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50Mbps Cable Launched on Long Island
the-dark-kangaroo writes "Cable Vision have teamed up with Narad Networks to provide a new 50Mbps broadband service in the New York metropolitan area. The current deployment has a capability of 100Mbps (the connections are symmetric) with future developments allowing up to 10Gbps connections. The system utilises current cabling systems allowing enterprise level connections to homes and businesses."
OptimumOnline caps their customer's upload throughput at 150kbit/s for uploading "too much". They don't even tell you what "too much" is. Their normal caps are rather generous at 10mbit/1mbit, but what's the point if you can't actually use it?
especially the part about the symetric connections. I'd be happy to get 5M upload at the moment.
...I gotta say, 50Mbps broadband would be enough to entice me to return. I'd like to run a Freenet node, but only if I had big bandwidth upstream. 50Mbps is _big_ bandwidth, and it's symmetrical.
With all the fear and loathing over p2p, I'm surprised to see that they're allowing high-speed symmetrical connections like this. I was fully expecting 50Mbps down/16Kbps up, or something similarly retarded.
And what does this do to hosting providers like serverbeach? That 50Mbps is going to be unmetered, right? So the game server, your new pay-per-view pr0n site, and the blog all get hosted at home on the Mac Mini. Wow.
And no, it's not flamebait about Long Island. People who live there know what I'm talking about. It's the traffic. You have to drive to get anywhere and even a simple trip to the grocery store and back can make you go insane. To say nothing of commuting. And if you're actually commuting to Manhattan and back, I only have two words for you: hard drugs.
Video on demand over ip, here we come.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Why is it that they always love to wax orgasmicaly about how fast their connections are but all these unlimited plans have caps of 10gb a month or so? How about you give your customers increased bandwith usage rather then hypothetical speed increases?
looks like fiber to the premesis is causing real competition... good to see cable companoes still know how to compete...
Get your torrents...
Lets face it, people using those huge connections are mostly downloading very large files for p2p networks. I know there are other uses, but I say generally. Now that the door have been opened for companies to held liable for the actions of users, its only a matter of time before ISP are killing your connection and turning you over to the RIAA or the like so they can save themselves a law suit. Disagree all you want. Hollywood WILL get their way. After that, whats the point of a insane fast connection....oh let me guess, for "research papers"? It's a sad time in america.
Never believe anything Cablevision writes or says, it'll be just smoke and mirrors. Had the "service" and anytime there was a hiccup, no connection, smtp service down, long delays in response, their "tech support" ws nowhere to be found. That is if you can actually get a live person to answer the "customer Service" or "Customer Support" phone lines. I wouldn't go back to cablevision service even if it was free for ever. Not worth the hassles. Ex cablevision customer from Brooklyn.
Here in Sweden you can already get 100 mbit up/down without limitations or caps for around 45 USD ( www.bredband2.se ) in an assortment of locations, not only universities. It's even better in Japan and Korea I think.
So how do you write that sound that Homer Simpson makes when he sees a box of donuts? That's the sound I'm making right now...
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.
Great. A giant city gets an even faster internet connection. Until I can get it in Kansas, I don't really give a shit.
And also, IIRC, those gigabit connections were available in Japan/Korea before in Sweden, don't have any link to use as confirmation though.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Seriously, before I could only have a player about a quarter the size of my monitor, if I tried to expand the size of the porn any more, it would not be clear. Her skin would not look smooth and soft. Now I can watch porn the way it was intended to be, in High Definition.
And before people start bashing me, anwser one question? How much money is made in porn on the web every year? How much money does Amazon make on the web? See... the web is there for porn, everything else is icing on the cake.
To the people of IRAN, if you censor your web, you will never get 100 megs a second. The moment you let people masturbate, the porn industry will come to Terahn and give you 100 megs a second!! But along with titles such as "Touched by Alah", you will have to let people have "Mr. Azerja, the goatfucker". Actually, I am sorry for that last joke. Please forgive me. I am going to burn in hell for that one.
