[NCLUG] Cable Modem Refugees

[Chris Wolney]

The need for bandwidth was reaching critical mass for me on Sunday, when I
shamed myself by actually picking up an AOL CD at the movie theatre.  I am
still doing some soul-searching on that one.

> Michael Dwyer wrote:
>
> The bandwidth cap was already in effect, I guess.  Upstream, at least.
> Now AT&T says that they are capping downstream to 1.5Mb/s -- which is
> still T1 speeds, so I don't think I have too much room to argue.  On the
> other hand, I was checking into DirecTV DSL, where they give you 256k up
> and 768k down with a static address for the same price as my cable
> modem.  I'd jump for that (or a FRII product, probably) if only DSL was
> in my neighborhood...
>

1.5Mb/s cap?  Bah.  No problems there.  Sounds like I was reading some FUD
on the various web-boards.  One thing I hear is that the news server
connection for many was peaking at 150KB/sec vs the 3-400KB/sec they were
previously able to get.  I used to dig that connection for grabbing stuff
from the .binaries. groups.  Who knows the way things will be once the
network shakes down.

>
> Personally, I'm more annoyed with the complete loss of static IPs.  Its
> gonna be hellish to track down my MP3s^H^H^H^H important business
> documents from work, now!  On the other hand, one of my recent projects
> at work was a little tool to enable one to find a machine out in the
> dynamic world... Hmmmm.
>

FWIW, I've heard talk of www.tzo.com and www.dns2go.com.  They both offer
Linux clients, but I have not used them.  I was also looking for a link to
the "new" AUP for aatbi that prohibited the use of these dynamic DNS agents,
but can't locate it.  Apparently the lease on our IP's will be much shorter
now.  I had the same IP ever since I'd been hooked up on @home, but from
people's attbi reports, that's going to change.

-Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Dwyer" <mdwyer at sixthdimension.com>
To: <nclug at nclug.org>
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2001 4:02 PM
Subject: Re: [NCLUG] Cable Modem Refugees


> Chris Wolney wrote:
> > I had read the slashdot post as well, and checked out a little traffic
when
> > my cable modem regained the link on Saturday.  Same experience as that
> > poster, the net is there, but no DHCP server.  I wonder how much more
prep
> > they need to do before they open the network back up?  Their press
release
> > says we may get back online on Thursday.
>
> I had no net.  We've always had a static connection, so the loss of DHCP
> shouldn't have hurt us. But all I could see when I watched the line was
> other cable modems doing DHCP requests.  Oh, and our internal DNS server
> should have worked fine, too.  So we were just clean cut off from
> bandwidth.  I was sort of bummed that I couldn't even talk across the
> AT&T intranet (so to speak) to other cable modem users across town.  I
> would have been a little happier if I could at least still play
> CounterStrike with friends. :)  But nooooo.
>
> > In the end I decided I would make do with dialup for a bit to avoid
getting
> > the dreaded "abuse" flag, but if others are having success with it, and
our
> > subnet is in anarchy anyway...
>
> Add another "Huzzah!" to FRII who apparently throws in a dial-up account
> with their web hosting package.  Anyway, I sort of doubt that anyone is
> manning the ABUSE lines at AT&T right now.  For instance, here's a quote
> from the Incidents.org intrusions mailing list:
>
>    @Home seeme to have finally done something about a persistant
>    scanner. (Thanks guys - I don't envy you your workload)
>
>    There seems a bit of a mismatch between the theoretical
>    minimum time to saturate the Internet with a new worm (15
>    seconds, was it, for the "Warhol worm" ?) and the time for
>    a financially troubled broadband provider to respond to a
>    scan report (52 days).
>
> > I don't like this new bandwidth cap concept.  I hope it does not get to
be
> > an issue.  I'd rather see them take initiative in doing something about
> > other customers probing my boxes for Windows trojans and other shady
> > goings-on than tighntening down the screws on my pipe.
>
> The bandwidth cap was already in effect, I guess.  Upstream, at least.
> Now AT&T says that they are capping downstream to 1.5Mb/s -- which is
> still T1 speeds, so I don't think I have too much room to argue.  On the
> other hand, I was checking into DirecTV DSL, where they give you 256k up
> and 768k down with a static address for the same price as my cable
> modem.  I'd jump for that (or a FRII product, probably) if only DSL was
> in my neighborhood...
>
> Personally, I'm more annoyed with the complete loss of static IPs.  Its
> gonna be hellish to track down my MP3s^H^H^H^H important business
> documents from work, now!  On the other hand, one of my recent projects
> at work was a little tool to enable one to find a machine out in the
> dynamic world... Hmmmm.
>
> Anyway, I kind of enjoyed the brain-storming that went on with our
> search for bandwidth.  We had all kinds of hare-brained ideas:  sell a
> T1 to all our neighbors, run a cat5 wire across the street to the local
> elementary school, get satellite service, move to a house closer to
> DSL...  You know.  That kinda stuff.
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