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Grex > Micros > #57: Full Speed Internet Connection at home (via cable) |  |
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srw
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Full Speed Internet Connection at home (via cable)
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Aug 28 06:45 UTC 1993 |
I received an article forwarded to me from my son (jweiss@mit.edu).
This article describes an upcoming service which provides
full-speed internet hookup to your home computer via cable TV
(not by phone).
caveats: (1) It won't happen until next year
(2) It is in the Boston Area, not here
(3) It will be too expensive
Nevertheless, I think this is an interesting technology and business
issue. The courts have indicated that cable companies can enter this
arena, and it will be interesting to see what it may push the phone
companies to do.
Here is that article he sent me:
------- Beginning of Forwarded message
From jh@mit.edu (Joe Harrington)
Subject: Internet on your cable TV
Continental Cablevision is offering (in January) Internet hookups via
Cable TV. This is a full 10Mbit/sec hookup, not a simple modem
hookup like we're used to at home. The catch is that Continental is
only in Cambridge, Arlington, and a few surrounding towns. They are
talking to the other companies in the area to offer the service
through them. A big show of customer interest would go far to pull
these other companies into offering the service as well. If you'd
like to have full-speed Internet access at home, call your local
cable company's customer service number and register your interest.
Here are the details of Continental's service, such as they are:
The articles were in the Globe today (front page and p. 29). A
Continental representative told me the following:
$70-$100/month, expecting to come down in price.
Available in January.
You get a modem in your house and (he thought) one IP address.
The article mentionned 10Mbit/sec; the rep will confirm this. He did
assure me that it was "a heck of a lot faster" than the 56kb SLIP
line I now have.
The rep will confirm that you can set up a gateway/router arrangement
connected to your one IP address at no extra charge.
Continental will do their own service areas (Cambridge, Arlington)
and are talking to Warner Cable (Somerville) and others to do
surrounding towns.
Feel free to pass this message on to others (in a sensible
manner...).
- --jh--
--------end of forwarded message
Perhaps we should call Columbia Cable (or your local cable company)
and ask when they will be doing this?
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| 60 responses total. |
srw
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response 1 of 60:
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Aug 28 07:21 UTC 1993 |
Perhaps this item is of somewhat more general interest, and ought
to be linked? (agora?)
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mju
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response 2 of 60:
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Aug 28 10:35 UTC 1993 |
What possible good is a gateway/router if you only get one IP
address?
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jdg
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response 3 of 60:
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Aug 28 12:48 UTC 1993 |
Yes, and since this seems to be E-net, the 10/Mbit-sec peak gives a realistic
throughput closer to 2-3Mbit on an active LAN. $100/month? Ouch!
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mju
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response 4 of 60:
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Aug 28 15:50 UTC 1993 |
$100/month sounds high until you do some comparison shopping.
A leased 56K line from the telco costs aroud $200/month. Service
from your service provider will probably run another $300/month
or so. IP connectivity, sadly, isn't cheap.
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srw
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response 5 of 60:
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Aug 29 05:17 UTC 1993 |
Re 2: I didn't understand the part about a router and 1 IP address
either.
In fact what I thought was most interesting was that this was a
non-telco approach to communications and it appears to be real.
I am currently paying $200 per 8-month academic year for my son
Jeremy to plug his Mac into the Cornell university Residence-Life
Ethernet. This comes to $25 a month, although it is undoubtedly
subsidised by the University and costs them more than that.
The service he is getting, and the service mju is getting at cmu.edu
seem to be pretty similar to this (1 IP address). This service is
something I drool to have at home. I can get a slow 14.4Kb version of
this for $20 from MSEN (via telco lines).
At $70/mo for a leased 10Mb connection, this is clearly a competitive
price in today's market. Still, It's too much money for me.
Even though it is almost the equivalent of a 2nd phone line, too.
HOWEVER
Things change quickly. Prices drop. Competition makes this happen.
Here we have someone offering a non-telco version of
ethernet-for-the-masses. I think this could be an important event.
The telephone companies should be afraid, IMO.
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mju
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response 6 of 60:
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Aug 29 06:01 UTC 1993 |
Interesting that Cornell makes you pay extra for net connectivity.
