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As I understand it, the deadline for filing comments on the UBB passed on midnight April 14th, 2009.

If you nevertheness wish to file (and high volume of comments, albeit late, may nevertheless be of interest to the CRTC), the commentary ought to fall under "Tariff", and an appropriate subject might be File Number #8740-B2-200904989 - Bell Canada - TN7181.

Keep in mind that this is DSLAM bandwidth (i.e. the "last mile" copper wire) that Bell proposes to impose this tariff on. It is not network bandwidth from an ISP to the backbone. Bell is obliged to sell DSLAM access on a wholesale basis to competitor ISPs. For interesting statistics, consider reading this: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20690166-The-Bell-Disclosure -- the statistics read, if I understand it (and there's a pretty decent chance I don't) the risk to a customer of having less than 100% bandwidth available at any one point is exceedingly low (i.e. less than 1% of it occurring for less than five minutes on any given day).

Interestingly, Bell has not disclosed how much money it has paid for Arbour Networks' deep packet inspection and bandwidth limiting hardware. I understand, informally and anecdotally (and, again, there's a decent chance I'm wrong), that the amount spent on the bandwidth limiting hardware greatly exceeds the cost of upgrading the DSLAMs to eliminate any risk of the above mentioned rare less-than-complete bandwidth. I would quite like to see more information on the cost of Arbour Networks' bandwidth limiting hardware, and the cost of upgrading DSLAMS. Hopefully the CRTC board does, too.

Well how about we get the goddamn fiber we have already paid taxes for. I like that option. lets call it option F. for Fuck the telcos. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ISP-Lobbyists-Shape-Broadband-Stimulus-Plan-100480

Capacity is only unlimited if income is unlimited. Even in a monopoly people will only pay so much, so there's a limited income to expand the network - which puts hard physical limits on capacity, and to make any money at all the network has to be contended.

Thing is is here in the USA cablecos and telcos received almost $200 billion to buildout broadband but they did not. All they did was use the money to pad their bottom lines. They also battle attempts by others build out broadband. Some articles and posts on /. have been about this, whither it's telecos trying to block muni wifi or cablecos trying to block cities from installing cable. One example is A Broadband Utopia. Commercial broadband businesses tried to stop it but were unsuccessful. They were successful though having the Utah state government enact a law that requires it to be open, which was planned from the beginning. Because of the network Comcast was forced to offer a $90 bundle.

Falcon

I saw this a few years ago and it made me true to my moniker: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19080808-Ars-technica-on-Sun-strategy-over-the-years. Looks like we have an edit to make to this spot-on, funny-but-sad pie chart.

I interviewed Alex Dudley, VP of PR for Time Warner Cable at Network Performance Daily on this. I tried to be impartial, but as I mention in the intro, this would raise my bill 500%, and would be a 1000% markup from Time Warnerâ(TM)s wholesale rate, and as TW is a monopoly in my apartment complex, the net effect is that Iâ(TM)m getting kicked out of my home when the billing goes live, so the interview gets heated at points. FTA:

NPD: I was wondering if you ever considered this⦠tracking the high-end users, and⦠only when the line is congested⦠throttling back their service using QoS priorities. Giving them--

Dudley: Thatâ(TM)s exactly what Comcast did about a year ago, and it caused a complete outrage and the FCC hauled them before the committee and told them they had to stop doing it.

NPD: Actually, I covered that. That's actually the result that Comcast applied after the FCC asked them to choose a different system . You're talking about the Sandvine stuff that was sending forged RST packets and the issue there was that the RST packets looked like they had come from the sender itself, which was essentially kind of a classic " Man In The Middle" attack . A kind of a fraudulent thing.

-------------

Dudley: â¦because of consumers that are using amounts like this, what we're seeing is a need for network expansion. â¦We figure⦠the top 25% of users use 100 times more network bandwidth than the bottom 25%.

NPD: Well that's just standard bell curves.

Dudley: Iâ(TM)m sorry?

