Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: @home Fizzles Away with a Wimper

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Topic: @home Fizzles Away with a Wimper

Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 12-04-2001 01:10 AM

As many of you know, @home filed for bankruptcy leaving many people without an internet connection at all temporarily. This has probably affected a few Film-Tech members. But here is what I don't understand:

@home had 4 million customers. How do you go bankrupt with 4 million customers that pay bills each month? You have to be a complete moron of a company to accomplish that! Talk about mismanagement.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-04-2001 06:04 AM

How did they go bankrupt? Simple: they didn't charge enough to cover the service that they were providing. They also expanded too quickly and allowed their network performance to go through the floor (or so it appears). They also had crappy terms of service which, among other things, forbid someone from, say, running a small personal web or mail server, but allowed high-volume Napster users to suck up unreasonable amounts of bandwidth.

BTW, apparently the network didn't actually die and some users may still have connectivity but no DNS service. For those users, it is possible to manually specify a nameserver in their network configuration and things will start working again.

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 12-04-2001 06:33 AM

I don't know how or why but I am on via Comcast cable modem...a user of @home....and have not seen any dissruption of service yet....though I am waiting for the eventual disconnection.

Steve

------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

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Mark Lensenmayer
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1605
From: Upper Arlington, OH
Registered: Sep 1999

posted 12-04-2001 07:33 AM

Steve...looks like you are in luck:

From Slashdot --- "Through a $160 million deal, it looks like Comcast users will have Excite@Home supplied access for at least more three months (press release). Comcast anticipates moving existing customers over to a new Comcast-owned and managed network before the new contract expires."

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-05-2001 10:24 PM

I have AT&T cable here. I had just switched over to it from Qwest DSL three days earlier. The cable service definately blows DSL to pieces. I'd have to estimate that it is at least three times faster than my 456kb DSL service was. The modem came back to life last night but no internet access till tonight. Everyting's fine now.

Steve G., Looks like yours will go dead in about three months time according to tonights CNN......
Mark @ GTS

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 12-06-2001 02:15 AM

Cable modem is pretty damn fast. My pal also has AT&T and he typically sees download speeds of about 400K per second. DSL usually only sees around 67K per second (depending on what kind of service you have, I had the Qwest 640kb option and that's the speed I got). My friend just got his internet back up, and his e-mail changed from xxxx@home.com to xxxx@attbi.com. It took looking at internet headers from his sent mail to figure that out, and AT&T never bothered to tell anyone. I guess it's really not that important since e-mail is just a fad and hardly anyone uses it

The only bad thing about cable modem is the upload speed, which is about twice as fast as a 56k modem (on the average for AT&T). Upload speed doesn't matter to most people, but it does to me. I like to upload 6 gig files wherever I go! My upload speed seems to rate faster than my download, and my download speed usually is in the range of 550K per second from a good site. That's nearly 3 times as fast as a T1 line!

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Sean M. Grimes
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 247
From: Lunenburg, MA
Registered: Apr 2000

posted 12-06-2001 02:38 AM

For Central New York Road Runner I can upload anywhere between 70 to 310k, all dependent on net congestion and the speed of where or whom ever I am uploading to. My downloads are from 60k to 450k or so... I tried dsl from Verizon (forget at the moment who the provider in my area was) and my fastest down was only about 70, and let's not talk about upload speed. DSL companies really need to stop pushing the distance from the phone switchers. Bad for business imho.

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Sean M. Grimes
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 247
From: Lunenburg, MA
Registered: Apr 2000

posted 12-06-2001 02:43 AM

Oh yeah the other thing that I should of added is until I installed Dr. TCP ( www.dslreports.com ) My downloads were never ever above 175k or so... Just tweak your computer for a few hours, it is definitely worth it!!!

