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."

Comments

They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[DosBubba]

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?

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[Anonymous Coward]

• they won't tell you the limits
• they draw the conclusion that uploading == p2p == piracy
• they tell you that p2p is unsafe because it will give you viruses
• and they DENY that the fact that several of my neighbors have the Optonline phone could have anything to do with why I have been CAPPED TWICE.
• and thanks to the supreme court, I will NEVER have a choice for high speed access.

They want me to use the Internet like it was a shopping channel. minimal demands and don't ever actually use all this speed that they hype up.

they don't understand the idea of a "network" ( ie two way communication)

I see no point in letting them boast about hight speed connections unless they acutely let people use it.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[Anonymous Coward]

People who download linux cds over bittorrent are warez homos? I had my uploads capped just for that.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[Qzukk]

First off OOL is a totally different service than this so why are you even bringing it up?

I don't live in an OOL area, but pulling up the optimumonline website, I see that its run by CableVision. Do you have any reason to believe that this CableVision network will behave in a significantly different fashion?

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[DosBubba]

I do not have a problem with OOL capping their users. What I do have a problem with is making the limits invisible.

I have some relatives up in the New Jersey area. They generally run Bit Torrent all night, at a full 100Kbps (On non-standard ports). The one time they upload some pictures to one of my servers via FTP on port 20, they get capped. I'm agreeing with the Anonymous Coward here, OOL's capping system seems to be designed for preventing users from running servers.

I will give OOL this though, uncapping is a painless procedure.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[j35ter]

May you be slashdotted....amen!

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[westlake]

I see no point in letting them boast about hight speed connections unless they acutely let people use it

Of course they will let you use it.
Just ask their sales representative about moving to premium residential or business class service. Entry level here is $60/mo.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[bedroll]

Bah. It's usable. I use it every day, and I do upload stuff. I've been capped once, but that was because I downloaded 3GB of OGG files from home to work, at a sustained 0.5mbit (limited more by my company's T-1 being used than my connection). I leave my server connected 24/7, and have very little downtime with my connection.

If you want to complain, you should complain about their port-blocking of 80 and 25. If you want to run a webserver it either must be on a non-standard port or HTTPS. I run mine on 90.

For the record, though, at least it's better than RoadRunner. They cap their upstream lower all the time, and if you have too much downstream traffic they'll switch you over to a business account or disconnect you. It happened to a friend of mine in Ohio.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[duckworth]

Great, now they can cap your connection 5 times faster. I downloaded a Suse dvd iso via bittorrent and the next week my outbound connection was capped to barely faster than dial up speed. Then you have to go through this whole game of checking all of your equiptment and connections, etc. Next, you wait to be called by a supervisor who scolds you like a child and tells you that you must be doing something bad like like "sharing files". If you have to upload something, then you should do it in small bursts no longer than 20 minutes long every few hours. When you ask to be upgraded to better service, even willing to pay more money, they don't offer any package and even their business class service won't promise you anything.

I had severe packet loss documented for over 4 months and my connection would come to a crawl. After 3 visits from technisions and 2 visits from field technicians, replacing all my equiptment, and re-wiring all the way up to the next tap, they refused to admit that the node was over-saturated or just plain broken.

I moved to DSL which is signicantly slower but it is much more reliable and at least I know exactly what I am getting for my money.

What good is such promised bandwidth when you have to leave in fear of using it?

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[nolife]

How do you connect abusing the TOS with warez homos? Are they monitoring packets and realize your downloading copyrighted software?

People who abuse deserve to be capped.
Define abuse. If you do, that would be a definition that OOL does not provide to anyone. That in itself is the problem. From what I;ve read, I've drawn the conclusion they cap the highest bandwidth users that has no relevance to the TOS or warez. Without defining what "too much" really is.

DSLreports is full of OOL capping incedents. You can draw your own theory on why they are getting capped.

The argument should be, what is unlimited and why is unlimited advertised but then limited provided.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[bedroll]

Your packet loss issues sound familiar to me. When I was living in the next town over it seemed that there was either faulty equipment or the network in that area was oversold. Either way, the net effect was that I had a lot of packet loss issues and I was disconnected every couple of hours. Every time I was disconnected the only way the help-desk could get me reconnected was to have me hard-boot the modem (unplug it and plug it back in, no power switch). Several calls didn't fix this issue.

What did fix the issue was moving. When I came to my present residence I found a faster and more reliable network waiting. I've had zero problems, even though I'm using the exact same setup as before.

The point is, OO's network seems to be hit and miss depending on the neighborhood.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[MasterSLATE]

If you want to complain, you should complain about their port-blocking of 80 and 25. If you want to run a webserver it either must be on a non-standard port or HTTPS. I run mine on 90.

How about you read their terms of service. You are NOT allowed to run webservers, so what does it matter that they block those ports? If you are running a server, then you're violating their rules. On another note, to my knowledge, another reason they blocked those (besides the obvious) is due to viruses and worms that have built-in servers.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[InfiniteWisdom]

they draw the conclusion that uploading == p2p == piracy
No, they draw the conclusion that consistently uploading=running a server which violates their terms of service

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[illumin8]

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?

I've had OptimumOnline for the last year and it is the best broadband internet service I've ever had. I have 10 megabits down, 1 megabit up, and I've never been capped. Granted, I'm not stupid enough to leave Kazaa up sharing files 24/7, but I've done my fair share of BitTorrent, including uploading about 10GB worth of traffic (that's gigabytes) during the course of a month.

You would have to be a total leech trying to run a warez hub to get your cap cut down. This just goes to show you that some people can never be pleased. I think paying $29 a month for 10 megabits down 1 megabit up is the best bang for the buck you can get nowadays. Also, they were ranked 2nd best ISP in the country by some review I read on Slashdot recently.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that OOL's network capacity varys greatly. At least 3 of the houses on my street have phone service via them. Also since they are the only choice for broadband in the area, just about everybody has it. ( well half anyway) But instead of some rational solutions like upgrading at the bottlenecks, or even throttling some users only when the load is high, they just toss out fixed caps to PUNISH their customers, for daring to actually USE this Internet thing.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[tepples]

You are NOT allowed to run webservers

What's the acceptable way to negotiate that clause out of the TOS?

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[masdog]

and thanks to the supreme court, I will NEVER have a choice for high speed access.

You always have a choice. If you don't like what your cable company gives you, you can get DSL. If you don't like either options, you can pay to have fiber run to your house.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[MasterSLATE]

Buy a business account. To my knowledge, they allow servers if you're a business client.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[darkonc]

People who get capped are those abusing the TOS(if you read it you'll see any abuse is not tolerated).

Can I take it you work for OOL, and have seen some proof?

Downloading a Legal copy of Linux is not Wares. It's a perfectly legitimate way to use the 'net. It's not abuse, and it's not illegal. Similarly, Uploading pictures of the family vacation is completely legitimate, and not illegal (as long as the vacation was legal).

If the company was advertising 'unlimited', then capping people who make heavy use of The 'Net is false and misleading advertising, breach of contract and probably an unfair business practice (not to mention abusing your customers).
Sooner or later someone is going to rip them a new orifice with a class-action lawsuit (at least, one can hope!).

