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50Mbps Cable Launched on Long Island
the-dark-kangaroo writes "Cable Vision have teamed up with Narad Networks to provide a new 50Mbps broadband service in the New York metropolitan area. The current deployment has a capability of 100Mbps (the connections are symmetric) with future developments allowing up to 10Gbps connections. The system utilises current cabling systems allowing enterprise level connections to homes and businesses."
OptimumOnline caps their customer's upload throughput at 150kbit/s for uploading "too much". They don't even tell you what "too much" is. Their normal caps are rather generous at 10mbit/1mbit, but what's the point if you can't actually use it?
Lets hope they do St. Louis next!
(hint: I live there)
especially the part about the symetric connections. I'd be happy to get 5M upload at the moment.
...I gotta say, 50Mbps broadband would be enough to entice me to return. I'd like to run a Freenet node, but only if I had big bandwidth upstream. 50Mbps is _big_ bandwidth, and it's symmetrical.
With all the fear and loathing over p2p, I'm surprised to see that they're allowing high-speed symmetrical connections like this. I was fully expecting 50Mbps down/16Kbps up, or something similarly retarded.
And what does this do to hosting providers like serverbeach? That 50Mbps is going to be unmetered, right? So the game server, your new pay-per-view pr0n site, and the blog all get hosted at home on the Mac Mini. Wow.
And no, it's not flamebait about Long Island. People who live there know what I'm talking about. It's the traffic. You have to drive to get anywhere and even a simple trip to the grocery store and back can make you go insane. To say nothing of commuting. And if you're actually commuting to Manhattan and back, I only have two words for you: hard drugs.
it's Cablevision not Cable Vision.
/ http://suffocate.us
/ http://johngrayson.com
Video on demand over ip, here we come.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Why is it that they always love to wax orgasmicaly about how fast their connections are but all these unlimited plans have caps of 10gb a month or so? How about you give your customers increased bandwith usage rather then hypothetical speed increases?
Is it protected from the rats and a bad power supplies? The industry spends billions of dollars building out the infrastructure but can't seem to protect from it from natural causes.
looks like fiber to the premesis is causing real competition... good to see cable companoes still know how to compete...
Get your torrents...
They never do these test market things in my neighborhood. Probably because its not high income enough.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
Lets face it, people using those huge connections are mostly downloading very large files for p2p networks. I know there are other uses, but I say generally. Now that the door have been opened for companies to held liable for the actions of users, its only a matter of time before ISP are killing your connection and turning you over to the RIAA or the like so they can save themselves a law suit. Disagree all you want. Hollywood WILL get their way. After that, whats the point of a insane fast connection....oh let me guess, for "research papers"? It's a sad time in america.
Never believe anything Cablevision writes or says, it'll be just smoke and mirrors. Had the "service" and anytime there was a hiccup, no connection, smtp service down, long delays in response, their "tech support" ws nowhere to be found. That is if you can actually get a live person to answer the "customer Service" or "Customer Support" phone lines. I wouldn't go back to cablevision service even if it was free for ever. Not worth the hassles. Ex cablevision customer from Brooklyn.
or are lots of addresses cheap?
Here in Sweden you can already get 100 mbit up/down without limitations or caps for around 45 USD ( www.bredband2.se ) in an assortment of locations, not only universities. It's even better in Japan and Korea I think.
So how do you write that sound that Homer Simpson makes when he sees a box of donuts? That's the sound I'm making right now...
That's just around the corner! Doesn't say if this will benefit current reseidential customers though.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Last time I had service with them, I had latency shoot up to above 1000ms two router hops ahead of me for about 7 hours a day. Absolutely useless service, would not advise anyone to fall for their marketing.
I am moving to Long Island. Screw Savannah, and the fireants, speaking of which, fireants and fireworks = murdering tons of fireants
SimonTek
that basically says "We don't find anything wrong with that content"...
except that they might think that it is the speech that "... they disagree with, or even find disgusting"
Paul B.
and one of the hookers won.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I was looking for the technical side, didn't look too hard, but I was kinda thinking the same thing. I was wondering if they'd hooked up with the MOCA guys as an early adopter until I remembered that it used existing cable...
Great. A giant city gets an even faster internet connection. Until I can get it in Kansas, I don't really give a shit.
And also, IIRC, those gigabit connections were available in Japan/Korea before in Sweden, don't have any link to use as confirmation though.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Seriously, before I could only have a player about a quarter the size of my monitor, if I tried to expand the size of the porn any more, it would not be clear. Her skin would not look smooth and soft. Now I can watch porn the way it was intended to be, in High Definition.
And before people start bashing me, anwser one question? How much money is made in porn on the web every year? How much money does Amazon make on the web? See... the web is there for porn, everything else is icing on the cake.
To the people of IRAN, if you censor your web, you will never get 100 megs a second. The moment you let people masturbate, the porn industry will come to Terahn and give you 100 megs a second!! But along with titles such as "Touched by Alah", you will have to let people have "Mr. Azerja, the goatfucker". Actually, I am sorry for that last joke. Please forgive me. I am going to burn in hell for that one.
