There's a significant difference between cable modem and DSL: the owner of
the wires, and the service philosophy of the provider.
In the DSL case, the owner of the wires and the provider of the service are
different (even if nominally the same company, e.g. Verizon). The wires are
provided as part of a regulated utility, the DSL isn't. However, that works
to DSL's benefit if the wires come down. There's a very big incentive to
get the wires connected again, and your DSL comes along with it. Yep.. all
those ads on TV with linemen standing in the roaring river in the middle of
a thunderstorm at night aren't there to provide you with DSL or Cable TV,
but they are there to provide POTS. However, if your DSL service is in
trouble because of quality issues, it's a bit tougher. Your DSL provider
can complain to the wire owner, but as long as it carries voice traffic
adequately, its not high on the priority list.
In any case, the physical plant (and it's management philosophy) is "keep
the dial tone on". They have a 24/7 mindset, even if deregulation has
changed things a bit. They're still worried about "real" 5-9's reliability
(#5 ESS can have no more than 60 seconds of downtime per year, and no more
than 30 seconds in any one 24 hour period, as I recall).
In the cable case, the wires and service are the same company (although
there WAS just a big court case that might change this).
The real difference is in mindset of the operator. They are providing
"entertainment". If your cable TV goes out, you're just not being
entertained, and they'll refund you a day's service fees, providing the
outage lasts more than 24 hours. If the wire fails over the weekend...
unless there's a big revenue problem (pay-per-view), it will get fixed
Monday. In fact, if there's a pole with power, telco, and cable on it, and
someone knocks it down, the order goes: power co first, then telco, then,
after the other two are done, the cable TV folks.
You'll note that most cable modem providers do not provide a real "business"
service (in that they have uptime commitments, repair time commitments,
etc.), unlike DSL, T-1, etc.. They may advertise their high rate service as
"business grade", but when you look into the details of the service
agreement, it's not something you'd want to trust your mission critical
datacom to. (I speak here from my experience with Adelphia, and formerly,
Verizon, for cable modem.. it may be different in other places, but frankly,
I doubt it).
The Direcway satellite service is very interesting. For one thing, they
don't have a huge wired infrastructure to fail, so there are fewer places to
look if something goes wrong, and failures tend to affect many people all at
once, so there's a big incentive to fix it (i.e. the lost revenue from
10,000 customers dropping offline is significant). Direcway DOES provide
business grade service, and in fact, that's really their primary market,
because things like distributing the same data to a bunch branch offices is
very well suited to satellite (an inherently one to many link). They've got
all the usual QoS and SLC (Quality of Service and Service Level Commitment)
stuff.
A very interesting option that's now available in some areas is GSM/EDGE or
high rate CDMA service. My Treo 650 does data at 144kbps (I don't know if
that has to be shared between up and down). One can, in fact, connect a
computer to it and use the Treo to get internet anywhere. (although there
are some Terms of Service issues, depending on the cellular provider). It's
also not very heavily used, so I don't know how many simultaneous users it
can really handle. There's only so much bandwidth, after all, and just like
a pileup in a contest, not everything gets through. However, it seems that
even if one were some distance from the cell site, one might be able to use
a directional antenna, etc.
There's also a variety of fixed wireless providers (and for those, the OTARD
rules let you put up as big an antenna as needed, regardless of HOA rules).
There's one locally that I've tried to get a quote from, but they aren't
particularly responsive. ( I used to have 144kbps (symmetric) ISDN,and it
was wonderful, when first installed in ancient pre-DSL days. Now, I have
the usual 768 DSL now. I'm just under 16kft from the CO.. none of the
providers offer faster, and I'd like to have a bit more symmetry.. Cable
modem, while faster, has the availability and reliability issues. I have
contemplated trying to do some sort of channel pairing, but the routing
seems like it would be too big a project.)
For hams, there's another alternative. I know of several people seriously
working on putting very high speed digital backbones on mountaintops (where
there are existing repeater sites). Originally it started as a "better way"
to link repeaters, but then they took a step back and realized that given
the relatively fixed infrastructure costs, they might as well go to much
higher rates, work with it as a fairly vanilla IP network, and use
techniques like VoIP for the linking. Even a 200km 802.11g (2.5 GHz 54Mbps)
link isn't out of the question with relatively simple off-the shelf hardware
(24dBi antennas at both ends, 1Watt amps, LNA). Of course, that would
require the cooperation of other hams, but, overall, I think I rather trust
the cooperation of hams than depend on a board of directors whose interest
is maximizing shareholder revenue. You might even be able to beat the HOA
with this... I don't know what it takes to get a MMDS license, but once you
establish that you NEED that 100 ft tower to get your high speed internet
access....
Jim, W6RMK
----- Original Message -----
From: "AA6DX - Mark" <aa6dx@arrl.net>
To: "Tom Rauch" <w8ji@contesting.com>; "Courtney Judd K4WI"
<k4wi@earthlink.net>; "Bob Nielsen" <nielsen@oz.net>
Cc: "TowerTalk" <towertalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] "The Socialized Power Grid"
> I LIVE 3 BLOCKS FROM THE COUNTY COURTHOUSE .. take into consideration ..
> I just switched from having (for 5 years) PacBell DSL, 5 static IPs,
> ~300-400 up, ~ 1.5 down .. to the new Cox 5 down, 1 up ... worky worky
worky
> ... have had as gud as 9 down, but it is hard to believe the modem will do
> that .. but, seems to! 7 down pretty not-unusual ... UP .. well .. never
> wunnerful like the down numbers, but usually ~400 - 1000
>
<big snip>
>
_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather
Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
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