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3 Megabit Cable Modems, Anyone?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the quicker-than-the-passage-of-recess dept.

joelav22 writes: "I've got to move to San Francisco! RCN has upgraded current customers to 3 megabits of bandwith for no extra charge. In the days of all the bandwith chopping and caps, this is definitely a welcome trend. I hope ATT and Comcast can take a hint."

18 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Caching by SpatchMonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can probably get away with things like that if you use transparent proxies to do web page caching, and so on. Or traffic shaping to make individual connections a little slower.

    Call me suspicious, but I bet they have all sorts of tricks to keep the actual usage past their network down.

    1. Re:Caching by SpatchMonkey · · Score: 3, Informative

      My local cable company does transparent proxying with common www and ftp ports. It seems to work ok, but it's misleading to always get a connection even when there is no server on the remote host.

      And when their caching servers are down, I can't access any webpage at all (in which case it's time to use an external proxy server)

  2. upload speed? by gabriel_aristos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I noticed that no mention was made of upload speeds. How much do you want to bet they're capped at 128Kbps...

    --
    Torg, come out of the spaceship. Nothing can stop Torg.
    1. Re:upload speed? by turnstyle · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Amen. There's never any mention of upstream. People don't seem to appreciate the value of outbound communication, and no doubt the cable companies would prefer to see their customers remain exclusively consumers.

      I take this personally because I make software, Andromeda, that builds streaming web sites from collections of MP3s. Some folks run it on a server at home (PHP or ASP) so that they can play their home collection while at work (or elsewhere).

      Capping upstream prevents people from fully enjoying the potential of the network.

      --
      Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
  3. Great news! And one little inaccuracy by forged · · Score: 5, Informative
    Favorite quote:
    • While other broadband providers are limiting their download speeds or cracking down on so-called bandwidth hogs, we've been working to give our customers even faster speeds at a terrific value.

    Way to go, RCN! And take this, ATT, Comcast ;)

    The inaccuracy was free of charge. It's only free for customers paying the Gold and Platinum ResiLink packages. For all other bundles, there is a price increase between $10 to $25 for the 3Mbits service.

  4. Common Misconception? by captainclever · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Quoting the story from yahoo:
    "RCN Corporation (Nasdaq: RCNC - News) announced the launch of a new "super-charged" high-speed Internet service in its San Francisco and Los Angeles markets. Known as MegaModem(SM), it enables RCN's California customers to access the Internet at download speeds of up to 3 megabytes per second (Mbps), double the company's standard downstream speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps, and up to twice as fast as competing cable modem and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services. "

    Shouldn't that be "3 Megabits per second" not megabytes?? 3Mbps (megabits-per-second) equates to theoretical maximum of 384 Kilobytes a second download, not 3 megabytes..doesn't it? :-)

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    1. Re:Common Misconception? by funwithstuff · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, you're right. The fun part of this one is that it's the company's mistake in a PR release. They've just promised bandwidth of eight times what they can deliver. Sign up, then sue.

      Glad someone's fallen foul of that bits/bytes marketingspeak that's been allowing bad companies to quote large impressive numbers for years.

      --
      it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
    2. Re:Common Misconception? by Nick+Number · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, you're right. The fun part of this one is that it's the company's mistake in a PR release. They've just promised bandwidth of eight times what they can deliver. Sign up, then sue.

      The disclaimer at the end of the release will probably cover them though.

      Some of the statements made by RCN in this press release are forward- looking in nature. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors. RCN believes that the primary factors include, but are not limited to[...]technological developments and changes in the industry

      I used to temp at one of the two big newswire services. Every single release has one of these at the end, and they are darn tedious to type out.

      --
      Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
  5. Look like a good deal by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But it leaves you with a tough choice:

    1. Use it responsibly to get faster downloads of the data that you actually want.
    2. Get your snout in the trough and suck down everything you can before they admit that it's unsustainable and cut it, cap it, or start charging sensible money for it.

    Incidentally, I'm in the first category, but I'm beginning to feel like I've been pretty stupid. Sure, I understand that "all you can eat" is just marketing blurb, and that the fees charged for retail flat rate services don't cover the ISP costs of using them to their full capacity. But why would the majority of customers understand or accept that? They're sold as always on, flat rate, all you can eat. A typical user (i.e. Joe Windows) would expect to be able to use them as such, which is why all of these schemes are doomed from the get go, and are just short term marketing schemes to attract customers (1. Burn money to attract customers away from other company's profitable schemes, 2. ..., 3. Profit!).

    And so I'm inclined to say go for it, and leech like you've never leeched before. I know that's unsustainable, but the first sin is being committed by ISP's allowing their marketing droids to sell services as being all-you-can-eat, when that's just not true. Perhaps when they offer services based on an actual sustainable model them then we could consider supporting them. But as long as they're selling services that we know aren't going to work, purely to attract customers in the short term, then there's little point in being the only guy on the block trying to play by the spirit of the rules, because the letter of rules are going to change in the mid term anyway.