What else is 100 megs a second good for? TV on demand? I wonder how the DirectTV and Dish will counter these fast speeds that cable has. What will DSL do? I hate supporting cable providers, because back when they were the only choice (for cable tv), they were the worst customer service pricks around-
Me: "Hi, I saw your advertisment for $29.95 instal with two months of HBO for half price with basic service"
Them: "Hey, hold on one second... *strange noise*... Okay, what did you want???
Me: "I'd like to order cable service, can you come out this Saturday?"
Them: "No way. Let me look... ahh, okay, we can come out in three weeks, the 13th."
Me: "Any way you can come sooner?"
Them: "No"
Me: "Okay I guess, what time can you be here?"
Them: "We will be there between the hours of 8am and 7pm."
Me: "WHAT??? I'd like to not wait all day"
Them: "Hold on, I have another call."
CLICK- call disconected.
Second Call
Me: "Hi, I was just disconnected"
Them: "Oh, yeah, what do you want again?"
Me: "I'd like to order service"
Them: *noise of chips crunching* "Yeah, fine, okay".
Me: "How do I order service"
Them: "Let me get to that screen. I am going to need to put you on hold again"
Me: "NOOOOOOO"
CLICK- call disconected
Third Call
Me: "You hung up on me again!"
Them: "No I didn't, I put you on hold"
Me: "Whatever, I want to order cable service"
Them: "Sure thing, we can get to you in four weeks, on the 20th"
Me: "You just told me three weeks, now it is four?"
Them: "Yeah, we had a mad dash of orders since I last talked to you"
The only good thing about the cable industry is they are so fucking currupted, it is easy to steal from them. I know people who had free HBO for 10 years just because they slipped the instal guy $20 bucks. Now that things are going digital, it does not work as well, because you need that box. And RTF Gold does not descrable all the pay-per-view stuff. But the one trick that is left, if you only want basic service and internet, is to order just the internet and then split the cable. You will get basic programming for free.
Having said that, I wonder what the sweet spot for broadband and tv service is, including stealing? Anyone have the gigantic dishes? Anyone know how to get all the premium stations and pay per view for free?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
My 1000BaseT (baseband) network around work is one hell of a lot faster than my broadband internet connection (ADSL). When will people get past the marketing concept that broadband means "faster"??
Tell me about it. After being driven crazy by my ISP for 4 years or so, I got the cheapest reliable connection in Poland that has a static IP (we're going to beta-test our game on my comp to cut costs).
$100 for 2Mbps down / 256 kbps up (yes, that's cheapest DSL that doesn't have monthly transfer limit of 35-or-so GB).
$110 installation, $100 monthly. And that's only because they offer a "promotion" since the begining of June (was much more). Plus it's a minimum 24 months deal.
You guys don't have a clue what less fortunate people (why oh why wasn't I born in a civilized country?) feel when they read your complaints about the level of service you're being provided with (and costs associated with it, especially when you take a look at average salary).
4 down and 256kup is officially for the dogs. I have a friend who just moved out there... I've already told her:
If you're in that area, expect a large delivery and monthly subsidy checks... Hell, after the first upgrade, expect to send me some housing info for that area... I don't care if I don't have a job even considered out there... I'll find one...
I read somewhere, but I can't find the story to back it up, that a large portion of Tokyo is wired with gigabit. That sort of thing works much easier in high-density populations where you have several hundred people living in one high-rise, so I can't expect to see that in the burbs any time soon... :(
I remember selling my Sega Genesis and a slew of game cart's for $100 towards a 14.4 kbps modem back when 28.8 was a distant rumor. I remember imagining text zipping by at 28800 baud and wondering why anyone who wasn't downloading warez would ever need a modem that fast.
I also remember thinking that the World Wide Web was just a passing fad.
If service providers can give enough consumers more bandwidth, content providers will give consumers more to download.
Slashdotting, duh!
U thought sites got shut quickly before...
The Dolan family, who controls CableVision, have just proposed a $7.9B leveraged buyout of the cable assets. To get the cash, they are planning on selling $4.25B in junk bonds. This would be the second largest junk bond offering in history, after the RJR ("Barbarians at the Gate") junk bond.
...and i was all proud about calling up verizon and getting them to upgrade me to 3Mpbs/768Kbps. I will always see more and more legitimate uses for such fatty pipes besides the evil bane of copyright infringement. Short-sightedness certainly does not help the cause for increasing bandwidth, but I am currently finding out that the most interested parties are archivists, not pirates. That is why I am so happy to see libraries as an ally in the realm of p2p. Personally, I want to be able to have instantaneous access to all my computers and data in all locations as if I were sitting right in front of them. Now we are reaching points to where you can easily access files no matter their displacement from you. Not only will I be able to control any computer from anywhere in real time, but I will also be able to setup my own personal data-on-demand network. This type of globalization sure is exciting to me.
http://www.sledgehammercomputers.com
you would do better getting 1 meg down and gaurenteed 384 kbps up than the 2 megs down and 256 up.
how many people can log into a 256 kbps up without causing everyone to crawl at a snails pace. once you get 20 people logged in at the same time, it will become so slow. you will have to disable graphics.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
You couldn't have 50Mbit down, 16Kbit up. You need enough upstream in order to send acknowledgement packets, not only on the TCP level but on the application level if so required (which often is.) With 16kBit, you might be able to reach 384Kbit downstream. MAYBE.