NPD: Well, when you put any system on a graph like that⦠because of the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle or whatever it's called, when you put something on the bell curve, of course the top 25 are going to use the most bandwidth because they're the top 25â¦.

Previously, I wrote on how bandwidth caps have a chilling effect on Internet participatory culture.

You've probably seen this before but this helps a lot:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r17679150-Howto-make-ActionTec-MI424WR-a-network-bridge

You can use a $50 Linksys WRT-G series router with hacked firmware that will do anything and everything you want it to.

Every time I see a story mentioning Steam, I'm reminded how my Verizon-provided Actiontec router can't handle the Steam server browser. My only option appears to be to replace the provided router with my own.

I haven't tried fighting with Verizon about how their router sucks. I guess I have the feeling they're not going to do anything about it no matter what I do.

That said, they are still better than Comcast :-/

This is the problem with SMS messages. they are overpriced drastically so people are looking for ways to subvert them.

Overpriced drastically?
SMS cost is $0 (dslreports.com)
Another informed slashdotter (gthing.net)

There's another article from a more reputable source (nytimes or something) that I don't have the time to dig up... but it says more of the same thing.

I ask you this:
Considering a single SMS is limited to 128 bytes and has been discussed as trivial to send, even by the cellular companies, why do I still have to pay $15 for the privilege of unlimited SMS? How is it that these companies can charge $0.10 to $0.20 per message for something that costs them nothing?

Closest analogy that comes to mind is the MAFIAA. The cost of production en masse is trivial compared to the price being charged for the production. Only difference is the MAFIAA invested millions/billions into the production and therefore need to recoup cost, while most texts are little more than brain garbage.

So they apparently lied to congress:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ISPs-Try-To-Prevent-New-Opt-In-Only-Privacy-Law-97991

Verizon statement before Congress:

Verizon believes that before a company captures certain Internet-usage data for targeted or customized advertising purposes, it should obtain meaningful, affirmative consent from consumers." To get that meaningful consent, Tauke said, requires a) explaining to consumers exactly what kind of data are being collected and for what; b) treating a failure to consent as meaning no collection of data for "online behavioral marketing"; and c) consumers' ability to easily opt out if they initially agree but change their minds.

I shocked. Shocked! I tell you...

"Verizon's 2008 operating margin was 17.34%, their return on average equity was 13.93%, neither are particularly stellar or out of line."

Thats wonderful.......errr...how much is their CEO paid? Looking at that I would have to say that the executives of the company are screwing shareholders badly. It is from 2007 of course, but do you really think much has changed?

Your last move was actually around the time they started ramping up fiber installations in my area. I haven't really kept up with it nationwide, but here in the suberbs north of Dallas, Verizon began rolling out their fiber to the premises service (FiOS) a bit over three years ago. I think they're pretty much done now. When I moved in to my house in May of 2006, 15 mbps down / 2 mbps up was available for $45 a month, and 30 / 5 service could be had if I really wanted it. They've now bumped that up to 20 mbps down. I forget what the new premium speed is, but I want to say 50 mbps.

There's really not much to it. There's a fiber line running from the alley where the main line is all the way to my garage, where's it converted to a plain old Cat-5 Ethernet run to my router. They installed it for free with a 1 year contract, and even threw in a cheap wireless router.

You might find this interesting: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios. It's a Google map with all the spots Verizon has FiOS installed at pinned. AT&T's equivalent product is called U-Verse. Here's a map for them too: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/uverse.

Hope that helps!

Your last move was actually around the time they started ramping up fiber installations in my area. I haven't really kept up with it nationwide, but here in the suberbs north of Dallas, Verizon began rolling out their fiber to the premises service (FiOS) a bit over three years ago. I think they're pretty much done now. When I moved in to my house in May of 2006, 15 mbps down / 2 mbps up was available for $45 a month, and 30 / 5 service could be had if I really wanted it. They've now bumped that up to 20 mbps down. I forget what the new premium speed is, but I want to say 50 mbps.

