[clue-tech] DSL providers

[Hex Star]

On 2/15/07, Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/15/07, William <wwcluetech1 at kimballstuff.com> wrote:
>
> > Qwest is the "line" provider, representing the "physical link layer" of
> > the network protocol.  Run a traceroute outside your LAN to see for
> > yourself that Qwest is not routing TCP/UDP traffic.  The first hop
> > outside your LAN is *not* a Qwest router [unless Qwest is *also* your
> > ISP].  For example, I use FRII DSL with Qwest as my line provider.
> > After passing through my firewall, then my perimeter router, my "first
> > hop outside my LAN" is FRII's DSL consumer gateway -- I never see any
> > Qwest hops [unless I happen to be running a traceroute into Qwest's
> > network on purpose, but that puts Qwest's routers at the end of the
> > route, not the start].
>
> Welllllll... not to belabor this TOO much, because it doesn't matter --
> but...
>
> Qwest *is* actually providing routing -- and there's plenty of routers
> involved between your DSL connection and FRII... you just can't SEE
> them because you're on what's called a "Virtual Private Connection"
> over ATM.
>
> >From the standpoint of your IP connection, it's transparent to the end
> points, other than the PPPoA configuration and login information...
> and the PPPoA is just going all the way to FRII to authenticate.  But
> in-between there definitely are *routers*... but they're not routing
> IP... at least not from what you can see, anyway...
>
> The traffic going from the DSLAM  to FRII is routed via Qwest's ATM
> cloud...  :-)
>
> When they provision your circuit, that's why they need to know the
> "ISP"... they have to nail up the end-points of the ATM connection to
> you and your provider.  When they aren't told a provider, they nail
> that end point up to their own routers... MSN and/or their own core.
>
> > To illustrate with an alternative example:  When we all used dial-up
> > modems, we didn't think of our telephone company as our ISP.  The
> > twisted-pair copper line was just the physical link between us and our
> ISP.
>
> Agreed.  The ISP is the company that provides you access to the
> Internet backbone via IP.
>
> [Another interesting side-note to this is that the MTU of a PPPoA
> connection isn't big enough to hold a full 1500 MTU Ethernet frame.
> It fragments.  You can often help your through-put on Qwest DSL by
> setting your MTU's appropriately for the lowest-common-denominator
> transport -- in this case PPPoA -- so you're not fragmenting every
> packet that has a full payload at the DSL "modem".]
>
> Nate
> _______________________________________________
> clue-tech mailing list
> clue-tech at cluedenver.org
> http://www.cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech
>

Why do you guys make getting access to the internet so complicated by
choosing some company that deals through another company for you? Why not
just make things simple by choosing one of the following bigger ISPs
which'll probably be much cheaper and support many more areas: AT&T or
Comcast?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://cluedenver.org/pipermail/clue-tech/attachments/20070215/2cd54ad1/attachment-0002.html