When my cable went to 4Mbit, they increased the upstream to 512Kbit. When I'm downloading at a full 4Mbit via http, I'm almost completely saturating the 512Kbit upstream. So they didn't increase my upstream because they were just feeling nice, they did it because they had to, so the downstream would scale upwards.
If it were really 50Mbit downstream, they'd need to give something like 8Mbit up, or at the very least 4. Unless, of course, it's just a marketing gimmick and they're using the lack of upstream to effectively cap the downstream where they want it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Just out of curiousity, but, is that USD?
I pay 50$ a month now for 1.5mbps/160kbps. No matter what, my upload is capped at 160kbps. There's nothing I can do to make that better. DSL is a joke around here; the wires are so pathetic you can barely make phone calls without line noise (and this is from a wide variety of houses, including brand new ones (well, one)). Up until two years ago, it was 70$ a month for 1.5mbps/128kbps (that was the best we could get then, too).
All in all, that sounds about right. However, I have NO idea how much 100$ USD actually gets you in Poland. For all I know, it could be the price of a Ferrari.
I'm in South London in the UK. Surely a good place? I've got 2Mb/s for 40 pounds/month
from www.bulldogdsl.com (Cable and Wireless)
I tried to upgrade from the best service they
offered when I ordered (2Mb) to the best service
in January (4Mb+ free calls) and was told there was no upgrade path!
Now the new customers get get 8Mb/s and
free local and national calls.
When I called to upgrade in April(!!) they said
they would make an exception and I can upgrade.
I just received the activiation date (4th July!).
I have the best/most expensive package and it takes 5 months in total to upgrade to the new
best package! No other local loop providers are
available in my area!
Wonderful...not!
Seriously though, as everybody has noted, there are tons of legal things to do with a fat pipe. Web-hosting is a hot one. Remote backups of my mom's computer. Audio streaming is still legal... at least I think it is. Remote desktop connections like VNC and Terminal Services. H264 multi-user video chat. Anybody who has to ask what to do with a fat pipe does not have the passion for networking that some of us do.
My biggest concern wouldn't be what to do with it, but what kind of latency comes with that fat pipe? I'd gladly trade that fat of a pipe for one a fraction of the size but has snappy response.
Instead of either a rate cap or a daily limit, why not simply charge per MB? A fraction of a cent, of course. You go away for a month -- you pay only a small sum, say $10 or something. You use P2P lots and you pay for it.
I wouldn't want to subsidise all the freeloaders maxing out their connections 24/7, I don't pay a flat monthly charge for my electricity, gas, water or phone (except for the minimum charges) so why should this be the case for data?
Someobdy has purchased shares of my new EyeSocket Cable Vision technology which allows you to plug ethernet into your face and see out of other people's switches, hubs!
You guys don't have a clue what less fortunate people (why oh why wasn't I born in a civilized country?) feel when they read your complaints about the level of service you're being provided with (and costs associated with it, especially when you take a look at average salary).
My service is more expensive for less speed than what you have. Not all the US gets such offers. There are rural areas that are no better off than you for service (though I will conceede the average salary point).
Learn to love Alaska
1. install ultraborad band. ....
2. sue the house owners for 1/10th price of their properties for movie/music sharing.
3.
4. profit!
ps: I wonder when there will be a league of protection of pron industry.
my 2c.
Well, I'm sure the Swedish government will be tracking you down to have a word with you, since it's YOUR post that will have been responsible for Slashdotting The Swedish Immigration Board's website now...
I have to admit, the idea of real LAN-speed broadband internet in my home is givin' me a nerd-on...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I'm moving to New York
In general, food and services are cheaper in developing countries, but anything related to technology is either more or a lot more expensive. Example: I'd say notebooks are 50% more expensive than in US. And keep in mind average salary is waaaaaay lower (I'd say it's about 500 USD right now... fresh university graduates are happy to get $300).
That's what you get when you elect politicians who'd rather invest in heavy industry and agriculture.
Cablevision isn't just doing this to be nice. Verizon is set to launch FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) in the area very shortly. In NJ they have been stringing fibers for the last few months.. I actually called them today and they told me I would be able to order fiber possibly as early as tomorrow. I'm currently an Optimum Online subscriber and am definitely going to be switching over ASAP.
;) Or is it okay for fiber not to work during power outages as it is Verizon who supplies it rather than some upstart VoIP business that doesn't have the lobbying power that incumbent telcos do...?) If you have a pair of binoculars you can check out your poles and look for the little Corning boxes.
Their pricing plan is pretty good:
Down/Up
Up to 5 Mbps/2 Mbps $39.95
Up to 15 Mbps/2 Mbps $49.95
Up to 30 Mbps/5 Mbps 199.95
The number direct to the FiOS center is: 908-474-9728
Verizon doesn't publicize it yet, but the people who answer do have access to a database telling them which switches are going live and when. Today when I called, I told asked if I was going to have service in my small town.. when he said no, I told him the local switch which served us (obtainable via Local Exchange Routing Guide). He acted very surprised and said that indeed we would have FiOS activated very soon now.
