Traceroute to Google:

traceroute to google.com (74.125.159.104), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1  64.sub-66-174-185.myvzw.com (66.174.185.64)  82.040 ms  71.681 ms  140.969 ms
2  127.sub-66-174-184.myvzw.com (66.174.184.127)  85.990 ms  88.710 ms  93.889 ms
3  146.sub-66-174-44.myvzw.com (66.174.44.146)  94.923 ms  99.735 ms  92.011 ms
4  235.sub-66-174-45.myvzw.com (66.174.45.235)  120.975 ms  88.777 ms  86.127 ms
5  194.sub-66-174-45.myvzw.com (66.174.45.194)  86.937 ms  99.731 ms  92.958 ms
6  98.sub-66-174-44.myvzw.com (66.174.44.98)  89.816 ms  92.702 ms  91.968 ms
7  6.sub-69-83-96.myvzw.com (69.83.96.6)  88.964 ms  90.749 ms  101.982 ms
8  3.sub-69-83-96.myvzw.com (69.83.96.3)  91.973 ms  89.745 ms  92.877 ms
9  253.sub-69-83-97.myvzw.com (69.83.97.253)  86.946 ms  87.701 ms  86.078 ms
10  gigabitethernet3-0-0.gw1.dfw7.alter.net (65.208.8.17)  93.040 ms  86.646 ms  86.916 ms
11  0.ge-2-1-0.xl3.dfw7.alter.net (152.63.103.6)  99.833 ms  102.809 ms  89.928 ms
12  0.ge-6-0-0.br2.dfw13.alter.net (152.63.96.181)  89.939 ms
0.ge-4-0-0.br2.dfw13.alter.net (152.63.96.45)  91.661 ms
0.ge-6-0-0.br2.dfw13.alter.net (152.63.96.181)  89.622 ms
13  te-5-1-0.edge2.dallas3.level3.net (4.68.111.121)  99.987 ms  116.649 ms
te-5-2-0.edge2.dallas3.level3.net (4.68.111.173)  90.885 ms
14  ae-83-80.ebr3.dallas1.level3.net (4.69.145.180)  92.662 ms
ae-73-70.ebr3.dallas1.level3.net (4.69.145.116)  92.622 ms
ae-63-60.ebr3.dallas1.level3.net (4.69.145.52)  97.740 ms
15  ae-7.ebr3.atlanta2.level3.net (4.69.134.22)  115.793 ms  137.608 ms  130.824 ms
16  ae-11-51.car1.atlanta1.level3.net (4.68.103.2)  120.070 ms  117.856 ms  116.900 ms
17  google-inc.car1.atlanta1.level3.net (4.78.209.194)  133.861 ms  118.900 ms  117.002 ms
18  209.85.254.241 (209.85.254.241)  122.982 ms  116.700 ms  119.880 ms
19  209.85.254.2 (209.85.254.2)  113.964 ms  120.700 ms
209.85.254.6 (209.85.254.6)  137.883 ms
20  yi-in-f104.1e100.net (74.125.159.104)  109.804 ms  129.913 ms  131.328 ms

Traceroute to SoftLayer (specifically, the server that hosts this website):