There's really not much to it. There's a fiber line running from the alley where the main line is all the way to my garage, where's it converted to a plain old Cat-5 Ethernet run to my router. They installed it for free with a 1 year contract, and even threw in a cheap wireless router.

You might find this interesting: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios. It's a Google map with all the spots Verizon has FiOS installed at pinned. AT&T's equivalent product is called U-Verse. Here's a map for them too: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/uverse.

Hope that helps!

I am certain this will work!

Here's an example of one I came across recently: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21704795-Browser-Redirect-to-7770-interesting

Also at the time I'm writing this, there are at least three PDF droppers listed here: http://www.techzoom.net/security-radar/latest-virus.en

Generally tracking things back to the original infection vector is fairly straight forward if it happened recently - there's usually cruft all over the system that wasn't there prior to the infection, and log file entries or application crash memory dumps correlate to the time things started getting hinkie. Often it's as easy as loading up the browser history in IEHV and seeing what the user did (google search for some topic, the 3rd URL down points to http://ssladjfkfj.fjdskjff.cn/ and if you're quick enough and the site is still up you can usually grab a copy to see exactly what the page is doing.)

Acrobat Reader that hasn't been upgraded to 8.1.3 (I'm not sure if there are patches for 7) is vulnerable. There are lots of PCs out there with an older version of Acrobat, especially since many people disabled the update notifications after getting sick of being prompted to install Photoshop Elements (or whatever else Adobe was pimping) over and over.

I think my Comcast broadband is symmetrical. It usually tests at 15Mbps both up and down these days, even though my connection is shared with 5-7 other heavy Internet users. That's as fast as the flash based tester is rated to test.

I'm ashamed to admit it here in front of my fellow slashdotters but even though the Java based tester gives more reliable results above 15Mbps, I just don't care. The day I need more bandwidth above this it's time for Internet Rehab.

The most logical structure for telecom networks is to have the government own the physical infrastructure (which is a natural monopoly) and then allow any private company that wants to to provide services (Internet, television, phone, whatever) over that infrastructure.

This is what a group of communities did in northeastern Utah. Governments there banded together to finance and build a Broadband Utopia. These communities built it then allowed whoever wanted to offer services it could deliver whether broadband access, cable tv, or phone service. If they wanted they could provide all three.

Of course the existing telecom companies have lots of lobbyists, give lots of money to both parties, and are quite happy with things just the way they are, so this is unlikely to ever happen.

Because of it Comcast was forced to reduce it's prices in the area.

Falcon

Viruses have been in warez before there was an internets. Good old self-attaching batch file trojans we put in (the 24 microfloppies of) Chuck Yeager's Air Combat back in the BBS days.

Viruses (et al) never crippled the BBS community, the sneaker-net community, the IRC community, or the torrent community. So a sucker now and then has to do a clean install... but pirates be hardy.

if you have a verified trustworthy hash code

You mean like a Tiger Tree Hash? Or apple can charge $99 bucks for code signing and walled pirate garden.

I'm being stung by a credit card fraud crime syndicate. I think they have a lot of credit card info - they supposedly get it from the source or close to source. They charge you innocuous ammounts like $2.95 put to maybe $12. I've been getting hit for $4.95, three times now - one from code-x and two from synergetics. You have to cancel your card to get off their fraudulent billings. Lookie here: http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/8703300621 and here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19620593-Ebook-websites-fraud-charges-DevbillDigitalAgePluto for more about this crime and more about who may be charging your card.

Similarly, there's the tweak section on Broadband Reports: http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

You can't test two different machines with different cases and compare the results, that's not how the scientific process works. Both machines need to be tested against the same cases - then and only then will you be able to appropriately tell if the software made a difference.

