So I’m a network nut. however few people would go as far as I just did: borrow my littlest brother’s laptop, dial in to my standby dialup account and run a few traceroutes to see what’s shakin’. Pretty retro-cool, actually. If I turned images down I could definitely live with dialup, cost-proportionally, better than a disgustingly high-latency satellite connection.
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.