Of course this was obvious as Verizon has spent $$$ wiring fiber everywhere which should be the next big thing(tm). They even replace the normal copper wires going to your house with fiber (doesn't work in a power outage though! I hope nobody gets upset about 911
My guess is that they expect a lot of people to buy the service but not use it to its full potential. Seriously, 100mb is overkill for things like Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, etc.. Paying per MB would not make much money in those cases. Plus, a montly fee makes it easier to plan because you have a set income that you can assure throughout the length of the contract; they know they'll get $XXX from each client over the period of the contract, minus the ones who default, of course.
Why now? Oh yeah, the Supreme Court just ruled they aren't common carriers. Enjoy being fed high bandwidth their way.
I'm happy with my 256/512 for £25 a month. Mind you, it has newsgroups, no filtered ports, and really helpful tech support.
Get your own free personal location tracker
This is designed to compete with Verizon's FIOS project.
But if they're as nasty about it as I've read, I doubt many people will jump.
BTW, here's a story about how government and education in one state gets screwed, while in another they don't.
We're looking at an 8Mbps connection from Cox. $2,000 a month. Friend of mine works at a state university in MA, they pay $250 for the same bandwidth through Comcast.
I was telling my boss today that cable companies are required to re-up their franchise every so many years. Suggested we find out when the next is coming up and put the screws to Cox.
50Mbps over cable. And this is news. Pathetic.
All scalability issues etc. aside, simply as a consumer I would expect more by now. Actually, a lot of the world DOES have more, but the U.S. lags behind.
I have symetrical 100Mbps fiber optic line in my apartment right now. (Reality checks show about 65Mbps both ways. Not bad. My bottle necks tend to be the servers I access, and not my line.) I also have an asymetric 48Mbps ADSL line. (I got it for free when I signed up for an IP phone that can call land lines for dirt cheap.) Also, I don't need to wait for "future development" for something faster, there's a 1Gbps fiber line right outside my building. I simply don't need it (hell, I don't even HAVE a gigabit ethernet card) and it's still a bit pricey. But I live in Tokyo.
Yes the U.S. has a much lower population density, it has an older infrastructure, and so on so forth. But to tell the truth, I couldn't give a flying fuck. If you're gonna be treated like a consumer, why not act like one? People should be demanding what they want, and not settling for excuses that the phone/cable companies dish out for keeping prices high and service non-existent. Sure there are reasons why Tokyo, Seoul, Stockholm and other cities have awesome internet connections and most areas in the U.S. don't, but why settle for excuses? Let the telecomm companies do some creative thinking and come up with a viable solution! As an ex-pat, I'd love to see some innovation for a change, and actually be envious of people living in the U.S. That, and I'd wish my Mom in Colorado could have broadband so I could actually see her via a web camera for a change, rather than just a phone call.
Let's face it. Cable companies have always advertised speeds then never delivered. CableVision is, one of the lowest in quality, in my opinion. I know many OO subscribers who can attest to this.
While the individual pipes may be able to handle 100Mbps and greater, unless they lay an entirely new system down, guaranteeing it and preventing bottleneck will be almost impossible.
FTTP, like that provided by Verizon (which I have), is much more promising. The new system is there and in place. Verizon has the financial backing to keep making upgrades to this system to keep improving it to wipe out competition. Right now, they have an OC-12 pipe going out to a maximum of 32 customers Which guarantees 20Mbps to every customer all at the same time. While they can't promise 30Mbps to everyone at once, I find this "risk" a whole lot more rational that what CableVision hopes to do.
Word is from what I've seen, Verizon will be upgrading to OC-24 pipes, if not OC-48, very soon.
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
i was an OOL customer for more than 4 years but when i started using gallery http://gallery.sf.net/ and uploaded massive amounts of family/personal pictures, they capped my speed to 400kbps. i got it uncapped twice then luckily, FIOS was deployed in my town - was one of the first 5 installations in Northern New Jersey. i switched. installation was free and i got a discount because of my existing calling plan with Verizon. FIOS works for me. i've uploaded gigs of photos with no problems. all i need is port 25, port 80 and port 22 (for SSH / ftp-tunneling) and i'm good to go. :)
isn't going to be that high. Narad is not designed for high density deployment. It is in essence an overlay network that makes use of unused spectrum around the 1GHz range, allocating itself up and downstream spectrum suitable for 100mb/s data rates. But to achieve this it needs to install triplex filters and active elements at EACH CATV active on the plant. What is more, the access devices can only be connected to two ports on each Narad active element, with three being available off of the last element.
We have deployed Narad on our network with great success but not as a residential service. Narad is a fit for us where we need to have fibre quality data circuits to businesses where running fibre would be costly/timely.
If a customer is willing to spend the dollars, I am sure they would be able to receive internet access from us, but at this time it is only for our larger municipal customers.
My friend has to pay 110$(CDN) a month for satellite internet service because thee is no broadband in his area. 1000k/56k He has to use dial up as the upload. His latency is well over 1000ms on a good day. I, on the other hand am lucky. I have 5Mbit/768kbit for 50$CDN.
This is not a subscriber level service.