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  6. RCN Rules! by linuxlover · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have RCN at home (zip : 94401, San Mateo, CA - aka San Francisco Bay area). They give me the combo package with phone + cable TV + broadband.

    The most impressed part gotta be their broadband. here are some stats
    - mozilla dowload speed : 324 kB/s ( ~= 2.5 Mbps!!)
    - people dowload from me on Limewire around 120 KB/s ( ~= 1Mbps)

    Now that is just leaps better compared to any DSL or cable here. Eat that AT & Pacbell :-)

    My new found obsession is Furthur (furthernet.com). And right now people are downloading from me @ 50KB/s. A buddy of mine is also on Furthur, but his upstream is capped at 15KB/s (~= 128 kbps). I told him about RCN and he is *seriously* thinking about moving to a place where he can get RCN :-)

    So people, please, if you are San Francisco Bay area give these guys a try. I have nothing but good things to say about RCN.

    IF you need further info see my website or drop me an email. /LinuxLover

  7. This situation seems a bit familiar by Sheetrock · · Score: 3, Funny

    Kind of like Prisoners' Dilemma, except that in the end you know no matter what happens the cable company is going to jack up the rates. So yeah, just wget the Internet now and check it out from your hard drives later when the rates go up.

    --

    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




  8. BBB in Sweden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you already going to move, why not move to Sweden? :-) I've been using (among 50000 other households) Bredbandsbolaget for 2 years now. True 10Mbit transfer both upload and download. For this great service I pay just 225 SKR/month (approx. US$25). And _no_; I'm not resident of a Campus or something like that. Cable modems are just dull and slow.. ;-)

    1. Re:BBB in Sweden by DiscoBiscuit · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I have a friend in Sweden with this sort of connection. His apartment block shares 10Mbit and it would appear that he is the only person using it. His connection goes from his apartment down into the basement where its plugged into a switch. The switch has a 10Mbit fibre transceiver and a fibre cable which dissapears off to the telco through a pipe.

      His ISP is also quite happy to give as many IPs as he wants on his subnet. Add a new machine, and its DHCP just allocates you another address.

      I remember when he first told me he had broadband, and I said, "What type" and he said "Ethernet" and I said "No, which type of broadband have you got - not what your internal network is" (thinking he was being dumb), and he said "No, really, its 10Mb ethernet!"

  9. Nice... yet sad! by kir · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's really nice to hear that bandwidth in the USA is increasing... at least in San Fran.

    It's SAD that I'm writing this from Tokorozawa, Japan via my 8Mb ADSL (3500yen/month ~= $30) that I've had for 6 months (My modem currently says 6.2Mb down, .842Mb up - I don't negotiate at max, but I'll take it)!!! SAD! I guess that article the other day was right - Japan really DOES get all the cool stuff first...

    WAY FIRST! My sister-in-law, who lives about 10 minutes from me, can't get ADSL due to fiber in the middle. That's OK. She can get 2Mb Cable (again, about $30/month) or 100Mb FIBER ($90/month)! FIBER I SAY!

    --
    3cx.org - A truly bad website.
  10. Not all Cable Modem Providers are currupt by peterdaly · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have a RoadRunner, through Time Warner, and have been very happy with the speed and reliability of the service. Each "area" operates very independantly, so service and "culture" is not the same at all TWC offices.

    I have previously talked with head of the technical team for the local division on a professional level, and his comments were quite interesting. For instance, the no NAT clause in the contract. They know people have more than one machine behind an IP, but really don't care. They won't do anything about he user unless they suspect bandwidth reselling. The no NAT clause makes it easier for them to drop the user since manytimes it is hard to prove the reselling end of things. Our local time warner office has their own (at the time a talked to him this was the big game) Quake II server. They are very gamer friendly, and realize that is why many of their customers want the service.

    I know people here love to bash cable modem providers, but up until now I have absolutely no complaints against mine. I take the back, the retards can't get tv/internet on one bill, I get two bills from them at different times of the month, with different due dates. That sucks.

    Anyway, not all providers are bad.

    -Pete

    --
    Soccer Goal Plans
  11. What you meant to say by NiftyNews · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I hope ATT and Comcast can take a hint."

    I think you meant "I hope ATT and Comcast can take a check," because you aren't getting anything for free from those two price-gouging bastards...

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  12. That's good news, but ... by dzym · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the NY/NJ/CT tri-state area, we have Optimum Online, a service from which I've often obtained speeds up to 7, 8 Mbits/s.

    The upload speed isn't too shabby either, I've sustained uploads at around 1.5 to 2 Mbits/s for periods of more than 1 hour at a time, according to my MRTG graph.

  13. I've had 3 megabit for quite some time by toast- · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here in the Toronto area, I'm able to download at a total speed of about 300kbytes/second if i want to.. (Of course, the site must be fast enough to feed that much data). I haven't given it a full stress test, but two transfers at 175k/sec at the same time is definately more than 3 megabits/second on the downstream.

    This is the Rogers "Hi Speed" service in Toronto. We were formerly with @home, but since the breakup Rogers has put in place their own infrastructure.

    I do get single transfers of 300k/sec+ the odd time..