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100mbps Fiber Service To Your Door

BitHive writes "With all the talk on /. about the last mile, it looks like people in Mason County, WA may get what I've wanted for years--a 100mbps fiber connection straight to their home. The ISP, DONOBi claims the personal account is 'unlimited,' but since they don't allow servers, and have a business account which is capped at 5Gb/month ($3/Gb addtl), I think we can guess at what their idea of 'unlimited' is. Their service offerings can be found here. Is anyone on this service or knows something they can report?"

18 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. $100 monthly point-to-point by davinciII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since I doubt the actual internet connection speed will be 100mbps, this seems like an amazing option for businesses with multiple locations in the city.

    Imagine a 100MBit connection between your offices for only $100 a month?

    1. Re:$100 monthly point-to-point by vasqzr · · Score: 3, Insightful


      Did you see the 5GB cap?

      We suck 10GB a month down our cable modem, I'd hate to see what we do between offices.

      Can this new service carry voice+data?

    2. Re:$100 monthly point-to-point by MoonBuggy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The article doesn't make this very clear IMO - the personal account is unlimited bandwidth but not for server use. The business account has unlimited uses (web servers, internet radio, etc.) but limited bandwidth (5GB/Month + $3 per GB thereafter).

      As the parent post said, after paying for the extra $3 per gig it's still a very reasonable price for 100Mbit fiber and you CAN run a server on the paid bandwidth package.

    3. Re:$100 monthly point-to-point by Idaho · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Obviously people shouldn't be allowed to really use that 100 MBit constantly (it's just the top speed, not the avg. throughput).

      But...a 5 GB cap? We sometimes download that within a day using our slow 512/64 cable modem! Not all the time, ofcourse, but I think 500 MB - 1 GB on average a day (sharing the connection with a few people) is not extreme...is it?

      Imagine having 100 MBit and then getting a DDoS, or just installing some new Linux distro from FTP...at 100 MBit, you can reach that monthly 5 GB limit in just over 8 minutes!

      I think something like 100 GB/month would be a lot more reasonable (though still pretty much on the low side). 250 GB would be great...

      --
      Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
  2. Servers by nightsweat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    How many popular sites have servers that could handle the load from a decent sized community of 100Mbps?

    Not complaining, just pointing out that YMMV.

    --

    the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
    1. Re:Servers by Pxtl · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thats what I was thinking. Really, the best use of this technology would be a medium-low end private server.

      I am perpetually frustrated by the consumer ISP's industry's belief that all their little users must be good little consumers and not actually use their service for anything but browsing the web and e-mail. I find that most ISP's don't even have functioning DNS servers, which means that most IRC servers (and similar old systems) will reject you from logging on.

      What bothers me most is the "no servers" policy. I am paying for the bandwidth - why cant I use it as I choose. Also, what if I want to be more of a server then a user? Why can't I get a better system for uppipe and trade-off my download amount? All the standard gear (DSL, Cable) gets several megabits per second but peaks at 200kb/s. Why is it if I just want to run a medium-sized UT server I have to fork over for a "business" account? Your average leech will have about the same strain on their servers, and yet those of us who actually want to contribute to the internet have very few options as consumers, besides paying for corporate-level accounts that we dont want.

    2. Re:Servers by Shishak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "I am paying for the bandwidth - why cant I use it as I choose"

      You honestly think that $39.95/month 'pays' for a 100mbps Internet feed? The current going rate for el cheapo national ISPs is about $75/meg in 100 meg chunks so you are talking about $7500/month. Decent backbones (i.e. WCOM, Sprint, ATT ...) charge $200+/meg/month.

      This cost per meg doesn't even cover the loop to get the bandwidth to the ISP router. Forget about the cost of delivering the 100 meg to your house. Now assuming your ISP buys the cheap stuff ($75/meg) and is selling you 100 megs for $39.95/month they are overcommitting about 200:1. If you did use your full bandwidth you would piss off 199 other customers. At 200:1 they STILL aren't making a profit.

      If you actually paid for what you used I'm sure the providers would have no problem allowing you to use it.

      Get real people, the Internet is EXPENSIVE to operate and maintain. throw all the spammers in jail and the price would drop some I'm sure.

      --
      Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
    3. Re:Servers by Algan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You know what? I would gladly pay $100 for a decent, reliable 1 meg up/down connection that won't restrict my usage in any way... problem is I don't know where to get it.

      --
      If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
    4. Re:Servers by Shagg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "I am paying for the bandwidth - why cant I use it as I choose"

      You honestly think that $39.95/month 'pays' for a 100mbps Internet feed? The current going rate for el cheapo national ISPs is about $75/meg in 100 meg chunks so you are talking about $7500/month. Decent backbones (i.e. WCOM, Sprint, ATT ...) charge $200+/meg/month.

      This cost per meg doesn't even cover the loop to get the bandwidth to the ISP router. Forget about the cost of delivering the 100 meg to your house. Now assuming your ISP buys the cheap stuff ($75/meg) and is selling you 100 megs for $39.95/month they are overcommitting about 200:1. If you did use your full bandwidth you would piss off 199 other customers. At 200:1 they STILL aren't making a profit.


