truth in cable

truth in cable

[Kirk Wood]

There are good and bad providers. But as for the cable being limited, it
is true. Except that adding more bandwidth to the cable system is a simple
matter. They can add another chanel for the cable modem to communicate on
and this adds the equivelant of 2 T1 lines to the bandwidth.

You will not know that you can have DSL until they actually have it
installed on your phone line. I have known at least two people who had
appointments for installation and then found out their line didn't
work. One of them didn't even get notified.

I have heard more horror stories of DSL then cable. I have heard them
about both. I would never count on actually getting help for your linux
box. Then again, I wouldn't count on getting much help for my winblows box
either. Given the current state of tech support, I think those who depend
on support for their knowledge are casting their lot to the wind.

There are some great people doing tech support. My roommate is very good
at her job. She has been working at an ISP for more then three years. But
she is the exception. Keep in mind that the average tenure at any tech
support job is on the order of 9 months. Given that many internal support
positions remain filled for years at a time, that means chances are when
you call tech support, you will talk with some person who is still afraid
of their computer and has been on the job less then 3 months.

If you have a relationship with a company that works stick with it. Do not
give it up over a choice in broadband technology. Charles, I will assure
you though that you know more about your computer then the guy who answers
the call next time. 

=======
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net

The mind is like a parachute; it works much better when open.
If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out.

RE: truth in cable

[Kaare Dehard]

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-admin@braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-admin@braille.uwo.ca]On Behalf Of Kirk Wood
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 11:19 PM
To: Speakup List
Subject: truth in cable


There are good and bad providers. But as for the cable being limited, it
is true. Except that adding more bandwidth <snip>
Hi Folks I haven't written to the list in some time, but as a tech working
at the cable companies isp I can vouch for the truth of the statement. Two
problems exist in the cable area as far as techs are concerned. First off a
lot of the time the call center mentality often will get in the way as far
as getting quality tech support. Many of my colleagues are too interested in
stats driven pay bonuses to really help out with issues that involve proper
trouble shooting procedure. The second is even though many of them may have
technical background, they either don't take any pride in the work they are
doing or they have no customer service skills. Personally I already get paid
plenty for the work that I do and would be embarrassed to accept a bonus
that rewards me for doing less than my best work. Cheers Kaare.
 Then again, I wouldn't count on getting much help for my winblows box

I WOULDN'T EITHER, AS FAR AS THE EVIL Policy deals with it most of us have
limited or no linux training and @home in California backs this up with that
end user agreement which only provides win support. There was or may still
be a good news group called @home Unix which deals with many issues related
to Unix/linux boxes on cable networks that you all might want to subscribe
to at some point. Cheers again.
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Re: truth in cable

[Frank Carmickle]

Shall I demistify a bit....

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Kirk Wood wrote:

> There are good and bad providers. But as for the cable being limited, it
> is true. Except that adding more bandwidth to the cable system is a simple
> matter. They can add another chanel for the cable modem to communicate on
> and this adds the equivelant of 2 T1 lines to the bandwidth.

t1's...  Well actually.  The cable system is made up of a backbone that
will support up to 27mbit.  Each cable modem will allow up to 7mbit of
download.  Most companies cap there upload speed at 128kbits although in
some areas there is no cap at all.  What was said years ago when cable was
first rolled out was that there would be 528 users per 27mbit
pipe.  Weather or not that still holds true I do not know.  What I can
tell you is that I get different performance all the time.  When using
traceroute to find the bottle necks I find that they are usually the isp's
link in to my city and not my local neighborhood.  I am also on at&t
@home.  But on those days when new iso images come out for distros
grabbing them at 300/400kbytes is pretty nice.


-- 
     Frank Carmickle
phone:     412 761-9568
email:     frankiec@dryrose.com

Re: truth in cable

[Kirk Wood]

Franke,

Thanks for the more detailed info. I don't know what the caps are on users
per local loop in cable either. I do know that they can add channels (each
able to support the 27Mbs) as they need more localized bandwidth. I have
had my service for over three years and also have only noticed bandwidth
problems much further upstream then the local loop.

As for the local download speed, while theoretically possible to obtain
27Mbs, I had a measured download speed of 3.2Mbps when they installed the
cable. Again, three years later I have yet to notice a slow down. What may
be of note, is that cable is the only afordable option for broadband in my
area. My local loop covers includes apartments about three miles away. So
at least in my area the slowdown is nothing but marketing hype to convince
you to by DSL.

As for real world experiances I have a close friend with DSL. He
experiances downloads slightly slower in speed. We have had about the same
amount of trouble with the lines. The big thing is that his ISP allows for
him to buy a routed subnet consisting of 5 available IPs. I can have
up to three non-routed IPs that are normally in different subnets.

=======
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net

The mind is like a parachute; it works much better when open.
If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out.

RE: truth in cable

[Kaare Dehard]

Hi had to open me mouth here again. The capping largely depends on the
provider of the fiber net and it's capacity. with Rogers if I remember  my
product well enough i think uploads are a max of 64 kbps per sec and
downloads are 384 kps max. I rarely get these the gods of connectivity have
to be really shining down upon you for things that are close:).

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-admin@braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-admin@braille.uwo.ca]On Behalf Of Kirk Wood
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 12:18 AM
To: Speakup List
Subject: Re: truth in cable


Franke,

Thanks for the more detailed info. I don't know what the caps are on users
per local loop in cable either. I do know that they can add channels (each
able to support the 27Mbs) as they need more localized bandwidth. I have
had my service for over three years and also have only noticed bandwidth
problems much further upstream then the local loop.

As for the local download speed, while theoretically possible to obtain
27Mbs, I had a measured download speed of 3.2Mbps when they installed the
cable. Again, three years later I have yet to notice a slow down. What may
be of note, is that cable is the only afordable option for broadband in my
area. My local loop covers includes apartments about three miles away. So
at least in my area the slowdown is nothing but marketing hype to convince
you to by DSL.

As for real world experiances I have a close friend with DSL. He
experiances downloads slightly slower in speed. We have had about the same
amount of trouble with the lines. The big thing is that his ISP allows for
him to buy a routed subnet consisting of 5 available IPs. I can have
up to three non-routed IPs that are normally in different subnets.

=======
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net

The mind is like a parachute; it works much better when open.
If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out.


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