[NCLUG] DSL Throttling or General Congestion?

[F.L. Whiteley]

FRII backhauls their DSL via Cogent.

Frank Whiteley

> -----Original Message-----
> From: nclug-bounces at nclug.org 
> [mailto:nclug-bounces at nclug.org] On Behalf Of Michael Milligan
> Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 9:06 PM
> To: Northern Colorado Linux Users Group
> Subject: Re: [NCLUG] DSL Throttling or General Congestion?
> 
> 
> Stephen Warren wrote:
> > Michael Milligan wrote:
> > 
> > That (being Qwest's problem) doesn't sound likely.
> 
> Actually, I'm pretty darn sure the problem is at the RT 
> (DSLAM) about a
> mile from my house.  I bet dollars to donuts that the uplink is only
> 1.5Mb/s to the fiber, whether it is ATM or not is irrelevant (though I
> know it is).  There are 25 houses in my neighborhood of which 
> 10 or more
> have 1.5Mbs DSL service already...  so, no matter how you 
> slice it, you
> can't stuff 10.5Mb of traffic onto one 1.5Mb/s ATM VC when everyone
> tries to download music via P2P networks all at the same time (every
> evening).  Cells have to be dropped.  Same goes for any ATM router in
> the core...  if aggregate traffic exceeds capacity of in- or out-going
> links, cells get dropped, end of story.  Which ones get dropped is
> another (interesting) topic...  there's also queue sizes and 
> introduced
> queuing delays of cells when traffic levels approach saturation as
> well...  I pretty darn sure I'm seeing the effects of both 
> due to local
> congestion.  And if I'm right, that will have little to do with which
> ISP I'm using to take my IP packets.
> 
> Does anyone else think it's not a Qwest issue and switching ISPs would
> help?  I'm game to go with FRII if it makes sense, they've been pretty
> good to me w.r.t. co-lo service...  But from talking with a tech at
> FRII, bascically all the Qwest DSL traffic is aggregated 
> locally, routed
> over the ATM cloud down to Denver (building on 16st Street), then
> cross-connected to all the various ISPs that are available (most with
> zero-mile DS3s or OC3s)...  so I doubt it would make any difference.
> 
> > With alternate ISPs, I *believe* that your phone line goes 
> into an ATM
> > switch at the nearest CO (central office), and that ATM line is then
> > routed, in isolation, to the ISP. Only then does the ATM traffic get
> > unpacked into potentially other transport technologies.
> 
> What's an "ATM line"?  Perhaps you are thinking of an ATM Virtual
> Circuit (VC).
> 
> > The thing about ATM is that it's time division 
> multiplexing, so there's
> > an assigned fixed-bandwidth link all the way from your DSL 
> modem at home
> > all the way to the ISP.
> 
> You've got to be kidding.  That would be prohibitively expense for
> Qwest.  If I had guaranteed bandwidth from my house to my ISP's
> first-hop router, I'd probably need to be paying at least 5 times more
> than I currently am.  Thought I WISH that were the case.
> 
> IMHO, if I'm right, Qwest needs to put a 6Meg card in my local RT soon
> to alleviate this, or I'm switchin' to something else as soon as
> something is available (can you say "WiMAX trial" anyone?).  
> It's so bad
> that I'm even considering going back to CWX...
> 
> Regards,
> Mike
> 
> -- 
> Michael Milligan                                   -> milli at acmeps.com
> Acme Professional Services LLC                        970-581-9948
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