|
Grex > Coop12 > #14: Internet Connectivity Revisited |  |
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 176 responses total. |
krj
|
|
response 110 of 176:
| 
Aug 12 15:01 UTC 2001 |
Here's the Rhythms shutdown story on Cnet:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-6838020.html
|
krj
|
|
response 111 of 176:
|
Aug 12 16:31 UTC 2001 |
resp:109 :: I should add that the "insurance policy" is not cheap;
counting installation charges, and monthly charges for duplicate
service, it would probably cost Grex on the order of a thousand
dollars, roughly 15% of the annual budget.
|
mdw
|
|
response 112 of 176:
|
Aug 13 04:06 UTC 2001 |
Unless I'm missing something, getting a "backup" connection of
sufficient capacity is liable to double our networking expenses.
|
krj
|
|
response 113 of 176:
|
Aug 13 15:19 UTC 2001 |
Yup. The flip side of that is, what is the damage to Grex if Covad
fails and the DSL line is lost?
(Financially, I'm worried about the M-net model: contributions
to M-net fell off precipitously, by about 2/3rds, when M-net went
down in June 2000 and stayed down for about six weeks. Contributions
have never really recovered; M-net responded by cutting about half
of its remaining expenses, 3 of its 4 dialin lines.)
If the cost of the "insurance policy"
is deemed unacceptable, then the staff needs to be working
on a drill: what does Grex do if it gets a 30-day (or less) shutdown
notice for the Covad DSL service?
With the Rhythms DSL shutdown following the Northpoint DSL shutdown,
and Covad planning its bankruptcy filing, a termination of Covad DSL
service no longer looks like a remote possibility.
|
scg
|
|
response 114 of 176:
|
Aug 15 05:02 UTC 2001 |
The other approach would be to get a more stable looking replacement
connection instead of a backup.
|
devnull
|
|
response 115 of 176:
|
Aug 15 05:34 UTC 2001 |
And what is there that's a stable connection that's better than ISDN BRI
that grex is going to feel it can afford?
|
krj
|
|
response 116 of 176:
|
Aug 15 18:03 UTC 2001 |
As I understand it, the window for modifying or escaping the Corecomm
/ Covad contracts expired without Grex taking any action, and as a
result Grex is contractually bound to pay for the Corecomm / Covad
service into June? 2002. I'd guess the chances at 50-50 that Covad's
DSL users will have lost service before then.
Can Grex get out of the contracts based solely on a fear
that the other party is likely to default? If we are stuck with
ten more months of this contract, then we are thinking either of
a backup insurance connection, or we are thinking of riding out
the DSL shutdown if it happens.
A no-cost proposal would be to talk to CoreComm. Grex can't be the
only DSL customer biting its nails.
|
gull
|
|
response 117 of 176:
|
Aug 15 18:33 UTC 2001 |
I think that if they're in financial trouble, the *last* thing they'll want
to do is let their customers break contracts and flee.
|
krj
|
|
response 118 of 176:
|
Aug 15 19:23 UTC 2001 |
Let me try to summarize my paranoia for the people who don't work with
networks. This is probably repetitive.
The staff has gone to great trouble to assemble a spare parts pile
for the Sun machine. But the network connection is just as
critical to the Grex community as the Sun machine:
take away the network connection, and the e-mail stops, and the
vast majority of users are cut off. We currently have no backup
for the Internet connection, and in the current business situation
I think the connection is in serious danger.
Grex's network service relies on Covad to supply the DSL connection
to the Pumpkin. There were two other companies similar to Covad:
non-Baby Bell companies trying to sell DSL service. These companies,
Northpoint and Rhythms, cut off their customers or
are in the process of cutting off their customers when they failed
as businesses. Covad itself is filing for bankruptcy reorganization.
In the current economic climate, there is no reason to expect
Covad customers to be fare any better than Northpoint or Rhythms
customers.
As I see it, Grex has three options:
1) Thinking about protecting itself by getting a backup insurance
connection, or by getting out of a relationship with Covad,
before Covad fails. This way, a Covad DSL shutdown would be
a non-event to Grex. This is expensive, no doubt.
2) Thinking about riding out a Covad DSL shutdown. This involves
planning NOW: does Grex move to a location with connectivity?
Does Grex multiplex analog phone lines? Or....?
3) Don't think; this networking stuff is too complicated, and maybe
Covad will pull through.
