CenturyLink/DirectTV

[Michael Butash]

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.
>