So if you’re a techie and am wondering what the “Networking Green Belt” part of the post is, bear with me. First let me lay out the internet situation in Big Sprint: Alltel EvDO, Basin 2Way as a WISP, Suddenlink for cable, one or two numbers for dialup. Sprint (my typical cellular carrier) is 1xRTT-only here, as is Verizon for the moment (but they’ll be EvDO soon once they integrate Alltel’s network). Not sure yet abut Basin 2Way’s services and pricing, though I’ll bet it’s only economical for folks who can’t get cable. For cable, Suddenlink is the provider; I’ve detailed their pricing plans and traceroutes here, here and here. Please disregard the extraneous discussion about DOCSIS modulations. Dialup is one of two phone numbers to my knowledge, one for AOL and one for everyone else. This is one of the few areas where TOAST.net has no local numbers, depiste their aggregation of dozens of dialup access number providers. The numbers here are owned by SBC/AT&T, but not WorldNet. Fun stuff.

So back to my networking green belt.

The church here has Suddenlink internet, which is nice for me since I thus don’t have to use my phone on roaming to get decent internet speeds; since my dialup plan doesn’t have local numbers in the area my only other option would’ve been using my phone for 1xRTT, which is dog slow.

However the church was using a Linksys WRT54G2 to spread the internet around, and it wasn’t making it to the other side of the building. So I added a Linksys WRT320N to the team shopping list and swapped that out for the WRT54G2. The signal ended up better, but not by enough.

So I grabbed their old router and set about figuring out how to use it as a repeater. The router is rather capable, with 16MB of RAM, though as with other consumer routers the 2MB of flash memory meant I could only flash the micro-plus-ssh version of DD-WRT onto the device. Still, that’s a whole lot better than mere micro; that’s what I have on my home router back in Fredericksburg, a WRT54Gv5. To get DD-WRT onto the router I followed these instructions. Basically I downloaded Linksys’ TFTP utility, then sent the VxWorks prep file, then the killer file, then the DD-WRT firmware to the router. The whole process took maybe ten minutes.

I then went here to figure out how to set the router up as a repeater, something that I hadn’t done before. The setup image was very helpful in getting everything…um…set up, and shortly I had Gateway Baptist G throwing wireless signal into the far corner of the building. Score.

Granted, the WRT54G2 won’t be the speediest repeater, since all traffic has to be passed wirelessly from it to the main router, which is then connected to the Suddenlink Ambit cable modem, but that’s not a big deal when you’re working with a megabit internet connection to start with. The big deal is that everything works, and it works everywhere it needs to. Plus, I learned a bit more about DD-WRT, knowledge I’ll apply when I get back to Fredericksburg to expand my home network by a bit. I think that’s a Win-Win-Win or something…well, the WRT320N did cost too much, but oh well.

Anyhow, after trying TOAST.net I thought “who are the big players in the dialup industry?” Here’s the list I came up with:

1) AOL
2) NetZero/Juno (the former has more access numbers)
3) EarthLink/PeoplePC

There are other dialup ISPs, but they pretty much are just the same as TOAST.net, albeit with different pricing, possibly a shorter list of access numbers and a different domain on the end of your e-mail address. As such, I’m sticking with TOAST.net, which I’ve had good luck with, for my emergency dialup/every-once-in-a-while newsgroup access/branded e-mail needs. Even Earthlink and NetZero share the 729-1999 number, and thus probably that USAWide backbone network and dialup performance.

However I was curious about AOL. From what I’ve gathered, they’re the only company in my area that actually has a different phone number for dialup access than 830-729-1999. As such, their service would be running on different equipment, with possibly different performance characteristics.

So I ordered a $9.99 limited-support unlimited-access dialup account from “The New AOL”. The company still sells a $25.90 (!?!) package that includes God-knows-what addons and granny-proof support, but I just wanted to know how the connection fared. My new e-mail address is ianlittman91@aol.com; iansltx (my usual screen name), ianlittman and a few other of my first-choice screen names were unavailable, something that has never happened to me anywhere else.

After dropping $9.99 for a month of ‘net access, I proceeded to download AOL 9.0 Optimized (or what the heck ever it’s called) over my broadband connection. The software was obviously designed for being distributed on a CD; the thing must have weighed in at 200MB! Pulling that software in over dialup would’ve taken me nearly fourteen hours, assuming I has a 32 kbps connection and wasn’t doing anything else with said connection. INSANE!

Now AOL does have a version 9.1 in beta that’s about one-third the size (or at least it seemed that way; AOL’s proprietary downloader doesn’t tell you such things) but, compared with an all-inclusive 4.5-megabyte installer for TOAST.net AOL’s installer is patently ridiculous. Alternately, you can find your phone number and connect with Windows’ own dialer for a zero-KB download. Last I heard that doesn’t work with AW…er…AOL.