traceroute to echo.mddhosting.com (74.86.48.34), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1  64.sub-66-174-185.myvzw.com (66.174.185.64)  73.485 ms  72.917 ms  73.973 ms
2  127.sub-66-174-184.myvzw.com (66.174.184.127)  91.918 ms  94.745 ms  184.212 ms
3  146.sub-66-174-44.myvzw.com (66.174.44.146)  100.537 ms  99.876 ms  95.165 ms
4  235.sub-66-174-45.myvzw.com (66.174.45.235)  94.993 ms  100.098 ms  98.174 ms
5  194.sub-66-174-45.myvzw.com (66.174.45.194)  98.010 ms  99.438 ms  93.713 ms
6  98.sub-66-174-44.myvzw.com (66.174.44.98)  94.994 ms  89.077 ms  85.875 ms
7  6.sub-69-83-96.myvzw.com (69.83.96.6)  100.961 ms  105.189 ms  88.124 ms
8  3.sub-69-83-96.myvzw.com (69.83.96.3)  87.943 ms  96.379 ms  97.863 ms
9  253.sub-69-83-97.myvzw.com (69.83.97.253)  98.888 ms  68.155 ms  87.944 ms
10  gigabitethernet3-0-0.gw1.dfw7.alter.net (65.208.8.17)  86.948 ms  69.442 ms  96.147 ms
11  0.ge-2-1-0.xl3.dfw7.alter.net (152.63.103.6)  112.539 ms  89.027 ms  85.911 ms
12  0.so-6-0-0.gw3.dfw13.alter.net (152.63.100.73)  85.015 ms  91.726 ms  86.006 ms
13  internapgige1-gw.customer.alter.net (65.208.15.230)  113.416 ms  96.205 ms  98.848 ms
14  border3.tge3-1-bbnet1.ext1.dal.pnap.net (216.52.191.22)  125.890 ms  95.198 ms  74.901 ms
15  te2-1.cer03.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com (216.52.189.30)  93.058 ms  94.118 ms  95.968 ms
16  po3.dar02.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com (66.228.118.211)  99.913 ms  100.785 ms  107.881 ms
17  po2.fcr02.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com (66.228.118.182)  111.010 ms  92.603 ms  121.966 ms
18  echo.supportedns.com (74.86.48.34)  97.877 ms  96.688 ms  153.805 ms

So pings are a bit lower, on average, than either AT&T or Sprint. They’re also rather predictable, unlike those of CricKet. Then again, I have full EvDO signal sitting at the dining room table with the USB727′s antenna extended. For what it’s worth, this traceroute is pretty close, after the MyVZW hops, to what I see on the family’s brand-spanking-new DSL connection, though that can be expected since both services are from the same company.

Here’s a speedtest…

Well gosh, at least at my location Verizon is nearly as fast as AT&T on the downstream, respectable on the upstream and a good bit more enjoyable to use than AT&T. Heck, the EvDO connection soundly beats the new Verizon DSL, though the DSL connection doesn’t cost $60 per month, nor does it have a ridiculously low data transfer cap.

That said, I’m not the only one on the tower…

Still respectable, just not quite as nice.

Now for a ping test…

Right in line with what I’ve seen on Sprint EvDO, except with a little less latency.

The bottom line: Verizon knows how to run a solid mobile broadband network. So does Sprint. Whether one serves you better than the other depends on who has the big pipes to the towers in your area, and who has the towers in your area period.

Well, and there’s the question of whether you want a 10GB cap for $60 or unlimited service for $70, both via Millenicom of course…unless you really, really want to sign a contract in exchange for a free EvDO modem.

Which provider would I choose at this point, if I had to pick up mobile broadband again? Tough decision; I own an AT&T aircard and don’t want to sign a contract, so the other options have an added expensve for me. With that in mind, I might end up going with AT&T for a month or two, but Sprint if I needed a home replacement connection. If I didn’t need to use the connection as my only internet and didn’t have an AT&T card already, I’d likely choose Verizon, with Sprint as a very close second.

At this point though, for someone new to mobile broadband, there’s one company I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go with, at least for my area: AT&T.

So naturally I pulled out my HTC Touch Pro, which has WiFi, to see what network they were running on. After registering for an account on the hotspot provider (Less Networks, never heard of them) I checked whatismyip.com to see who I was on. Sure enough, the connection there was GVTC, registered as “Guadalupe Valley Telephone”. Right before we pulled out of the place I opened up my laptop, logged into the WiFi network that way and did some tests. Here’s what I got for a traceroute:

traceroute to softlayer.com (66.228.118.53), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1  192.168.169.1 (192.168.169.1)  194.115 ms  181.762 ms  77.970 ms
2  96-8-192-3.block0.gvtc.com (96.8.192.3)  94.851 ms  107.971 ms  146.974 ms
3  12.88.219.169 (12.88.219.169)  47.516 ms  218.308 ms  149.762 ms
4  cr1.santx.ip.att.net (12.123.154.10)  81.998 ms  58.617 ms  64.528 ms
5  cr2.dlstx.ip.att.net (12.122.30.130)  71.363 ms  55.947 ms  70.918 ms
6  gar6.dlstx.ip.att.net (12.122.100.65)  52.436 ms  58.138 ms  56.583 ms
7  12.90.228.14 (12.90.228.14)  52.971 ms  48.888 ms  80.834 ms
8  border3.tge4-1-bbnet2.ext1.dal.pnap.net (216.52.191.83)  52.188 ms  51.494 ms  52.917 ms
9  te2-1.cer03.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com (216.52.189.30)  55.883 ms  54.237 ms  55.133 ms
10  po3.dar01.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com (66.228.118.209)  53.084 ms  84.979 ms  47.910 ms
11  po1.slr01.dal01.dallas-datacenter.com (66.228.118.138)  66.371 ms  54.266 ms  57.160 ms

I have a feeling that the WiFi conection was flakey, otherwise I would have gotten a better traceroute.

Speed-test-wise I got the following:

I’m guessing the line was provisioned at 8 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, but I can’t be sure.

The IP address, for what it’s worth, was 96.8.236.103.

All in all, not a bad hotspot, and the traceroute is nice and short between where I was and AT&T’s network in San Antonio, which GVTC appears to use exclusively to connect to the internet nowadays. So someone using an AT&T aircard and GVTC FTTH will find themselves with similar traceroutes within just a few hops, at least around here.

I guess I’ll leave it at that…if I talk any more about GVTC I’ll start getting envious of their 20/3 and 40/10 FTTH service, which I have no chance of getting at my place. Can’t even get DSL there :/

1. My mom saw a Verizon truck in the county fair parade today (I didn’t go; saw no need and was tired). The truck has “High Speed Internet coming soon!” or similar painted on te side. This is DSL, not FiOS (Verizon always refers to their fiber offering by its trademarked name). However from what I hear Verizon’s DSL release is just a ploy to drive up the sale cost of their system here; Fredericksburg isn’t a large metropolitan area, and there are too mayn bridged taps and other phone system anomaies here for DSL to reach beyond a small part of town. At least that’s what the scuttlebutt says. My prediction: Verizon offers some flavor of DSL to folks who can currently get Windstream DSL, then sells the system to whoever will take it, using the “we have DSL in our central office” argument to jack the price up slightly above what the system is worth.
2. Bee Creek Communications, the local our-hands-are-tied-and-if-anyone-competes-with-us-we-lose wireless ISP, was in the parade today as well. They also have a third-of-a-page ad in the paper advertising free installation to new customers until September 15th. A few years ago an installation with similar equipment would have run you around $220. The problem here is that their network is already over capacity in some areas, they’re spread too thinly in terms of manpower and their speeds are the stuff of yesteryear, barely competitive with satellite internet (though their monthly transfer caps are higher). The service also requires a two-year contract with a $125 early termination fee. If you want a one-year agreement service will run you another $10 per month. In short, don’t buy.
3. Clearwire is launching WiMAX service in San Antonio and Austin on September 1st. Maybe they’ll bring their service here. Would put Bee Creek right out of business, since Clear has an uncapped-download, one-megabit-upload (or is that uncapped too?) tier for a mere $45 per month. They even have cheaper tiers to compete with your garden-variety DSL options. They even have business tiers that will fill the gap between Bee Creek’s woefully slow packages and Time Warner Cable’s woefully expensive ones. In a nutshell, something for everyone as long as you’re within range of one of their towers. I’ll be keeping close track of what happens here. For what it’s worth, I told Bee Creek about Clear’s possible imminent launch nearby, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their larger-than-usual print ad was a direct result of this.
4. Hill Country Telephone Cooperative has run fiber around the city of Fredericksburg and plans to get CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) operations started before the end of the year, or something close to that anyway. They may just focus on high-end business operations (like they’re doing in nearby Kerrville, where they recently connected the city’s independent school district) however they’re a residential provider in their home area, so they know how to deal with “normal” customers. Plus, they have a lot of options for deploying service; in addition to their new fiber-optic network they have an AWS (1700 MHz cellular) license for this area, a 3.65 GHz “light license” which they’re using for WiMAX service in the nearby town of Mason, and maybe (if the price is right) Verizon’s old copper network, though I’m not sure why they’d want it. I heard HCTC offered $50 million for the network a few years back, and Verizon wanted $80 million fot it. Knowing that the network wasn’t worth that much, HCTC walked.