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[markwalling]

VZ dsl blocks port 80 inbound. big whoop. just change the Listen directive to another port. big whoop. i still get a perfectly fine upload, and no nice lawyers knocking at my door.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[werewolf1031]

"Warning: You have reached the End Of The Internet. Please turn back... Now."

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[mi]

You are NOT allowed to run webservers, so what does it matter that they block those ports?

Which takes us back to the point made by the first poster in this thread -- what good is high bandwidth (especially -- in the "up" direction), if I can not use it?

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[eLamer]

this has happened to me, i left a torrent uploading at 150 kb/s open for a few weeks by accident...

what you do is just call em up and say you need to send a lot of files to and from work, you send home videos to your daughter in college and your family overseas, they say alright and uncap you

since then, they have never capped me and due to torrents, i am always uploading so i figure they have "removed" me from the what i call, capable list

i think the reason they do this is to stop people who won't realize they are capped and not really give two shits in order to avoid slow speeds for everyone. for those who are tech-savvy enough to know they are capped and can make up a bullshit excuse, they just remove it. all it takes is a 5 minute phone call.

it's lame that they do it, i know, but it's not irreversible.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[Awptimus Prime]

Common sense answers won't work with these people.

For example, I worked for an ISP's support group when they decided to implement port 25 blocking.

It was rather amusing being on the phone with very condescending Win2k "admins" who would moan and groan about this, then be completely confused when I suggest they throw up a ssh tunnel between them and their server at the office and use it instead of their dynamic IP to try and send mail from.

Then there were the "I FUCKING NEED THIS FOR BUSINESS, I AM LOSING MONEY" idiots. Yes, this tactic will work wonders for getting hung up on. Anyway, those people would go nuts at the mere mention of considering a business class account. Wait? You claim to have lost $5k in trades today because your wal-mart brand home network didn't play well with the Internet and you can't afford goddamn $160/mo to get a decent connection.

Let's not forget the cheapest lusers of them all, the "HEY MAN I RUN LINUX SO I AM GOING TO PLAY GAMES THE WHOLE CALL". Things like "Ok, what firmware are you running on your router?" would get the "HA! I don't run Windows! LOL" type of responses. Damn idiots, all of them. Just ignore them and Darwin will take care of the rest, eventually.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[PAStheLoD]

10 gigs a month? Lol , thats a fair share.. I've got a 3/0,5 Mbit Chello cable, that costs me 75$/mo, and its not a business conn. , just a little expensive (ordinary connections 50$ or less) here in Hungary. And I usually have 100 gigs of traffic per month, 60GB of it is upload to BT. Fortunatelly, my ISP's traffic meter is broken, or they haven't turned on capping in my area yet. Because the limit in the contract is 60 GB/mont..

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[deviantphil]

This activity smells of bait/switch. Have you considered filing a complaint with the FTC?

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[drunkennewfiemidget]

Then there were the "I FUCKING NEED THIS FOR BUSINESS, I AM LOSING MONEY" idiots. Yes, this tactic will work wonders for getting hung up on. Anyway, those people would go nuts at the mere mention of considering a business class account. Wait? You claim to have lost $5k in trades today because your wal-mart brand home network didn't play well with the Internet and you can't afford goddamn $160/mo to get a decent connection.

These are they very people that pissed me off the most back in my days as a network admin and support call target.

I had people who were saying things like, "I'm losing $20k every day you're down." and in one case I even asked the gentleman, "if you are losing $20k every day, why don't you spend the $1000/mo for a T1 that comes with a service contract guaranteeing against that sort of thing, and stop spending $34.95 for home DSL that isn't guaranteed in any way shape or form?"

People are strange.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[Awptimus Prime]

If by strange, you mean "cheap and scummy", then I agree. :)

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[rselph]

They allow servers, but not on port 80. Even the business level service from OOL sucks. They have the same ambiguous bandwidth capping. Really there is no difference except for the TOS.

I had a business account with them, but eventually cancelled it and went back to consumer service. After a month or so, I got a call from one of their business account reps asking why I cancelled.

Me: "Because I got capped. If you will tell me what the usage policy is, I can comply with it, but if you won't tell me, then the extra money is buying me nothing."
Account Rep:"Yeah, we get that a lot."

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[bedroll]

Port 80 matters to me because I'd like to use it for other things. On a lot of networks they block connections to other ports than 80, 21, and 443, some are even more overzealous and block 443 and/or 21. So if I want to be relatively sure that I can SSH into my home machine when I'm at random windows box X I have to run on port 443 and hope it's not blocked.

This was a real killer when I was at school and the admins there seemed to think that if you couldn't take your work on a 3.5" disk then you shouldn't take it home. I had to resort to using Yahoo webmail to send my homework to myself because they only allowed outbound connections to port 80. Between school and Optimum Online I was transported back 15 years to a time when the best way to transfer data was via floppy disk.

The more services block port 80 the more that viruses, worms, and the ilk will just run on a non-standard port. It's not like people who fall for phishing schemes would notice the :90 after the IP or domain.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[legojenn]

I did support back in the dialup days 1998-2000. I would get those calls too. I always used to laugh at the lawsuit threats. You know they are full of crap and it's hard to feel sorry for them. I'd rather have spent 45 minutes on the phone helping an old lady set up her email than deal with one of these clowns.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[lowrydr310]

I'm experiencing this a lot. If I leave my modem/router on for extended periods of time, I lose my connection and need to unplug/replug my modem.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[OldeTimeGeek]

You always have a choice... ... you can pay to have fiber run to your house.

Really? That's easy enough to say. Have you ever priced fiber or the equipment that you need to use to terminate a fiber connection? Better yet, have you ever tried to convince your local phone company to put in the equipment necessary just so you can have it? If you don't live in an area served by a CO or mini-CO that is already set up for it or you don't have a lot of money or political pull, forget it. The same goes for DSL.

Realistically, if your cable service doesn't provide Internet service, or you are too far away from a CO for DSL, or have the wrong exposure for dish, your choices are rather limited.

You could always move, I guess.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[bigman2003]

I would pay huge money to have this connection, and not be blocked in any way.

I have 14 different hosting accounts through different services. Not a single service out there has lived up to what I expect. (Basically, decent response time on my pages, and limited downtime.)

One of the FORMER best hosting services - HostMySite - chokes on my site all the time, now that I get more than 30 hits per day.

I wonder how many sites they do run on a server...

I maintain servers at work (using the exact same hardware as HMS- Last time they advertised the hardware, they were using Dell 1650s with Dual Xeons) and I serve up about 500 dynamic sites on one server- with no problems whatsoever. The server sits at about 2-10% CPU capacity at all times. Somehow HMS dies when I get 2 or 3 concurrent users. I'm guessing they have multiple thousands of sites on the server which is probably a bit overloaded. Buy some new servers guys...they're cheap!

So having my own server at home is till just a pipe-dream with my current 384kbps/3Mbps DSL service. But as soon as I find a better option, I am going to dump HostMySite and do it myself.