Cable companies essentially have the same topology in HFC (hybrid fiber-coax) networks. They have their data center, with their connection to the backbone, and have fiber to several hubs, which are essentially the "regional" or "metropolitan" branch sites. From the hubs, served by fiber, coax is run to the individual nodes, which subscriber services are branched off from. What this is all about is the connection between hubs and nodes - there's more overhead bandwidth available farther downstream - but not yet to the customer premise. The four coax lines sent from the hub to the node can now support 100mbps symmetrical.
This enhances the inter-nodal communications, the junctions between the fiber backbone most major cable companies have deployed and the coax they use to push their various signals out to consumer premises. In essence, they're getting 100mbps over coax for the four coax "pipes" used to support the node itself. While it's a big deal insomuch as it means they have a lot more ceiling with regards to bandwidth and deployment of available services, it's not the point that they've got fiber past the hubs to the individual nodes... yet. It does mean, however, that there's less need to deploy more nodes (read: capital expense) so they can spend that money on R&D and getting "faster" to go "farther." Ultimately, it'll end up with fiber to the pole, then finally fiber to the house.
What it WILL mean? You should see an increase in upload caps sooner than you thought... and cable companies are getting ready for a lot, lot more HD and HD-on-demand services. Remember, their focus is still video - data is just an added bonus.
This is a "Business Service", designed to give customers business customers different policies at a different price point. That doesn't mean that they'll necessarily implement clueful open-usage policies at a very low price, or even at a medium price, but they're perfectly capable of doing it if they feel like it. (After all, they went to a lot of work to implement the cretinously stupid policies they've imposed on your service, so you know they're at least persistent...) The system is implemented using Hybrid Fiber Coax, so the bandwidth from the cable head end in your neighborhood to their hub sites is as big as they feel like providing (depending on what hardware they're using to light their fibers and whether they own dark fiber or rent bandwidth from telcos, probably the former. It's symmetric service.) The asymmetric part in consumer cable modem service is on the shared cable from the head end to the home; this service appears to get around that by dedicating cable, or else by dedicating bandwidth on the cable - it's a bit hard to tell, but not really relevant. Is there enough upstream bandwidth that your business could really burn a full-speed 50 Mbps in both directions full time? Probably not - if the service costs $10,000/month, I'd find that really unattractively priced, and if it costs $100-500/month and you can figure out what the real performance is, that's really just fine, because paying the price of a dedicated T1 line and occasionally getting up to 30 times that fast is a pretty good deal.
I've seen some cable companies that offer "Business Service" at about twice the price of consumer service - usually it doesn't mean that you're getting real fully-open Internet access, just that the people running their consumer service are greedy morons who block IPSEC and other VPN services because "consumer service isn't for business use" and they think they can get another $30/month in return for unblocking it and giving you higher priority at the help desk. But there are other cable companies that aren't so stupid (they might be just as greedy, they're just a bit more selective in how they rip you off.)
Disclaimer: I'm not currently an employee of a cable modem company, just a stockholder, and yes, they're one of the stupid+greedy types unless they've somehow wised up recently, which is unlikely. Cable modem would be faster than my DSL service, and a bit cheaper, but it's worth paying extra for sonic.net DSL, because they're actually letting me use the Internet service I'm paying for (Speakeasy's another service with similar policies.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"isn't it ironic that only the people getting capped for abusing are warez homos"
What's really ironic is that someone who has brain enough to work a computer and log into slashdot can be a homophobe enough to think that being "gay" is the worst insult imaginable.
My first thought is that you should be ashamed of being a homophobe, but I guess we're stuck with the idea that people who hate homosexuality so much probably just haven't come out of the closet themselves. Not that its bad to be homosexual (who really cares), but that you ought to just admit your sexual preference is towards men and stop hating yourself so much.
I was capped. You have to call them to remove the cap and they threaten you that if you do it three more times they will discontinue your service. I had read the OOL terms, as I always do, and I certainly was not abusing the service. I don't download illegal software. However I upload large files for work. That seems to have done me in. Pretty ridiculous. I can't wait to move to fios.
There is very little of this bogeyman you call "child pornography". Its right out of 1984, because its a war that will never end and can be used as a justification of any violation of civil rights.
While I'm sure child pornogrphy exists and that there are exploited children, the little amount that is out there doesn't justify the paranoia and laws that people like you persist in shoving down our throats.
All in the name of "protecting the children". Its sickening.
boy do I hope they have some stellar outgoing filtering on their network. ... but even 100mbit worth of bad traffic is pretty bad.
Can you imagine zombie hosts used for criminal purposes, all of which have 50mbit upstream to throw at you? Sure, the provider may not have the bandwidth to throw more than a few hundred mbits or a gbit or whatever they decided they needed to provide acceptable service to everyone
The interesting issues are going to be pricing, average throughput (e.g. how many people are you sharing your upstream with), and policies about port blocking (they're presumably going to allow web servers, because that's the kind of application that needs 50 Mbps upstreams.