In short, it will be interesting to see what happens around here in the relatively near future with regard to internet service. Right now Time Warner Cable is the only provider who will give you more than a 2 Mbps connection (okay, HughesNet will give you 5 Mbps but they don’t count due to obscenely low caps and ridiculously high monthly fees). They’re also the only provider around here with customer-available fiber; Verizon apparently doesn’t have any. Sounds like that may change soon though. I’ll tell all I know (or am allowed to tell, whichever is less) as I find out more.

So the big question in my mind is, how would I design the perfect set top box, from both a consumer and a provider point of view? Here are some specs I came up with:

1. nVidia ION chipset. Everyone says the thing can decode 1080p video with no problem. Paired with a decent operating system and a halfway-decent processor (like the low-power Atom 330) you’ve got an STB that not only performs well, but also can be used for a variety of things and isn’t going to run up the power bill.
2. CableCard support, multiple streams. Granted, this is a given these days, but why not make things clear? RF video (via GPON) is what I’m assuming as the last mile medium; IPTV would work a bit differently of course.
3. Easy-access 12.5mm height 2.5″ hard disk bay to turn pa plain set top box into a DVR. Pop in a bare SATA drive and pay a one-time upgrade fee, then start recording shows. Or pay a slightly larger fee plus the price of a handpicked drive and a tech will do all of that for you. Bottom line: there should be no hardware difference between a regular set top box and an HD one, aside from the presence of a hard drive, or lack thereof. If you’re wondering why a 2.5″ drive, it’s because the drive is smaller and takes less power. If people want to store gobs of content they can add an external drive. There might come a time when all video content is cached at the edge of the network (networked DVRs) but until then, let people have as many bits in their box as they possibly can install.
4. Flash storage for non-video, namely the operating system and program guide. You want that stuff to load quickly, so why commit it to spinning metal when you can get enough flash to hold it for under $20?
5. HD on every STB so you can say that there’s no extra equipment required. Plus, having a single model of box makes things a whole lot easier to keep track of.
6. 2 USB ports. Aside from easy testing of devices, this would allow people to view media on their STB by plugging in a memory card reader or something equally quirky-but-cool. More importantly, people would be able to connect a whopping 2TB drive to their STB if they wanted and record shows onto it. The more shows they have recorded, the longer they’ll stick around to watch ‘em, and the longer they’ll pay for service. Also, you can hook…
7. …an external Blu-ray player to one of those USB ports. Make one that fits in with the decor of the typical media center and you’ve got yet another feature that makes that STB “sticky”. Why not? The onboard processor can handle it.
8. Whole-home functionality. No need having multiple DVRs recording the same thing when you can just pull between them. That way one DVR does all the work and the rest sit there with less stuff to break.
9. TiVo as the operating system, with no TiVo monthly fees. If you’re a service provider, you can probably work with TiVo on lowering the “price for life” subscription per box. Also, why use any other piece of software than the best? People say “I TiVoed that” just like they say “I googled that” so why not take advantage of the latent mindshare?
10. Farm out on-demand as much as possible, with an “you’re on our awesome box” commission of a few percent. Nobody wants to spend $8 on a cable-provided movie on demand. Though on the other hand some sports stuff has to be done that way, at which point just download the on-demand stuff over the internet rather than via RF.

