Re: CenturyLink/DirectTV

>     From: Michael Butash <michael@butash.net>
>     Subject: Re: CenturyLink/DirectTV
>     To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>     Date: Friday, July 27, 2012, 10:33 PM

>     Qwest/CL DSL has always proven spotty *at times* with anyone I've
>     ever known using it. As a network guy I inquire with fellow geeks I
>     know, and they let me know. Generally the residential side of
>     Qwest/CL fairly weak on troubleshooting most issues because of
>     simple physical problems that often cannot easily be overcome with
>     2wire systems. If you can get VDSL, it's decent from what I've
>     heard, as long as you have new wiring, in a new area, and live close
>     to where every they dropped the local dslam. Most fall NOT into this
>     category.

>     Data comes in the form of modulation, and consider 10baset requires
>     4 wires still, gig ethernet 8. 2-wire is poop compared to the
>     modulation and speed capable on _shielded_ coax. Qwest has simply
>     had to push the envelope with dsl tech to remain relevant in the
>     market, eventually resorting to new wiring (twisted-pair i think),
>     often with some shielding now to achieve it which is hardly
>     traditional for a telco outside of business service. Eventually they
>     had to begin to roll fiber as they were reaching unpractical
>     limitations in their 2wire tech to modulate data at *competitive
>     speeds*.

>     Fixed point-to-multipoint ala old sprint broadband and various
>     others operate in parts that do it too now, sometimes a decent
>     alternative where available I've heard (cave creek area). At least
>     until it is oversubscribed to hell. Sprint acquired independents
>     here in town setting them up, but ultimately they oversold it to
>     death, and finally shot it in the head to finish years later. Not
>     sure this isn't the eventual outcome of any wireless deployment.

>     Satellite is a last-resort option with as stated, latency and
>     bandwidth caps (extreme point-to-multipoint far, far away).

>     If celco's weren't so greedy/proud of wireless LTE tech, it would be
>     decent as a fixed solution as well as mobile as latency and
>     throughput is much improved. I couldn't run the small datacenter in
>     my house with it though. I can however get a LTE EHWIC for a Cisco
>     router now that customers can and do use as a "backup" solution when
>     someone back-hoe's your businesses fiber.

>     Qwest/CL fiber deployment, like fios is "pon", passive-optical
>     network based. These are not to be confused with anything like
>     optical ethernet, sonet, dwdm, etc that are "active" optics. Cable,
>     dsl, most non-optical (generally) are subject to async behavior as
>     you have a small modem, and a very large cmts and active amplifier
>     network driving very large coax feeds at headends and active optical
>     from there. Fiber doesn't have so much those physical limitations so
>     long as the laser can use power in the diode to shoot your frames
>     from here to there some ways (active zx single-mode optics can shoot
>     60km for gige, raman based dwdm amps much further). PON is a
>     cost-effective way of aggregating fiber in a controlled fashion as
>     you somewhat would a copper plant, only now the techs roll with
>     portable fusion splicers and otdr's instead of qam test kit for coax.

>     Cable is where it's at, when fiber is not. I've too worked at cox,
>     and actually back to @home and offshoot isp back in the day when
>     they started the tech before cox as media whores figured out what IP
>     was. The modulation and timing that drives docsis 3.0 is very
>     scalable for a copper means, and it's nothing cox will need to dig
>     up and replace anytime soon. Other than being a bit proud of
>     watching and working it along the way, it's solid tech.

>     I have some issues with Cox ultimately, but they are one of the less
>     evil of the isp's out there, and generally have much improved
>     stability over most anything else. Generally speaking, the only time
>     I call them is when truly something dies (arizona is hell on coax),
>     as I don't require network support otherwise. I've used them off and
>     on a good 14 years for data, and as long as you have a clean
>     physical connection (modem levels can tell you/them this), it's
>     pretty damn solid. Business services gets you someone out to fix
>     your stuff asap vs. 2-3 bd, and open ports (cox blocks surprisingly
>     less than you might think these days on residential - not even https).

>     So far pon is driving speeds comparable to cable with qam docsis 3.0
>     now that they're channel-bonding to aggregate much as wireless tech
>     does in 802.11n. Pon is capable of 10g speed down, 2.5gb up. That is
>     why cox and other cable mso/isp's killed analog off, to reclaim
>     huge/clean spectrum to reuse for wide-band operation across more
>     spectrum to compete with this. They're ability with modems and cmts
>     channel/timing management to auto-provision docsis allows them to
>     optimize channel/spectrum bonding/mimo usage, allowing them to
>     simply keep adding more bandwidth.