(My sites use ColdFusion, and unfortunately it is not easy to find good ColdFusion hosting...)

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[bedroll]

Good luck.

As I said, several support calls yeilded nothing. As soon as I got my connection back they would play it off as fixed or an issue not of their creation and bid me farewell. Their technical support staff is, as pretty much all call center technical support staff, useless.

One thing I did find out in the move: It may have something to do with the splitters other equipment on premises. When I first moved I had a decent connection, but it wasn't as rock solid as it is today. They had my cable turned on but not installed and I was using the previous occupant's setup plus some splitters and cables that I'd brought with me. When the tech finally showed up (took almost three months, but that's another story) he replaced all of the splitters. He proclaimed that even the ones that were only about a year old and had been shipped with the cable modem weren't up to their standards anymore and that iO required a higher quality connection. After he was gone I noticed less dropped packets and I haven't been disconnected since.

Re:They can't even handle 10mbit/1mbit

[mattspammail]

Those two aren't necessarily practical, but options are more varied than they used to be. Consider this situation: my dad is a stock/bond broker. They're about to move to Lake Travis (about 30 miles from Austin, TX). He needs a constant connection. He can't get cable or DSL. A 1/4 T1 would be $300/month. Is that reasonable? Hardly. My recommendation: Dual WAN sources. 1. Satellite at $60/month for about 450 Mbps (.5 second latency is acceptable for data transfers), and 2. ISDN at $40/month (as a backup during periods of inclement weather. I will have him hooked to a dual-WAN router, for failover purposes. Linksys RV042

very nice

[spyder913]

especially the part about the symetric connections. I'd be happy to get 5M upload at the moment.

As much as Long Island sucks...

[nokilli]

...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.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[Widowwolf]

Yeah why is this never in calipornia?(yeah thats supposed to be a p)..hell we even had strippers and hookersrunning for our governorship..i vote to change the name!

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[nokilli]

Damn man, it's like the NSA has a whole room full of GS-7 retards whose sole job it is to spam refresh /. looking for the word freenet in a race to get the first post in that libels the protocol and all who use it as child molesters.

In case you haven't noticed, there are all kinds of prohibited bits and bytes out there today. Moreover, just because the data is legal doesn't mean I want GS-7 scumbags to be looking at what I read and write.

So...

Fuck you.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[commodoresloat]

And if you're actually commuting to Manhattan and back, I only have two words for you: hard drugs.

There are other things you can buy in Manhattan, you know!

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[nokilli]

You may resume trading now.

If freedom freaks you nazis out so much, why don't you all do the goosestep into some other country that thinks the way you do?

Like North Korea or Saudi Arabia.

I suppose next you'll want to ban digital cameras. What? No? Don't you know they can be used to produce child pornography? You support child porn!

Damn, I'm looking at my monitor and do you know what? It can be used to view child porn! Must. Destroy. It. Immediately.

My eyes, they can see! But that means, they can be used to look at child pornography! Somebody blind me quick!

Where do we get these fucking retards from?

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, I'm against true freedom because I --...

WHAT WHAT WHAT?! You're against freedom!? THE UNITED STATES WAS BASED ON FREEDOM! Why don't you move back in time to fucking Soviet Russia! Or go die of the plague in Cuba in a pile in donkey shit you fuckwad!

You don't even realize what your forefathers -- LIKE JESUS -- had to go through to get you that freedom, you arrogant little pissant!

Don't you get it? The terrorists are out to destroy our way of life! If you say that about freedom, they've already won!

You're just like one of them, you terrorist! You want to BOMB ALL OUR CHILDREN TO DEATH! I bet *you're* the real molester, trying to confuse the rest of us God-fearing patriots.

</satire>

See? I, too, can blow the topic completely out of proportion, Mr. Coward.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[nokilli]

Freenet.

Oooooh, look everybody, /. has a link to Freenet (which has a link to some page (which has a link to some other page, which might possibly link to child porn)).

Not only that, OSTG actually *hosts* freenet.

Gotta be a special place in hell for doing that!

And just to be sure we don't forget about Google, you can use Google to find Freenet, so then, Google can be used to find child porn too!

What makes these links possible? THE INTERNET! THE INTERNET IS ENABLING CHILD PORN SOMEBODY MOD IT DOWN QUICK!!!

lol

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[Qzukk]

Those are some pretty big and mighty words there.

Since it's apparent that you don't understand how it works, I'll let you know that blocks that aren't requested don't propagate and are eventually dropped. I can run a freenet node fully content in the knowlege that unless the billion people in China are suddenly all pedophiles, the Chinese blocks are statistically more likely to exist than the child porn blocks.

So, what Chinese Blog have you hosted recently? What's that? You're not doing your part to clean freenet of child porn?

MMMMhmmmm...

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[westlake]

if you want to look at a system that works, consider countries where child porn isn't 'illegal' like japan

Child pornography is illegal in Japan. Japan: Law for Punishing Acts Related to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, and for Protecting Children (1999)

depictions of naked kids

Child pornography is not "a picture of a naked kid."
Child pornography is the rape of a child for the sexual entertainment of an adult.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[Guppy06]

"There are other things you can buy in Manhattan, you know!"

Yeah, but most Slashdotters wouldn't even know what to do with a "lady of the eveing." :)

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[Guppy06]

" I did actually think that people saying it was so easy to acquire child porn were hyping it up until I installed it myself and seen dozens of links to what I assume are extremely disgusting freenet sites..."

So... why exactly were you looking for such sites?

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[Guppy06]

Ooh, a NAMBLA member!

"Seriously, they think making a law that makes child porn illegal PROTECTS children.. From what? the naked body god gave them when they were born?"

No, more like protecting them from the naked body God gave the freaky old man that's offering to buy them toys if they go through with it.

" from the person who BROKE THE LAW the idiots put in place to protect the children when they decided to take/look at child porn?"

From the person who paid money to the photographer, to the person who exploited children who either weren't able to say "no" or had no idea what they were saying "yes" to until it was well beyond too late.

"if you want to look at a system that works, consider countries where child porn isn't 'illegal' like japan, for instance."

Huh? You're pointing to a country where it is illegal to show genetalia (or even drawings of it) and you're saying that they have a more "liberal" attitude towards pornography?

All the hentai manga and anime you downloaded off the internet isn't legal for distribution in Japan as-is. What you see is what the artists drew before they had to obfuscate naughty bits to comply with Japanese law. And all the fictional depictions of teenagers having sex is legal because they are still depicted as being over the age of consent for Japan, whereas in the US the Supreme Court recently overturned a law against "simulated child pornography," meaning that it's legal here for fictional portrayals of sex even if the fictional characters aren't above the age of consent (however, in both countries, actors and actresses in live-action scenese must still be at least 18 years of age).

Japan may be more liberal in where you're allowed to sell/purchase pornography (depending on what state you look at), but pointing to a country where their porn looks like it came out of the Witness Protection Program and saying they're more liberal in content than the US is outright absurd.