The above list might make for an expensive” dumb” set top box, but then again it might now. I’m pretty sure that, when purchased in bulk, all the above components would total less than $200, so if you charge $8 per month per box with the first one free you’re making your money back before the boxes are obsolete. Plus the fact that you’re using a single box across your network will make things a lot easier to deal with for customer service. I’m pretty sure any provider who instituted all of the above would have people running from competitors, even if the service did cost a few bucks more per month. Then again, I’ve never had pay-TV in my life :p

Okay, so maybe not everyone using HughesNet is suffering, always lonely, is stuck on a deserted island and has a bunch of people in the background chanting about his doom. Still, the plight of someone on HughesNet these days can’t be overstated by much. Hence the excerpt from a play that I acted in my sophomore year in high school. Four years later, I had to Google it to make sure I got it word for word, but I was close enough to find the passage.

What does this have to do with my short, albeit rather painful, experience with HughesNet? Not much, other than the painful part. In fact, the rest stop west of Eden, TX, while remote, is quite different than a deserted island. For one thing, the structure on which the internet satellite dish was purched was well-maintained. Second, US-87 runs by said rest stop. Third, the Texas Department of Transportation instituted the free wireless hotspot as a public safety measure, seeing as how some carriers’ cell phones (ahem, Sprint…ever heard of roaming on Five Star Wireless in the Eden area?) just flat out don’t work around those parts. Of course, you can’t use any sort of voice communication technology over HughesNet, but I suppose that’s beside the point. Still better than a deserted island with vipers and no free public WiFi, right?

So enough with the literary references. As is my usual wardriving custom, I did a few traceroutes, speed tests and forays into the wireless access point admin panel while we were stopped at the rest stop. This took a little longer than the family liked due to the length of each hop of the traceroute (five to ten seconds) but I got them to stick around long enough to yield the below results:

Tracing route to google.com [74.125.45.100] over a maximum of 30 hops:

 1     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  192.168.10.1
 2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 3  2078 ms  1842 ms  1854 ms  host67142002135.direcway.com [67.142.135.2]
 4  2555 ms  1842 ms  1944 ms  host6714200158131.direcway.com [67.142.131.158]
 5  1848 ms  1772 ms  2115 ms  host6714200149131.direcway.com [67.142.131.149]
 6   913 ms  1820 ms  2031 ms  host671420078131.direcway.com [67.142.131.78]
 7  1750 ms  1535 ms  2047 ms  12.86.52.225
 8  1826 ms  2047 ms  2038 ms  cr2.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.129.142]
 9  1838 ms  2057 ms  1842 ms  cr2.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.28.177]
 10  1840 ms  1944 ms  2558 ms  cr1.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.28.173]
 11  1836 ms   984 ms  1820 ms  12.123.22.5
 12  1036 ms  2763 ms  1944 ms  12.88.97.6
 13  2585 ms  2224 ms  1646 ms  72.14.233.54
 14  2041 ms  3168 ms  1970 ms  72.14.232.215
 15  1975 ms  1304 ms  1977 ms  209.85.253.137
 16  1228 ms  1841 ms  1535 ms  yx-in-f100.google.com [74.125.45.100]

In short, you don’t want to game on HughesNet. It’s bad for your health. No Voice over IP either; the connection is jitterier than a junebug on a caffeine high.

Want a speedtest? I did one of those too…used testmy.net as it seems to be the de facto standard for sat internet speed testing. All the other tests paint Hughes, WIldBLue and their ilk in an even dimmer light…

:::.. testmy.net test results ..:::
Download Connection is:: 812 Kbps about 0.81 Mbps (tested with 1024 kB)
Download Speed is:: 99 kB/s
Upload Connection is:: 40 Kbps about 0 Mbps (tested with 386 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 5 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net (Main)
Test Time:: 2009/07/19 - 6:44pm
D-Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-91E08GPX2
U-Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-ZJ9AFBQ43
User Agent:: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060215 Firefox/3.0.11 [!]