For a business, besides price, the technically cool thing about high-speed cable modem service is that it's not using the same wiring from your office to the telco POP that almost everything else users, so you get some protection from street construction crews and Bubba the Backhoe driver that you'd otherwise only be able to get by buying a higher-end fiber ring service from the telco or using a short-haul wireless connection to a nearby wireless provider. So depending on your price and reliability needs, you can either use this for cheap fast unreliable service, or for cheap reliability improvement to your existing more expensive service, as well as for cheap speed improvements to your regular service. After all, if what you really need is 5-10 Mbps, then getting a 50 Mbps service that's oversubscribed a bit too heavily and priced like a T1 line is almost always a big win.
Repair Speed is the main business problem with cable modem services - the economics of providing $30/month service depend on piggybacking on consumer cable TV service, which means you've got enough technicians and repair trucks to go fix it if it breaks, but if it's Friday night in a bad snowstorm, and your customer's TV service goes out, they can just watch videos or play with their kids or read books until Monday when the snowplows have finished clearing the streets. Low-end "business" cable may mean you get better help-desk service, and maybe the truck goes to your building a bit earlier, but it doesn't put any more trucks on the street. This service may be priced high enough to pay for better service than that.
Commuting on Long Island I used to have a project in Syosset that required me to commute there from central New Jersey for a month. Took about 1.5 hours each way, unless traffic was worse than usual, like the days that it was faster to walk across Staten Island than to drive. Hard drugs would have made driving too difficult, but a Grateful Dead concert tape is about the length of a round-trip, which was at least a good substitute. I tried taking the train one time when it was going to snow heavily - about 2.5 hours to get from Jersey to NYC to the LIRR to whatever the nearest station was, get a taxi to the office, and find out that they were closing because of snow (:-), and the LIRR was far noisier and bouncier than the New Jersey trains so it wasn't possible to do any real work while riding them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm running RCN Broadband, which is 10MbPS/800kbps supposedly. The issue is that that speed is usually only moderately realistic when you're running through RCN's own internal network. Once you're out of it, ie in everything else besides overpriced music downloads, speed drops dramatically. This doesn't mean that you're going to be downloading a 100 MB file in a second or two from download.com. All servers have upload caps- you're only going to get uncapped from people connecting directly to your server. But still, in order to make use of that kind of bandwidth, you have to have some serious hardware to distribute a stable amount of data. And the people who have that hardware are the people who generally can afford a huge pipe in the first place. This is just going to be for show until real consumer-level products appear. Once that happens, it'll be great. But now you can't really do much on such a fat pipe, other than brag about it to your tech-clueless neighbors.
Due to financial difficulties, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
The technically cool thing you get from this kind of service is that the physical cable routes are generally different from telco cable routes, so not only can a business buy lots of bandwidth for a reasonable or low price, but it provides backhoe protection for their telco-based services without having to go to the expense of building physically diverse fiber rings.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is Long Island, not just Brooklyn and Queens. It's like stretching Overland Park out to Lawrence and Shawnee Mission. Doesn't mean you'll be able to get it anywhere west of Wichita or up in Atchison any time soon, but if you're living out in farm country you're obviously there for the peace and quiet.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Don't feel too bad. Silicon Valley never, ever gets the trials for new broadband technology either. Broadband has absolutely sucked for the past 10 years, and still does. So income apparently has little to do with it.
Heck, I would've paid $150-200 per month back in 1999-2000 to get just 1 Mb down, 128 Kb up. But noooo. And this was in a well off neighborhood (Los Gatos). Instead I had to move (for this and other reasons). I was barely able to get the above speed, and was grateful for it. Again in another well-off neighborhood.
One would think that the PHB's in the Cable and Telco's would try innovating where people are eager, willing and forgiving of new technology. But it doesn't seem like that idea has ever occurred to them. It always seems like this stuff only goes to the technological boondocks first; and only many years later does it hit Silicon Valley.
Go figure.
Possession of a picture of a naked child will land you in the hoosgow for many years.
We've gone a little overboard, imho.
SINGAPORE : SingTel has confirmed Pakistan's Internet and cellphone links to the rest of the world have been cut off by a fault in a key submarine cable.
But it has played down reports that millions of people have been affected by the breakdown.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
I had read the OOL terms, as I always do, and I certainly was not abusing the service. I don't download illegal software. However I upload large files for work.
With many providers, using your residential class connection for business is abusing the service. Your connection shall be used for private home entertainment purposes only. To negotiate this out of your contract, pay extra to upgrade to business class service.
I'd be happy to get 5M upload at the moment.
Are you using your connection for warez? (Copyright infringement is prohibited.) Are you using your connection for trading freely redistributable works over eMule or BitTorrent? (Running a server is usually prohibited on a residential class connection.) Are you using your connection for telecommuting? (Business use is often prohibited on a residential class connection.) Read the TOS carefully before you sign a commitment.
when i first was with comcast it was about 2.5 - 3.0 mbps.. and it was flaky at times i must admit. then it was a dedicated 3.0 and i sometimes got more than that. then it was 4.0, now recently its 5.0 and there is a difference and although it fluxuates give or take 250k or so maybe a little more i have a strong day to day average of 5.0.
Standard cable modem service is based off DOCSIS 1.0/1.1/2.0. This is something completely different and works by using higher frequencies on the cable that what is in use in most cable plants. It's very cool none-the-less but don't expect to see it off cablevision unless they adopt the same technology. (Maybe they will)
Why would a home user need these speeds? I can't think of a legal use that my 3Mb connection isn't perfectly capable of handling. 10Mb would be great for downloading pirated DVDs. Of course, some day there will exist a legal online movie distribution system, and this would be perfect for taking advantage of that service. I'm genuinely curious -- what would you use that speed for?