"It doesn't make would be child rapists less likely to comit acts,"

The sale and purchase of child pornography funds these rapists, giving them the ability to continue to do it.

"depictions of naked kids aren't."

Depictions of naked adults are illegal in Japan! On the other hand, depictions of naked kids are legal in the US so long as it's not pornographic in nature.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[oncebitten]

Great, now my mom (who lives on Long Island) can tell me how great and super fast Optimum Online is and do I have it? And I get to answer yet again, no mom, I have a cable modem, but Comcast is the service provider.

And then proceed to watch her fire up AOL.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[bumptehjambox]

As of whenever we want: your right to unrestricted discussion, or "terrorist talk" has been revoked.

This discussion has raised the topic "child pornography" above the US legal limit. The amount of "child pornogrpahy" mentions,
could have triggered a thought towards children that is illegal, unpatriotic, terrorist-like, and above all- bad.

All who have posted must inform your local authorities and nearest recruiment center for mandatory armed service.
Failure to respond will make you a very bad person.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[westlake]

I can run a freenet node fully content in the knowlege that unless the billion people in China are suddenly all pedophiles, the Chinese blocks are statistically more likely to exist than the child porn blocks.

This assumes that the general Chinese population is a significant participant in Freenet. It is perfectly possible, and, I suspect, far more likely, that the origin of most Freenet blocks is Western.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[Marc2k]

Uh, no. That was a completely different provider entirely. That was OptimumOnline, the 100mbit provider is Cablevision.

Re:As much as Long Island sucks...

[The_Wilschon]

Voltaire (not actually, but he's often quoted as saying this, so good enough) said something very close to "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

And yes, there are logical limits to freedom: "Your right to swing your arm stops at the end of my nose", as my father has said. But, this does not justify preemptively taking away freedoms where there is no conflict. I would not say "You have no right to swing your arm because the end of my nose exists", because that would be stupid. Like you. And yes, in case you were wondering, that last bit is an ad hominem fallacy. So disregard it for the purposes of logic.

It's the beginning...

[intmainvoid]

Video on demand over ip, here we come.

Re:It's the beginning...

[Hack Jandy]

It's called IPTV. HJ

Re:It's the beginning...

[jmp_nyc]

Digital cable is a step in that direction already. Cablevision freed up a huge amount of bandwidth over the last few years by forcing all their subscribers to switch to digital cable boxes rather than the old analog ones. Now, all of the channels over their cable are transmitted digitally, which takes up far less bandwidth than the old analog scheme.

Some of the resulting bandwidth goes to increasing the number of channels (and HD channels), while some of it goes to additional Internet bandwidth. Add to that any upgrades of their network's bandwidth capacity and add switched video to reduce the bandwidth usage for channel offerings, and you get a much more robust set of offerings over cable TV.
-JMP

Re:It's the beginning...

[mreed911]

Have you looked at the configuration screens of your digital cable box lately? You have video-over-IP already. Your cable box has an IP address, and gets a compressed digital video stream from the local cable node/hub/provider, which it decodes into a picture and pushes out an output on your box (s-video, component, HDMI, etc.).

For digital services like video on demand, the box uses shared-key security and the MAC address to authenticate and "unlock", then the node just pushes the content down like data, letting the box handle the reassembly and decoding of picture/audio data.

My Scientific-Atlanta DVR has two tuners and gets two IP-addresses - one for each tuner.

And probably 10gb a month transfer limit

[nihilistcanada]

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?

Re:And probably 10gb a month transfer limit

[UnderScan]

Perhaps. Perhaps not. As a current Cablevision/OptimumOnline user, I downloaded over 10GB in just Linux distros just this past week: one 4GB Knoppix 4.0 DVD, five FC4 CDs, four Centos 4.1 CDs, & CDs 1-4 of Debian 3.1r0a.

As for speeds, I get 10Mbit/1Mbit. There is a local Debian mirror at Suny Stonybrook and I get about 800KB/s sustained from it. I can upload to my website at a max of 80KB/s. Sure its a ratio of 1:10 but its been this fast for the past three years & I have never been emailed or postal mailed by OO regarding any sort of bandwidth usage or abuse.

fttp...

[torrents]

looks like fiber to the premesis is causing real competition... good to see cable companoes still know how to compete...

Re:Sounds cool

[trelanexiph]

tactical nukes are on their way, merely as a customer service feature you understand. Please have a nice day.

Wrong place

[ManoMarks]

They never do these test market things in my neighborhood. Probably because its not high income enough.

Re:Wrong place

[mooingyak]

NYC + suburbs is the perfect place to try this out -- not because of regional incomes, but due to population density.

SF is the only place in the US that even comes close, and it's a small area.

what will you even use it for?

[pablo_max]

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.

Re:what will you even use it for?

[stagmeister]

... or, you will run a web server. With that kind of bandwith, you could run a server and not have to pay for hosting!

Re:what will you even use it for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hosting game servers, high quality video chat, voice conversations, sending home movies to the relatives, making your personal photo libraries available, hosting your blog, video on demand from those hollywood types you mentioned. More importantly how about being able to do several of those things at once instead of just one at a time as is often the case now.

There are thousands of useful and totally legal things that can be done with very high speed connections that can't be done very effectively with the current "broadband" offerings. Just because it can be used for illegal activities doesn't mean those are the only uses for such connections.

Re:what will you even use it for?

[startleman]

I disagree.
There are tons of uses for more bandwidth. One only needs to envision online services such as fast system backups, multimedia mail, videophones, on-demand HDTV over ip, . . . .shall I continue? I don't beleive that the only people that will benefit from larger bandwidth are pirates and p2p users...
just my 2 cents.

Re:what will you even use it for?

[fallendragon]

these questions are completely redundant. who needs more than 640k of memory? if you build it he will come. you can't even envisage what this could be used for because it probably hasn't even been invented yet. its like having a 60gig ipod in 1983 (?) when the only CD you could buy was Brothers in Arms and wondering what you were going to use the other 59 gigs and change for.

Re:what will you even use it for?

[afabbro]

Hollywood WILL get their way.

Because, of course, that's what's happened to date.

Oh wait...

Re:what will you even use it for?

[Nahor]

Yeah, 640kbps ought to be enough for everybody! Sheesh...

Re:what will you even use it for?

[Alef]

It's funny you mention research papers. In fact, I am working on a research paper at this moment, and have found it very useful to have an optical fiber plugged into my computer, since it allows me to transfer simulation data (several GB) between the university and my home computer.

Re:what will you even use it for?

[Iax]

Havent you forgoten the number 1 industry on the Internet? PORN! I bet they could think of ways to saturate that connetions if a large enough percentage of people had 50Mbps

Re:what will you even use it for?

[tepples]

Hosting game servers ... making your personal photo libraries available, hosting your blog

Running a server is prohibited in most residential high-speed Internet access agreements.

video on demand from those hollywood types you mentioned.

It would compete with the cable company's own VOD, and the cable company has every right to slow it down.

Re:what will you even use it for?

[Sithgunner]

You can also be a good bittorrent seeder, the likes of Linux distribution gets helped good in this way too.