A comparison would be Chinet. According to a Chicago transit web site
hosted by Chinet, Chinet was down for three weeks after Northpoint
cut them off, before they could get a replacement T1 line installed.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 119 of 176:
|
Aug 16 00:10 UTC 2001 |
(Usually I gripe about seeing the same item in two conferences; this time,
it's convenient: I meant to reply i coop but pressed the wrong key. Easier
to go on and get it second time around than to figure out which item it is.)
DSL is about the fastest available to most people today. Anything else is
going to be a step down for us. Still, it seems to me our choices are ISDN
to the Pumpkin or co-location. We've done ISDN before, we *could* do it
again. We've talked about co-location but have we found a place?
|
janc
|
|
response 120 of 176:
|
Aug 16 12:33 UTC 2001 |
Well, if Covad suddenly disappears we could probably re-establish a dial-up
PPP connection pretty quickly. This would give us *some* kind of net
presence, though not anything anyone will really want to use. It's a better
stop gap than completely disappearing off the net.
It'd be nice to have a meaningful fallback plan. We discussed this at the
last staff meeting without coming up with anything even vague resembling a
viable plan. I don't think we can afford to bring up a backup connection.
The best we can do is decide what connection type we should choose if Covad
goes away. Seems like the choices are:
- T1 - probably still out of our price range
- Cable - has anyone checked if symmetric commercial service is available?
- Ameritech DSL
- ISDN - not very attractive from a cost/performance point of view
- colocation
|
mdw
|
|
response 121 of 176:
|
Aug 16 17:47 UTC 2001 |
For cable (or any of these) we need at least 6-8 static IP addresses,
roughly symmetric bandwidth, the ability to run servers that won't be
blocked, including mail, web, telnet. We don't need email accounts, web
space, lots of hand-holding, DNS. The provider should understand what
it means to run a public access system.
My personal impression is the local cable company is relatively clueless
and would probably not like to discover what a public access system
means. This could change if we found a good person inside the cable
company who was supportive of us, but the cable company is definitely
organized to make that very unlikely (the front desk people are heavily
fortified and specially trained to prevent customers from penetrating
past the front office under any circumstance.) The cable company also
currently has a block on *all* traffic to port 80 on any customer
machines to block "code red", and rumour has it they'll probably never
relax this restriction. Not sure if this applies to business customers
too, but this doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings about the local cable
option.
|
krj
|
|
response 122 of 176:
|
Aug 16 20:41 UTC 2001 |
In the Covad disaster scenario, would it make sense to arrange for
two dialup PPP connections, and use one of them to handle the e-mail
load? This might be easier than getting the stuff needed to multiplex
two phone calls into one connection. Just ruminating.
|
mdw
|
|
response 123 of 176:
|
Aug 16 22:33 UTC 2001 |
I doubt even 2 dialup connections would handle all of our mail.
|
scg
|
|
response 124 of 176:
|
Aug 17 03:33 UTC 2001 |
Grex is pretty far beyond being able to run on a dial-up connection.
You don't need a provider who understands public access systems. That's
irrelevant. You need a provider who is willing to forward packets to
arbitrary incoming ports ("let you run your own server"), as would probably
all the options above except apparrently your local cable company. Likewise,
symetric bandwidth is a red herring. As long as the slower direction is fast
enough, it's not a problem that the other direction is faster.
Grex probably does need a provider willing to do some handholding, although
whether the Grex staff will take advantage of the availability of said
handholding is another issue. The current Grex staff approach to network
problems seems to be to label it as my problem, ignore any solutions I
suggest (such as making a phone call to the ISP) as too complicated, and wait
several weeks until I either make the necessary phone call (not very effective
when the ISP wants to know what the stauts lights on the router are doing),
or until the problem goes away on its own. Since that's not a service I'm
able or willing to provide from this distance, Grex needs to find somebody
else to deal with network issues. However, since that's a service Grex is
paying its current ISP for, and nobody is willing to take advantage of it,
I suppose another ISP willing to provide support on another sort of connection
may not be any more useful.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 125 of 176:
|
Aug 17 15:10 UTC 2001 |
Since I'm in the building, I thought I'd ask Merit about a T1. Installation
would be about $6,000. A full T1 would run about $13,000 a year. Fractional
T1 would cost the same for installation, but the yearly cost would be less;
I think it was $8K for 768Kbps. (For those who don't know, T1 is 1.5Mbps,
or roughly 1500Kbps.)