At CMU you can connect to the campus Ethernet (with full Internet
access) for nothing more than the cost of an Ethernet card, a
10BaseT cable, and a cabling adapter to plug the 10BaseT cable
into their IBM Type 2 wiring system. Oh, you also have to fill
out a form with your machine type, serial number, Ethernet address,
etc., and it takes them about a week to turn the jack on.
One thing to watch out for is reliability. From what I've heard,
cable companies aren't exactly famed for their downtime records.
In order to be successful, they need to have downtime measured
in seconds (or minutes, at worst) per month. It needs to be
as reliable as telco service. 10Mb/sec service to the home is
worthless if it's down every third or fourth day.
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srw
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response 7 of 60:
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Aug 29 13:50 UTC 1993 |
I think you're paying, Marc. It's in your tuition or room charges.
CMU has a campus-wide ethernet, but Cornell does not.
This is only the 2nd year Cornell has had any dorm rooms wired.
It's called the "Computer Pilot Project", and it's only available
on two floors of one dorm and one floor of another.
They claim the charge is for the routers and their maintenance.
They hand out free "Friendly-Net Adaptors" which are the adaptors
between Apple's Ethernet jack and the 10BaseT wiring. ($79, your
non-Apple adaptors are probably cheaper.)
Next year all of the dorms will be wired, and I think the rules will
change. I think it'll be "free" like at CMU, and you'll have to buy
all the gizmos. We'll see.
All of those people at Cornell w/o ethernet can still use the
Campus SLIP servers over their modems at 14.4K, btw.
---
Will the cable companies be less reliable than the phone systems?
Probably somewhat, at least at first. At least they will be
competing. This will allow the free market to help them
decide on the importance of price, reliability, etc.
Their reliability may improve when the consequences of an outage
change from what they are for their current cable TV business.
This will be interesting to watch - maybe to participate in, one day.
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mju
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response 8 of 60:
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Aug 30 04:16 UTC 1993 |
I'm certainly paying for it, but not as a separate fee -- it's bundled
into something else. CMU actually doesn't have campuswide Ethernet,
though it's close. Most of the administrative buildings are wired,
and four of the dorms are. The dorms that aren't wired for Ethernet
have a terminal server in them, for direct serial connections.
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srw
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response 9 of 60:
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Aug 30 06:54 UTC 1993 |
Oh. Sorry. I thought CMU dorms were all ethernet.
Assuming those direct serial connections are reasonably fast and
permit SLIP or the like, then you have decent fairness. At Cornell
w/o ethernet you need (1) to buy a modem, and (2) to tie up your
phone. The separate $$ for ethernet balances this unfairness, though
I think it's a bit steep. I won't defend it beyond that.
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bdp
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response 10 of 60:
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Sep 6 19:41 UTC 1993 |
re#0: I doubt Columbia Cable would know what the heck you were talking about.
"Interwhat?"
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srw
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response 11 of 60:
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Sep 6 21:02 UTC 1993 |
Yeah, Brian. I probably should have put a smiley on my question at the
end of #0.
Nevertheless. How else will they ever learn that there might be people
who live in their service area who might care about stuff like this?
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bdp
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response 12 of 60:
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Sep 10 01:02 UTC 1993 |
they won't. :) Sure, eventually they will, but probably not in the near
future.
Internet via cable is a really interesting prospect though. Might require
some reworking of cable lines to allow them to be two-way (dunno if this
was discussed already - short term memory. :) But with the theoretical
coming of ISDN, who knows...
Of course, if ISDN ever arrives, Internet would only be a subset of it.
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srw
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response 13 of 60:
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Sep 10 02:24 UTC 1993 |
ISDN uses the phone to give you a digital connection to a party on the
other end who also has ISDN. High speed (64KB? 128KB? I can't remember)
This cable service strikes me as a higher grade of service..consider.
(1) It doesn't tie up the phone.
(2) They're talking about full ethernet speeds.
(3) It's not metered. (Though local loop ISDN isn't either)
The only disadvantage is that it isn't switched. But wait.
The packets go onto the internet where they are switched digitally
at the packet level. You get the same effect. WHat am I missing?
