[luau] Verizon DSL

[MonMotha]

Casey Roberts wrote:
> --- Dustin Cross <dusty at sandust.com> wrote:
> 
>>At Bell Atlantic the connection from the CO to the
>>main office was a T-1 even though the system
>>recommended an OC-3 for the amount of lines they
>>had.  What you got was dedicated bandwidth to the
>>CO, from there it is shared bandwidth.
> 
> 
> Better to have a choke point at the CO than to have
> one for the neighborhood segment on top of that.  Like
> I pointed out in my previous post, with my block, even
> if they had a dedicated line to just my block, 300
> units times 7-8 buildings equals a lot of potential
> cable modem user on a small pipe.  It really depends
> on how many people are using cable for broadband.  

The theoretical bandwidth of most cable modems (DOCIS) is IIRC 53Mbit/sec. 
That's really fast.  Probably faster than the uplink where your DSL pools at the 
CO.  In my experience, the limiting factor with cable modems is the ISP's uplink 
to the public internet, not the local segment, though with population THAT 
DENSE, you may want to check into it...ask the cable modem people what the 
average usage of that subnet is, as well as wehre it goes to (there may be one 
run to each building for example).  Ask the DSL provider what the uplink at the 
DSLAM is and the average % utilization of that.  If the cable modem people are 
uplinking to a T3, and the DSL people are uplinking to a T1, the cable modem 
will probably be faster simply because T1s are REALLY SLOW for this kind of thing.

> 
> Also with Verizon, the static IP service is lumped
> under Verizon DSL Business Class, so you are allowed
> to run servers as part of your agreement.  If you
> decide to use a dynamic IP instead, you connect using
> DHCP.  When you order the service, you receive a box
> with the DSL modem, a disk with Outlook Express and
> Internet Explorer, four DSL filters and instructions
> on how to connect the computer to the modem and phone
> line.  The documentation they provide with the modem
> is confusing (My invoice stated that the modem was a
> PPPoE modem, and it took me two days of being stubborn
> to call tech support to find out that they use
> standard DHCP).  They will not help you troubleshoot
> your system, since they do not support anything other
> than Mac or Windows.  I had a hard time convincing an
> after-hours tech that he couldn't support my OS.  Even
> with the lack of Linux support, I found it pretty easy
> to set it up.

RoadRunner doesn't support Linux either, but I've found that if you don't 
mention what OS you're running and ask specific questions (like, what is the 
setting for thise) rather than letting them give you step-by-step instructions 
(click on start, control panel...), you can usually get along fine.  I've 
actually had some after hours (3AM, don't ask...their BGP routes expired) techs 
help me even though they knew I was running linux.  It seems to depend on who 
you get, and how busy they are.  If they're really busy and the supervisor is 
watching over them, they'll likely just say "We don't support that, sorry", but 
if it's a slow day and the tech is bored (and intelligent, which the local ones 
here are if you bypass level 1), a lot of them know unixish OSes and will help 
you out.

> 
> Casey Roberts
> 

--MonMotha