This was not a formal quote, just information.
|
keesan
|
|
response 126 of 176:
|
Aug 17 18:35 UTC 2001 |
I ran across mention of a $3500 T1 installation charge for another ISP.
|
mdw
|
|
response 127 of 176:
|
Aug 18 03:19 UTC 2001 |
Grex needs a provider who won't freak out when some stupid NT
administrator sends nasty mail threatening legal action if the X who
tried to exploit their ISS bug happened to use grex to run his script.
Some providers are going to take that as par for the course. Some are
going to freak out and go ballistic. I don't think we want to find out
the hard way.
|
drew
|
|
response 128 of 176:
|
Aug 18 18:33 UTC 2001 |
Re #125: I pay less than that for my house.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 129 of 176:
|
Aug 18 18:40 UTC 2001 |
I assume you mean your home connection. What kind is it? Who provides it?
How much *does* it cost? I'd love to move up from ISDN at home. (Last I
checked, neither DSL nor cable-modem were available in my neighborhood.
But then, I'm not willing to settle for an asymmetric not link.)
Eventually, we will need to do some comparison shopping. 'Twould probably
be easiest to appoint a shopper to gather the facts.
|
rksjr
|
|
response 130 of 176:
|
Aug 18 19:13 UTC 2001 |
Among numerous usenet postings regarding Covad which I found
at:
http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/deja_announcement.html
one posting was singularly prominent, excerpts of which are
the following:
> From: Bill Somerville (bsomerville@toad.net)
> Subject: ToadNet re: Covad
> Newsgroups: comp.dcom.xdsl
>
>....
>
> Date: 2001-08-10 21:25:20 PST
>
>Today I received the following letter today from David
>Troy, CEO of ToadNet regarding the Covad situation. I
>understand that other ISPs are sending similar letters to
>their customers.
>
>>"August 7, 2001
>>
>>Dear Valued Customer:
>>
>>....
>>
>>Covad Communications, the carrier that you use to receive
>>DSL Internet access through ToadNet, today announced an
>>agreement with its bondholders that will eliminate about
>>$1.4 billion in debt, lifting a significant burden from
>>the company's shoulders and allowing it to focus on
>>achieving profitability sooner.
>>
>>....
>>
>>Covad is and has been the leading independent DSL provider
>>in the U.S., with about 335,000 active residential and
>>business DSL subscribers. Today its stock has moved
>>upward on the news.
>>"The main issue was getting out of debt," Charles Hoffman,
>>Covad's chief executive, said in an interview. "In one
>>fell swoop, this restructuring will take us out of debt."
>>
>>....
>>
>>We [ToadNet] have also been working quietly for the last
>>several months with other carriers including Verizon and
>>NAS. If for any reason Covad becomes unable to deliver
>>service to you, we will immediately notify you with
>>information about migrating to one of these carriers.
>>...."
>
> (c)2001 Google
Given that (as stated in the above letter):
Covad is and has been the leading independent DSL
provider in the U.S., with about 335,000 active
residential and business DSL subscribers.
it is not surprising that there are 391 usenet postings
in Google posted during the last seven days regarding
Covad:
Searched Groups for covad from 11 Aug 2001 to today
Results 1 - 100 of about 391. Search took 1.79 seconds.
Has Grex received any notices or e-mail from CoreComm
regarding Covad?
|
drew
|
|
response 131 of 176:
|
Aug 19 02:28 UTC 2001 |
Re #129:
No, I mean I *live* here for less than the cost of that connection.
For contact I just have dial-up service.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 132 of 176:
|
Aug 19 02:36 UTC 2001 |
Yup; network connections are expensive.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 133 of 176:
|
Aug 19 03:36 UTC 2001 |
The discussion culminating in response #127 above reminded me that Merit
used to discourage anonymous access to the Internet. So I went looking
at their Acceptable Use Policy and Conditions of Use. Eventually, I found:
There are a few technical steps that you can take to limit and
help recover from Internet abuse incidents:
Limit anonymous access to and from your systems.
If you must allow anonymous access, limit what can be
done from the anonymous session to local activities that
are not likely to cause problems for others elsewhere on
the Internet.
Develop and publicize your own Acceptable Use Policy.
(Taken from http://www.merit.edu/michnet/policies/abuse.html)
I think we have implemented those suggestions.
|
remmers
|
|
response 134 of 176:
|
Aug 19 18:19 UTC 2001 |
Indeed, that's almost exactly our outbound access policy (except
to the extent that unrestricted outbound access to port 80 might
"cause problems for others elsewhere on the Internet.").
|