DSL

Losing Cable Service During A Power Outage

Over at www.broadbandreports.com a VOIP forum member has noted an interesting problem. When he suffered a power outage he also lost his cable modem service. This despite the fact that he dutifully provided a UPS solution to keep his network gear running. We can infer that the CableCo doesn’t provide similar UPS capability in the local cabinets serving his area.

This is in stark contrast to Telco’s, who historically provide continuous service through power outages. They have put huge effort into achieving 99.999% uptime, and continuous power is a major consideration.

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Walt Mossberg Says “We suck at broadband!”

You really need to see this. It’s Walt giving a presentation outlining trends in TV viewing on PCs vs home theater and the sorry state of the broadband reality in North America. I don’t always agree with Walt, but he has this completely nailed. He very lucid and well spoken on the matter. He also highlights AppleTV & Tivo as well as the pending (60 days) availability of a 3G iPhone.

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Jared Valentine’s “Application Aware Triggered QoS”

Jared Valentine has posted an interesting description of a system he developed for automatically manipulating QoS & bandwidth allocation to support the use of VOIP over his DSL service. He calls this “Application Aware Triggered QoS.”

He described his initial problem as being trouble with inbound bandwidth management. This is something that I’ve never experienced myself. My trouble was always related to limited outbound bandwidth.

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Remembering Sprint ION

Back in 2001 we had the pleasure of a year of Sprint’s ION DSL service. ION remains to this day the best broadband service that I’ve experienced. It’s a terrible pity that Sprint shut it down.

ION stood for, “Integrated On-Demand Network.” It was an xDSL drop to a CPD (CPD = Customer Premises Device) that presented network connections (RJ-45) and phone connections (RJ-11s.) It was offered in a couple of packages. We had the one targeting SOHO users, which was 2 fixed IP adresses and 4 phones lines. For $149/mo the service included 1.5/768 data and unlimited local calling & domestic long distance. There was also a lesser service with 1 IP and 2 phone lines for $99/mo.

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