Well, seems Japan is leading the way when it comes to Internet speeds and price these days. Either the Internet is important or it's not. And since our visitors are reading this over some Internet provider, it must be important.
Seems John Kerry is spending some time talking to people about this issue. While I personally have not supported him in the past, I'm curious what he plans on doing about it. I've sent him a letter along with other's to encourage our Politicians to pay attention. We're already in 16th place and falling behind awfully fast. I encourage everyone to contact John Kerry and let him know how important the Internet is to you.
So, is Comcast disrupting Bittorrents? Seems the Jury believes so. Personally I had NO problems with the company over four years as a customer. Now they seem to be purposefully causing havok with torrents. That's sad.
I occasionally had the outage which nobody in my neighborhood had complained about (according to Comcast's CSR's). Two years ago I even had to show the Customer Service Rep how to diagnose a problem I noticed with one of their switches. It took him over an hour just to figure out how to submit a ticket to Comcast Internal! I guess I should have charged them for my time after I spotted the problem :-)
BTW, as I suspected, 200 Gigs is the unofficial Comcast bandwidth limit. Personally I don't see how I could have used even half that. Xmission.com has RRDtool running and my reports have been WAY lower. I haven't broken even half of my monthly allotment (100 Gigs a month). I think they simply don't know how to use the new tools they have in place. But that's my guess why they are stepping up terminations.
Bandwidth is becoming such an issue these days. Received this via email and just had to share. iPlayer is going to be a BIG problem in the coming year. Seems ISP's are complaining it's using too much bandwidth. Based on IPTV tech. I see this as a real killer unless we have an Infrastructure that can handle it. Oh and copper was developed in the 1800's. I don't believe it can handle anything close to what fiber can do. Look around the world. Does anyone see countries really investing in copper?
One last note. I noticed they canceled the subcommitte meeting for next monday. The next meeting on October 25th (and possibly the last) falls on another day I'll potentially be out of state... again. I swear somebody has been leaking my schedule out ;-) Yeah that was a joke.
I took this week off to catch up on pulling house wiring and putting up sheet rock (yeah, I have many skills beyond computers ::grinz::). I'm making calls and sending letters out today to keep S.B. 66 dead. I'm sorry but some technologies must die. I'm sure the buggy whip manufacturers were upset when companies started to sell cars in their region. But that's the way it must go.
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12 comments:
Woods Cross has an important meeting coming up as well. On the 16th, they'll be holding a "workshop" with Qwest, Comcast and UTOPIA prior to deciding to cough up $15K for a feasibility study. Anyone who lives out there or just supports UTOPIA should show up.
Is there any way you could post a draft of your letter addressing SB-66? I would like to send letters out to our politicians as well and would like to reinforce your points in my own statement.
Could you please continue posting your monthly bandwidth usage? I would like to compare to my own usage as I'm forced to remain a comcast user.
Jesse Harris said...
Woods Cross has an important meeting coming up as well. On the 16th, they'll be holding a "workshop" with Qwest, Comcast and UTOPIA prior to deciding to cough up $15K for a feasibility study. Anyone who lives out there or just supports UTOPIA should show up.
I wonder why West Jordan city council simply won't consider a feasibility study of their own. Councilman Bennett mentioned he was part of the original group looking into it for West Jordan. I would have expected some idea of what it's about. But when he spoke about things that I know were incorrect, it made me re-evaluate him and look at possible replacement.
You can't be in a position like that and not have a clue what your talking about. People have a tendency to check things out :D
The comments were basically how much the city would have to put in to join Utopia. He never mentioned about non-pledging status which means no money goes into it from the city. We could join like other non-pledging cities. Plus Utopia has a 5 million dollar liability and run's like any other public utilities.
So what's the problem with joining? No money and no liability. Did I miss something?
From what I could tell from the meeting, it seems that the usual lies from Comcast and Qwest have seeded enough doubt in the council to make them hesitate. I have to admit, though, that $15K seems like a lot for a town of just 8500. I'm going to try getting some better information into the hands of council members and the mayor to get them making an informed decision.
