[clue-tech] DSL (Was: So-called "smart" hosts.)

[Nate Duehr]

On Aug 21, 2006, at 11:24 PM, T. Joseph Carter wrote:

> Of course, frii suggests that maybe it might be possible for me to  
> maybe
> get more than about 1.5 down, but they also call for less than 1.5 up,
> which is quite annoying.  I'll believe more than 1.5 when I see it of
> course, but that could be the difference right there.

The up/down rates are seemingly only limited by the local-loop DSL  
access you pay for from Qwest with FRII.  Their pricing doesn't seem  
to "care" what speeds you buy from Qwest, if you come into them at  
that speed, they'll send you out at that speed.  So the Asymmetric  
aspect of the DSL local loop offerings from Qwest is the reason for  
their pricing list showing different up/downstream speeds.

Last I checked FRII *did* have some overall bandwidth caps -- if  
ViaWest doesn't have them also, I'd be surprised.  That'd be one  
thing to check out before purchasing.  My FRII cap I recall  
calculating that I'd have to run full data rate downloads  
(bittorrent?  heh.) for 22 days of a month to hit it at my current  
speed of 1.5 Mb/s down.  I haven't looked at the cap numbers lately  
or even paid attention to it, but they do give you a web page to view  
these things.

Lately, I'm seeing (consistently) 2.0 Mb/s down, even though I'm  
paying for 1.5 -- Qwest goofed somewhere in a recent provisioning  
change or something.  I see EXACTLY 512Kb/s up, though.  No overshoot  
or higher rates there.

I live close enough to the Englewood CO (and have had the loop test  
qualification done during the initial installation of the DSL) for  
7.0 Mb/s down, but I'm way too cheap to pay for THAT.  I'm also now  
in Comcast's high-speed 6.0 Mb/s service area, but I like my  
stability and my static IP's and my customer service when things are  
wrong from FRII too much (plus I like sending money to a LOCAL  
business), to ever switch to Comcast.

Pricing would end up slightly less on Comcast, but I'm sure I'd hate  
how variable the speeds would be, and I'd definitely hate not having  
my static IP addresses, the only way God Himself intended the  
Internet to be.  :-)

Another "option" recently popular is "bundling" where you get data,  
TV, and phone services from the same company -- those initial rates  
for those services sure are tempting, but since they're limited time  
offers that run out... I just tell myself to ignore them and move  
on... (GRIN).

One other item:  If you go with FRII, get on their tech support  
mailing list.  I've *never* seen a service provider send out such  
timely outage/problem e-mails and updates, and explanations of the  
problem.  No other vendor I've ever worked with has been as  
"transparent" (honest?) as FRII.  I really like their service  
philosophy.

You probably won't use it, but everyone I've referred to FRII also  
loves their spam fighting solution, MailArmory.  My dad and others  
all say it does an excellent job.  I run my own mail servers, so I  
don't use it, but I hear it's got a nice web interface and works well  
and relatively seamlessly.

One other item:  FRII offers something I've never seen from anyone  
else, and with as stable as my DSL connection has been, I really  
haven't needed to use it ever, but... they offer dial back-up for the  
DSL.  If you log into their dial-up router with a slight change to  
your login name (add -ppp to it) your entire block of statics will  
automatically be routed to that dial-up line.  Now you're VERY  
limited on the number of hours you can use it, but I'd bet that if  
you were involved in a multi-day DSL outage they'd work with you on  
the pricing... and your static-IP'ed servers would be up and  
available, although slow, if you set up a Linux box as a dial-up  
router for the PPP connection.

I never really did anything with it other than try it out one time  
when I had a modem in the server... no modems around here really  
anymore except in the laptops, but still a nice "oh man the DSL is  
STILL down - I need to get the mail server online and do a flush out  
of the secondary MX machine!" moment.  (Disclaimer: I haven't tested  
this in years... it may no longer work, but it did a few years ago!)

Oh I guess one time, I was just goofing off, and I did route all my  
statics from the house to a hotel room once just to see if I could  
cram all the services/servers onto the Linux laptop with all the IP's  
as virtual interfaces, and still have them all work in a serious "the  
house is gone" type of emergency, but I was really bored one evening  
on a business trip when I did that trick.   I had pre-downloaded the  
MySQL database and the website content to the laptop that day on  
broadband.  :-)

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com