits will use browsers that are harder to exploit and easier to control, such as Mozilla, Opera, or Communicator. Not that these programs are all exempt from exploitation, but they have proven to be a much smaller target audience.

ok in what world is cable more reliable than DSL?

Houston definitely! Are you basing all your stuff on actual real world experience or parroting theoretical specs like a lot of other geeks out there?

Take a look around DSL Reports

What are peoples' experiences with local alternative POTS(land-line) carriers?

I've had a nightmare overbilling experience with SBC, and as a result, I'm forced to use Verizon wireless for my "home" phone and HotSpot for my broadband.

What I'd like to know, is there any place that is aggregating this information, in a similar fashion as dslreports.com dslreports.com but for POTS? National would be of obvious use, but I'd settle for any information in the L.A. area.

But hey, I completely understand that not everyone is as socially deprived as I am. I verified not only the distance to the CO, but how their feature set compared to the CO in the neighborhood from which I was moving. Not that I understand what a CO being an "OC12 capable wire center" truly means, but anything mentioning OC12 has to be cool, right? ;-)

Q: What sort of upload speed can I expect? (#2000)

A: Generally consumer grade satellite broadband systems are advertised with upload speeds of "up to" 128kbs. One way systems come with no upload speed predictions.

In actual use, at least at this time, none of the consumer grade two-way satellite systems get upload speeds near the 128kbs suggestion. There is a wide variance in actual upload speeds from moment to moment. You can expect that most of the time the upload speed of a two way system will be in the 30kbs-80kbs range. Due to latency issues with satellite connections, most upload speed tests will show speeds lower than actual FTP uploads.

It varies depending on the telco and type of service. Generally you can get ADSL out to 17500 feet (about 5300 meters). Depending on the conditions of the specific line you can go farther than the given limits, or not quite as far. But telcos don't want to exceed the limits they give because it usually causes them support issues.

A good read is here

I saw this a few days ago on DSLReports.com: A Speakeasy customer, who was running an anonymous FTP server, with NO MP3s at all, was forwarded a threatening letter from the RIAA by his ISP. The letter actually complained that the site offered "approximately 0 sound files for download. Many of these files contain recordings owned by our member companies," etc. See the whole thread here.

I live in Morris County, New Jersey and those Optimum Online Fookers capped my upload to 120kpbs.

All you people drooling over OOL, do not, because they have started capping. See this thread on Dslreports.com to read the anger of fellow Cablevision customers who are capped, and you can also read the pro-corporation consumers deserve no rights shills defending any action from Cablevision.

The article says Cablevision's on top with an average of 800K. I routinely get from 4-5Mbps with upload consistently at 933kbps (according to DSL Reports. Everybody I know on Cablevision gets speeds in the megs. If the average is 800k, that would mean a lot of people are getting a fraction of that. $45-50/mo is a lot to pay for little more than ISDN-type bandwidth. I don't complain about my speeds or reliability, but I sure like to piss and moan about the soaking I get from Cablevision.

However one consideration that may be lacking from this analysis is how Comcast (and many DOCSIS providers) handle capping the connections.

On my Comcast cable modem, the cap is regulated by my local cable modem. So if I'm downloading from an extremely fast host, my connection will momentarily burst into the 3 megabit/second range. The cable modem will then halt all communications for the remainder of that second. So if you have a NAT situation going, and one of the machines is nailing the bandwidth, it will slow down the other machines in the house.

There's a more indepth discussion Here.

---

To do it manually using the following as the PPPoE login
Username: sbcyahooreg@sbcglobal.net
Password: sbcyahooreg
[this is the replacement for dslreguser/reguser, for those who were familiar with that.]
And go to the following URL to complete registration
https://sbcreg.sbcglobal.net/

I've been using the PPoE built-in to my NetGear firewall/router/switch on my SBC DSL line for years with no trouble. I have no Enternet software on my PC. I removed the software after I signed up, but as per above, you don't have to install it all.

To do it manually using the following as the PPPoE login
Username: sbcyahooreg@sbcglobal.net
Password: sbcyahooreg
[this is the replacement for dslreguser/reguser, for those who were familiar with that.]
And go to the following URL to complete registration
https://sbcreg.sbcglobal.net/

I've been using the PPoE built-in to my NetGear firewall/router/switch on my SBC DSL line for years with no trouble. I have no Enternet software on my PC. I removed the software after I signed up, but as per above, you don't have to install it all.

I also use SpeakEasy DSL and host my own servers. The SpeakEasy guys are very cool about setting up the reverse DNS records for you. They did it for me. You just need to ask them. The DSL provider I had before them (now out of business) also was totally cool about configuring the reverse DNS as I requested, so I suspect other DSL providers might be willing to do the same...people just have to ask for it.

I will say that SpeakEasy is very cool about geeks who setup their own servers. Some broadband providers are not. When selecting your broadband provider, it is a good idea to make sure you pick one who is not anti-geek. Check www.dslreports.com if you need info on a specific provider.