Anyhow, back on the subject, some of WinXP's default networking parameters are a bit conservative when it comes to high-bandwidth links that don't have LAN-like latency (particularly the TCP Receive Window/RWIN); a good but short description of this can be found at DSL Reports. So I wouldn't be absolutely shocked if once he corrects his methodology, he still gets similar results, although in general I find RWIN tweaking to be bollocks compared to the few people that swear it works. Vista and later OSs include self-adjusting network stacks that compensate for this and then some (Microsoft is rather proud of their sustained bandwidth over very high latency links), so I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

More proof that politicians pass laws to please their political donors and lobbyists, without understanding their implications. These infringement notices have been shown to be unreliable and easily spoofed.

http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080605-study-paints-grim-picture-of-automated-dmca-notice-accuracy.html
http://torrentfreak.com/study-reveals-reckless-anti-piracy-antics-080605/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/the-inexact-science-behind-dmca-takedown-notices/

So now any New Zealander can have their internet connection cut if anyone knows their IP address: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/95089

So today's Political Enemy of the Internet Award goes to New Zealand's Judith Tizard, who joins Australia's Stephen Conroy and Britains Andy Burnham. I could handle it when all politicians did was rort the system, but this is getting really annoying. I don't recall voting for any of this stuff, and I'll put them last on the ballot next time.

    It depends on what tank you put with it. :) I don't see a spec for the tank on either the Home Depot site, nor the Guardian site. It does indicate that it runs on LP or natural gas. I would guess the assumption is that you can use it with your local supply, assuming you're in an area that you can get gas.

    I have a neighbor a few miles away that has natural gas at his house. Now, I don't know if that's affected if the power to the area goes out.

    The indicated fuel consumption at full load is:

    Natural Gas - 139 cubic feet/hr
    LP - 68 cubic feet/hr (1.68 gal/hr)

    A 20 pound tank, like you'd use for your BBQ, is approximately 4.1 gallons, or about 2.4 hours.
    A 250 gallon tank would last you for about 6 days.
    A 500 gallon tank would last you for about 12 days.

    According to These reports you'll be paying about $3 to $4 per gallon. This will vary by your location, current market value, etc, etc. If you were to need to run a week on propane, because of ... well, whatever ... It will consume approximately 280 gallons of fuel, and cost you pretty close to $1,000.

    Now, if you fill the tank once, and only need a few hours here and there, then it's not a big deal. Just have it topped off every so often. How important is your power to you though? Can you get away without a computer, and camping around the fireplace? It's probably cheaper. :) The kids will make noise without the TV and PS3/Xbox360/GameThing(tm). Can you survive? Maybe they'll have to communicate. If they get too noisy, throw them out in the snow. They'll shut up just to be able to stay inside. :)

As obvious as your solution is, it simply does not work for many reasons, as the bloke in the link outlines.

What you'e comparing is not "internet speed", but the speed of two different versions of Firefox on two different operating systems. Look at the Firefox forums and you'll see lots of posts about settings and options that can drastically affect its operation -- e.g. recent anti-phishing features will try to check out a site before dispalying it. Even if you install both version at the same time, the Windows and Linux versions will inevitably operate differently and have different defaults. Could simply be caching or operation of a plugin. Who knows.

If you want to compare "Internet speed", check out some of the sites at DSL reports to get a quick indication of your connection's speed.

If you'd said "Firefox on Linux is 5X slower than on Windows", I might have raised my eyebrows, but not bothered to argue. But saying "Internet is 5x slower" is just wrong.

BBR has a good opinion piece too IMHO.

> Wasn't there a U.S. city that recently was sued by a telecom because they had the unmitigated gall to actually make plans to build their own fiber network for use by their residents, because that telecom didn't want to be bothered to build the infrastructure themselves?

There are many. Here's a few:

Utah's Utopia project vs. Qwest: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/99301 and http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/97502

Utah's iProvo deployment (which is weird because a company, Broadweave, bought the entire muni deployment): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94208

Powell, WY vs. Qwest and Bresnan Comm.: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94814

Monticello, MN vs. TDS Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/98320

Vermont vs. ...themselves: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94893

There's also the fibre ownership ordeal in Ottawa, but that's a little different (no lawsuits): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/96618

> Wasn't there a U.S. city that recently was sued by a telecom because they had the unmitigated gall to actually make plans to build their own fiber network for use by their residents, because that telecom didn't want to be bothered to build the infrastructure themselves?

