there's been a long going media war about which is better: cable modems or DSL? i have followed the arguments over time, but until recently i was not fortunate enough to have a choice. Three years ago AT&T@Home brought cable modems to my neighborhood, but i was "too far from the central office" to get DSL. So i subscribed to cable modem and endured the transfer from @Home to AT&T and then endured the transfer to Comcast, while everyone else raved about their DSL lines.
DSL supporters warned that cable modems shared bandwidth with others in the neighborhood, and my speed would soon eek to a crawl, but this never happened. AT&T et al seemed to expand the network as needed to keep the bandwidth at way over acceptable levels, so i was a pretty happy customer. i did experience occaisonal outtages, for an hour at the most.
The problem came when i needed to have a static IP address at home. A static IP address in the home is useful for a lot of things...not only hosting a website, a home email server, or family photo album, but also for setting up VPN access to corporations who have IT departments that only allow incoming traffic from known, static IPs.
I had gotten by in the past by keeping a DHCP lease open on the cable modem so that my IP address never got reset. the few power outtages we had reset this, so i had to update DNS on a few occaisions. when comcast took over from AT&T, however, is where things went awry. comcast started to force expiration of the DHCP least every 3 days, probably to keep people like me from doing what i was doing!
A few calls around comcast revealed no knowledge of such a static IP product, nor plans to do so. In fact, their agreements prohibit users from running servers of any kind.
at the same time, yahoo/SBC started marketing DSL in my area, so i said what the heck, i'll try it.
now, anyone who dealt with SBC's predecessor in this area, Ameritech, should remember what may have possibly been the worst customer service ever, with installation technicians that may or may not have shown up let alone complete an installation correctly. SBC brought some southern hospitality to the customer service, but this is clearly the same Ameritech underneath.
as a preface, before we moved into my house, the city changed the street name. it exists on the platte of survey under one name, and with the post office under another name. although SBC had in one database that i was eligible for DSL with my correct address, they still had the old address in the DSL database, and could not relate them. ( where's all those "connect legacy systems together" companies when you need them? hey webmethods, go talk to SBC! can't you just "throw in" one of those "enterprise busses" and fix this? ) long story short, the customer service rep said "well you are definitely able to get DSL, but i can't put an order in for you, so sorry. i can put it down in my notebook to call you if this ever gets corrected". yeah right.
so i moved on to another choice, speakeasy.net who i had heard good things about and said they were able to sell me DSL. they resold Covad in my area, and although they were twice the price of Yahoo/SBC, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - so i placed an order for a 1.5 MB down/384 up conenction with a static IP address. three days later, i get a call from speakeasy that the technician will be there for an install.
now who shows up, of course, but an SBC technician, because SBC owns the copper from the box to my house. so i relayed the story to him about trying to buy DSL from SBC expecting an explanation but he wasn't surprised one bit. he ( an ex ameritech technician, of course ) said something to the effect of "those f!#kheads in the front office will never get it right". at any rate, he hooked up my DSL, i installed my filters and DSL modem and i was open for bizness!
suddenly i felt the pain. what had i done. my snappy connection was now to be described as "sluggish" compared to the cable modem. a few tests using the tools at dsl reports reported that my connection was getting near what was advertised, but yet it still was not as snappy as my cable modem. I called speakeasy, and they were receptive to the problem, but i am not sure what ever happened.
but the story is not over yet. suddenly, a week or two after the install, my DSL modem started to lock up on a daily basis, with no pattern. all the lights were on, yet no packets were getting out. resetting the modem would always cure the problem, but this wasn't an acceptable solution when i was travelling and needed to get at my email server.
another call to speakeasy. "outtages are hard to diagnose. we can oly diagnose while it's down". so i wait until the next day, and call again. "yes, it's hung. reset the modem. okay, good. well, we have no idea, we'll have to call covad to come out to the house."
three days later a covad technician ( another ex-ameritechee) does stop by, listens to my problem, and goes to the telecom box outside. "ah here's your problem, pointing to a broken wire in my phone box". turns out the brittle half of a twisted pair was broken, but somtimes making contact. his explanation was the cable modem would fill up with errors, and when the modem fills up, it shuts down. resetting the modem clears the buffer. well there you go.
so here i am with what's now reliable DSL. it's still sluggish compared to my cable modem but i'll live. i'm investigating setting up a router that would use the cable modem for all outgoing connections and the DSL for all inbound connections but i'm just not sure it's worth it. i know there are DNS/DHCP solutions, but i manage multiple domains, and this just seems to complicated for what i need.
why comcast can't get their act together and offer static IPs is beyond me. i'm sure they are worried about one person hosting a server and slowing down the neighborhood, but i just never experienced this as a problem.
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Posted by Steve at August 15, 2003 03:05 PM | TrackBack
i think DSL service quality has dropped off considerably thanks to the prevalence of ADSL (shared over your phone copper) vs. SDSL (dedicated wire pair). With ADSL, my service seems susceptible to failure if someone's using the voice line for more than 15 minutes or so, and I have inexplicable "no sync" connection issues every 45 days or so. Repeated requests for resoluton (to Speakeasy, yeah, i'm one of those who probably recommended them to steve) have led to service restoration but no improvement in reliability. One thing with ADSL (SBC peddles this variety) that's more annoying than the dongles they make you hang on every phone is that your service quality is only as good as your inside home phone wiring. if there are any shorts, staples through the insulation, or other maladies that don't have appreciable effect on voice communication, installation of DSL will certainly bring them to the fore.
I've never had cable, so I can't say I've ever enjoyed the bandwidth you had at one point, but always having a static IP address in my various DSL configurations has been the one constant benefit. It *is* a shame the cable guys can't get this right. Comcast now runs my neighborhood, too, and I'm not about to switch, but when we move in the next 3-6 months, I'm almost certain I'll be tempted to consider cable if static IP is even remotely possible.
Posted by: matt at August 15, 2003 07:31 PM
I have also had a comcast nightmare. They are currently offering a "Comcast Pro" account for business with 5 "Persistant" IPs. These are 5 semi-static IPs that are supposed to last for 6 months. It has been my experience that they do not last for more than 3 days. I have called them several times to correct the problem over the last 6 months but it never got resolved. I just set up a Static DSL connection with Verizon. It is not as fast as the cable but if it will allow me to host my web pages and recieve my e-mail without having to use dyndns.org at $45 a year to be able to change my IP every other day it is worth the slow down. If you have to have cable consider dyndns.org as a solution for running a web/e-mail server on a DHCP cable system. They have client software that will automatically update your account everytime your IP changes. But it costs some moeny. I run a XServe that binds its netinfo to the IP address so I need a static and I don't suggest it for Mac OS X Servers. It gest really messy in the unix world with DHCP public address.
Posted by: Matthew Barry at November 11, 2003 03:17 PM
yes, this is new from the comcast website:
**Comcast Pro -Use is subject to the Comcast High-Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement (and when installed in a business location, the Comcast High-Speed Internet Pro Addendum). Comcast High-Speed Internet Pro is for residential and small business use only. Up to 5 computers may be connected to the service and no servers may be installed. Other restrictions apply. Available in limited Comcast wired and serviceable areas only.
"no servers may be installed". wow, they will never get it.
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