DSL reccomendations? anyone using PSN?

[Kevin Saling]

> > back to the speedchoice backbone is shared, but I doubt it.
> That leaves the
> > outgoing traffic...  my understanding is that outgoing traffic is MMDS
> > broadcasted on whatever frequencies (surely someone here knows
> them) and my
> > hybrid router is only interested in packets destined for my IP address.
>
> Ah, but that doesn't mean you're on a switched network. Normally your OS
> only picks up braodcast traffic and traffic specifically destined for your
> ethernet address. This is regardless of switched and shared, aka
> hubbed. The difference between those two is that on a switched network
> presumably the only traffic on the wire is that which you should be
> seeing.

Ah, now that makes more sense.  Even though my hybrid is only interested in
packets destined for me, the transmitter still has only a finite amount of
broadcasting bandwidth.  This bandwidth must be shared between all the users
in a particular segment.

> > Therefore, it only _routes_ inbound packets that are destined for me and
> > ignores everything else.   This would explain why I don't see any other
> > traffic when I am sniffing between my hybrid router and my NIC,
> huh?  :-)
> > Now, if I inserted a sniffer between my hybrid router and the
> antenna, do
> > you think I would see other traffic???  Hmmm.
>
> That you would. They've broken the network down into several segments,
> which is the different freqs, but there are many people on the same freq,
> which is the functional equivalent of a ethernet segment shared by
> hub. You can't necessarily sniff the network, but you're still fighting
> for bandwidth. Switched is much, much better overall, but doesn't allow
> you to burst and eat your neighbors unused bandwidth :).

Agreed.  Thanks for the tips!

...Kevin