And just 'cause I like to talk, let me ponder one more thing: will the ultimate result of all these anti-geek policies result in an OuterNet? In other words, with plenty of geeks already setting up WiFi hotspots everywhere, with the continually lowering costs of networking equipment in general and the ever increasing simplicity of their use, and with the increasing restrictions on what can be done on the Internet (think Napster), will we see the day when a second, open, lawless InterNet-like network will emerge run by geeks in their spare time? If that does happen, will it ultimately lower the revenues of the AOLs and Earthlinks of the world?

Opaserv

network.vbs

There were some others I found before, but I'm not finding them now, probably need to refine my search, but I don't have the time atm.

Here's some more reading material...

911, etc.

port scan

I spent some time reading up on how buffer overflows were used for exploits on this port, UDP packets, and so on. I'm not convinced this is innocent activity, particularly since I do have a firewall configured and don't see any outgoing traffic.

Learning about attacks is an ongoing thing for me and until I have all the facts, or enough of them, I'm leaving it my firewall to keep intruders out. I have seen bursts, usually on weekends when I assume more infected computers have been turned on and the worms are active. At various times I've had as many as 100 hits within 2-3 minutes.

Since I have no current reason for anyone on the internet to access my system, I believe a complete lockdown is a good position to start with. If I put it on a high-speed connection, with fixed IP and fire up services, then I'll allow ports as necessary.

I love it when people who don't understand the history of the present situation try to act like they know something.

Finally the bells can use their *property* without subsidising their competitors.

Property that was paid for via a government protected, anticompetitive monopoly with tariffed rates that kept costs high and federal laws that prevented competition. Line sharing simply recognized the reality of how those lines were paid for and how the law kept others from competing. We payed artificially high prices for decades to finance that property with the stated purpose of developing a public infrastructure...not as an act of "corporate welfare" for the Bell system.

This will be a good thing in the long term 3-5 years.

No better than what happened when the cable companies kept increasing rates and not improving service when THEY didn't have any competition. Think about how bad the cable is now...even WITH the competition from satellite services. With most consumers having only one, perhaps two broadband options left to them you can expect the costs to rise, bandwidth to get metered, and content to be prioritized via PPPoE. Fewer choices is NOT a good thing. Don't believe me? Ask any economist. And note that the non-Bell ISPs *consistently* beat the service ratings of Bell ISPs...see Broadband Reports.

As for comparing us to South Korea...? Do you really think our situation in the U.S. is even remotely similar to that of South Korea??? :)

With previous rules there was no incentive to upgrade their systems because then their competitors would be able to use it too. Now we can have: cable, phone, satelite, wireless, and (perhaps) power line all competing.

With the previous rules the Bells simply followed the strategy of deliberately keeping their equipment primitive and broken to block competition long enough to put them out of business. They knew they were the choke point for the CLECs, and that if they could deny them revenue long enough they could put them out of business. And with most of the CLECs the strategy worked...most of the CLECs went under. Here in California Pacific Bell/SBC had a whole host of tricks to make it difficult for CLECs like Covad to get wire pairs for DSL installs...but remarkably had no problem at all when it came to handing out those same pairs to companies installing home alarms.

This is a good thing even if it is not the socialist position.

Drop the stupid rhetoric. The old, regulated Bell system was clearly more like socialism than what we have now. The US government protected them from competition for the better part of a century to allow them to build up their infrastructure. Ensuring competition by allowing competing providers to use the existing infrastructure just makes sense. Would you require each trucking company to build its own highway to transport your frozen chickens to market?

This is just great with me.

Now maybe the Bells will have some incentive to invest in technologies (read: FTTH) without the fear that some company that didn't invest a dime in this infrastructure will come along and get to use it at "cost". It BLOWS that the federal government can come in and say "Yeah, you and the stock holders paid for it, but you gotta lease out your private property/investment whether you want to or not." Truly socialism, if not communism, at its finest.

We've been stuck with crummy ADSL for over 7 years with no real increase in speed/decrease in cost since it started. This 1996 act should have been repealed a long time ago and is the worst piece of legislation I know except for the DMCA.

The issue is, there are not very many DSL capable central offices in the first place, let alone repeaters on the end of their lines. It sounds to me that they are going to refuse to upgrade the rest of the CO's. The bad part is, in a way, the consumers lose something either way.

Check out this map of capable CO's in Kansas, on DSL Reports.

Thanks should go to NYLXS, a non-profit organization made up of individuals from the community that provide solutions to small and large business problems of software licensing fees, restrictive code agreements, and abusive auditing tactics.

It was the membership of NYLXS who rented a van and left NYC at 4 am on July 17, 2002 to attend the Commerce Committee "roundtable" on drm, where the odds were stacked against the public at around 22 to 1 according to reporters covering the event. It was individuals within the organization, and friends from other organizations with similar goals, who stood up and said, enough! to the load of bull being put forth by Mr. Jack Valenti and his cronies at that "roundtable". Had it not been for the actions taken on this day, and for the media response, and for the Commerce Committee's damage control (one staff member was quoted as saying "we've never had anything like this happen here before", and the Commerce Committee's damage control response resulting in an invitation to sit down and talk with them, all covered in Newsforge and many other netzine articles), had it not been for NYLXS's actions, the drm legislation was being steamrolled through Congress, and had good momentum. It was stopped in its tracks that day, and the result was it was killed for the year, since the elections came soon after and the legislation was tabled.