So once the download and installation process was done (which took nearly as long as installing Windows 7, mind you), I turned off wireless on the computer and dialed into AOL. After a bit, the modem synced with AOL and I was online…ish.

You see, apparently the computers on AOL’s end are downright sucky. I’d wager the AOL number I connected to was running off a fractional T1 with too many users on a phone line that had been chewed on by varmints of multiple types. You wouldn’t know that by the connection latency, which shows off the AOL Transit Data Network (ATDN for short), but the connection was actually more sluggish than satellite. Which reminds me, I need to uninstall the crapware when I’m done with their month of service; I think it’s slowing my computer down.

So here are the traceroutes. As I said above, they look decent. Too bad download speeds are around 19.2k and pages take positively forever to load. In case you’re wondering, I wan’t doing ANYTHING in tha background while the traceroute was being run, though I suspect AOL 9.0 was.

Tracing route to softlayer.com [66.228.118.53] over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 769 ms    206 ms    197 ms    ipt-ntca04.dial.aol.com [207.200.122.4]

2 203 ms    206 ms    198 ms    iptfarmna-ntc-sw0-v3.net.aol.com [207.200.120.30]

3 1495 ms    1586 ms    428 ms    wc1-ntc-A0.net.aol.com [172.24.20.11]

4 220 ms    205 ms    206 ms    dar1-ntc-s0-1-0.atdn.net [66.185.142.117]

5 2006 ms    1681 ms    205 ms    pop1-sjg-p10-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.63]

6 195 ms    196 ms    221 ms    so5-1-0-2488M.br1.JC2.gblx.net [64.208.110.93]

7 1926 ms    1753 ms    776 ms    te1-1.cer03.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com [64.215.81.2]

8 242 ms    244 ms    245 ms    po3.dar02.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com [66.228.118.211]

9 2084 ms    244 ms    245 ms    po2.slr01.dal01.softlayer.com [66.228.118.142]

10 242 ms    253 ms    252 ms    www.softlayer.com [66.228.118.53]

Tracing route to google.com [74.125.67.100] over a maximum of 30 hops

1 206 ms    196 ms    198 ms    ipt-ntca04.dial.aol.com [207.200.122.4]

2 196 ms    190 ms    197 ms    iptfarmna-ntc-sw0-v3.net.aol.com [207.200.120.30]

3 186 ms    199 ms    196 ms    wc2-ntc-A0.net.aol.com [172.24.20.12]

4 186 ms    197 ms    198 ms    dar2-ntc-s0-1-0.atdn.net [66.185.142.165]

5 189 ms    196 ms    197 ms    dar1-ntc-s0-2-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.10]

6 187 ms    555 ms    189 ms    pop1-sjg-p10-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.53]

7 188 ms    189 ms    198 ms    google.atdn.net [66.185.150.94]

8 189 ms    196 ms    197 ms    72.14.239.250

9 259 ms    253 ms    261 ms    209.85.249.140

10 252 ms   269 ms    253 ms    72.14.239.131

11   *      975 ms    269 ms    64.233.174.46

12 276 ms   277 ms    277 ms    gw-in-f100.google.com [74.125.67.100]

As you can see, AOL doesn’t appear to peer with any of the “big guys” in Dallas, which I find odd. But hey, you take what you can get, right? Yes, but you have a bit more selection in dialup-land ISP-wise than if you want broadband. Again, while the traceroutes above are decent, I would wholeheartedly recommend you go with a sane dialup provider like TOAST.net, then download the AOL software yourself if you must have their keyword-ridden content stable. You’ll end up with a much more reliable connection from my experience, and you can uninstall their crapware without losing internet access. Plus, it doesn’t cost more and may well cost less than AWOL…erm…AOL. No wonder they’re a dying company who wants to get out of the dialup biz.

Yep, I said satellite. Was at church earlier tonight and had to do some work over their Wildblue connection (cell signals are bad there, and landline internet is, well, dialup). They have WildBlue from the folks at CTESC. 512 kbps down, 128 kbps up, $50 per month, 7 GB down per month, 2.3 GB up per month and a truckload of latency. How much? Try 1500-2500 milliseconds to softlayer.com, my ping target of choice around these parts. If you really want to get geeky, the first eight hops or so are all private IPs (good; I don’t want satellite internet hogging public IP space for tons of router hops) and the connection appears to be Qwest-only from there (Laredo, supposedly) out to the internet. Big bowl of yuck if you ask me…too bad the one-way sat systems aren’t as popular and have even lower download caps.

