CenturyLink/DirectTV

Sat Jul 28 11:51:41 MST 2012

"I couldn't run the small datacenter in my house with it though.".  -- Are you using Cox to do this?

I home office and twitched from a consumer package to a business package so I would have the ability to run a server.  I ran a server part time for testing only.  I was testing out the Qmail Toaster.  

I had a bad experience running a server about 10 years ago.  I left the email relay open and was exploited.  Since then I have been leery of running server out of my house. 

My cable connection has been very stable with just a couple of outages.  I think those outages where on my consumer connection.  I do not think I have had any outages since twitching.

I'd be interested to hear if you are using Cox for your home based data center.  

------------------------

Keith Smith

--- On Fri, 7/27/12, Michael Butash <michael at butash.net> wrote:

From: Michael Butash <michael at butash.net>
Subject: Re: CenturyLink/DirectTV
To: plug-discuss at 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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