Cox Internet connectivity..

[storkus at storkus.com]

On Sat, 31 May 2008 21:19:23 -0700, "koder" <hmichels01 at earthlink.net>
said:
> 
> Quoting:
> "If you really want a bulletproof connection, get a dedicated T1 line
> (or faster)."
> 
> Correct me if I am wrong, but based on my experience in another city,
> our T1 connection physically came from the local phone company. Is it
> not the same in most cities, with the exceptions of some that have
> diverse backbone options?
> 
> I know that our T1 would go down with some regularity. In spite of all
> that we were able to do, we would lose it about once every three or four
> months for a few hours, once for day and a half. Very bad for a branch
> of a major corporation.
> 
> Harold

Agreed, and it all comes down to the same thing: you're stuck on a pair
of point-to-point wires that need to be disconnected now and then, or
sometimes get disconnected w/o warning such as getting dug up or a car
hitting a pole. :(

> 
> 
> On Sat, 2008-05-31 at 20:49 -0700, KevinO wrote:
> > storkus at storkus.com wrote:
> > > Umm...I must be missing something here: you still need the hard
> > > connection
> > > to the outside world so how can you ssh into someone else's network
> > > without a working network connection of your own?
> > > 
> > Because he has a solid connection and route to his friend, just not to where he 
> > wants to go.

Ah, I knew I missed something there.

> > > Along the same lines, the guy who recommended the DSL resellers: it's
> > > still Qwest's copper that's getting resold,
> > Tell us something we ALL don't know. The difference is, ISP's like Cox and Qwest 
> > do not care about customer service. When you go with either of the recommended 
> > ISP's, you are dealing with people who care about customer service and you are 
> > not going to get told misleading statements nor given a runaround when a 
> > technical problem arises.

True, which is what I said if you hadn't cut out the rest of my comment.
 But the
fact that it's still Qwest's (or whoever the ILEC is) copper is still
the main
point and, at the end of the day, someone is still gonna have to deal
with them.

> > Sure, you still rely on the local monopoly phone company to supply the copper 
> > pair, but your ISP will help get that taken care of on your behalf.

Or at least try.  In my experience, the ILEC (which was SBC where I come
from)
will still be a royal PITA, and it could sometimes be days before things
got back
to normal; in the mean time, I (or you) would be sitting around waiting
for news
from your own provider who could only relay what they were told.  It
really makes
you feel doubly powerless. :(

> > If you think living with a DSL connection with Qwest is like having one through 
> > Deru or FastQ, you are sadly mistaken.

I was speaking of a technical standpoint: obviously dealing with the
CLEC's people
will be very different, especially with billing issues.

> > If you want consistently high latency and high packet loss, go wireless.

Latency depends mainly on the modulation scheme, as it does on cable and
DSL.
Packet loss, unfortunately, is more common than not and is directly
related to
oversubscription.  I was lucky in that both systems I used (a local ISP
using
Canopy as well as ClearWire when they first moved in) were not
oversubscribed
and I rarely encountered packet loss though my speed would vary quite a
bit.
The Canopy was real nice because it was sold as a business service so
day speeds
were bad but at night I was pretty much the only person on the segment
so I would
get over 2 megs/second down AND up!

Mike