19 Jul
2001
19 Jul
'01
2:25 p.m.
There's quite a bit of competition, at least rhetorically, between QWEST, our
local phone service provider, and AT&T, which is the local cable company. Both
offer "high-bandwidth" (DSL/Cable) internet service. The party line from
AT&T
is that they offer 256Kb up and down, while QWEST guarantees that you get at
least that. I have DSL from QWEST and they tell me (via their router, which
could easily lie) that I normally have 640Kb down and 272 up. That speed isn't
reflected in my transfer speeds, however.
I seem to remember reading that the former RBOC's are required to provide a 256k
minimal transfer rate in either direction, while the cable service providers
have more latitude. Everyone I know who's got/had the AT&T cable modem service
has had lower slower transfer rates. My understanding is that AT&T is
provisioned such that they can provide the full 256Kb to one block (whatever
that means, but presumably a city-block, since that's how they're physically
structured) and that's what the customers on that block have to share. I find
that a little hard to swallow, but it's possible, since these companies are run
by bean-counters.
Though the statistics my DSL modem software provide suggest I receive lots of
bandwidth, my transfer speeds vary widely. I have made a few cursory tests, and
found on one occasion, that when I used my notebook via dialup on the voice
line, at 56Kb, I got faster transfer (concurrent transfer of the same file from
the same place took WAY less time) than concurrently and through the same ISP
via my DSL connection. Weird!
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey S. Sharp" <jss(a)subatomix.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: OT: DSL Woes
On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 mjsnodgr(a)rockwellcollins.com
wrote:
I've had 256k DSL for about 9 months now
Is 256 kbps common for DSL or cable?
A network admin at the local cable company here (who handles my cable
modem service) told me that their infrastructure can do 10 Mbps to each
modem, but that the software in the modem was configured to limit that to
2 Mbps. I don't know if the software limit story is true, but I can vouch
for the 2 Mbps effective rate. I've had FTP transfers in excess of 200
KBps before.
had about 37 minutes of down time.
I've had more than that. Sometimes it happens several times per week, but
there have also been periods of several months without problems. Only one
outage has lasted over 30 minutes. It's been good enough for me to run
this mail server on it.
Speaking of running servers: my cable company supports it. I've never
came out and asked them directly, but all the evidence is there. There
are explicit provisions in the service agreement against running servers
_for_other_parties_, but no other mention. IPs are assigned via DHCP (I
probably ought to ask if static IPs are available), but you always get the
same IP until you change NICs. Finally, I've been running a mail server
over my link for a while, and my logs show that the cable company has
tested it for open relaying (which I don't do) several times. I have
never gottan a call from them asking me to not have the server up.
--
Jeffrey S. Sharp
jss(a)ou.edu