Besides, it makes it easy for you to try out many unix of several hundered of mb downloads each.

And making VPN on 2 end points, you have a speedy file interaction on those computers, is only bearable with many big files with such bandwidth.

Re:what will you even use it for?

[mbius]

and seriously, what's with this "Enhanced Graphics Architecture?" Do we really need all those colors for video games? It's not like anybody will ever put photographs on their computer.

Re:what will you even use it for?

[ArchAngel21x]

I can't believe this was modded as insightful. That same remark could have been made about the cable connections we run today. When you combine online gaming, VoIP, and streaming TV, etc you suddenly realize that there will be a need for connections like that without throwing piracy in the mix. Saying that piracy is the only reason for such a connection is arrogant. That's like someone saying the only reason you would want a gun is to commit a crime.

Cablevision service nightmare

[warren96]

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.

Re:Cablevision service nightmare

[LoRdTAW]

Yea but cable vision in brooklyn always sucked. One kid I used to know lived on the Brooklyn Queens border in cityline (not more then 10 blocks from me) always had complaints. Out on LI I have a few friends and they dont have any complaints.

I live in south queens and we have Time Warner cable at one home and Verizon 3.0/768 DSL at another. No complaints with either service (except the RR cable is much faster and more responsive then the DSL). I know a few people with RR cable from TW and they also never have a complaints.

Verizon is deploying FIOS in the metro area too but they left out NYC. It always appears that NYC and other major cities are left for last with Broadband. Its probably too costly to beploy fibre in densely populated areas. I personally would like to get Fios since Verizon is also gearing up to deploy Digital TV services over Fios. Hopefully it will be as good or better then Time warner cable (it simply rocks).

In other news

[Psionicist]

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.

Re:In other news

[lorenlal]

Yea, I know... we're freaking out for something that you all consider sliced bread...

Lots of my friends had broadband before I ever touched it. I didn't care. It was just as wonderful when I got it, regardless of when.

Think of it like landing on the moon... Sure the first guys got the most recognition... But everyone who did it felt the rush!

Now if I could just find a way out there...

Re:In other news

[Alef]

Actually, at least in Västerbotten, optical fiber networks are built to most households (even in villages). It currently costs about 20 USD per month (175 SEK) for 100 Mb, although there is an installation fee of about 1000 USD.

Re:In other news

[Rakishi]

In Japan at least this is the case because they started getting broadband much later than the US. In the US they already had broadband which both made it less important to upgrade things yet again, and also made it less profitable to do so.

Re:In other news

[fermion]

That is so not true. The reason the US has low speed internet is that there is no money in it, and the goverment structure, at least after 2000, changed so that there were no longer any incentives. Pre-2000 there was real compitition. I did not have to go with local service provider. Today SBC has out nuts in a vise.

In effect, the current administration decided that the telco and cable were sufficient compition and allowed everyone else to be squeezed. Niether of these have an incetive to provide high bandwidth because it would squeeze other bussiness units.

A very good and recent analysis of this is in foreign affairs. It details the policy change that lead to the US becoming a technological backwater.

Re:In other news

[Beatbyte]

rub it in our face why don't you. at least we have the world's most expensive military! eat that! ...i'm going back to my 1.5mbps adsl and ENJOYING IT!

Re:In other news

[TheoMurpse]

It's not better in Japan. Fiber Optic (I don't know the speed rating) is around 70 USD/mo. I have DSL (45mbit down/?? up) for 35 USDsmo.

Re:In other news

[Reaperducer]

. Pre-2000 there was real compitition. I did not have to go with local service provider. Today SBC has out nuts in a vise.

Your situation is unfortunate. But it is not indicative of the situation in every corner of the United States. Where I live (in the downtown of a large city) I have upwards of 30 choices for high-speed internet from cable, DSL, fixed microwave, cellular, and wi-fi.

Re:In other news

[shimpei]

Your information is outdated. Usen has FTTH for JPY2,980 (~US$27) per month. TEPCO's FTTH offerings are also well below $70/month. Unless you live in remote regions, I'm sure you can do better than $35/month for ADSL as well.

Re:In other news

[TheoMurpse]

That sucks for me. I got here in September, and spent months looking for a good deal for broadband. FTTH was advertising JPY7,000 when I got here. I live in Sagamihara, Kanagawa, which borders Tokyo. The price must have changed quite drastically in the past few months. J-Com was expensive for someone who doesn't need TV, so I didn't go with that.

Man, that really sucks! I wish I could have gotten FTTH so cheap in September!

Re:In other news

[Sithgunner]

In terms of price, I'd say we're about same in Japan.

Don't know what your price includes, but I assume that price includes the line fee as well as the ISP fee.

If you mean the quality comparison, in here my ISP with 100mbps up/down, had no downtime at all for nearly a year (running linux servers and such, so I know if it goes down for some amount of time) since I have subscribed to, so it's pretty perfect service for reasonable price.

Re:In other news

[Brobock]

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.

I believe you only get this in your local area network. Such as bredband to bredband customer.
That is why DC++ is so popular in Sweden besides the coder being from there.

However when connecting outside the bredband network, you get typical DSL speeds.

Re:In other news

[apanap]

High taxes yes, relatively small land mass, no! Sweden has a population density of about 20/km^2, USA has about 30 (according to Wikipedia and CIA world factbook). Though it's true that a lot of the infrastructure and backbones are paid by taxes.

Re:In other news

[Rakishi]

*sigh* Japan asfaik built a whole new infrastructure, they didn't extend phone lines or cable but built fiber (I belive that is right) everywhere. The US can do that as well however there has been no incentive till now since people generally don't need that much speed. If everyone has dial-up they will bitch, if everyone has mdoerate broadband the generally won't as much. Verizon's FIOS is closest to what Japan did and amaxingly enough they seem to be building it without much trouble however its going slowly and took time (probably to become cheap enough).

Its called competition and capitalism, an existing infrastructure limits the profits from a new one since the old one can usually be sold for less. People will buy cheaper things even if they're not the best.

Donuts

[InvaderSkoodge]

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...

Holy shits!

[CarrionBird]

That's just around the corner! Doesn't say if this will benefit current reseidential customers though.

Cable Vision? No thanks.

[weevlos]

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.

That's it

[simontek2]

I am moving to Long Island. Screw Savannah, and the fireants, speaking of which, fireants and fireworks = murdering tons of fireants

Re:That's it

[needacoolnickname]

Enjoy the horrible accent!

In Savannah the ugly women sound sexy. In LonG Aiylend the sexy women sound ugly.

Re:That's it

[op00to]

Yeah, those hicks sound 'sexy' if you like your women to sound like morons who have a mouth full of marbles. Ah-hyuck!

Not as simple...

[PaulBu]

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.

I know, I was there during that election.

[infonography]

and one of the hookers won.

Not MOCA

[lullabud]

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...

I don't care.

[kc32]

Great. A giant city gets an even faster internet connection. Until I can get it in Kansas, I don't really give a shit.

not only 100 Mbit, GIGAbit.