There are many. Here's a few:

Utah's Utopia project vs. Qwest: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/99301 and http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/97502

Utah's iProvo deployment (which is weird because a company, Broadweave, bought the entire muni deployment): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94208

Powell, WY vs. Qwest and Bresnan Comm.: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94814

Monticello, MN vs. TDS Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/98320

Vermont vs. ...themselves: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94893

There's also the fibre ownership ordeal in Ottawa, but that's a little different (no lawsuits): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/96618

> Wasn't there a U.S. city that recently was sued by a telecom because they had the unmitigated gall to actually make plans to build their own fiber network for use by their residents, because that telecom didn't want to be bothered to build the infrastructure themselves?

There are many. Here's a few:

Utah's Utopia project vs. Qwest: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/99301 and http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/97502

Utah's iProvo deployment (which is weird because a company, Broadweave, bought the entire muni deployment): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94208

Powell, WY vs. Qwest and Bresnan Comm.: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94814

Monticello, MN vs. TDS Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/98320

Vermont vs. ...themselves: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94893

There's also the fibre ownership ordeal in Ottawa, but that's a little different (no lawsuits): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/96618

> Wasn't there a U.S. city that recently was sued by a telecom because they had the unmitigated gall to actually make plans to build their own fiber network for use by their residents, because that telecom didn't want to be bothered to build the infrastructure themselves?

There are many. Here's a few:

Utah's Utopia project vs. Qwest: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/99301 and http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/97502

Utah's iProvo deployment (which is weird because a company, Broadweave, bought the entire muni deployment): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94208

Powell, WY vs. Qwest and Bresnan Comm.: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94814

Monticello, MN vs. TDS Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/98320

Vermont vs. ...themselves: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94893

There's also the fibre ownership ordeal in Ottawa, but that's a little different (no lawsuits): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/96618

> Wasn't there a U.S. city that recently was sued by a telecom because they had the unmitigated gall to actually make plans to build their own fiber network for use by their residents, because that telecom didn't want to be bothered to build the infrastructure themselves?

There are many. Here's a few:

Utah's Utopia project vs. Qwest: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/99301 and http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/97502

Utah's iProvo deployment (which is weird because a company, Broadweave, bought the entire muni deployment): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94208

Powell, WY vs. Qwest and Bresnan Comm.: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94814

Monticello, MN vs. TDS Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/98320

Vermont vs. ...themselves: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94893

There's also the fibre ownership ordeal in Ottawa, but that's a little different (no lawsuits): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/96618

> Wasn't there a U.S. city that recently was sued by a telecom because they had the unmitigated gall to actually make plans to build their own fiber network for use by their residents, because that telecom didn't want to be bothered to build the infrastructure themselves?

There are many. Here's a few:

Utah's Utopia project vs. Qwest: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/99301 and http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/97502

Utah's iProvo deployment (which is weird because a company, Broadweave, bought the entire muni deployment): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94208

Powell, WY vs. Qwest and Bresnan Comm.: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94814

Monticello, MN vs. TDS Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/98320

Vermont vs. ...themselves: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94893

There's also the fibre ownership ordeal in Ottawa, but that's a little different (no lawsuits): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/96618

> Wasn't there a U.S. city that recently was sued by a telecom because they had the unmitigated gall to actually make plans to build their own fiber network for use by their residents, because that telecom didn't want to be bothered to build the infrastructure themselves?

There are many. Here's a few:

Utah's Utopia project vs. Qwest: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/99301 and http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/97502

Utah's iProvo deployment (which is weird because a company, Broadweave, bought the entire muni deployment): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94208

Powell, WY vs. Qwest and Bresnan Comm.: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94814

Monticello, MN vs. TDS Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/98320

Vermont vs. ...themselves: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94893

There's also the fibre ownership ordeal in Ottawa, but that's a little different (no lawsuits): http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/96618

You can download a smaller version here. It's a 176MB .MKV file.

