[GRLUG] ISP shopping

Thu Jun 23 11:57:41 EDT 2011

With a classical twisted pair to the CO,
the bandwidth goes like the inverse of
distance.  You can get 6Mbps if you're
within about 5K feet of the CO.  At 18K
feet the signal is pretty marginal.  Maybe
500Kbps on a reasonably noise free line.

This is all complicated today by the use
of partial fiber systems.  AT&T uses fiber
to get within the last 2K feet or so of a
house, or they'd never be able to deliver
U-Verse over "twisted pair," or even talk
about 24Mbps with a straight face. i.e., most
city areas have hybrid systems today.

    -- Bob

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 11:45 AM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dry DSL is very likely the same thing as 'Naked DSL', which just means
> that there's data, no voice. From the sounds of things, through some
> ISPs, you can get as much as 15Mb/s down that way.
>
> There's never going to be a guaranteed speed over a mundane copper
> pair that's above 128Kb/s, though I expect most ADSL customers could
> switch to 'SDSL', which appears to be unregulated T1 (which would get
> you something like 1.544Mb/s up and down, each).
>
> Anything beyond that is going to depend on how many thousands of feet
> your copper line runs before it reaches the telco's DSLAM.
>
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:07 AM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What's "dry dsl?"
> > What is the upstream speed?
> > Is there some kind of guaranteed
> > speed implied?  i.e., is this like
> > business service?
> >    -- Bob
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:01 AM, Matthew Seeley <
> matthew at threadlight.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> I have never actually had service with them yet, but if your looking for
> >> something like Speakeasy, Iserv.net is local to Grand Rapids, and they
> seem
> >> legit.
> >> For some reason, they hide services and pricing offline -- so you'll
> have
> >> to call or 'live chat' with them to get a quote.
> >> But they quoted me $50/month for 5mb down for "dry dsl" which seems
> >> reasonable. It's $20ish dollars more per month than the same speeds from
> >> AT&T U-Verse in my area, and you have to agree to a contract,  but Iserv
> >> gives you get a real modem (for "free"), and a static IP address (also
> for
> >> "free").
> >>
> >> (I'm switching to them sometime in September, and can let you know how
> it
> >> goes)
> >>
> >> --
> >> Matthew Seeley
> >> Threadlight Systems
> >> PO Box 612, Jenison MI 49429
> >> T: (616) 328-5649
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Philip J. Robar
> >>> > <philip.robar at gmail.com>
> >>> > wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> On Jun 22, 2011, at 1:44 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> > I'm shopping for an ISP for home. Not going to touch Comcast or
> >>> >> > U-verse for this. U-verse because I don't like their router, and
> >>> >> > Comcast because the local loop's bandwidth will be shared with too
> >>> >> > many other local customers.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> I had Comcast in an pretty dense apartment location in the heart of
> >>> >> the SF
> >>> >> Bay Area, California for years and never had a problem with shared
> >>> >> bandwidth
> >>> >> or their service. Currently I'm using Charter here in St. Louis and
> >>> >> I've
> >>> >> never noticed a slow down.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Phil
> >>> >>
> >>> >>
> >>> > I was told by a Comcast rep that one of the things
> >>> > get with a business class service is "preferential
> >>> > treatment" with bandwidth.  Somehow they
> >>> > allow the business traffic through preferentially
> >>> > if there is congestion.
> >>>
> >>> That's QoS with preferential routing. A reasonable option, but I've
> >>> got worries about Comcast doing DPI traffic shaping even on their
> >>> commercial customers, especially considering I'm going to be pushing
> >>> VOIP.
> >>>
> >>> Also, when I last had Comcast, they had regular-as-clockwork service
> >>> outages at about 2:30AM every Wednesday night, at about the same time
> >>> as all their video channels gave the "this is a test of the emergency
> >>> broadcast system" message. I wouldn't use them for anything that
> >>> needed to run reliably overnight.
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> :wq
> >>>
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