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-06-2001 09:36 AM

I only lived 2 blocks from the phone switch and my DSL was still disappointing. There was no way it was doinmg anywhere 456K that they claimed it was. So bye bye Qwest

. With my phone bill it was costing me 97.00 a month without long distance....what a joke! Now for under 60 bucks I get really fast net plus 144 cable channels of which I will probably never watch at least 130 of. Still a better deal though.
Mark @ GTS

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 12-06-2001 03:54 PM

Wow Qwest was really giving you the shaft, it sounds like! I lived further away when I had Qwest but was still able to get about 67K per second (browser speed). In Qwest speed that equals 536kb per sec when I was supposed to be getting 640kb. Of course the 640 was only the "theoretical maximum". Qwest was charging me about $77 a month with phone (Caller ID was included in that). My new service, Wide Open West is charging me $45 a month. It's not DSL. It's not cable. It's some sort of fiber optic connection. All I know is all the lines up to the junction box in my backyard are fiber optic. I don't get cable with that price, but for $10 or $12 more a month I could, but I just don't watch that much TV, and I don't wanna start!

I should have said in my previous post that all cable modem systems are not equal. Some providers will give you equal upload and download speed. Dr. TCP did help out my PC, but for some reason it is still slower on the internet than my Mac. There is really no reason that it should be!

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-06-2001 05:08 PM

Joe said "I should have said in my previous post that all cable modem systems are not equal. Some providers will give you equal upload and download speed."
Thats a good point Joe. I'll have to run a diagnostic that comes with the modem and see what it is actually doing tommrrow when I get back.

You're right that Qwest was really screwing me big time. I got rid of the DSL and my home phone as well. Sent them on their merry way so to say. I have two cell phones anyway and I rarely used the home phone at all. Sort of like I'll rarely use the home cable channels that I now have too. But I still come out ahead. Yesterday we had a T-1 line installed here at work that Qwest claims is 1.5mb speed. I was not aware that T-1 can run at that speed or was the installer pulling my leg?
Mark @ GTS

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 12-06-2001 06:29 PM

T1 is indeed 1.5444(etc) megabits per second. Not to be confused with MegaBytes. A T1 line can theoretically download at about 196K per second MAX (browser speed). So why doesn't everyone with a T1 line just get a cable modem or Wide Open West like I have since they are significantly faster and cheaper? Well I'm sure there are reasons. For one most ISPs demand that you use DHCP, or dynamically assigned IP addresses. If you have a web server then that won't work very well. I myself have a static IP (3 of them, actually). DHCP works just fine for most people surfing the web, etc. There's gotta be some other reasons as well, perhaps Scott can explain.

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 12-06-2001 06:57 PM

Mark

The story I hear is that Comcast has bought a 3-month extension but it was to buy time to get their own network up and going so in 3-months, we are supposed to switch over to Comcast owned network.

We will just have to wait and see.

Steve

------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-06-2001 07:54 PM

Speed is only part of the issue. A T1 and Joe's FTTC (fiber to the curb) connection are not the same thing. That's why a T1 costs about 20 times what Joe pays for his service.

One of the big advantages of T1 service is that, at least in the US, T1 service is tariffed differently from DSL or cable or other services and thus the phone company is required by law to repair problems within a specified period of time. Contrast this with DSL, where getting a problem repaired can take weeks.

Also consider that T1s are generally sold to business that demand reliability and other features that most home users either don't care about or don't want to pay for. Will your cable/DSL provider give you a /24 IP block? Will they give you a BGP feed? A news feed? Will they delegate reverse DNS to you? Will they refund part of your monthly fee if the line goes down? Can the lines maintain sync for months on end with no problems? What? You say that you can't get a DSL or cable WIC for your Cisco router? What kind of SLA (service level agreement) can you get for your cable/DSL/FTTC connection? Can you get a point-to-point private cable or DSL connection?

In short, these are different products for different markets.... BTW, T1 circuits aren't just for Internet connectivity; they are also useful for voice and private data links among various sites.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-07-2001 12:30 AM

Indeed we are using ours for a commnications link for the Olympics. Its part of a trunking network of repeaters we have been building. I'm not too involved with that end of things at work but I certainly do understand alot of it.
Mark @ GTS

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