I'm also on Bell for DSL and I'm currently torrenting it at 600KBps.

Thanks for the mkv. That's what I was looking for.

As for your download speed, I'm surprised and curious. I really generally only have a max of 30k/s, but that's for week day nights, otherwise, it is much slower! Take a look at this Bad ISPs wiki page for Canada, Bell is at 5+. Whatever that means, I failed to circumvent (for legal downloads of course) the throttling. There's bypass solutions but that has not worked for me...

I went with a local wireless broadband provider. I had to buy a directional antenna for my roof, but now I have 3MBps symmetric w/ latency comparable to a land line, $50/month, (6mbps/$80 iirc) and they're customer support is a pleasure to deal with, especially compared to comcast...

The whole think is based on motorola canopy, though newer technologies might be available elsewhere.

I found them here:

http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/localisp

In addition to TimeWarner, Earthlink offers cable modem service from Comcast and BrightHouse. I am currently using Earthlink powered by Comcast for my home internet service. As an added benefit to have the account, it comes with 20 hours / month of free dial-up access. For more info check out http://www.earthlink.net/access/cable.faces/ or http://www.dslreports.com/faq/ecable/

from http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21500602- :

Re: Is this a good thing for the net?

Yawn, here comes the typical argument... bandwidth is bandwidth, either way you look at it. All p2p does is open several simultaneous connections, splitting the user's bandwidth. Unless you horribly misconfigured your client to open up, say, 1000 ports.

It's not as if the user is using any more bandwidth than if they were conducting a regular http download. P2P actually is better for a network, as (given enough peers) it completes downloads significantly faster than normal centralized server methods, thus getting heavy users off the network noticeably faster (obviously, unless the user is dumb enough to allocate their entire upstream bandwidth to seeding).

As to bypassing the "TCP congestion control" you speak of, do you think Bell's solution is ANY better? The throttling of particular packets by itself violates the principles of TCP. Not only that, it also throttles/cripples MANY legitimate applications, such as secure VPN's or other encrypted connections.

Do you REALLY want that as an alternative to this so-called "problem" of p2p? I've said over an over, the ideal solution is to gracefully scale back speed for ANY upload/download if the said user is using their full bandwidth for more than 20 minutes during peak hours. This actually solves the problem, unlike throttling schemes like bell's, which render many legitimate applications useless. Let's face it, even Comcast here in the states has been forced to take a long hard look at their policy on Sandvine. Soon enough, we can only hope Bell will as well...

Do I even support the above solution? By itself, absolutely NOT!! IMHO, the ideal solution is to upgrade the core and its routers. However, that takes time and capital that companies like Bell are rather unwilling to spend; they'd rather (ab)use their position in the limited Canadian ISP market to deploy band-aid solutions like throttling p2p.

Really, you think "wireless broadband" will be the savior? It's got more problems than wired (latency issues, distortion/signal strength issues, materials penetration issues, interference issues).

And if that weren't enough, if anything "Wireless Broadband" is already MORE restricted than wired (DSL/Cable/FiOS) offerings. For example, both Verizon and AT&T cap you at FIVE GB. Your own example (Wi-Max) sneakily enters into underlying "service provider" agreements to pull the same stunts.

Again: a FIVE GB cap, even when advertising their service as "unlimited." Use anything over that, and they cut your account instantly (while insisting, of course, that if you want to get out you have to pay them severance charges).

"Wireless broadband" is not your savior.