So back to dialup. After calling my dialup ISP to retrieve my password (I never use the account…okay, almost never…so I had totally forgotten it was a temporary thing for use when other people needed an account to download something), I grabbed their four-megabyte connection wizard/accelerator installer and set it up. Now 4 MB isn’t too bad over cable or DSL, but over a 512k wireless connection it takes a minute or three, especially when another computer is downloading Internet Explorer 8 in the background.

So I downloaded the program, installed it and restarted my brother’s Lenovo Ideapad Y430. I no longer own a computer with a modem (iMac, macbook, IdeaPad U330) though my mom and brother’s computers are graced with the retro-sheik tech. At any rate, a few minutes later I was dialed into 830-729-1999 and humming along at a lickety-split 31.2 kbps. Actually, according to TOAST.net’s excellent dialup connection manager the number was more along the lines of 33.6 kbps…an appreciable difference percentage-wise. I could probably get a better connection with a better modem (laptop softmodems aren’t the best) and better telephone cable but this was just a quick test.

Then again, I don’t really care about speed in this case; it’s a means to an end: testing latency. First, let me note that even having a web browser open monopolizes the connection (websites these days…can’t shut up can they). With that said, here are some traceroutes and pings:

1   185 ms   183 ms   180 ms  72-48-176-105.usawide.net [72.48.176.105]
2   224 ms   197 ms   174 ms  router-1.usawide.net [72.48.176.1]
3   299 ms   190 ms   189 ms  72-48-116-214.ip.grandenetworks.net [72.48.116.214]
4   280 ms   189 ms   190 ms  ge-0-0-1.core01.smrctx.grandecom.net [24.155.121.5]
5   268 ms   205 ms   198 ms  sl-gw38-fw-11-0-2.sprintlink.net [160.81.136.1]
6   251 ms   212 ms   197 ms  sl-gw38-fw-1-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.0.113]
7   250 ms   197 ms   194 ms  sl-st20-dal-13-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.83]
8   302 ms   205 ms   208 ms  sl-internap-79059-0.sprintlink.net [144.228.250.114]
9   244 ms   198 ms   197 ms  border3.tge3-1-bbnet1.ext1.dal.pnap.net [216.52.191.22]
10   281 ms   206 ms   197 ms  te2-1.cer03.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com [216.52.189.30]
11   274 ms   197 ms     *     po3.dar01.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com [66.228.118.209]
12   210 ms   197 ms   190 ms  po1.slr01.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com [66.228.118.138]
13   288 ms   198 ms   189 ms  www.softlayer.com [66.228.118.53]

1   198 ms   188 ms   190 ms  72-48-176-105.usawide.net [72.48.176.105]
2   274 ms   182 ms   181 ms  router-1.usawide.net [72.48.176.1]
3   226 ms   197 ms   198 ms  72-48-116-214.ip.grandenetworks.net [72.48.116.214]
4   305 ms   189 ms   198 ms  ge-0-0-1.core01.smrctx.grandecom.net [24.155.121.5]
5   313 ms   269 ms   189 ms  so-5-0-0.core01.dllstx.grandecom.net [24.155.121.135]
6   277 ms   205 ms   189 ms  ge-0-0-0.core02.dllstx.grandecom.net [24.155.121.128]
7   250 ms   189 ms   198 ms  74.125.48.29
8   212 ms   205 ms   206 ms  66.249.94.94
9   284 ms   197 ms   213 ms  216.239.47.121
10   300 ms   206 ms   204 ms  209.85.242.21
11   306 ms   229 ms   229 ms  216.239.48.50
12   418 ms   300 ms   261 ms  209.85.241.211
13   362 ms   260 ms   261 ms  216.239.46.212
14   330 ms   253 ms   340 ms  64.233.174.97
15   268 ms   268 ms   270 ms  216.239.46.22
16   412 ms   261 ms   269 ms  pz-in-f100.google.com [74.125.127.100]

Interesting, huh? Looks like some “USAWide” outfit is leasing dialup space to various providers via the Ikano network (I found this out via http://findanisp.com) and backhauling the bandwidth via swireless (ibid). The backhaul terminates in a Grande Communications circuit of unknown capacity. USAWide’s website is on its own network by the way, see

1   230 ms   188 ms   181 ms  72-48-176-105.usawide.net [72.48.176.105]
2   306 ms   189 ms   181 ms  cpanel.usawide.net [72.48.176.11]

and latency to SoftLayer hovers around 225 ms, +/- 25 ms.

Now all of this probably sounds positively crappy to the casual, broadband-equipped bystander, but for a dialup conneciton that runs me $5 per month for ten hours, plus 5GB of Giganews access, a branded GMail account, CA Antivirus and the option to cut costs by another $2 per month by paying annually, I’m not complaining.

Next up: a look at how AOL (lol) routes their packets in these troubled times. I know they use a different local access number. beyond that I’ll have to pay $10 for a month of dialup to check ‘em out. Heading that way right now.