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"High speed Internet"

Chuck(G)

25k Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2007
Messages
44,227
Location
Pacific Northwest, USA
After a lot of pestering and grassroots activity (and Federal money), the local telco is finally bringing in fiber to my area--they've been at work for the last couple of weeks stringing both fiber and 200 pair copper for those further away. The terminus for the fiber is only about 400 feet away from where I'm typing where years ago, I sold the telco some land to put a bunch of boxes. I'm told that 40Mbps for me will be no problem--after years of getting by on 1.5M, this will be interesting.

At any rate, the line people had a big (maybe 4' in diameter) spool of fiber on a corner near my house. Propped up against it was a sign advertising Exede satellite internet. Uh, I don't think so guys... :)
 
GRATS! Its going to be amazing!

Not to rain on the parade, but only 40? I've been told never to look gift horses in the mouth, but honestly 40 is going to be considered low again here in a few years. (hell, I consider it low NOW) I have 2 major internet companies and they are getting 1gig and 2gig out here in the next year or so. It sounds like overkill, I know, but when I bought Grand Theft Auto 5 was an EASY 60GB download, and it is not going to be getting smaller. Also, Isn't google fiber coming to the portland area? I'm just assuming "pacific northwest" is close to portland.
 
We were just upgraded with the latest they offer in this part of NJ. 10 meg down, 768 k up. We don't expect more any time soon. Fiber to a commercial address is an 18 month lead time.
 
40 is pretty good here--my friends on cable don't get much more than 8, depending on neighborhood traffic. To be pretty much out in the middle of nowhere and get this kind of speed is remarkable--and I'm as excited as I was when the folks showed up 15 years ago offering to buy some land from me to upgrade local landline service (Since I was so far from the CO, I was modem-connecting at 28.8K on a good day). 1.5M was huge upgrade that made browsing the web tolerable.

I won't live long enough to see 1G service here.

Does anyone here have a simple "dry loop" installed (i.e. DSL with no POTS)? How does that work for you?
 
Does anyone here have a simple "dry loop" installed (i.e. DSL with no POTS)? How does that work for you?

I do. My DSL is at a separate appearance point. It all goes back to a time when AT&T had some major problems in my area. Nothing to write home about here; 2.54 down and .254 up. Premium service is available at a price. 18 and 45 U-Verse packages are available, but stand-alone is more than I want to pay at the present. My township cut a deal with Comcast and AT&T back in the 80's for lower rates, and they have a monopoly on all except satellite. Court action may be pending.
 
Only recently did my unincorporated area get fiber. Prior to that, it was cable, period (too far from the DSLAM), and Time Worthless sat on their hands for six weeks until I wrote a complaint letter to the FCC and got released from my contract (to be fair, they never charged me, they just didn't do any installation).

So since I needed a hard line for my home servers, I gritted my teeth and bought a T1. It's still incredibly exorbitant, and ironically comes to the house over HDSL, but I have no caps, no questions, no latency and no neighbours encroaching on my DOCSIS timeslice. Plus, it's tariffed and has an SLA, so I'm always referred to level 2, and any issues get fixed the same day. The downside is it's still just 1.5 both ways and it required both phone pairs to the house (one for tip and one for ring). It turns out I don't miss having a landline, though.

Fiber came in January of this year. I'm still on my T1 contract, but I'm not sure if I'll switch. The level of service I get is very good and I know I can always count on the bandwidth. Haven't decided yet.
 
I've noticed, ever since Google started their FTTP 1G service in kansas, it really has lit a fire under the asses of the big providers. There is a "small town" called longmont where the city bought all the dark fiber and is going to provide 1g fiber to every home. CHEAP. I believe when more people have access to 1g, the more people who dont have it, will demand it.
 
I've had Frontier FiOS (was originally Verizon until they spun it off) in the Seattle area (Redmond) for a few years. The service is currently rated at 25/10M, although they now advertise 30/30M for less than I am paying now so I should call them up and see if I can get more for less. I've been pretty happy with the service since I did the upgrade from Verizon DSL.

Last year I ditched my phone and TV service which was on the same FiOS connection. I transferred the old phone number to Google Voice for free voice mail only service for anyone who still calls the old phone number. I don't miss traditional TV service at all. Almost anything I care to watch anymore I stream over the Internet.
 
I have Frontier FIOS as well - I'm just a little bit north of you.

For telephone service I have Ooma, which is a voice over IP provider. You purchase a box/device for around $150 up front, and then after that the service is about $4 per month. I ported over a landline phone number to Ooma, so now my Minnesota phone number which I first got assigned in 1992 is with me here in Washington state. And it has worked across three different cable/internet providers.

There are cheaper solutions, but Ooma has been perfect for the past two years and the ability to screen and block calls using their web interface is fantastic.

As for the fiber service, I generally like it but I am noticing that in the evening things slow down quite a bit. My individual connection is fine, but I suspect that Frontier is oversubscribed on some of their network and it is causing ping times to suffer. I've seen a ping to Google DNS start at 8ms during the early morning hours and degrade to 90ms in the evening. That's horrible for some applications. Traceroute clearly showed the congestion between levels of Frontier's network.
 
Fast speeds are nice until you find out there is a DATA cap after which they charge you and that gets expensive.

What exactly do you need anything over a steady 10Mbs for anyway (at this time)? Streaming HD video doesn't use that much and still allows somebody else to do Windows updates and game at the same time. I guess once the rollout is done you wont expect a speed bump for a long time and by then there will be something to take up the bandwidth.
 
