Since posting about the DSL bandwidth bummers in the new house last week, the outlook has not brightened. Speakeasy put me in touch with their throughput gurus and we looked at the problem from every angle (I can’t recommend Speakeasy highly enough – their customer service is sterling). Conclusion – they can get me maybe 5% or even 10% more upstream, but we’re not going to get anywhere close to the 768kbps upstream I had in the previous house until the telco builds a closer C.O. Called the telco and got laughed at — “You’re already within DSL range — why would we build another C.O.?”
Started doing more research into cable options via Comcast. Just getting through to them has been a study in frustration. Half a dozen phone calls and emails unreturned. All I wanted to know was what their upstream cap was and whether they impose any restrictions on ports/servers. Their web site was totally unhelpful. Their commercial service sounded promising, but no details online. Finally, a sympathetic soul in tech support passed me to someone with a clue. Sure enough, 384kbps upstream cap and no traffic on port 80 allowed. Period.
So I’m back to square one. Home T1 too expensive. Colo probably affordable but will necessitate buying another box. Having too much fun running servers to throw in the towel, though someone with a less-thick head than myself probably would have long ago.
>and no traffic on port 80 allowed
Yup, this is the one single thing that pisses me off with Comcast. No web servers are allowed, they port scanning your IP to see if you are running anything that you are not supposed to… I think there are some ways to “fool” their scripts, I read somewhere on the web some time ago, but you will have to live with the fear that you might get discovered. I guess they are doing that for piracy reasons, but unfortunately it has effect for all of us that are not 16 years old and interested in mp3 & software piracy. :(
As for “listening”, I once sent an email to them and got a reply within an hour. It was about 8 months ago, and they were talking on limiting the downstream allowance per day to about 500 MB per day per account (unacceptable!)! I emailed them and told them that this is not an option as even a single Linux ISO was more than that. The guy who replied was kinda “Linux-oriented” (seemed that I hit a nerve ;) and he replied and said how thankfull he was to get such feedback and that he would rush to forward the email to his superiors. Hehe… I guess you just have to be lucky for your emails to reach the “right” person. :D
Been there done all of that.
You are right, Speakeasy totally rocks end of discussion. I wanted to host my own stuff on a DSL line and I had an OK connection but it could be better. Long and short, I kept the speakeasy Adsl to surf. I get 63K down and about 12 up. But the latentcy was killing me.
So, I also got a 256K wireless broadband for 99 a month. 30K ish symetrical. I can bump it to 1.544 for 400 a month. Then it is effectively a T1.
I can even bump it to 10mbs if I have the payola. For hosting it really rocks. Very few hops from anywhere. The 30K/sec is hardly ever a problem for what I do. My next stop is 384 which will give me about 42K/sec for $129.
Anyway, moral to the story, look for a wireless ISP and it that does not work, start one. They are surprisingly cheap to get started.
Paul
clickz at planetzat . com (I hate spam so I spoofed your script, sorry.)
Paul, *great* tips on Wireless — truth be told, I had not even considered the genre, but I seem to be in the perfect position to give it a shot. Looks like NextWeb might cover my area, will find out tomorrow. Who are you using? Any outages since you’ve been (not) hooked up?
Speakeasy?!? Are you ever lucky. Take a look
at “Speakeasy Lets Consumers Become WISPs”
http://www.80211-planet.com/news/article.php/2231411
Sorry ’bout your accident. Heal fast.
Wow, a relevant discussion at ASK.Slashdot: “How Reliable is 900Mhz Wireless Internet?” :o
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/10/215221&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=193&threshold=-1
Eugenia,
Interesting, all the discussion there focuses on 900 mhz and 2.4 ghz though the service I was looking at is 5.8 ghz and has a 30% margin for dealing w/ rain, geese, etc. But it turns out I’m too far from a repeater. We’re screwed!