Broadband – Page 13 – Graves On SOHO Technology

Wifi Business: AT&T Buys Wayport

November 6, 2008
Michael Graves
Broadband

Andy Abramson has posted with respect to AT&T deciding to purchase Wayport and so expand their Wifi hotspot business. Although I still prefer to not do business with AT&T I have over the years spent a considerable sum with Wayport. Such is the life of one who inhabits hotels quite frequently.

Andy notes, and I’m very pleased to hear, that one of the beneficiaries of the deal will be Boingo. While I haven’t posted about this before I’ve been using Boingo for about a year. In fact I just upgraded my account to their Boingo Unlimited access.

Comcast Post-Ike: Just As Helpful As Centerpoint

It’s been very frustrating dealing with the utility companies with respect to restoring service in the post-Ike period. At issue is their inability to get and redistribute information about who’s on, who’s not, and routine progress reports. Today for a short while my focus turned to Comcast as our cable tv and cable modem service remains down.

Houston Utilities In The Post-Ike Period

September 22, 2008
Michael Graves
Broadband

Now I still have a major issue with AT&T, and very much prefer to not give them my business. However, in The Woodland Heights neighborhood where I live we have now been without electricity and cable tv for 9 days. That in an of itself is bad but not entirely unexpected.

The unexpected part is that we have not seen ANY Centerpoint or Comcast branded vehicles in the area. Accepting that Centerpoint, the electrical distribution utility, is using help from utilities all over the state I can say that we have not seen any kind of electrical utility vehicles in the neighborhood, branded for whomever.

A Very Strange Week Indeed: Houston After Ike

September 16, 2008
Michael Graves
Broadband, Family, VoIP

Well it has certainly been an unusual week around here. To start with migrating my domain to a new host took longer than I thought. The whole process took about a week. The thing is that it finally happened the very day that Hurricane Ike was to hit the Houston area. So…..I was a little busy…y’dig?

We had the house and office all boarded up and executed what the local authorities call “Shelter In Place.” That protocol, known as “SIP” to some outside the VoIP community was the recommended practice given our location.

Customer Owned Fiber

July 31, 2008
Michael Graves
Broadband

Timothy B. Lee over at Ars technica has an excellent piece on a pilot project going on in Ottawa, Ontario. A neighborhood is getting fiber installed to their homes at their own expense. Once that's in place any ISP that…

Traffic Shaping For VOIP With m0n0wall

July 30, 2008
Michael Graves
Broadband, VoIP

My screencast guide to traffic shaping for VOIP using m0n0wall has been posted on the m0n0wall web site.

However, Manuel Kasper (m0n0wall project lead) had some interesting ideas on how to revise and perhaps simplify my approach. What he describes departs from the approach underlying the present implementation of the Magic Shaper in m0n0wall. Use of the Magic Shaper is the basis of the existing screencast.

Updated to provide a YouTube version in the post and ftp downloadable high quality version.