      All of the above is absolutely true, but it has nothing to do with not allowing users to run their own servers. If a user is hogging a significant amount of bandwidth and causing degredations in service to others, then I agree that the ISP should charge them more or cap their usage. But again, that has nothing to do with running servers. You can just as easily hog the bandwidth downloading data as you can serving data.

      What you decide to do with your share of the bandwidth feed should be entirely up to you. Do they really believe that running your own secure mail server with 5 email addresses, or running a web server so that Grandma can see pictures of her grandkids online, is going to use more bandwidth than users who download ISOs and/or porn all day long? The policy and reasons for that policy as stated make no sense.

      --
      Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
    5. Re:Servers by andrew_0812 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Exactly. My cable access which just 2 months ago was consistantly 1.4 - 2.0 MB is now running about 600KB because of people sitting at home running Kazaa all day long. Why should the ISP happily allow that, but I risk loosing my only source of broadband access if I decide to have a FTP server so that I might access my home network from work? How much traffic will that cause? Gimme a break.

  3. First (?) by neuro.slug · · Score: 4, Insightful

    5Gb per month? If they really are talking about gigabits and not gigabytes, then that is somewhat ridiculous. Oh boy, I can download one CD image (of a piece of software I already have, of course) per month. What a great service. --n

    1. Re:First (?) by IAR80 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even if this are Gigabytes it is still very litlle! Actually on a true 100Mbps connection you can teoretically dowload 5GB in less than 7 minutes.

      --
      http://ebgp.net/ccc/
  4. Now, wait a second. by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure, they also offer a business account that has limited bandwidth and allows servers, but that account costs the same amount as the personal account.

    So, I think they're being trustworthy. They're just saying, if you want to run servers, you have to pay for bandwidth. If you want to download pr0n, gobble away. It's a stupid model, but it doesn't seem duplicitous.

    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  5. Not cheap until.... by SirLantos · · Score: 2, Insightful

    High speed internet access will not truly be cheap until it is considered a utility instead of a commodity. Until then, people will be making wads of cash selling it to people, and that is the way it should be. Once it turns into a utility, you will see a lot more gov control over it.

    So, you have to ask yourself: Would you rather have cheap Internet service or an uncontrolled Internet?

    Something we all have to learn is that you cannot eat your cake and have it too.

    Thats just my humble opinion,
    SirLantos

    --
    The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
  6. Fraud? by NineNine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Call me nuts, but isn't advertising something as "unlimited" when it's not, generally considered fraud? I don't care if it's really x amount of bandwidth + no servers, blah, blah, blah, but the company can't really advertise "unlimited" if it's not. A real "unlimited" pipe to the Net at xxGig/S is called a T-1, or greater. Those are generally $1500/month.

  7. Five gigs a MONTH? Are they insane? by CrystalFalcon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I usually leech on the order of fifteen to twenty gigs a DAY. These guys have not done their homework on how the customer uses the product...

    ...either that, or they are trying to present a politically correct image of how the product will be used, in case they will go the way of the other dot-bombs. In any case, they have shown to be pulling numbers out of thin air. My guess is that the executives' secretaries print their e-mail for them.

  8. Actually... by unicorn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The point to point makes no mention of bandwidth caps anyhow. So I would assume that it's unlimited as well.

    --
    "Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
  9. Re:Well... by kesuki · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The post office still is.
    Where else can you sent 4.7 GB of porn for the cost of a stamp? that's 37.6 Gbit per 37 cents. $3 for 1 gigabit is not nearly as cost effective. Over 300 times more expensive than the post office, True, you can send a CD-rom in a minute with 100mbit/second and the post office has a latency issue of usually 2-3 days.
    I really wonder if broadband technology can ever get to a point where it's cheaper than post for sending porn/warez/etc...

    BTW, yes, you can send a DVD-r for the one ounce postage rate, as long as it complies with postal regulations when it's shipped. the weight of a single optical disk in a basic optical disc mailer is exactly one ounce, and complies with postal regulations. Of course it's not as well protetected, and could become fragmented or delaminated in shipping...

    I'm willing to bet they force any high bandwith users over to the capped limit, because really how do they prove that you are or aren't running a server? or what a server is? Isn't gnutella really based on a http server? does that mean you'll get switched over to capped bandwith if you go on gnutella and they detect a lot of http traffic?

    and the 5 gbit cap isn't very much at all.. that's only a single 650 MBbyte CD-rom. $18 a minute for internet access... 50 seconds a month provided and we call that cheap.. (it is 100mbit internet access afterall.)

    Now the point to point link deal is really good, because you just pay the flat $100 a month, no per bandwith charges, because you're running over a dedicated private link and the data isn't going over the internet.
    Speaking as an experienced cable mode user, 8 gb per month is nothing at all to utilize... that's without even trying. and under a restrictive under 1 megabit downstream cap.
    At $112 per DVD I don't think the fact that you can get one in under 7 minutes makes up for it.
    hmm... 37 cents? or $112? nope, the post office STILL wins hands down.