I am not left-handed, either!
Why does CableVision feel the need to create a new proprietary standard when we have a perfectly good standard already: DOCSIS, the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. DOCSIS 2.0 offers 38mbps down and 30.72mbps up, which ought to be plenty for everybody. If it's not, get another channel and bond them together until you have enough. DOCSIS 3.0 will even handle the channel bonding FOR YOU.
Since cable providers already run fiber until the CMTS, which is usually within the last mile, why not run fiber the rest of the way or live with 38/30mbps service rather than creating a new proprietary cable modem standard?
Assuming my ISP did that to me, I'd just find a different one. Speakeasy? Hmm.
Speakeasy relies on the phone company. If the phone company doesn't want to offer DSL to you, or it piddles around and makes it as hard as possible for competing DSL ISPs to set up and maintain service, that's the phone company's right under law. So will it be cable, dial-up, or move?
FIOS is being deployed in my area and suddenly COX bumped their uplink to 2 mbps and their premier package from 5 Meg/768K to 15/2M. Called them up n was talking with the rep who said outright said that it was because of FIOS.
then they better start pulling adds where they talk about how you can use it to work from home or download music.
"Work from home"? Upgrade to the business class and it's OK. "Download music"? Use iTMS or any PlaysForSure (WMA) vendor and it's OK.
It's bait and switch all the way
Bait and switch, but probably not fraud: "Plans start at $39.99/mo" with the fine print "Some features require a Business Class plan at $79.99/mo, subject to availability."
Well it can vary from user to user. The "ratio" you refer to would depend on the RWIN (TCP Receive window size) set in the OS and/or router. This controls how much data is recieved before an acknowledgement packet is sent.
Yours appears to be around 40k. But if I recall correctly the default on Win 98 and other older systems was sometimes as low as 8k, which would be in line with what the grandparent saw.
I would be interested to know what OS he was running.
I'll see a reliable broadband service from them when Dolan's Knicks win the NBA title.
Isnt it a overkill or do we really need to have such a fatpipes coming to our residences... while enforcement authorities are working seriously to kill the file sharing or P2P which contributes their part to have a big fat pipe, what are the other things we could like in to ..HD TV or video conf...????????????????
Srikrishna Komatineni
A full size IP packet is about 65K bytes long. A TCP ACK/NAK is about 20 bytes (both are subject to link layer overhead). In the real world, the overall size of a TCP packet will be limited to 1500 octets because it's going over Ethernet.
So to run TCP at 50 MBps full speed would require (50Mb*20/1500=) 667Kbps reverse channel for ACKs.
But, TCP alone does not IP make. You can send all the UDP you want without needing to NAK in the other direction, which makes your basic premise completely flawed.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Bryggenet offers cable tv, internet and telephony very cheap in a part of Copenhagen. Many such networks exist in Denmark.
I have a shared 88Mbit/s connection to my home office, for something like $25/month.
René Seindal
You guys gets 50mbps, I'm lucky if I get 53kbps. Lets see here, upgrade existing broadband in town to newer super duper connection or upgrade to broadband for areas nearby town? They'll never choose me.
I live 15 miles from a state capital and the best I can get is 26.6kbps and even that falls out occasionally. We shouldn't be proud of our speed increases until we can get more people up to par.
Huh?
To me, they are the best option if you have them as an option. I constantly get over 7Mbps down and atleast 800Kbps up on my 10/1Mbps line.
So, if they can come up with this (where I live) in time for the Verizon FIOS official launch with the TV service, I might stay with them. Otherwise I'd go with Verizon's 15/2Mbps for about the same price as Cablevision's current package.
Oh, and the first poster mentioned something about an upload cap. Well, I limit mine to around a 100Kbps when downloading distros on Bittorrent and they don't seem to mind and at. Actually, I have a talk with someone at corporate about this and they guy assured me they don't cap, unless of course you are dumb ebough to open unlimited access to your bandwidth. I even run Remote Administrator at very high refresh rates (300+) and it's all good with them. Also, you can't run any kind of web or game server on their lines. (All default ports are blocked, and they are good at monitoring others traffic.)
I wouldn't be surprised if people in the US almost pay $100 USD for a similar connection in the wrong area. But as you say there is a difference in the cost of living. $100USD is big bucks in Poland. My wife (who is Polish) quotes ice cream being like 20 cents CDN (if I remember correctly).
Cost of living aside, everything I've heard about the Internet in Poland is that it's really screwed up. The quality is usually pretty bad, and the cost is truley insane for the average Pol.
If you modded the parent up, you lose.
>But the one trick that is left, if you only
>want basic service and internet, is to order
>just the internet and then split the cable.
>You will get basic programming for free.
Besides being illegal, splitting the cable doesn't work if the cable company knows what they are doing.
A few years ago I talked to a cable guy as he was doing some work on an apt. building near where I lived. I asked about the filters that were on some of the lines. Most of the filters were to enable or disable premium channels, one was to enable Internet, and one was to disable all analog TV channels. That one was for Net-only customers.