As a HAM, I have met a few who have nifty gear able to tune into cell phones and their 'pings' or tower replies (from post-911 US cellphones) and a few of them have told me that there seems to be more than just pinging or tickling the towers going on. More than is needed to keep up the TX/RX channels open or for simply switching towers based on cell tower capacity and range to the handset.
Others hinted that the removal of the battery does not fully prevent (post-911 US cellphones) from receiving radio frequency energy and replying uniquely (just like RFID tags do but cell phones have Much better antennas).
Links that touch some on this topic:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=8068
http://jya.com/cell-track.htm
http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/37748res20081112.html
http://allgpstracking.net/gpstracking/index.php/gpstracking/2006/03/12/how_gps_works_gps_tracking
http://ezinearticles.com/?Cell-Phone-Location-Tracking-Information&id=782355
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21442821-Cell-phone-location-tracking-without-telcos-help
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081116-foia-docs-show-feds-can-lojack-mobiles-without-telco-help.html
http://www.danbrown.com/secrets/digital_fortress/cell_phones.html
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3945496.ece
Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but because RFID tags cost only a few cents each, why would similar capability NOT be incorporated into the chips of modern cell phones. Tear down an RFID tag, it is just a very very small semiconductor chip paired to a set of antennas between layers of opaque plastic tape an a sticker backing.
(NOTE: In college, we had fun by carefully removing discovered RFID tags and 'repatriating' them onto different and unrelated merchandise at our local Wal-Mart Supercenter... good times..... not to be confused with the old tried and true bi-metallic strips that loss control departments use which set off the door antenna loops that we all walk through. But sticking one of those to your buddy's jacket made for a good laugh...)

that depends on which European country you're talking about.

and it's not just an issue of advertised speed. it's an issue of quality of service--bandwidth caps, overselling, traffic throttling/shaping, packet monitoring & other usage restrictions. and all of these ultimately tie to _value_, which is what we need to compare.

we don't need to be faster than everyone else or as fast as Japan and Korea. that's not what i'm arguing. but we shouldn't be paying more for less. Japan is far and ahead of the U.S. because their government has focused on developing this vital infrastructure through government subsidies and technology initiative. in the U.S., we tax payers are still subsidizing the ISPs & telecoms but we're not getting anything out of it because our government cares only about business interests.

even BusinessWeek puts us at #16 out 46 surveyed countries. even countries like Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovenia are doing better than U.S. in terms of broadband quality. but more importantly, if we are to be a technology leader, or just continue to be relevant in the information age, we need more competitive broadband pricing. the current business model used by U.S. ISPs is basically preventing our broadband infrastructure from being upgraded in step with growing demand.

the blind greed of corporations is not driving technology forward. it's ever-growing consumer demand that is usually the driving force behind technological progress. but now ISPs are trying to suppress that demand by villanizing power users and manipulating internet usage. not only that, but the lack of industry regulation means ISPs can abuse their monopoly to artificially inflate broadband prices, thereby further manipulating bandwidth usage/demand economically.

Insight Communications in Indiana and Kentucky have been doing this for a while now.

At least yours is planned. Colorado isn't even under consideration. Gotta be east or west coast, apparently. We hicks in the middle of the country apparently ain't good enough for it.

Looks like Manhattan isn't well covered. I know my apartment complex down in the NOHO/SOHO region isn't covered yet.

According to:
http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios

It seems as if brooklyn and queens are better covered.

I believe a major part of the problem with Fios in bigger cities is the fiber itself. Last year, Corning announced development of a bendable fiber, which will help the installation in multi-family homes. Not having ever had any experience as a fiber installer, I don't know if this is BS or not, but it seems Verizon is now making plans to penetrate the bigger cities.

I would expect a simple shell script on a workstation or laptop should be able to assist with maintaining the ip list; or make a Linux virtual machine/put it on the cloud, and only ever run the VM while updating the list. It would be sensible to use a script and format the output so it can be pasted into the device to perform updates according to any DNS change.

It is fairly commonplace to have script-generated firewall configurations like this. Esp. when a single site has several firewalls (I.e. for backup internet links); it is beneficial, for example, for attacker blacklist bad ips to be synced, and often this would be done using a database at a management point.