So since I needed a hard line for my home servers, I gritted my teeth and bought a T1. It's still incredibly exorbitant, and ironically comes to the house over HDSL, but I have no caps, no questions, no latency and no neighbours encroaching on my DOCSIS timeslice. Plus, it's tariffed and has an SLA, so I'm always referred to level 2, and any issues get fixed the same day. The downside is it's still just 1.5 both ways and it required both phone pairs to the house (one for tip and one for ring). It turns out I don't miss having a landline, though.

I think it was around 1997 or so that one of the carriers approached us and offered T1 at a mere $1K per month, installed. I'd already investigated ISDN and was quoted a figure in 4 digits for installation. Apparently, they'd have had to install several "manhole boosters" along the route.

Oddly enough, a direct microwave link-up with a local ISP would have been cheaper, if less reliable--but then I'd be a captive of that ISP. In the late 1990s, local ISPs were often run by very small operators, many of whom who consider their service a fiefdom. I recall threatening a lawsuit over releasing their claim as administrative contact on my domain--eventually, my new ISP convinced NS to accept a notarized request with proof of ID to get the domain back in my own hands. Other times, small ISPs would simply cease operation without notification. Fun times.

Internet back then wasn't pretty.
 
Fast speeds are nice until you find out there is a DATA cap after which they charge you and that gets expensive.

What exactly do you need anything over a steady 10Mbs for anyway (at this time)? Streaming HD video doesn't use that much and still allows somebody else to do Windows updates and game at the same time. I guess once the rollout is done you wont expect a speed bump for a long time and by then there will be something to take up the bandwidth.

In the UK I have an un-capped service, its not especially cheap but its uncapped. I get about 65Meg down and 20 up. I use the high download speed from time to time as I download ISO's from TechNet, also the Turnkey ISO for Linux...

but its still fibre to the cabinet so cancelling the phone line isn't an option
 
I think it was around 1997 or so that one of the carriers approached us and offered T1 at a mere $1K per month, installed. I'd already investigated ISDN and was quoted a figure in 4 digits for installation. Apparently, they'd have had to install several "manhole boosters" along the route.

Oddly enough, a direct microwave link-up with a local ISP would have been cheaper, if less reliable--but then I'd be a captive of that ISP. In the late 1990s, local ISPs were often run by very small operators, many of whom who consider their service a fiefdom. I recall threatening a lawsuit over releasing their claim as administrative contact on my domain--eventually, my new ISP convinced NS to accept a notarized request with proof of ID to get the domain back in my own hands. Other times, small ISPs would simply cease operation without notification. Fun times.

Internet back then wasn't pretty.

It hasn't gotten a lot better. On my contract price I'm still paying about $400/mo, though they threw in the install if I signed a two-year-deal and router rental is included. I still had to do the wiring from the demarc to the server room inside the house, but I used to work with a nest of telco guys and I can still run a punchdown tool with the best of them.

But as Unknown_K points out, unless I'm trying to do six things at once you can get a lot done with 1.5Mbps. I won't be watching Netflix (very well) on that, but I buy DVDs anyway. I toyed with getting high speed wireless on a second subnet, but the bandwidth cap defeats the purpose.
 
Time to brag about my home town here.

I live in Chattanooga, TN, and I've had Gig fiber for over a year, it's great, no caps, and I have vpn's setup to the kids houses for sharing media.
I pay 69.99 a month. (That's total, no taxes, etc.) and no caps.

I've got 2 teenagers and two adults still at home, and have never had a bandwidth issue.


(I do run a untangle box as a router, with 2 intel gig nics, and a i5 cpu.)

Later,
dabone
 
It hasn't gotten a lot better. On my contract price I'm still paying about $400/mo, though they threw in the install if I signed a two-year-deal and router rental is included. I still had to do the wiring from the demarc to the server room inside the house, but I used to work with a nest of telco guys and I can still run a punchdown tool with the best of them.

It all does get gradually better. I recall that in 1984, we were paying $5K a month for a leased line from Santa Clara to St. Paul running at a blinding 9600 bps on a Bell 209 modem bisync SDLC.
 
Time to brag about my home town here.

I live in Chattanooga, TN, and I've had Gig fiber for over a year, it's great, no caps, and I have vpn's setup to the kids houses for sharing media.
I pay 69.99 a month. (That's total, no taxes, etc.) and no caps.

I've got 2 teenagers and two adults still at home, and have never had a bandwidth issue.


(I do run a untangle box as a router, with 2 intel gig nics, and a i5 cpu.)

Later,
dabone

I'm happy to live in an area where I'm most likely to get this: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/co...idential-2-gig-service-in-colorado-2015-05-21

I guess my little Asus XG-DLS router will have to be replaced by something a BIT more robust...

But anyway, I say a discussion on a local reddit page and it was telling how what internet access you had could change the value of your home by a LARGE margin. The way netflix has gone from little dvd in the mail company to a freaking behemoth that rivals the 3-letter networks... It makes sense to me fast internet access is going to be less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Get on the bandwagon or get left behind.
 
What exactly do you need anything over a steady 10Mbs for anyway (at this time)? Streaming HD video doesn't use that much and still allows somebody else to do Windows updates and game at the same time.
Can't answer for anyone else, but for myself I don't do any HD video streaming (the closest would be the occasional Youtube video - mostly short instructional videos) - and I still need high speed. That's because I push backups upstream, to the company and to my backup server on the net. Just synching my triplicate-backup'ed photos from my camera takes as much bandwidth as I can get, or it takes too long. Not to mention when I need data to process. Gigs of that. Then there's Skype and WebEx, which don't need that much bandwidth, but low latency is the key here. In short, I'm happy about the 30-40 Mbs I have when I'm in Japan. Although I wish it would stay that way all day.. now it varies with time of day.
 
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