> Exactly, this is a common scenario these days, where people are stuck
> in their area with their crappy legacy isp's that are unwilling to
> invest in upgrading, or even just fixing what they have today. Take
> back the power. This is really on a per-ISP basis how good they are
> about doing so, but cable providers seem WAY ahead of any traditional
> 2-wire telco. Cox was actually one of the best I've worked with, they
> actually fix old cable plants they've acquired over time that are
> sub-standard, at least around Phoenix.
>
> Back in 2003 when I was looking at doing the residential isp thing, I
> tried a few things, including mounting a big ass 2.4ghz antenna on my
> house and doing some 802.11 testing outside to see what sort of
> performance I'd get even from say my direct neighbor's house. It was
> crap, even using proper cisco high-power commercial AP's at the time,
> so mostly scrapped that as it would be mostly unsupportable and/or
> unsellable. There wasn't any better other than Microwave, which
> was/is still quite pricey to do.
>
> Last year working with a Cali municipal ISP in Santa Monica, they do
> business and residential last-mile fiber for 1-10gbe connections,
> typically much cheaper than anyone there as they reuse their own city
> fiber used for traffic and emergency systems all over the city. Any
> sort of construction, particularly street cuts, gets uber expensive,
> so we started using some wireless point to multipoint devices using
> technically 5g or mm-wave 60ghz connections that can do I think up to
> 5 connections per unit, which were small and non-descript. We dropped
> these on a stop light we were in already, pointed at the general area
> we wanted to cover, deployed our first customer in a week. It helped
> we *were* the city to do so, but not to say you can't add a small
> tower in your backyard for the hood.
>
> This came with 1gbps rates to each end node, at roughly 1000ft line of
> sight, so was a bit more ideal potentially for a residential wireless
> isp type of setup, or at least localized instances, and just needed to
> get a 1/10g single-mode ethernet connection to the multipoint unit.
> Perfect for neighborhood isp setups, this was using Siklu components,
> but Ubiquiti makes them too, I'm sure others. Even better after they
> start showing up on Ebay cheap.
>
> I love this sort of networking stuff, working around the Man and such,
> building ISP's - I'm always happy to help explore these concepts if
> someone is serious about wanting to do so. Who's got the VC hookups?
> Will work for bandwidth.
>
> -mb
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 11:23 AM Jim via PLUG-discuss
> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
> <mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> wrote:
>
> I read something once about a lawyer who set up his own ISP. The
> phone company wouldn't supply DSL to the rural area where he
> lived. The only internet service available was dialup. He found
> that from the roof of his barn, he had line of sight to the
> building the law firm had its offices in. He found some
> interested neighbors and set up a microwave link from his barn to
> the office. The local phone company did lease him the lines he
> needed to provide DSL to his neighbors.
>
> On 8/20/20 2:28 PM, Stephen Partington via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> Part of me really would enjoy setting something like this up. The
>> new High speed and dedicated wireless/microwave tools we have now
>> are pretty dang phenomenal and could lead to a decent
>> wireless/wired hybrid internet service.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 12:19 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss
>> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
>> <mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> wrote:
>>
>> I'm not sure I could live somewhere with crap internet, I
>> would probably go about forming some sort of local isp of
>> sorts if enough folks around to be worth it. It's not
>> exactly hard, backward telcos and cable companies can figure
>> it out, it's all capital cost up front and who pays for it,
>> ideally more than just you.
>>
>> Circa 2003 at cox business, we had some baller customers with
>> DS3's to their house (one ran an isp in his basement), which
>> really meant we installed an OC3 fiber node there, and gave
>> them a third of it. These were maybe $2000-3000/mo circuits,
>> but the construction to get fiber to their crib alone might
>> be $30-50k. One customer in the middle of a lake community
>> was more to build into. Either they lock you into a 5yr or
>> more contract to make that construction cost back, or you pay
>> it up front.
>>
>> Back then, I worked a lot with the project group that did
>> construction, so I sat down with someone and we looked at
>> getting fiber to my house for some baller service myself,
>> ideally with some employee discount... They estimated
>> roughly $35k in cost alone for construction, including
>> construction street cuts to bury fiber, permitting, etc, let
>> alone service, and mine wasn't terribly complex. I
>> considered reselling to neighbors, but back then expensive
>> gigabit options probably weren't too attractive to general
>> consumers in 2003. I stuck with my cable modem, they didn't
>> pay that well.
>>
>> Today that would probably be equivalent to a 10GbE+ drop to
>> your house, but at scale of cost most likely. Resell that to
>> your neighbors for some premium bandwidth, everyone wins, but
>> presumes your neighbors aren't all luddites. Some rural
>> communities are doing this, when AT&T and others aren't
>> shutting them down.