It bears mentioning that Cisco871W ISRs and other similar models, if the proper features are licensed can do straight URL blocking, though configuration may be challenging. URL filtering on those devices is meant to be provided by a third-party vendor, however there is reportedly a way to allow some URLs and default-deny everything else.

(You manually enter exclusive allowed domains, configure no filtering vendors, and turn off allow mode)

The 871W router+AP combos are approximately $400. This is not inexpensive, but is still a bit cheaper than buying and dedicating a full-blown server just to do filtering while also requiring a separate unit for the AP, especially when it comes to noise pollution and power consumption over time (and ongoing costs of electricity, UPS capacity (since all servers need an UPS or will potentially have a short life), and higher probability of PC failure anyways [mechanical disk drives fail predictably after a few years, _Especially_ when used for years in disk-intensive I/O-hungry apps like a squid cache]).

How unfortunate. Isn't t-mobile the smallest network in the US, with the least coverage, and no 3G/high-speed data whatsoever?

It was bad enough when Apple locked the iphone to AT&T, but at least they have some 3G and good coverage (after acquiring Cingular.) But t-mobile? That's not going to be good for business :(

T-Mobile works off of Sprint.

Which does have 3-G and was the first large service provider to offer it.

Uh WRONG, T-Mobile is a GSM provider like AT&T/Cingular is. They have roaming agreements with AT&T, and therefore have similar coverage. They're way behind on the 3G, but they've begun to roll it out to markets.

Verizon, Sprint and Alltel OTOH are CDMA, you could say Cricket "works off Sprint", as they are also CDMA.

I don't know, but several large isp's have beeen trying to convince their customers that slowing their data will speed up the internet for everyone. However, the customers don't seem to agree.

"It looks like we're moving forward with the trial next month regardless of how I or any of my co-workers feel about it," says an employee at one ISP. "I've pretty much accepted that at this point, so it's not likely anything I'll walk out over."

I was amused to hear the employee is going to ensure they aren't tracked.

"We have two upstream links to the Internet and the NebuAd spybox will only be hooked up to one of them, so I know at least for my home connection I'll be setting a static route to use the non-poisoned link," they say. "I don't want to go anywhere near it." How's that for a candid vote of confidence?

From here.

A Google search revealed this way to test specific DNS servers from the command line (in case you're using a DNS server other than the one that's authoritative for the netblock you're in):

Good:
$ dig +short @208.67.222.222 porttest.dns-oarc.net txt
z.y.x.w.v.u.t.s.r.q.p.o.n.m.l.k.j.i.h.g.f.e.d.c.b.a.pt.dns-oarc.net.
"208.67.222.222 is GOOD: 26 queries in 0.1 seconds from 26 ports with std dev 17746.18

Poor:
$ dig +short @206.13.28.12 porttest.dns-oarc.net txt
z.y.x.w.v.u.t.s.r.q.p.o.n.m.l.k.j.i.h.g.f.e.d.c.b.a.pt.dns-oarc.net.
"206.13.28.13 is POOR: 26 queries in 0.2 seconds from 1 ports with std dev 0.00"

More discussion on this method here:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20759262-CERT-VU800113-DNS-Cache-Poisoning-Issue~start=20

Windstream started this kind of crap earlier this year. I instantly installed my own DNS server. Shortly after that, I learned that Windstream has alternate clean DNS servers.

166.102.165.32
207.91.5.32
From: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19794173-Windstream-DNS-Servers-With-and-Without-Ads

I noticed this yesterday and asked about it a DSL Reports and got some interesting replies like this one:
"I've recently noticed this as well. I use rogers DNS as a secondary dns and 4.2.2.1 as my primary. Either way 30 seconds after seeing this I got annoyed and in firefox 3 typed in...
"about:config" in the address bar, accepted the "This will void warranty" message and proceeded to type in "browser.search.search" into the filter bar
you should see "browser.search.searchEnginesURL" come up after typing it, all i did was replaced the default value to "www.google.com" and instantly every time i type something in it will goto google instead wooo!!!"
read more at - http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20813296