A week or so ago I mentioned that I got my DSL to a point of very high reliability. There’s a fair amount of truth to that, with a bit of a sudden change today. Here’s how it all went down.

I figured out that my DSL was acting up because of issues with wiring in my house. What exactly was going on I still don’t know. But I do know that the previous owners of my house installed a second phone line, and that the physical wiring for that line is still in place. By installing a DSL filter at the service box outside and wiring the DSL side to the second phone line, I was able to filter my whole house using that one filter and ensure a clean signal for the modem.

Of course, that service-happiness high lasted for about a week.

Last night and this afternoon my ISP decided to do something to their access concentrator. I’ve been switched to yet another one, not unlike the disaster that happened back in February. No, I don’t have another $20 a month to fork over just for a static IP.

So as of now I have bigmomma running my ZoneEdit update script which is hitting the No-IP dynamic update check server every five minutes. I may have to make the interval smaller (and I will switch to using Germantown for the remote IP check if I do this) but it looks like things will work out.

Naturally my static IP hack I used on my modem isn’t working anymore. It didn’t work for a period back in February either, but then began to work again. We’ll see. I definitely won’t be seeing 98.17.59.63 again for a while.

This is the response I got from the Roadrunner cable rep. Way to treat their potential customers, eh?

Dear Mr. Fuhry:

Thank you for your email. We always appreciate the opportunity to respond to our customers.

Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable. The services and availability may vary based on Package Selection and promotions that may be available in your area. We have found the most efficient method of providing you with pricing are for you to speak to a sales representative who will explain all packages and assist you in customizing a service plan that best fits your needs. Please contact our sales department at 1.877.772.2253. Representatives are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Sincerely,
Mark

Your On-Line Time Warner Cable Representative

I replied to the e-mail politely noting that I already know what service plan I’m going for and that what I’m trying to find out is ethical and network management practices. Needless to say I think I will definitely be sticking with Windstream for right now. Especially now that I got it working nearly perfectly - more on that in a day or two.

Peter McCullough and I are starting up a community tech/news site aimed at geeks, affectionately called twogeeksonesite.com. Here we plan to post hardware reviews, track industry news, talk about current events, and provide a general tech discussion community. We’re not going for anything particularly Web 2.0 (e.g. social networking) but we are planning on something based on Enano and PunBB (and yes it will run the latest alpha code). I’ll be posting again when it’s all set up, but until then beware of scaffolding and “registration disabled” messages.

Hi,
Just a while ago I checked the Road Runner website and it looks like Time Warner is offering the service where I live. I have a few friends that used RoadRunner in the past until their area was bought out by Comcast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner_Cable#Former_divisions_sold_to_Comcast). I’m currently using Windstream DSL and I’m seriously considering upgrading to Road Runner cable, just have a couple questions though because I’m a power user and use my Internet for a lot of different things. My current situation is that I have an ISP that does absolutely no throttling or firewalling (which I positively love) but the connection isn’t as reliable as I’d like it to be. So my questions are:

• Do Time Warner and/or Road Runner support, financially or otherwise, any legislation that could have any impact (positive or negative) on net neutrality? If so, what bills are they, and where can I view more information about the legislation on the Internet?
• Do you have a monthly bandwidth limit? If so, what is the cap?
• Do you throttle any traffic using port blocking, deep packet inspection, or any other method? If so, what all is blocked?
• Are any ports firewalled by default? I am currently running a web server, mail server, and SSH server from my home. (My question applies to your home/residential service; I will not purchase a business account just to lift inbound port restrictions.)
• Does your acceptable use policy (AUP) or terms of use (TOU) have any restrictions on what types of traffic, inbound or otherwise, residential customers may allow? E.g. are there any legal restrictions that would prevent me from running a web server or a properly secured mail server?
• 15Mbits down is all fine and dandy, but what is the average upload speed of a residential connection? 1Mbit would be nice, but 1.5 or 2 would be even better. 5Mbit would be outstanding.
• How often does RR go down for maintenance? When was the last service outage in my area? Were customers notified of it in advance? How long did the outage last?
• Is there any possibility (even a 1% chance) that my area will be bought out by another provider, specifically Comcast, within the next three years? This is the one issue that I’m scared to death of with residential cable. As you probably know, Comcast is under heavy fire from both customers and the FCC for their questionable (and sometimes downright illegal) network management practices.
• Are there any times of day (or week) when traffic is throttled slower than the peak limit? Also, my DSL modem sometimes connects at a much slower speed than the expected 1.5Mbit/sec due to environmental conditions. Will this happen with cable? Power, phone, and cable lines are all buried underground in my area.
• Is the modem simply a bridge to the Internet or does it behave like a router with NAT? Can I access the modem to forward ports or, preferably, DMZ my router?
• How often does a residential IP address last on average? How much is a static IP address per month?
• Finally, my router and DNS server are at the south end of the house whereas the cable connection is at the north end. I have 75 feet of standard coaxial cable to work with, but does cable Internet require a higher grade of cable to work reliably and at full speed? Needless to say the modem would be in close proximity to the router.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. As of right now I am very seriously considering an upgrade to Road Runner provided that your policies are in line with net neutrality and will be for the forseeable future. I look forward to applying for Road Runner cable.

Sincerely yours,
Dan Fuhry
dan@enanocms.org