[TERdON]

http://www.uppsalanytt.se/news.asp?newsID=1192 (sorry, in swedish). And there might be a cap on that connection, I don't really know.

And also, IIRC, those gigabit connections were available in Japan/Korea before in Sweden, don't have any link to use as confirmation though.

Re:not only 100 Mbit, GIGAbit.

[Professor_UNIX]

How exactly is this kind of thing affordable to build out? Is it subsidized by the government in any way? I just can't see what kind of incentive there is for a private company to give the average user that kind of bandwidth when it'll be so obviously abused. Unless they run HDTV video on demand over it in addition to VOIP, why would a company offer this?

Don't get me wrong, I'm highly jealous, but I can't see any private company in the United States rolling out this kind of thing unless it was capped at 1 Mbps upstream with tons of blocked ports (for your protection) and a dynamic IP that uses PPPoE for connectivity.

Re:not only 100 Mbit, GIGAbit.

[TERdON]

1) They DO run both VoIP and video-on-demand, IIRC. Or if that's the other broadband supplier?

2) I DO suspect them to actually have some kind of cap, if nothing else only having a limited pipe to the intarweb (can't get very much fatter than 1 Gbit - is there really anything bigger than 10 Gbit? - and I would suspect it to be shared among quite a lot of users).

3) The prices mentioned in the article are quite hefty. 850 SEK / Month = appr. $120 / Month. And a connection fee a bit above $200 (this is for clients already connected to the "normal" service - so perhaps I should call it an "upgrade fee" instead).

4) This is for ISPs specializing in connecting whole neighborhoods, including grandma surfing (even though she won't sign up for this deal, she's paying part of it anyway).

5) As far as I know, there isn't any special government subsidizing. There ARE some subsidize systems, but they're more aimed at getting broadband at all (the coverage is still really spotty on the countryside, my parents are still on phonemodem even though they live in one of the more densely populated parts of non-urban Sweden) - and even for that the money is far from enough. (The socialdemocrats promised "Bredband åt alla" during the elections, but it have hardly helped anyone at all to get it).

6) This is still an exception, even in Sweden, even 100/100 is still really unusual except at universities (the normal being 10/10 or X/1 where X=2,4,6,8 or 28), if nothing else because it also costs quite a lot.

7) There's no chance in hell that the connections are being used to their full potential, even with P2P'ing, unless you connect a small sized LAN party to them. At gigabit speeds, you would fill a 200 GB harddrive in only approximately 45 minutes (and uploading as much). Normal computers can't even handle that rate of I/O in theory, and nevertheless, it isn't very likely you would be able to bypass the human bottleneck in the system...

8) Basically, I think the answer is really to find in the swedish market structure: a) swedes are hightech-people, knowing what to get, b) there has been quite a lot of competition on the swedish market, with Bredbandsbolaget pioneering really affordable and easy-to-get symmetrical broadband connections (10/10) really early (multiappartment house LAN connections), making swedes expect more. Basically, it's lead to a kind of bandwidth race...

Re:not only 100 Mbit, GIGAbit.

[Keruo]

> Is it subsidized by the government in any way?

yes, the government in Sweden is sponsoring the building of broadband network.
I don't recall the exact figures, but I think their goal is to make 2Mbit/s or better available to every corner of the country in next few years.

Porn in HD!!

[John Seminal]

I am dumbfounded. 100 megs a second?? Is that what they said. That is a whole HUGE milf file in less than 3 seconds.

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?

Re:Porn in HD!!

[Elminst]

"Anyone know how to get all the premium stations and pay per view for free?"

Go to work for the cable company?
As a TimeWarner employee, I get all the digital cable, all the HD, all the premiums, all the extra channels, all the video on demand, DVR, 3 extra digital boxes, and free RoadRunner (5M/384k). Easily $250+/month.

Re:Porn in HD!!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a TimeWarner employee, I get all the digital cable, all the HD, all the premiums, all the extra channels, all the video on demand, DVR, 3 extra digital boxes, and free RoadRunner (5M/384k). Easily $250+/month.

Yeah, but you have to work for the cable company.....

Re:Porn in HD!!

[MeanMF]

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.

Not with Cablevision...f**kers put a filter on my line.

Re:THIS IS NOT FAIR

[muszek]

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).

Screw the midwest

[lorenlal]

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...

Tokyo

[lullabud]

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... :(

Memories...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Hope they can afford to finish this

[DeepRedux]

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.

explosions in the sky

[dimmak]

...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.

Re:explosions in the sky

[Marc2k]

I'm not really sure what explosions in the sky has to do with the body of your post, but I am nevertheless intrigued.

what good is 256 kbps up?

[John Seminal]

you are running a server, right?

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.

Re:what good is 256 kbps up?

[muszek]

I could get 1Mbps/256kbps for $20 less. Provided there are 3 of us living in this apartament, additional 1Mb is nice (all of us tend to abuse bandwidth at times ;) ).

I can get additional 256 up for (to a total of 512) for $35. I can do it any time, but don't really neet it (torrent suffers, tho...)

The game we're developing is a web-based game. With gzip compression turned on average page is a bit over 4kB. That gives us ~7 pages per second with 256kbps. If one logged in user requests one page per 30 seconds (my assumption), we'll be able to serve 210 logged in users, which is more than enough for early beta.

TCP/IP class 101 in session

[cbreaker]

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.

Re:TCP/IP class 101 in session

[CardiganKiller]

Can we get some "Immune to overstatement but still technologically insightful" moderation in here?

Re:TCP/IP class 101 in session

[TCM]

When I'm downloading at a full 4Mbit via http, I'm almost completely saturating the 512Kbit upstream.

If it were really 50Mbit downstream, they'd need to give something like 8Mbit up, or at the very least 4.

I call BS. The overhead for ACKs on a pure download is _not that_ high. I ran netstat -bI 1 while downloading a file via HTTP:

376704 9420
323586 9708
378421 9724
377904 9228

First number is bytes down, second is bytes up over the last second. The ratio is roughly 40:1. You must have done something wrong saturating half an Mbit with a 4Mb download.

Re:TCP/IP class 101 in session

[mlyle]

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.

As another poster pointed out, you must be smoking crack. Even if you send some massive 72 byte acknowledgement (tons of IP options) per 1500 byte packet down, that's a ratio of 1:20, or perhaps 200kilobits of acknowledgements up. In practice you shouldn't be sending nearly this much (because of delayed ACK and similar factors).

As download speed increases (and with it, the bandwidth-delay product), the relative proportion of ACKs decreases yet further.

Re:TCP/IP class 101 in session

[ProfaneBaby]

Depends on the implementation - things like SACK make a world of difference.

Do I think that Win98 has an 8:1 down:up ratio? No, but I'm sure it's not as efficient as Win2k3, FreeBSD 5.3, and Linux 2.6 are..

Re:THIS IS NOT FAIR

[Skye16]

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.

Imagine a global beowulf cluster of...

[lullabud]

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.

Re:Imagine a global beowulf cluster of...

[Khyber]

Seriously though, as everybody has noted, there are tons of legal things to do with a fat pipe.