I actually did the test twice. Apparently HughesNet isn’t terribly good at uploading data; I know my computer does fine at it, and I’m supposing the wireless access point (a Colubris model; everything except that and the internet’s public IP address was hidden safely behind a login page) wasn’t falling down on the job.

So, according to the above, HughesNet isn’t very good at what they’re supposed to be doing: providing high-speed internet where cable and DSL can’t reach. Then again, WildBlue doesn’t seem to be that great at the job either lately, but at least WildBlue will give you their internet access package for $50 per month, and have internet plans that top out at a whopping 22 GB of data transfer per month, usable any time the service is available.

Of course, service on HughesNet varies from area to area. I’m just hoping that the above is the lower end of the scale for Hughes, though I have it on good authority that there’s worse out there. It jsut doens’t happen to be on a deserted, snake-infested island minor highway at a rest stop.

What had really happened is the modem has been kicked off the network for a bit, been reassigned a new IP address, and I had forgotten to set up DynDNS again on my router (easy to overlook when you’ve had the same IP for months on end). So in reality the internet at my place was hunky dory…I just didn’t know where “my place” was on the ‘net.

So what was the cause of the modem reboot and subsequent switch from 76.xxx.xxx.xxx to 67.xxx.xxx.xxx for my IP address (people with 24.xxx.xxx.xxx addresses probably didn’t see a change; they’re still around here)? A DOCSIS 2.0 upgrade, as a matter of fact.

How do I know that the upgrade was to DOCSIS 2.0? I can’t access my modem configuration/status page; the modem in question (a Zoom 5241) has those funcctions walled off for whatever reason. However I *could* do a speed test, and Comcast’s own test revealed a near-shocking 7-11 Mbps on the upstream, a far cry from my typical 2.6-3 Mbps, limited by the DOCSIS 1.1 technology the system had been running on until recently. Another tip-off: Comcast e-mailed me a few days ago, tuting their new DOCSIS 3.0 services as “coming soon”…they’re still not here yet but DOCSIS 2.0 upgrades are one big step closer to that reality.

If you’re wondering why Comcast gave me the upgrade, it’s not because of competition; Qwest’s services are handily beat by DOCSIS 1.1 on Comcast. However if Comcast upgrades their systems to DOCSIS 3 (with DOCSIS 2 as an interim step) they’ll be able to release higher-speed tiers at higher prices, including a 50 mbps down, 10 Mbps up tier weighing in at $116 without TV (versus the $65 I’m paying right now for 8 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up, plus PowerBoost in both directions).

Speaking of rampant capitalism, apparently Comcast wants me to sign up for some of their other services. During my absence, the company sent me two letters. One offered cable for $30 per month (I think it was the mid-tier digital package; I didn’t get further than that since I don’t want cable and I certaily don’t want a one-year contract for the service). The other offered phone service for $15 per month (I already have a cell phone…and yes I know that the phone package is normally $40). Despite these offers, and the fact that the internet portion of m bill would go down if I added another service (TV in particular would drop my internet price by $12 per month), I’m not interested. Still, nice try guys.

Lastly, Comcast has been sprucing up their website portfolio lately. Comcast.net is now shiny and new, as are Comcast.co’s pricing pages. The company has even overhauled their account managment portal so that it now looks pretty cool. I’m pretty sure all these upgrades, combined with the relatively recent introduction of their SmartZone Webmail/web-voicemail system, means every portion of Comcast’s online consumer presence has been reworked in the past nine months or so.