Isn't this an ISDN killer?
As far as reworking the cable system, I don't have the technical info,
but I believe that the breakthrough is that they have figured out
how to use existing cable without reworking to do this. (They do
need to install an amplifier on your terminus to permit you to send.)
If someone has any better info, please share it.
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bdp
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response 14 of 60:
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Sep 10 22:04 UTC 1993 |
I kinda assumed that once ISDN was made available, people would use it
for their own Internet hookups. I heard somewhere that ISDN would be two
64kbps digital lines, and once voice line. ISDN would probably be cheaper...
:)
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srw
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response 15 of 60:
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Sep 11 03:16 UTC 1993 |
ISDN is almost certainly going to be cheaper for point-to-point.
But if you want to hook up to a 64Kb or 128Kb internet connection,
you will also have to pay a network provider for that over and above
the ISDN costs, no? Maybe it will turn out to be comparable in
price, but it offers 10Mb not 128Kb, and it's dedicated not dialup,
and it avoids the potential need for another phone line.
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mju
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response 16 of 60:
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Sep 11 05:24 UTC 1993 |
ISDN BRI (Basic Rate Interface) is 2B+1D -- Two 64Kbps channels (each
can run voice or data, independant of the other) and one 16Kbps
channel (usually used for connection control, although it can
transfer data as well). If you had an Internet connection through an
ISDN line, you would probably make an ISDN data call to your service
provider. The service provider would then take care of switching your
packets out onto the Internet. It would basically work a lot like
a high-speed SLIP or PPP line (in fact, you'd probably run SLIP or
PPP over it...).
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emv
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response 17 of 60:
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Oct 3 22:26 UTC 1993 |
At Msen we have two pair of ISDN lines - one going at 64K between two
offices running PPP, and the other pair running at 38.4K to my house.
The first pair is going "only" 64K because the terminal adapters (Adtran
ISU-128s) slow down a bunch when you run both channels together - more
bits per second, but there's an annoying 200+ ms delay.
mju is right about the ISDN setup - you're basically making a phone call,
a data call, to someone who has equipment on the other end to turn the
whole mess into an IP connection.
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srw
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response 18 of 60:
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Oct 4 07:16 UTC 1993 |
I wonder how that kind of service will compare price/performance versus
a dedicated 10Megabit IP connection for $70/month via cable TV and
thus leaving your phone free.
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scg
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response 19 of 60:
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Aug 10 17:56 UTC 1994 |
It's almost a year later. Does anybody know whether this was successful?
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srw
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response 20 of 60:
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Aug 12 02:44 UTC 1994 |
I believe they did bring the service up. After that I have no clue.
I'll ask my kid at MIT to see if he's heard any more of this.
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kaplan
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response 21 of 60:
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Mar 21 17:42 UTC 1995 |
I just noticed this old item in micros and thought the Internet conference
might want to look at it.
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nephi
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response 22 of 60:
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Mar 22 02:30 UTC 1995 |
Well, what did your son say, srw?
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curby
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response 23 of 60:
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Mar 24 04:34 UTC 1995 |
This sounds impressive. If not pratical, at least impressive. A full
10mbit connection is a pretty thing. Of course, the cable companies
protocols for sending information to your house really wasn't designed
for duplex mode. So I am sure that there will be problems routing IP
traffic over the cable network.
As far as the 1 ip address thing, that is not a problem. As long as
the cable company is running a Border Gateway Protocol (bgp or egp),
you can announce as many networks from your machine as you want. So,
you could have a service running from your home from the connection.
Of course, you would run into some problems with running a service from
your home if the connection is bad or flaky. One of the most
attractive reasons for attaching to an ISP/NSP is the 24 hour
monitoring that they provide to the network. Also, most ISP/NSP's have
a large reserve of talent that can be used in fixing problems that
happen.
Overall, I think that this is another of those things where, "You get
what you pay for".
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srw
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response 24 of 60:
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Mar 25 08:40 UTC 1995 |
I don't remember the outcome of my question from 7 months ago.
I heard recently that the service is available, but not taking off
wildly. I think there are some problems with it, but I am not certain.
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