Except smoke it, in some areas of the world.

Awesome!

[lullabud]

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!

Re:THIS IS NOT FAIR

[AK Marc]

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).

what about riaa and mpaa

[zoftie]

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.

Emigrating Hordes of Nerds...

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

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...

Thats it.....

[Ichigo Kurosaki]

I'm moving to New York

Re:THIS IS NOT FAIR

[muszek]

I have NO idea how much 100$ USD

It's not a question of how much could you buy for it, but rather how much an average person can spare for such stuff after paying bills (and the answer is "almost nothing").

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.

Verizon's FiOS is competition

[__aaijsn7246]

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.

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 ;) 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.

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[nolife]

I actually called them today and they told me I would be able to order fiber possibly as early as tomorrow.

HAHAHAHA, they have been telling me I could get DSL next month for the past 5 years. I hope you have better luck.

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[xenoandroid]

Verizon installs a backup battery inside your house to power the system in the case of an emergency. However they say it's the customer's responsibility to maintain it.

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[guibaby]

I have had 15/2 for about a year now. I have no technical conplaints. I have not had any outages. Billing was a little dicey in the beginning because I don't use verizon phone services, but everything else is wonderful.
And they actually mean 15/2.

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[Zackbass]

My town has been absolutely swarmed with Verizon trucks stringing up fiber over the past few months. It's amazing the way they attack an area, most of May I'd see 5-10 different Verizon trucks on my 15 minute commute.

They have got me a bit worried though, they've been slowing down over the past few weeks but they're still about a mile down my road (Meriden Rd in Rockaway twp NJ if anyone cares) and haven't done any work in weeks. I hope they make it up here sometime soon, I don't know how much longer I take Cablevision's flakey service.

Verizon, if you're reading this, you'd better string some fiber up here. You're missing out on a huge lode of rich people (that conviently live right by me), the kind that buy the expensive plan but only get as far as email and MSN.com. Come on, just hook me up and I'll have everyone in the area buying.

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[illumin8]

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 ;)

Why would it not work during a power outage? I've actually seen a FTTP setup at a small-town run telco when I went to repair a server there. It was slick. They basically have a durable plastic case that you mount on the wall in the garage. It has a self-enclosed UPS with replaceable battery, power conditioner, fiber modem/router/wireless 802.11G card optional, plus patch panel for analog phone jacks (VoIP router built in) and coax jacks for HDTV set-top boxes.

You mount that sucker on the wall of your garage, or in a closet, or in the basement, connect it to AC power, fiber, and run all your internal wiring to the patch panel... voila! Fully digital, battery-backed up home information system... All your services, voice, data, HDTV plus video on demand on 1 fiber. More than enough bandwidth for any service, or all of them at once. 100 megabits is a ton, and most services stay on the MAN (metropolitan area network), so they only need a couple DS3s to provide internet service to the whole town... All the feeds for digital TV and video on demand come in over Satellite and are stored on some Sun servers at the head-end.

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[__aaijsn7246]

Sounds lovely. This is the future.

The reason phones wouldn't work in a power outage is you can only put light over fiber, and phones use electricity. There is the battery but that will last for about 8 hours from what I hear. I wonder if ONTs will become more energy efficient..

Here's some data for AFC's AccessMAX 610x which FiOS uses,
https://www.afc.com/documents/literature_library/A FC_FiberDirect_Overview(1).pdf

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[bill_mcgonigle]

HAHAHAHA, they have been telling me I could get DSL next month for the past 5 years. I hope you have better luck.

That's because all the guys who would be installing your DSL-capable infrastructure are busy ripping out his DSL-capable infrastructure and replacing it with Fiber.

They'll get DSL to your podunk ass after the rest of the country is strung up on fiber.

Unless they come up with something faster than fiber first, in which case they'll replace the whole country with that while you're still using wet and corroded split-pairs of 22-gauge copper.

God, I love a monopoly.

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[_marshall]

I just bought a new house in the Coppell/Lewisville Texas area where Verizon is rolling out FTTP for all new development. Just a quick disclaimer, I'm speaking from personal experience, so I don't know for sure if they are doing this in the New York area or not.

At any rate, I had this same concern when Verizon came to install our fiber. To my delight, Verizon installed a battery in my garage (just sits on the wall) that has an approximately 1 hour life that will serve your fiber phone line in case of a serious outage (I'm sketchy on the battery's life so don't quote me exactly -- it might be longer).

Enjoy the 15Mbps .. it's unreal. Definately the most useful $50 I spend every month =)

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[eth1]

Except FiOS has inbound port 80 and 25 blocked, and a no-server policy... totally useless.

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[__aaijsn7246]

Not sure if anyone is still watching this thread but just in case... I just finished speaking to Verizon, and indeed, fiber has become available for me today! They will be installing it on the 11th of July - very impressive. It's an all day installation, taking 8 hours possibly, and they will replace all the old copper from the street with fibers. The backup battery lasts 2 days, or 4-6 hours of talking on the phone (I don't think the net will work on battery).

They also told me that there will be a TV package coming over the fiber soon, and to "ease the transition" they are offering satellite in partnership with DirectTV for the time being, so I could stop cable totally if I wanted. Of course I don't watch any TV so I didn't care for this but it is interesting business.

Very exciting.. I've been waiting many years for this :)

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[bill_mcgonigle]

Nice. Are you in Northern NJ?

Re:Verizon's FiOS is competition

[__aaijsn7246]

Yup :)

My Guess: Securing Solid Dollar Figures

[lullabud]

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.

of the end.

[MacDork]

Why now? Oh yeah, the Supreme Court just ruled they aren't common carriers. Enjoy being fed high bandwidth their way.

Who needs all that?

[caluml]

I'm happy with my 256/512 for £25 a month. Mind you, it has newsgroups, no filtered ports, and really helpful tech support.

Of course

[kilodelta]

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.

I honestly doubt it

[AdamReyher]

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.

mass photo-uploading, OOL capped me.

[scaturan]

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. :)

General availability...

[redphive]

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.

Not a subscriber-level service

[mreed911]

Having worked for Time-Warner in the Roadrunner division, and having RTFA, let me be the one to smash your dreams:

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.

"Business Service" = Different Policies

[billstewart]

Yes, you're using a consumer service which has cretinously designed policies implemented badly with poor communications to the users so they'll be scared into only doing couch potato stuff instead of participating in the Internet, but you probably knew that when you bought cable modem service (or certainly figured it out quickly soon after :-) But the problems aren't technology - they're policies and terms of service, and it's not that they can't provide higher speeds, they're just not providing them to *you* because they think you're a couch potato who wants to pay $30-40/month for Yet Another flavor of Pay-Per-View while their kids play online games.

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.)

I've been capped

[waffffffle]

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.

Symmetric - Business Services - $$

[billstewart]

They're going to allow high-speed symmetric connections because there's demand from customers who are willing to pay more for it. The press release doesn't talk about pricing, but this isn't going to be the same $20-50/month that typical consumer cable modems cost, and probably not even the $50-100 that low-end business cable service costs. I'm guessing it's somewhere in the $500 range, maybe $150-1000.