>>
>> -mb
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 9:19 AM Bob Elzer via PLUG-discuss
>> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
>> <mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> wrote:
>>
>> I'd brush up on fiber splicing lol
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 1:40 PM Jim via PLUG-discuss
>> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
>> <mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> wrote:
>>
>> AT&T is still fscked up. The tech came out today and
>> told me that the cutoff for the service is 4800 feet
>> and I'm 5136 feet from the box the modem talks to.
>> He ran some test anyway and confirmed it's not
>> available. He told me he has heard of no plans to
>> bring fiber to my neighborhood, but said it is
>> available in a small town 5 miles up the road from me
>> in one direction. 3 miles down the road in the other
>> direction is a subdivision that has it. The fiber
>> runs next to the highway less than a hundred yards
>> from here. I guess it's time to see what other
>> options if any are available.
>>
>> On 8/16/20 10:39 AM, Michael Butash wrote:
>>> I think it mostly comes down to the fact that they
>>> can only really guarantee 2 or 4 wires to a premise
>>> for residential telco, probably more modern
>>> deployments a full 8 wires (ala CatX), though their
>>> traditional copper distribution isn't built for it
>>> unless commercial (their big PED on the roads your
>>> neighborhood comes back to. Probably something in
>>> the telcordia standards back to ma bell days that
>>> says that is just how it is. Since the plants are
>>> non-shielded, non-twisted pair cabling too, it can
>>> only modulate so high, particularly when poorly
>>> run/done, which is why you're stuck at 12mbps.
>>>
>>> If they had to change your home copper, they'd just
>>> run fiber, neither will happen likely.
>>>
>>> The DSL bonding is already a hack to get more
>>> bandwidth when DSL itself is stuck in time now at
>>> raw theoretical limits. Combining more physical
>>> channels as these were would be trivial, if copper
>>> were available, and telcos wanted to support it.
>>> Someone would need to make the modem too.
>>> Technically cable modems do this, literally taking
>>> "channels" or slices or spectrum on the wire, and
>>> load-balancing them internally, up to 24 or 32
>>> channels for multi-gig capabilities. Same with
>>> ethernet, taking 8 into a port-channel and balancing
>>> across them, whether 100 megabit or 400 gigabit
>>> ethernet.
>>>
>>> AT&T is the most ghetto provider out there still,
>>> and always has been imho. Moving to San Jose in
>>> '99, there was AT&T Cable TV installed by the
>>> owners, which consisted of 2x of your standard coax
>>> ala modern cable from the outside, and required a
>>> physical a/b switch box to switch between 13
>>> channels on one, and 13 channels on another. First
>>> I looked at it, and was confused enough I had to
>>> call them and ask wtf the cable "channels" worked to
>>> realize just how bad it was, and I then worked for
>>> the original @home cable isp company then supporting
>>> AT&T cable modems! The images were even snowy, the
>>> service was so bad even a tech couldn't (read:
>>> wouldn't) improve. When I asked about a cable modem,
>>> they laughed at me, so I had to get DSL (phat
>>> 1.5mbps then), disconnected the useless cable tv
>>> (yay usenet alt.binaries.video even then), and threw
>>> up a finger to AT&T.
>>>
>>> I can only imagine how bad AT&T's DSL is if they
>>> couldn't figure out even coax. My experience
>>> supporting their customers for Cable Modem data in
>>> '99, relatively new tech then, wasn't much better,
>>> as if the cable plant to your house was broke, it
>>> tended to just stay broke despite our rolling their
>>> techs to fix it. Then they'd get angry at us for
>>> doing so and tell us to stop rolling so many trucks
>>> to fix things.
>>>
>>> Sigh.
>>>
>>> Having grown up in Phoenix where Dimension, and
>>> later Cox actually had their shit (relatively)
>>> together, this was an inconceivable atrocity but
>>> exactly what I'd expect of AT&T. Thanks to them (and
>>> Comcast, all the media cartels now really) owning
>>> the FCC now with your tax dollars, it'll never,
>>> ever, get better either. Good thing Net Neutrality
>>> and consumer rights weren't really needed after all!
>>>
>>> -mb
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 12:42 PM Jim via
>>> PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
>>> <mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> wrote:
>>>
>>> 150 Mbps, you're lucky. Here AT&T has to bond
>>> 2 pairs so I can get 25 Mbps. At least it's
>>> not comcast. I wonder how many pairs they could
>>> bond. Is there a technical limit or is it just
>>> a matter of how many they want to bond? As more
>>> people abandon landlines, that leaves more
>>> capacity for AT&T to bond multiple pairs for
>>> internet customers.
>>>
>>> On 8/10/20 11:21 AM, Michael Butash via
>>> PLUG-discuss wrote:
>>>> So I went through this moving from Cox to
>>>> CenturyLink, and pretty much as described,
>>>> fairly painless.