>     Data on cable used to be shoehorned into a small chunk of spectrum
>     (what good is data? cox, circa 1996). Now that wastful tech is off,
>     it gives them more channels to use from 200khz to 6.4mhz. Things
>     like qam at 128 now allows for huge modular data streams, and
>     diverse ones to offer assured data/video/telephony, or the "triple
>     play" holy grail of service provider income. Only video and wired
>     telephony is getting deprecated these days with personal mobile
>     telephony/data and the tubes.

>     Speed, even stability is becoming less of an issue these days once
>     you get beyond 2wire poop and physical transport issues. Real
>     problem is they all see the decline of legacy services like video
>     and telephony, and now data is consuming their services so they feel
>     the need to manage, or queue the traffic. The routers or cmts or
>     dslams all have intelligent QoS capability, and by default sort your
>     data and queue them selectively according to their rules, not yours.
>     Illusion of neutrality has generally been long gone if you
>     understand queuing and qos concepts, as your data will always be
>     subject to some level of priority that comes down to src/dest ip and
>     port. Them over you, profitable vs. non-profitable.

>     Like qwest/cl (especially with government boot on their back since
>     mabell) or any intelligent isp, cox has multi-1/10g devices
>     sniffing/tapping your data as well, looking at damn well whatever
>     they feel like, and probably sharing more than you care to know. Any
>     enterprise, or service provider worth a damn does. Most devices do
>     netflow, are tapped, include "lawful intercept" features, span, tap,
>     whatever. All your data are belong to them - encryption is your friend.

>     Cox is a marketing company, and a media company - remember that.
>     They can, but do far less than other cable isps such as comcast.
>     They have the same hardware to limit bittorrent and other sharing as
>     comcast does, but don't. They ran usenet servers (distributing
>     binary files!) for years (somewhat knowingly of the warez). They
>     don't tromp the tubes or netflix as just about everyone does. They
>     have decent peering as well, but Qwest/CL overall is better due to
>     business relationships.

>     Integrity of your personal data will prove to be the real mettle of
>     your service provider in the near future. It's not a matter of if
>     the look at your data - they do. It's a matter of how they queue it,
>     and whether they give, sell, or get hacked, giving up your data as a
>     flow, description, or entire tcpdump in pcap format. Yeah I'm a bit
>     paranoid, but I have built the tech for companies to do it.

>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network
>     http://www.netoptics.com/products/network-taps
>     http://www.netscout.com/products/service_provider/nSAS/sniffer_analysis/Pages/InfiniStream_Console.aspx

>     If you read this far, take asprin. :)

>     -mb

>     On 07/27/2012 11:58 AM, jill wrote:
>      >
>      > I have to think my experience is probably atypical or they'd be
>     rioting
>      > in the streets. But, you asked I answer. :)

>      >
>      > We switched to Qwest about a year and a half ago when they ran
>     new fiber
>      > through our neighborhood in Chandler. No TV, just data on a business
>      > account for static IP and all ports. It was actually decent for a
>     good
>      > long while, never had to call in for support. When we called for
>     basic
>      > account stuff they were easy to work with. Speed varied quite a bit
>      > from the advertised 'up to' we paid for, but eh - shared dsl/cable,
>      > don't expect much. Then from 6/12 to 7/15 we had 6 (known) outages in
>      > excess of 60 minutes. Everything from failed DSLAM cards and gateways
>      > to 'oops we botched a vlan tag' and 'gee we don't know but hey it's
>      > working now'. Trying to deal with them on any of those was painful at
>      > best and terribly enlightening. There is nowhere in all of CL a DSL
>      > subscriber, including a business account, can ever sit and talk
>     face to
>      > face about their account. Only fiber/t1/pri circuit accounts get
>     that.
>      > Stores can only do sales, no account access at all. I had one call
>      > where I was transferred 8 times before being told that all
>     departments
>      > who could do account support were closed (at 6:30pm on a weekday,
>     having
>      > initiated the call at 4:40). Their policy is to cold transfer
>     calls so
>      > you're constantly re-explaining - been told this policy by I
>     think it's
>      > been 3 different CL reps. We're actively switching back to Cox right
>      > now. It's a bit pricier, but I know as both business or residential I
>      > can go into stores and get help if I need to and on a business cable
>      > account you get a real live human account rep. So if that's the
>     sort of
>      > that's important to you, it's worth considering. (full disclosure
>      > disclaimer: I am also a former Cox employee, but we're talking 6
>     years
>      > ago. I've also worked for 2 other cable companies over the years
>     prior
>      > to that, so I recognize my ISP standards may be excessively high!)

>      >
>      > I don't know if something might have changed at CL recently,
>     especially
>      > with Eric's experience that they changed residential port blocking in
>      > June. Your mileage of course may vary, but I'd hesitate to sign a
>      > contract at least at first if you decide to try it out.

>      >
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