Disclaimer: This was a few years ago, my memory is hazy. Any cable installers out there care to clarify?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
why not run fiber the rest of the way
That's a lot of trenches or overhead lines to string.
"The last mile" is generally the most expensive part of a network to upgrade.
Why? Everything before of the last mile and you improve the service to LOTS of customers for every mile of new cable you put in. For the last mile, you improve service for relatively few customers at almost the same installation cost as the closer-to-the-hub cables.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Just the other day I wanted to download a Linux DVD. At 3Mb/sec it would take several hours.
If I could D/L faster than I could burn it, or better yet, "burn" it as it streamed in, that would be much more efficient.
Another obvious use is nanny-cams, so you and all the other parents can watch your little tykes at the day care in high-rez video. Or, more spooky, remote monitoring of Wal-Mart parking lots from Bentonville, AK.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Here in Sweden you can already get 100 mbit up/down
Hell, AOL dialup can give you 100 millibits per second up and down... or did you mean 100 M(ega)bit...
Capitalization makes a difference, with both the m and the b in reference to data flow.
Mega vs. milli and bits vs. Bytes
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
you might want to consider that in corporate telecom we see virus laden machines all the time. We see five or six machines on a given account all getting the same one. And the number one effect of these viruses? Not wiping the boot sector. No, generating traffic. Sending spam to other people in the infected machines' address books, sending spam to Usenet, port scanning, acting as automated zombies, etc.
Consider how much less properly administered the average consumer broadband users' machines are. Cable networks are clogged with this sort of traffic constantly.
Then add in the large numbers of abusive file sharing people who despite being repeatedly made aware that they do not have unlimited usage at all hours will ignore it and not set any limits on their file share apps. Here's a clue: set your download cap on eMule to your maximum and the UPLOAD to no more than ONE THIRD of your upstream. Cap torrent, etc. Clogging the upstream on your node is as disrespectful to your fellow users as clogging a DSL backhaul.
Then add to this the clueless nature of most cable modem users. Despite there being several hundred thousand web pages world wide on the technology, despite cable techs doing their best to educate their customers, they still act like dimbulbs as soon as they got rocking on cable modem. I've seen people literally try splicing their cables with a knife and electrical tape to share service with a neighbor and then wonder why it doesn't work. Don't even get a former cable tech like me started on Rat Shack.
A little education and common sense goes a long long way. Nevertheless, I long ago lost count of the number of people who scream about rate capping for over utilization but on further inspection are found to have been transmitting both ways full speed 24/7 for months on end before the cable company finally couldn't turn a blind eye to it any longer.
For those who think getting DSL is superior, simply multiply three hundred users by a one half megabit per second and then imagine if they all behaved like they should have unlimited utilization when the backhaul is a single 44Mb DS3. ALL comminications systems are ultimately shared systems.
Like I said, a little education and common sense...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Rule #1:
FULL DISCLOSURE
Disclose your capping and port-blocking policies. Be specific, i.e. "bandwidth 4Mb/sec-down/1Mb/sec-up, but after 72 hours worth of full usage every month we cut you to 0.4Mb/sec-down and 0.1Mb/sec up for the rest of the month."
Rule #2:
Automated un-capping
If you cap at 10%-per-month (i.e. 3 days of full-use per 30 days) then send you back to slow-speed, automatically uncap at the end of the month.
Rule #3:
Let people pay for higher caps
If someone needs full usage, and your normal usage cap is 10%, let them pay 10x as much. If they only need unlimited uploads, then let them pay a prorated rate (half if it's symmetric, porportionately less if upload speed is less). People who torrent Linux 24x7 and saturate the link up- and down-loading should pay their share of the freight.
Rule 3b:
Allow subscribers to ask for this "as needed" so they only pay more in months they actually use more. Some customers will want to buy "extra bandwidth" on a one-shot basis, others will want to automatically buy more so they never suffer "brownouts."
Rule #4:
Port-block abused ports BUT allow opt-out
Block incoming tcp port 25 and other widely-abused ports and restrict outgoing tcp port 25 to connections with the ISP outgoing mail server, BUT allow savvy customers who warrant that their systems are secure to access any port they want without restriction. If those customers start sending out viruses on ordinarily-blocked ports, cut them off and charge them a reasonable reinstatement clean-up fee.
1. Good customer service
2. Good products
3. Fair pricing
4. PROFIT!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I live in a college town in central Illinois. My roommates and I pay $84/month for 1.5M/384k.
Yeah yeah "back in my day we had..." I started off with a 2400 baud connection (and was damn happy to have it) but in 2005 $84/month for 1.5M/384k is still highway robbery.
Your points are certainly valid, but it's also very expensive to develop an entirely new cable modem standard, including the development and purchase of cable modems to go on customer premises and inside the ISP racks at every headend. In this case, we already have fiber run to within a relatively small distance of the targets, so if customers really NEED massive bandwidth, this seems to be the way to go.
I pay around $160/mo for business class DSL which in this part of the U.S. is only 1.5Mbps/384Kbps.
So, you're not doing all that bad.
I have optimum online and my upstream is capped at 17kbs! Thats right 17!!!