What else is 100 megs a second good for? TV on demand? I wonder how the DirectTV and Dish will counter these fast speeds that cable has. What will DSL do? I hate supporting cable providers, because back when they were the only choice (for cable tv), they were the worst customer service pricks around-
Me: "Hi, I saw your advertisment for $29.95 instal with two months of HBO for half price with basic service"
Them: "Hey, hold on one second... *strange noise*... Okay, what did you want???
Me: "I'd like to order cable service, can you come out this Saturday?"
Them: "No way. Let me look... ahh, okay, we can come out in three weeks, the 13th."
Me: "Any way you can come sooner?"
Them: "No"
Me: "Okay I guess, what time can you be here?"
Them: "We will be there between the hours of 8am and 7pm."
Me: "WHAT??? I'd like to not wait all day"
Them: "Hold on, I have another call."
CLICK- call disconected.
Second Call
Me: "Hi, I was just disconnected"
Them: "Oh, yeah, what do you want again?"
Me: "I'd like to order service"
Them: *noise of chips crunching* "Yeah, fine, okay".
Me: "How do I order service"
Them: "Let me get to that screen. I am going to need to put you on hold again"
Me: "NOOOOOOO"
CLICK- call disconected
Third Call
Me: "You hung up on me again!"
Them: "No I didn't, I put you on hold"
Me: "Whatever, I want to order cable service"
Them: "Sure thing, we can get to you in four weeks, on the 20th"
Me: "You just told me three weeks, now it is four?"
Them: "Yeah, we had a mad dash of orders since I last talked to you"
The only good thing about the cable industry is they are so fucking currupted, it is easy to steal from them. I know people who had free HBO for 10 years just because they slipped the instal guy $20 bucks. Now that things are going digital, it does not work as well, because you need that box. And RTF Gold does not descrable all the pay-per-view stuff. But the one trick that is left, if you only want basic service and internet, is to order just the internet and then split the cable. You will get basic programming for free.
Having said that, I wonder what the sweet spot for broadband and tv service is, including stealing? Anyone have the gigantic dishes? Anyone know how to get all the premium stations and pay per view for free?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
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).
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.
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.
You couldn't have 50Mbit down, 16Kbit up. You need enough upstream in order to send acknowledgement packets, not only on the TCP level but on the application level if so required (which often is.) With 16kBit, you might be able to reach 384Kbit downstream. MAYBE.
When my cable went to 4Mbit, they increased the upstream to 512Kbit. When I'm downloading at a full 4Mbit via http, I'm almost completely saturating the 512Kbit upstream. So they didn't increase my upstream because they were just feeling nice, they did it because they had to, so the downstream would scale upwards.
If it were really 50Mbit downstream, they'd need to give something like 8Mbit up, or at the very least 4. Unless, of course, it's just a marketing gimmick and they're using the lack of upstream to effectively cap the downstream where they want it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Well, I'm sure the Swedish government will be tracking you down to have a word with you, since it's YOUR post that will have been responsible for Slashdotting The Swedish Immigration Board's website now...
I have to admit, the idea of real LAN-speed broadband internet in my home is givin' me a nerd-on...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I'm moving to New York
Cablevision isn't just doing this to be nice. Verizon is set to launch FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) in the area very shortly. In NJ they have been stringing fibers for the last few months.. I actually called them today and they told me I would be able to order fiber possibly as early as tomorrow. I'm currently an Optimum Online subscriber and am definitely going to be switching over ASAP.
;) Or is it okay for fiber not to work during power outages as it is Verizon who supplies it rather than some upstart VoIP business that doesn't have the lobbying power that incumbent telcos do...?) If you have a pair of binoculars you can check out your poles and look for the little Corning boxes.