Thanks should go to the NYLXS membership who protested Dmitri's imprisonment regularly in NYC while he was imprisoned half way around the world from his home and family.

Thanks should go to NYLXS who are putting on business demonstrations showing that open source works for business. Business demos held in NYC, and in Queens, NY. Business demos that are widely attended. Business demos that are recorded and can be heard at the link above if you download the audio files.

Thanks should go to the NYLXS educational arm, the Free Software Institute, that provides the training to individuals and companies, in open source and free software operating systems, tools, and applications that make individuals more productive, less reliant on others, and provide true cost savings and reliability.

Thanks should go to the members of NYLXS that meet with local legislators both at home in NYC, and in our nation's capitol, and let their views be understood, their voices heard on free and open source software, on the DMCA, on drm, and other relevant issues.

Thanks should go to the members of NYLXS that sacrifice their time, and keep the gears turning behind the scenes to make sure that NYLXS functions as it should, according to its charter.

NYLXS is a non-profit organization that puts earnings from its Free Software Institute back into free and open source software promotion, issues, and problems. Installfests (where you can bring your computer and receive assistance in getting a gnu/linux distribution legally installed on your computer) are just one area where NYLXS members help to promote free and open source software.

While NYLXS can receive donations that are tax-deductible due to its non-profit status, the NYLXS organization prides itself in being doers, not watchers. Membership is open to people who share the organization's ideals and goals, but as stated, this isn't a join and do nothing organization. Members are required to actively participate in the organization. It may take a little while, but normally, new members listen, find some project, issue, mission, within the organization that they like, and then run with it. It is a testament to the diversity of views of the organization that enables such effective and motivated participation on the part of its members. And it is this motivated participation that enables NYLXS to succeed in its mission, and to effectively communicate its message to others curious about what free and open source software is all about.

Thank you NYLXS!

It's a relatively new technology being deployed by Bellsouth now. Digital Fiber in the Loop (DFITL) makes use of a new card that gets installed into your fiber pedestal (ONU), manufactured by Marconi. It essentially acts as a mini-DSLAM.
Then inside your house, you use a regular ADSL modem on your phone line, and you'll get maximum speed no matter how far you are from the CO.

The problem is that Marconi is the only company that manufacturers cards such as these and they are proprietary from what I understand. However, for those like me that were stranded on dialup for months before this was finally available, it's a wonderful thing to have.

coverage

According to this forum thread, it said "Grey Magic looking at the alert said they informed Opera in Nov. of the problems in beta 1 of version 7. In beta 2 Opera thought they had fixed it but instead had only fixed part and not all. On Jan. 31 Grey Magic informed Opera of these problems in version 7 final , Opera asked for the to wait till Feb. 6 before announcing so that they could have it fixed , Grey Magic chose not to wait just 2 more days."

And if those packets happen to slam into your Linksys BEFSR41 router, it will freeze up, crash, and flop around like a half-dead fish.

Here is a link to a forum talking about C-dilla.

Don't make the same mistake I did and delete a directory called "C:\C_DILLA". I did, and my computer froze upon startup. Apparently C-dilla is a service that requires this directory to be there otherwise it barfs on you.

I didn't know what it was, and thought it might be related to Mozilla (Mozilla, Bugzilla, Chatzilla, etc). I deleted it, and upon reboot, my system froze during startup. After troubleshooting my frozen machine for around 1/2 an hour, the missing directory turned out to be the problem, along with these mysterious services that I didn't remember installing. I guess the service hung while looking for the directory and froze my entire system.

I went to uninstall Turbotax and it doesn't uninstall C-dilla. I asked Intuit Live Chat support how to remove C-dilla and they told me to delete the C_DILLA directory and reboot. I told them what would happen, but they said that's what to do. After I did it, and it froze again, they said there was nothing they could to and to contact my system administrator/vendor to fix the freeze. Thanks.

They have a 60-day return policy. USE IT. Tell all your friends and co-workers not to buy Turbotax. I was a loyal Turbotax purchaser since 1997 and I am now going to switch because I no longer trust them. Why did they install this shit on my computer without telling me, and fuck everything up?

They have completely lost my trust, and there is nothing they can do to get it back, that's for sure.

Note that Linksys is careful not to even call this product an amplifier. It's a "signal booster."

The WSB24 does not amplify the transmit signal much, if at all. The FCC test reports show its peak output at between 17.9 and 20.5 dBm, not much more that the access points and routers it sits on. 20 dBm = 100 mW, or 10 percent of the FCC max at the antenna connector.

Linksys never claimed the transmitted signal would be amplified. Its own published specs state only a nominal 14 dBm output level. (This could be conservative advertising; more likely it's because Linksys' marketing department doesn't know a dBm from a dB.)

Rather, the benefits of the unit are supposed to come by amplifying the received signals.

See this thread in the DSLR Linksys forum, which includes links to the FCC test data.

DirectTV won't be around to complain, so bon appetit!