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Grex > Coop12 > #14: Internet Connectivity Revisited |  |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 176 responses total. |
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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mdw
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response 144 of 176:
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Aug 21 21:26 UTC 2001 |
I believe ComCast offers business service as well, but I know very
little about it. I expect they see it as an extension of their
residential service rather than something special.
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dpc
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response 145 of 176:
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Aug 22 20:42 UTC 2001 |
OK, I'll ask. What is Port 80? Can someone explain its
significance for the technologically challenged?
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cross
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response 146 of 176:
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Aug 22 22:15 UTC 2001 |
``Port 80'' in this context refers to TCP port number 80, which is
the well-known port for the HTTP protocol, which is the protocol that
web servers typically use to move data around.
So, in other words, port 80 is what you talk to a web server on. It's
significance, other than that, is that that's the port that Microsoft's
IIS web server `listens' on. IIS has all sorts of funky security holes
in it, most recently the one used to propogate the `code red' worm
which has been plaguing the Internet recently.
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keesan
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response 147 of 176:
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Aug 22 22:21 UTC 2001 |
The Ann Arbor public library uses some other port which is why you have to
go an indirect route to renew books if not a paying grexer.
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scott
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response 148 of 176:
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Aug 22 22:34 UTC 2001 |
The proxy route we're implementing should allow all users to get to the most
common non-standard HTTP ports (8080 is one of them).
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jared
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response 149 of 176:
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Aug 23 04:28 UTC 2001 |
Sorry for being out of things, but what's the current deal here?
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janc
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response 150 of 176:
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Aug 23 20:59 UTC 2001 |
Not much. We still have Covad DSL through whatever Voyager is called now.
Nothing has changed. But people are worried that Covad will vanish, and our
net connectivity will vanish with it. Nobody has come up with any viable
suggestion of what we should or could do about it.
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russ
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response 151 of 176:
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Aug 24 23:17 UTC 2001 |
Has anyone investigated the possibilities of 802.11 links
around Ann Arbor?
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gelinas
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response 152 of 176:
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Aug 25 00:50 UTC 2001 |
A friend of mine drives around town now and again looking for open wireless
networks. Does that count?
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gull
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response 153 of 176:
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Aug 25 16:44 UTC 2001 |
Supposedly they're pretty easy to hax0r. ;>
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russ
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response 154 of 176:
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Aug 25 22:55 UTC 2001 |
I was thinking of something more like an encrypted tunnel
over 802.11 between the Pumpkin and a local ISP. As the
connectivity problem is much more associated with the "last
mile" wiring than any lack of bandwidth, that might be
something to look at.
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russ
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response 155 of 176:
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Aug 26 13:09 UTC 2001 |
Re #153: WEP is a joke, but I doubt that an encrypted tunnel
is going to be much less secure over 802.11 than it is over
the broader Internet.
A further advantage of 802.11 is that it might allow for
wireless access to Grex from nearby users. I'd recommend
making this access via ssh only (no telnet). That's one way
to save on phone lines.
The core issue is if there are any remaining local ISPs which
would be willing to co-locate enough 802.11 hardware to get
a signal through to the pumpkin. Repeaters could extend this
range quite a bit, but depending on volunteer-operated
repeaters for Grex's internet connection isn't a good strategy.
Might the landlord allow installation of an antenna on the roof?
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gull
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response 156 of 176:
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Aug 26 18:42 UTC 2001 |
Yeah, an encrypted tunnel would solve the security problems.
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mdw
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response 157 of 176:
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Aug 26 20:55 UTC 2001 |
When grex moved into the pumpkin, the landlord was very receptive to the
idea of an antenna on the roof. Unfortunately, he was on a oxygen tank
and has since died. ISPs aren't generally receptive to "weird" hookups
- they like to see hardware and software they know and understand. A
further option would be pricing - ISPs charge mainly for network
bandwidth - which could make this quite pricey. 802.11 is apparently
pretty particular about having a good path and range depends greatly on
the quality of that path. We'd probably have to have roof access not
only wherever grex lives, but also wherever the ISP is, & something
close to line of sight inbetween. Ironically, our best option might be
via merit & a friendly merit affiliate, but probably only if we could
move in directly across the street.
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gelinas
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response 158 of 176:
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Aug 27 00:34 UTC 2001 |
Merit isn't doing wireless these days. (I asked.) They've experimented with
it in the past, but it hasn't panned out.
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mdw
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response 159 of 176:
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Aug 28 03:05 UTC 2001 |
What we'd probably do with the hypothetical friendly merit affiliate
would be to locate our own router (pc of some flavor) with
802.11/802.11B card somewhere like an upper-story outside wall broom
closet, and negotiate with merit about subnets and the like. M-net had
a somewhat similar arrangement with merit in the distant past, and HVCN
has a similar arrangement today, so this is in theory doable.
Technically, when we were in the dungeon, and ITD was in Argus, the
physical arrangement was close to what we would have needed. We might
have had to do something to get the antenna out of the basement of the
house, plus negotiate with the sty to locate a PC in the right part of
Argus.
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jared
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response 160 of 176:
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Oct 7 05:39 UTC 2001 |
Grex is too far away for me to provide 802.11b type wireless.
doing wep or similar things is doable, and one could do some ipsec
encoding in addition to the wep at the router level at each end of
the link to provide sufficent security to make such a link secure.
some rural isps (datawise.net for example) use wireless to interconnect
nodes that are distant. there are also people who make interesting wireless
devices (adaptivebroadband[.com]) for one. i talked to them a few years
ago at an interview and their technology was quite interesting and
sprint broadband uses them. last i checked we were not in an area
that had access to such service. the ameritech dsl stuff would be an
intersting choice as some people (ic.net for example) resell it. i
also talked to comcast folks about cable modem stuff (static ip, etc..)
and they can provide service that would be usable to grex but
at a much higher cost than dsl.
if grex were to get in a bind for connectivity some staff person
could call me and i can attempt to arrange some sort of
backup connection (isdn, static ip dialup, etc..) in short
order.
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gull
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response 161 of 176:
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Oct 7 19:58 UTC 2001 |
Re #160: We use ic.net at work and I can't recommend them. Their
outgoing path is through Sprintnet, which is infamous for
unreliability. Generally we have at least one outage or packet loss
problem a week, and connection speeds to non-ic.net sites are generally
very poor. They also have a tendancy to lose DNS servers, but that's
easier to work around, of course.
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mdw
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response 162 of 176:
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Oct 8 00:30 UTC 2001 |
Grex used to be connected via ic.net. They've got some local peering;
at least, when I do a tracroute from work, they don't go via sprint for
any hop, and don't appear to exit the state of michigan. Losing DNS
servers won't be an issue for grex (well, except for the reverse arpa
thing).
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