Their pricing plan is pretty good:
Down/Up
Up to 5 Mbps/2 Mbps $39.95
Up to 15 Mbps/2 Mbps $49.95
Up to 30 Mbps/5 Mbps 199.95
The number direct to the FiOS center is: 908-474-9728
Verizon doesn't publicize it yet, but the people who answer do have access to a database telling them which switches are going live and when. Today when I called, I told asked if I was going to have service in my small town.. when he said no, I told him the local switch which served us (obtainable via Local Exchange Routing Guide). He acted very surprised and said that indeed we would have FiOS activated very soon now.
Of course this was obvious as Verizon has spent $$$ wiring fiber everywhere which should be the next big thing(tm). They even replace the normal copper wires going to your house with fiber (doesn't work in a power outage though! I hope nobody gets upset about 911
Let's face it. Cable companies have always advertised speeds then never delivered. CableVision is, one of the lowest in quality, in my opinion. I know many OO subscribers who can attest to this.
While the individual pipes may be able to handle 100Mbps and greater, unless they lay an entirely new system down, guaranteeing it and preventing bottleneck will be almost impossible.
FTTP, like that provided by Verizon (which I have), is much more promising. The new system is there and in place. Verizon has the financial backing to keep making upgrades to this system to keep improving it to wipe out competition. Right now, they have an OC-12 pipe going out to a maximum of 32 customers Which guarantees 20Mbps to every customer all at the same time. While they can't promise 30Mbps to everyone at once, I find this "risk" a whole lot more rational that what CableVision hopes to do.
Word is from what I've seen, Verizon will be upgrading to OC-24 pipes, if not OC-48, very soon.
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
i was an OOL customer for more than 4 years but when i started using gallery http://gallery.sf.net/ and uploaded massive amounts of family/personal pictures, they capped my speed to 400kbps. i got it uncapped twice then luckily, FIOS was deployed in my town - was one of the first 5 installations in Northern New Jersey. i switched. installation was free and i got a discount because of my existing calling plan with Verizon. FIOS works for me. i've uploaded gigs of photos with no problems. all i need is port 25, port 80 and port 22 (for SSH / ftp-tunneling) and i'm good to go. :)
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.
The interesting issues are going to be pricing, average throughput (e.g. how many people are you sharing your upstream with), and policies about port blocking (they're presumably going to allow web servers, because that's the kind of application that needs 50 Mbps upstreams.
For a business, besides price, the technically cool thing about high-speed cable modem service is that it's not using the same wiring from your office to the telco POP that almost everything else users, so you get some protection from street construction crews and Bubba the Backhoe driver that you'd otherwise only be able to get by buying a higher-end fiber ring service from the telco or using a short-haul wireless connection to a nearby wireless provider. So depending on your price and reliability needs, you can either use this for cheap fast unreliable service, or for cheap reliability improvement to your existing more expensive service, as well as for cheap speed improvements to your regular service. After all, if what you really need is 5-10 Mbps, then getting a 50 Mbps service that's oversubscribed a bit too heavily and priced like a T1 line is almost always a big win.
Repair Speed is the main business problem with cable modem services - the economics of providing $30/month service depend on piggybacking on consumer cable TV service, which means you've got enough technicians and repair trucks to go fix it if it breaks, but if it's Friday night in a bad snowstorm, and your customer's TV service goes out, they can just watch videos or play with their kids or read books until Monday when the snowplows have finished clearing the streets. Low-end "business" cable may mean you get better help-desk service, and maybe the truck goes to your building a bit earlier, but it doesn't put any more trucks on the street. This service may be priced high enough to pay for better service than that.
Commuting on Long Island I used to have a project in Syosset that required me to commute there from central New Jersey for a month. Took about 1.5 hours each way, unless traffic was worse than usual, like the days that it was faster to walk across Staten Island than to drive. Hard drugs would have made driving too difficult, but a Grateful Dead concert tape is about the length of a round-trip, which was at least a good substitute. I tried taking the train one time when it was going to snow heavily - about 2.5 hours to get from Jersey to NYC to the LIRR to whatever the nearest station was, get a taxi to the office, and find out that they were closing because of snow (:-), and the LIRR was far noisier and bouncier than the New Jersey trains so it wasn't possible to do any real work while riding them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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?