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Grex > Coop11 > #249: Internet Connectivity Revisited |  |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 176 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 119 of 176:
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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?
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janc
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response 120 of 176:
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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
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mdw
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response 121 of 176:
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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.
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krj
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response 122 of 176:
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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.
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mdw
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response 123 of 176:
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Aug 16 22:33 UTC 2001 |
I doubt even 2 dialup connections would handle all of our mail.
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scg
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response 124 of 176:
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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.
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gelinas
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response 125 of 176:
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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.
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keesan
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response 126 of 176:
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Aug 17 18:35 UTC 2001 |
I ran across mention of a $3500 T1 installation charge for another ISP.
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mdw
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response 127 of 176:
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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.
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drew
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response 128 of 176:
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Aug 18 18:33 UTC 2001 |
Re #125: I pay less than that for my house.
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gelinas
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response 129 of 176:
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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.
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rksjr
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response 130 of 176:
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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?
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drew
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response 131 of 176:
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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.
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gelinas
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response 132 of 176:
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Aug 19 02:36 UTC 2001 |
Yup; network connections are expensive.
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gelinas
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response 133 of 176:
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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.
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remmers
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response 134 of 176:
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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.").
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i
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response 135 of 176:
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Aug 20 11:21 UTC 2001 |
(But see item #39 - our port 80 policy appears to be changing.)
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remmers
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response 136 of 176:
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Aug 20 13:48 UTC 2001 |
(Noted.)
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gull
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response 137 of 176:
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Aug 20 18:18 UTC 2001 |
Re #129: My asymmetric DSL connection is as fast in the "slow" direction as
an ISDN link is in either direction.
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scg
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response 138 of 176:
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Aug 21 05:49 UTC 2001 |
It should be noted that Merit's prices for years have been well above what
any of their competitors were charging, for what has generally been far slower
connectivity. Price quotes (and bizarre policies) from Merit are probably
more confusing than helpful to this discussion.
Having a bunch of experience working for and dealing with ISPs, I don't find
Marcus's fantasies about things that would cause the ISP to go balistic and
cut Grex off at all realistic.
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mdw
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response 139 of 176:
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Aug 21 07:46 UTC 2001 |
So how much experience have *you* had with ComCast's customer service?
I've dealt with them, and heard plenty of other stories. Their ISP
might be your kind of cool folks, but thems definitely not in charge of
the rest of the organization.
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gull
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response 140 of 176:
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Aug 21 13:20 UTC 2001 |
I hear ComCast is now telling residential customers that web servers are
against their AUP, and that port 80 will stay blocked. I kind of doubt this
is the kind of ISP that would want business from someone like Grex.
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scg
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response 141 of 176:
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Aug 21 18:28 UTC 2001 |
Who said anything about ComCast? I thought we'd alrady established that we
needed an ISP that would allow customers to "run their own servers,", which
it sounds like isn't remotely ComCast's business model? That's very different
from "must be familiar with public access Unix systems," which would exclude
just about everybody for no good reason.
ISPs that deal with business customers are used to customers putting up
servers that need to be connected to on arbitrary ports. This is something
a few of the cable companies have explicitly disallowed from their residential
offerings because they want to deal only with residential customers, but that
has far more to do with their specific narrowly focused business model than
wiht any sort of paranoia on the part of ISPs in general. This means that
residential grade cable service (complete with dynamic IP address) isn't
appropriate for connecting devices that need to be connected to from outside
(such as Grex, or a corporate web or mail server), but that was already
obvious. Any ISP dealing with business customers (in other words, pretty much
anybody except the cable companies) will not have that issue.
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krj
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response 142 of 176:
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Aug 21 18:31 UTC 2001 |
Grex is not a residential customer, and it should not be attempting
to squeak through as one. Prices for "residential customers"
are set assuming a certain pattern and intensity of use, and it's
reasonable for the ISP to set rules and policies so that people who
want to use lots more bandwidth are forced into a different category.
From a network-service point of view, Grex is a business, even if we
are a non-profit organization.
Disclaimer: I have no direct knowledge of ComCast's access policies,
and no idea if they offer anything which would be suitable for business
use.
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krj
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response 143 of 176:
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Aug 21 18:32 UTC 2001 |
((scg's resp:141 slipped in and said what I was saying, more or less))
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