Re: [IRCA] High Speed Internet OT

[Rick Kunath <k9ao@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> but I am tired of 28.8 dialup. Once they run the cable to my
> house, which I refused years ago, the radiation is there (If there still
> is that issue), as even if they disconnect the service the coax still
> can radiate.


Here are a couple of quick comments for you Patrick...

I have had Charter for years here. I have their 26/3 meg package but most 
areas are getting rebuilt for the new top speed pf 60/5. I can get that here 
if I want it, but what I have is plenty fast.

I don't have any noise issues here. But the plant is fairly new and it's 
tight. They have to fix any leaks, so suffering is not something that you have 
to do. I do have a few good contacts I can share with you off list. I have the 
local Plant Manager's direct telco line, and there are some top-notch ways to 
get the technicians and not the contractor-level guys involved in an on-line 
forum. If you go Charter, I can share that stuff with you off list. 

They have been great here. I had a few issues here over the years. One was 
when a neighbor had a new driveway put in, yeah you guessed it. They ignored 
the markings and nicked the buried trunk with some re-bar. But a quick call 
when things began acting up and I was getting noise and a few days later they 
direct bored in a new piece of underground trunk and installed it all pretty 
like. I wound up getting their HD package and a few more television sets, way 
too many actually, but they happily rewired my entire place for me, leak 
tested everything, ran a TDR on my drop, and then added a local amp as a pre-
amp here at my demarc on the television side to serve up all of the sets. All 
for free.

There were a few times that people began saturating the node here and speeds 
varied. A call and they rebalanced the nodes for traffic loading and added some 
additional incoming capacity, and boom. No more issues. 

I get the full speeds, plus the short time power boost way over that almost 
every time. As far as the speeds here, I am satisfied. And I am picky as heck.

Now as to renting vs buy. Invariably, you will lose modems now and then unless 
you never get storms. I would have been way in the hole had I bought mine. If 
for no other reason than that they had upgraded the technology here. The 
latest one I have is  Ubee DOCSIS 3 modem. This is the new name for Ambit 
modems. It has been stellar. I got it before channel bonding went active here, 
and even on a single channel it was a lot better than any of the modems I had 
before. Channel bonding (to 4 downstream channels) is active here now and the 
speed consistency is superb. For me, I wouldn't want the hassle of owning. I 
get new modems every year or so as they upgrade and make them better. If you 
rent, you just call in and they ship one to you in a box whenever something 
new is out. They special shipped me that new Ubee ahead of the general roll-
out straight from St. Louis when I asked about it. Over and above service I 
would say.

I don't get noise as I mentioned. But I run shielded CAT5 from the Ubee modem. 
That I use to run my local LAN here. I have an IP Cop dedicated firewall/router 
that I built from castoff PC parts here that handles the job of routing from 
the Internet to the LAN and also does firewall service. I have about zero 
invested in it. I built that in a good and well shielded case and used a very 
quiet PC power supply. The output of that feeds a metal cased Ethernet switch 
and Shielded CAT5 to all of the wired PCs, printers, etc. I have a dedicated 
wireless AP set to transparent bridge mode that allows secure  WiFi access to 
my laptops too, with IP Cop handling the security and routing and the AP 
handling encryption only. Again, no noise issues here.

Many of the consumer grade routers and WiFi access points I have used over the  
years have been quite noisy. But my home-brew and far better setup works well.

One of the good things about the system upgrades Charter has been doing to add 
higher Internet speeds and telephone service is that they really have to 
tighten up the cable plant performance. Sloppy, leaky ,and mis-adjusted cable 
plants don't handle those services reliably. So you might want to see what 
services are available in your area.

As to DSL, that is just too slow for me. And the farther from the CO you are 
the slower it is. We have some DSL here at a few of our sites and it is noisy 
as heck. Being far off the beaten path and with DSL providers trying to at 
least look like they offer broadband and not what is really near-broadband, 
they have been pushing faster DSL permutations. Often these have shorter 
service length limitations. So I'm not sure how feasible you getting it will 
be. I am 1/2 mile from a CO here and they can't justify upgrading it because 
cable Internet has so blown by them in speeds that no one wants DSL any more. 
Now FTTH is another story. But it's doubtful if I'll see that either for a 
good long while.

Maybe it would be worth having the local Charter people call you and talk with 
them. If you want to follow up send me an email off-list and I can point you in 
a direction. I sure can't imagine them not killing the line if you dropped the 
service and were having noise issues. But you could ask your local people.

All I can say is that with what I have here for cable and my local setup, I 
wouldn't want to be without my Charter service.

My advice: Rent the modem. (Do not get their whole house router/modem combo as 
these are unreliable speed wise and noisy, and you can't manage them as 
flexibly), and add your own router or router/WiFi-AP or do what I did and make 
a better quieter router for free from a cast-off PC if you want to share that 
connection with all of the computers in your house.

I hope that helps.

Rick Kunath
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