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.

Re:Symmetric - Business Services - $$

[enigmatichmachine]

I don't know about your pricing ideas, I had 10Mbps(fiber to the home) each way in Sacremento for a while for around 50 bucks a month, the trick was, I could only transfer 5 gigs each way a month. if that were a server, it would have to average 30kbits /s or go overboard and then pay 10$ a gig thereafter. i would imagine they're going to set up some sort of limit like that.

Re:Symmetric - Business Services - $$

[AvitarX]

You leave out that the LIRR has hot dog stands of booze in the waiting area. Also my usage of it has been much more pleasant (but not great) than yours.

I don't see the point

[crypto55]

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.

Business Web Services and Diversity, that's what

[billstewart]

50 Mbps symmetric service isn't something for the average home user, who can be served much less expensively with asymmetric services (even if they're 50/5 or whatever.) This is a business service, presumably with a business price level, and since it's symmetric and fast they're presumably permitting businesses to run web servers (just like they *should* be doing with consumer service but are too stupid and stubborn to do.)

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.

Giant Suburb, not Giant City

[billstewart]

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.

Re:Giant Suburb, not Giant City

[kc32]

I'm not here for the peace and quiet. I'n only here because i happened to be born here. And I live in a decent-sized city, I want a fast connection.

I know where they got the cable!

[monk]

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.

Because you're using it for work

[tepples]

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.

Read the TOS carefully

[tepples]

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.

Comcast has always been good here....

[Cutting_Crew]

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.

New Technology f

[papasui]

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)

Proprietary systems are bad

[Alereon]

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?

Not everybody can get DSL

[tepples]

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?

Competition

[pinkocommie]

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.

Like a car ad: starting at $20K; as shown $25K

[tepples]

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."

Depends on the OS

[ravenspear]

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.

Re:But WHY?

[patio11]

I live in Japan, and get 50 MB/s. It gets wasted 99.98% of the time (I don't pirate). However, when I participated in the ICFP programming contest this last weekend, being able to download an entire Linux distribution in the time it usually takes me to download my email was pretty cool. (By the way, if this whole broadband thing is making you nostoglic for the days of 300 bits per second being a speed demon, you can relive the early nineties anytime you want, for free, by trying to connect to the Yahoo Japan mail server).

Cablevsion is worse than Aids.

[JustinRowe]

I'll see a reliable broadband service from them when Dolan's Knicks win the NBA title.

isnt it overkill

[srikrishnak]

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...????????????????

Re:But WHY?

[NerveGas]

I can't think of a legal use that my 3Mb connection isn't perfectly capable of handling

There are things I'd like to download from work fairly often that my 3 mbps connection is just too slow for, and I'll wait until I go in the next day.

Here's another example: I regularly sync up the photos I've taken to a storage server at the office for backups. Uncompressed file sizes can be over 300 megs *per image*. It doesn't take many of those to make you wish you had more than 768k. Even if I had 3mbps up, it would still take a lot longer than I would like.

steve

Re:filters filters filters

[NerveGas]

Sure, the provider may not have the bandwidth to throw more than a few hundred mbits or a gbit or whatever they decided

Here's the beauty of being a large player in a well-connected city: You don't necessarily need to buy huge upstream pipes, all you need is a presence in a major peering location - then you can work out "non-transit" peering with the other major players. You're not buying bandwidth from them, they're just agreeing to take packets from you that are destined for their network anyway. You can get rid of a lot of customer's packets without shelling out much money that way...

As an example, the provider that we use has always given us absolutely fan-freaking-tastic performance getting our packets anywhere they need to go, because they have such agreements with hundreds of different networks - everything from the big players to relatively "small" players like the Microsoft and Yahoo networks. It's an entirely different ball game from someone who just buys pipes from one or a few upstream providers.

steve

Re:Boring...

[NerveGas]

Yes the U.S. has a much lower population density, it has an older infrastructure, and so on so forth.

That's not the problem. The problem is that the US government has a real knack for regulating the industry where said regulation will not benefit the consumer, while not regulating when it would help the consumer.

Besides that, the taxes on telecommunication lines are just insane. A few years ago, our company was paying over $200 in taxes on a line that cost $400.

steve

steve

Re:Why not pay per MB?

[NerveGas]

Providers don't buy transfer, they buy (or trade) bandwidth. Because of that, selling transfer (as opposed to bandwidth) becomes a stickier situation, plannign capacity becomes much tougher, and they're less able to deal with peak demands.

I've always thought that selling transfer to be hokey. Every time I see someone with a cut-rate hosting company with a web page that says "This web page has exceeded it's monthly transfer allocation...", I shake my head in disbelief.

(The only reason for doing that is because they're putting many domains on one machine, and using name-based virtual hosting - making rate-limitting much more difficult. With IP-based virtual hosting, then a relatively cheap Linux router can rate-limit quite well.)

steve

Re:But WHY?

[Big_Al_B]

More and more modern cable head ends run IP to the customer. It's probably part of a migration plan, where your internet traffic will share bandwidth with your MPEG2/MPEG4/HD content...and phone traffic.

What could an average user legally do with that much bandwidth?

• Remote backups,
  
• Send Grandma a whole photo album/slideshow with background music
  
• Broadcast-quality Videoconferencing (even multiple sites)
  

There. That didn't take much imagination...

Bryggenet

[Seindal]

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.

sigh..

[rotagivan]

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.

Thats great...but what about us farm folk...

[jeephistorian]

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.

Re:But WHY?

[Overzeetop]

It's not about downloading a hundred gigs a day. For most of us, it's about sitting down at the computer, checking our email, and getting Aunt Ginnie's holiday photos (all 100megs of them) without having to go find something else to do for 15 minutes. ITs about having ebays home page fully loaded in a second or two, instead of ten. It's about getting a driver or a utility app in a couple of seconds versus a couple of minutes.

That may seem trivial - a few seconds here, a minute or two there - but when you have a real life, you don't have a couple of hours in an evening or on a weekend day to sit in front of the computer waiting for a download. Fast internet makes browsing the web more like browsing a book. I never thought I'd say this, but with 6Mb over Adelphia, I'm starting to get annoyed at the lag (latency) for web pages. I can click through pages pretty fast when I'm trying to research somehting, and my connection is still a bit laggy.

The speed is there to minimize the time spent staring at a static screen on the computer, not to increase the total download capability of the system.

+4 Insightful?! This guy is an ass!

[dmauro]

If you modded the parent up, you lose.

Splitting the cable doesn't always work

[davidwr]

>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?

Homer's gargle

[alienmole]

Ahckmkkmmm!

No, it's more of a gargling sound. I'm not even going to try to spell it though, whoever can succeed at that will have my undying admiration.

The last mile is EXPENSIVE

[davidwr]

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.

Linux DVDs

[davidwr]

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.

Before everyone whines too much

[suitepotato]

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...

How to cap and port-block fairly

[davidwr]

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!

perfunctory DSL price complaint

[zumbojo]

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.

So are proprietary standards

[Alereon]

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.