>>>>
>>>> <tldr>
>>>>
>>>> I had scheduled a CL tech to install me for new
>>>> service a few years ago, and we first hit the
>>>> outside where CL ran their cabling in. It was
>>>> an ancient telephony distribution from the
>>>> 90's, and I've never had a land-line in my
>>>> house since owning it in 2002. My house built
>>>> in 95 at least used cat5 or like, so I have 4
>>>> pairs to every room, so 2 pairs I need was just
>>>> fine for bonded DSL He ripped out the old
>>>> block, removing the house cabling but the one,
>>>> and isolated the particular line we needed to
>>>> my office where the modem lives, added an
>>>> approved jack, done. Bonded dsl is 2x 2-wire
>>>> channels, and they essentially load-balance
>>>> 75+75mbps channels. I have tested this to n-by
>>>> gigabit upstreams.
>>>>
>>>> Phone only guarantees 2 wires are available, so
>>>> telcos built on this 100 years ago are a bit
>>>> assed-out on passable high-frequency modulation
>>>> schemas in use for data and other things to
>>>> move beyond where they're at. DSL makes up for
>>>> this, particularly when double up on wires it
>>>> gets better, but still unshielded and prone to
>>>> breakdown. Problem is mostly it isn't
>>>> shielded, thus capable of very high frequency
>>>> modulation ala Cable/DOCSIS, so it will never
>>>> go much further than it has today whereas Cable
>>>> scales to gigabits with channelization and QAM
>>>> modulation at 32bit rates.
>>>>
>>>> VDSL tech is capable of roughly 75mbps per
>>>> channel, and 2x of these get you to around CL's
>>>> bonded DSL limits. This also includes your
>>>> distance limitations to your local DSLAM, or
>>>> regional router that terminates your data that
>>>> degrades this eventually further you are from
>>>> it, so it's a bit tricky. It's been stuck here
>>>> for years, and pretty much at life end. This
>>>> is why my cousin living half a mile from me can
>>>> only get 75mbps from CL and I can with bonded
>>>> @150mbps here. Old crap network there.
>>>>
>>>> Fiber, particularly Single Mode, gives you
>>>> whatever to ~100GbE, but depends on how your
>>>> provider does low-rate Passive Optical
>>>> Networking (PON) today for residential fiber.
>>>> Not quite the same as a business data network,
>>>> but any fiber is better than copper networks.
>>>>
>>>> Why Centurylink's only hope for the future is
>>>> fiber vs. copper in new builds. I like my 25yr
>>>> old house still, so no fiber for me ever.
>>>> Unless I street cut my block for fiber myself,
>>>> which I've considered, just need to get my
>>>> neighbors to buy into me as their new gigabit
>>>> isp. ;)
>>>>
>>>> -mb
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Aug 8, 2020 at 1:27 PM Jim via
>>>> PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
>>>> <mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Ok. I won't complain if I have to go out
>>>> and buy a 4 conductor phone cord.
>>>>
>>>> On 8/7/20 9:05 AM, Stephen Partington wrote:
>>>>> My understanding of this is that they will
>>>>> activate the second pair that is commonly
>>>>> used in the RJ-43 port in your wall. This
>>>>> will allow 2 lines active to the device.
>>>>>
>>>>> Changes inside might need to happen if
>>>>> your residence does not have 4 wire (2
>>>>> line) compatibility. (IE 2 pairs to the
>>>>> jack vs 1 pair)
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 9:10 PM Jim via
>>>>> PLUG-discuss
>>>>> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
>>>>> <mailto:plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Where I live, I get AT&T for my DSL
>>>>> service. I've signed up for an
>>>>> upgrade from 10 Mbps to 25. I finally
>>>>> got someone there who would tell
>>>>> me why a technician visit is required
>>>>> for the upgrade. They're bonding 2
>>>>> pairs to supply the faster speed here.
>>>>> I've read up online about DSL
>>>>> bonding. I understand that one pair
>>>>> will carry some of the data, and
>>>>> the other pair will carry some. But
>>>>> one thing I didn't find out was
>>>>> whether or not anything will change
>>>>> between the wall jack and the
>>>>> modem. Is everything done outside or
>>>>> do they have to come inside? I
>>>>> currently have a 2 conductor cord
>>>>> connecting my modem to the wall jack.
>>>>> Will that have to be replaced with a 4
>>>>> conductor cord? Do they install
>>>>> an extra box outside or inside? I
>>>>> guess all will be answered on the
>>>>> 18th when the guy is scheduled to be
>>>>> here. I'm really curious how this
>>>>> works.
>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
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>>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to
>>>>> change your mail settings:
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm
>>>>> clock, will prevent you from rolling over
>>>>> and going back to sleep after you hit the
>>>>> snooze button.
>>>>>
>>>>> Stephen
>>>>>
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>>
>> --
>> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you
>> from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the
>> snooze button.
>>
>> Stephen
>>
>>
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