Lastly, while messing around with my modem I decided to test IPv6 connectivity. Not that anyone cares about IPv6 yet, but I was able to ping and trace to a few hosts (he.net, softlayer.com, fdcservers.net). Though I must say, latency was rather absurd, on account of all IPv6 traffic being routed through AMS-IX (AMSterdam Internet eXchange) and SWIPNet before going to those fragments of the internet that are IPv6 enabled. Of course, the situation on that front will improve and it’s cool of Comcast to have the tech in place, but it’s largely a bragging-rights deal at the moment.

Personally, I’d rather have a minimalist online UI and 10 Mbps symmetric fiber with no PowerBoost and IPv4 only for $40 or $50 per month including one branded GMail address, but I suppose I’ll have to pioneer that service myself. For now though I suppose Comcast’s service is becoming more passable every day, and that’s rather Comcastic of them :p

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.

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Starting off with the wireless division, we see the iPhone getting a few new laurels to rest on. It has snagged the top spot for most sold US wireless phone this quarter from the Motorola Razr, and also appears to be 2X the reliability of BlackBerries and nearly 3X the reliability of Treos. AT&T has also opened up free AT&T WiFi access to iPhone and other smartphone users. This is particularly cool since the company also bought up hotspot operator Wayport right around ten minutes ago.

Last but not least, 1.1 million customers and a lot of spectrum, towers and other such infrsatructure got traded for a cool $944 million in AT&T’s buyout of Centennial Communications, yet another regional GSM carrier to fall under AT&T’s sway.

UPDATE: Looks like AT&T will be allowing iPhone tethering…for $30 on top of your regular data plan. The transfer limit is 5 GB with this option, and if you’re thinking that the total data cost is equal to that of a dedicated modem, you’re abso-freaking-lutely correct. Ripoff? Yes, but I suspect people will bite. Though Sprint’s network is generally faster, and tethering is only $15 on top of a data plan, which is also $30 on top of a voice plan but also includes everything from navigation to text messaging.

Speaking of WiFi, you get that free with most AT&T DSL/U-Verse plans. Which may be capped. The monthly transfer caps are as follows:

$10-$20, 768K, 20GB (DSL only)
$25-$32, 1.5M, 40GB
$30-$36, 3M, 60GB
$35-$43, 6M, 80GB
$55, 10M, 150GB (U-Verse only)

The caps are a bit biased speed-wise toward the lower-end tiers, but of course cost-per-GB-wise toward the higher tiers. Overages will be $1 per GB. The caps are squarely between Time Warner Cable’s proposed 5-40 GB limits and Comcast’s 250 GB cap. What’s funny about this is that AT&T hs plenty of backbone infrastructure, especially with U-Verse, to allow everyone to download as much as they want. Of coursse, business-class users won’t see these caps, but users in the Reno, NV test market already are, or they’re being grandfathered in at 150GB per month. What’s unnerving is the result if you only qualify for a lower-speed DSL connection due to distance from the CO: low caps, high overages.

Speaking of U-Verse, AT&T has introduced an 18 Mbps tier (1.5 Mbps upload) for $10 more than the 10/1.5 Mbps one, or $65 per month, though people have reported that they’ve gotten better deals by calling AT&T to upgrade. The caveat: the U-Verse service has to share bandwidth with any TV that’s running, and the shared pipe is only 25 Mbit/s wide downstream and 2 Mbit/s upstream. This “profile” is due to the fact that VDSL (the tech upon which U-Verse is based) drops off quickly speed-wise as distance from the VRAD (fiber-fed DSL terminal) increases. The result: if you’re watching TV, you get 14-15 Mbps internet speeds instead of 18 Mbps, though TV quality doesn’t degrade while the internet is being used. No word on caps on this tier; let’s hope they’re to the tune of 250GB…competitors are sure to deploy DOCSIS 3 in response to this new U-Verse tier, and Comcast‘s caps are well above AT&T’s proposed ones.

Last but not least, AT&T is trying to create a video search engine (!?!) in partnership with a startup by the name of Divvio. Once can’t but think that this new service, dubbed Videocrawler, will be a nice tool for chewing up your gigabytes once caps are in place. Why I oughta…