I'll probably have a write-up of the meeting later today, FYI.
That link about the popup to pay for extra bandwidth is quite interesting. It's probably implemented with some nefarious technique, but the concept is sound. So long as the pricing is fair, I think just about every heavy network user would rather pay his fair share than be banned, especially in monopoly areas. Heck, just bill me from byte 0 so long as the rate is competitive - I don't see the electric company offering flat rate electricity.
Sam said...
Could you please continue posting your monthly bandwidth usage? I would like to compare to my own usage as I'm forced to remain a comcast user.
That's not a bad idea though I'm at a loss to understand how it would benefit anybody within Comcast. The numbers were screen shots of Xmission's stats page for my account. It correlates btw with my own firewall tools. VNSTAT btw is an awesome tool. I recommend it.
I'll post the numbers now and then. It should be noted that my focus has shifted to promoting awareness to the problem of a private company pulling this garbage and promoting PUC infrastructures. After all, it worked just fine with phone companies and the infrastructure built by the Government :D
There's a few things you really need to consider. Copper can handle the bandwidth "limitations" you're talking about, but you are right, it's not as reliable as some of the other things out there. But it's the cheapest, most compatible, most effective, and easiest to maintain. The only thing about the bandwidth limit you need to know is that if it affects your neighbors, you can be shut off. As for bandwidth, there's two streams. Up and down. If you're doing peer to peer stuff, that's gonna be two-way communication, and you need to keep track of that. Additionally, if you have a wireless router, you need to be positive that you're the only one on it. If you're going to use a bandwidth monitor, you need to put it on the router, not on your computer.
Bill McGonigle said...
That link about the popup to pay for extra bandwidth is quite interesting. It's probably implemented with some nefarious technique, but the concept is sound. So long as the pricing is fair, I think just about every heavy network user would rather pay his fair share than be banned, especially in monopoly areas.
I guess that would be decided by the terms of the agreement in deciding what his "fair share" would be. That vs. the status quo, a one sided contract with undisclosed terms.
The pricing would need to be reasonable. Not something like what Comcast offered. A commercial line which costs up to $10,000 to install and up to $2,000 monthly. Yeah, there's a bargin. I only wish they sent me a hard copy quote instead of a verbal. Chickens. What would I do with it? Oh yeah, post it here :-)
Heck, just bill me from byte 0 so long as the rate is competitive - I don't see the electric company offering flat rate electricity.
That's an interesting idea. I'm curious with other's who had a "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee" but use the Internet "too much", if they were offered the same or a competitive rate per byte.
Electric companies charge more depending on usage, most phone companies also but that's changing to unlimited use also. At least that's what I have on my cell phone, unless Unlimited doesn't mean unlimited anymore :D
Alphasee said.
There's a few things you really need to consider. Copper can handle the bandwidth "limitations" you're talking about, but you are right, it's not as reliable as some of the other things out there.
Copper certainly has heavy limitations. For instance, in a CAT 5 environment, you are limited to 300 meters. More than that and you will be very unhappy. I've seen it before in other companies. Very poorly designed and you're in trouble.
But it's the cheapest, most compatible, most effective, and easiest to maintain. The only thing about the bandwidth limit you need to know is that if it affects your neighbors, you can be shut off. As for bandwidth, there's two streams. Up and down. If you're doing peer to peer stuff, that's gonna be two-way communication, and you need to keep track of that. Additionally, if you have a wireless router, you need to be positive that you're the only one on it. If you're going to use a bandwidth monitor, you need to put it on the router, not on your computer.
Yeah, I can't say but the wireless router is in some landfill right now. I was pissed that the linksys kept turning the dang wireless back on after disabling it. So no more for me.
Oh and after attending SANS 2007 in Vegas, I really don't recommend wireless now. I had no idea how screwed up it is. Even with encryption and all.. It has problems.
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