DSL is now Available

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:20 pm

Either one should be a world ahead of anything we had available last year on the Island. I would have no reservation signing up for either. Here we're just arguing which is a better deal - the ribs or the steak. It's a better situation than we could have imagined a year or two ago for potential customers.

would someone please point me to a thread where both prices for speed is documented.

www.tdstelecom.com
www.centralsolutions.biz

The latest pricing information I myself have received I have posted at:
http://www.beaverbeacon.com/Beaver_Isla ... net/#plans
and:
http://www.beaverbeacon.com/Beaver_Isla ... net/#plans

(this does not include the current TDS 6-month promo or the Central Solutions install deal.)

(Steve - do you have better wireless pricing information you can post? -- The above is the latest pricing information I've received from Central Solutions.)

DwightEarly · Post by **DwightEarly** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 8:37 pm

Jeff,

Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, I have more information about the two services from this forum than on the two service providers' web sites.

I have AT&T DSL in my mainland house. (I'm paying $25/mo for 3Mbps download speed.) So, I know how DSL works: phone line to DSL modem to wireless router supporting multiple computers. However, I use a work laptop from home using Cisco VPN to encrypt my work computer connection to my work network.

Do you know if either service support Cisco VPN? (Sorry, I have to ask here because the web sites have next to nothing on them about their services.) If you don't know, I'll bug their tech support.

With respect to Central Solutions, I couldn't find in either Island newspapers how the residential CS access works. Is the access for one computer? What equipment is needed for a household's computers? I have a suspicion that CS access is for one computer with a special wireless PC card or USB dongle somewhat like the cell phone companies WiFi access. Or, is the access like at the Library? BTW, I can enable a VPN connection with my work laptop at the BI Library.

So many questions, so little information.

--Dwight

P.S. WildBlue (.com) satellite internet service, which has a presence on the Island has the same speed/price as Central Solutions with a DSL like connection - e.g., satellite to modem to wireless router. I've used WildBlue at one residence, and it worked well with two computers sharing the access at the same time. I believe that the connection was the 1.0 Mbps download / 200 Kbps upload.

Post by **Gillespie** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 8:56 pm

I have a wireless network at home with my CS wireless connection, works fine!!

DwightEarly · Post by **DwightEarly** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:10 pm

That's good to hear. So, the set up is like the WildBlue & DSL access. I'll have to call Central Solutions tech support to ask the VPN question.

I'd also like to see what the DSL speeds are like near the 31000 "blolck" on East Side Drive which is at the "end of the line".

But, you have to admit that DSL 1.5Mbps for $40/mo is attractive.

Chamber of Commerce · Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:11 am

(Steve - do you have better wireless pricing information you can post? -- The above is the latest pricing information I've received from Central Solutions.)

Jeff,

As Forum Admin perhaps you should contact both firms by email and draw their attention to this thread. They can then jump in or no as they see fit re: questions.

I have found that a quick phone call to both gets an answer.

The Central Solutions service at my Chamber office works great! My personal view is that because they made an early capital investment in Beaver Island when others did not they have earned a little extra consideration. Perhaps I'm just an old softie.

Steve

Dan Wardlow · Post by **Dan Wardlow** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:22 pm

We have wildblue satellite service. 1.5 mb is $79.95/month. It's remarkably reliable, though there are two things we don't like:

1) the latency period is around 3/4 of a second. OK for most stuff, but Skype is impossible (it works kinda sorta maybe a little), and on-line gaming is very iffy.

2) bandwidth limitations. You get 17 gb downloads in a rolling 30 day period. That may seem like a lot, but not if you watch any video or listen to streaming audio. If you hit your limit, they punish you with a speed reduction to near-dialup levels. We haven't been punished, but we monitor our usage carefully.

On the other hand, it was very very easy to integrate with our in-home wifi system (it "auto-configured" without any work on our part), and works with a variety of computers just perfectly.

If DSL comes our way some day, we would probably switch for the better price, lowered latency, and more bandwidth. We might consider CentralSolutions wireless if they can prove it will work deep in the leafed-out woods (and I am quite skeptical that it will).

DwightEarly · Post by **DwightEarly** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:38 pm

Dan Wardlow wrote:We have wildblue satellite service...there are two things we don't like: 1) latency...[and] 2) bandwidth limitations...get 17 gb downloads in a rolling 30 day period.

Excellent points/issues. VPN is also problematic with satellite.

Jeff & CoC, Dan's and my issues/questions are standard FAQs for ISPs. Yet, both the telco DSL and Central Solutions web sites are silent on most of the questions/issue brought up here.

I'd like to reiterate my previous suggestion to have a "sticky" topic on this forum off the main page that is like a FAQ of Internet on the Island with the ISPs giving service prices and answers to a standard/generic set FAQs. If you'd like, I can provide a set of FAQs to kick off your stickie. I can even help with the design of this sticky.

(Note: I'm am not connected with an computer company or service - although I had my first internet email address in 1979, way before Al Gore could spell ARPAnet. My aim here is to have facts available so people can make an informed decision. A novel concept. Oh, yah...I just want the thing to work for me.)

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:45 pm

That's a great idea.

You/We might run into some gray areas and unknowns still even in very basic areas -- e.g. I've not seen usage limitations spelled out from Central Solutions yet; with TDS if you use 50 GB/month on residential they will ask you to upgrade as per their TOS/AUP at tds.net; networking you may run into areas where either provider politely wants you to upgrade to a higher level plan if they are to officially "support" networking yet where it's trivial to plug in a wireless router; both seem amazingly flexible compared to my past experience with satellite. Also for residential customers I've not seen any black and white commitment to a minimum quality of service during prime time from either, but both seem quite serious about providing quality service.

I'm just starting my print run so I'll be away from the discussion for a couple days... back after 26,400 prints...

DwightEarly · Post by **DwightEarly** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:01 pm

Jeff, after thinking about this "one stop stopping" sticky idea, I'm thinking that this is probably something the CoC should do on their web site. This is where I go to first when I need a product or service on the Island. By having CoC do this, it would keep the forum more for discussions. I dunno...just a thought.

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:20 pm

I'll continue to seek out and post any information and real world comparisons I can test, and I definitely look forward to seeing any and all FAQ and answers you are generous enough to come up with.

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » Thu May 01, 2008 7:30 am

Just got this photograph from Rich and it's so cool I have to post it:

Spent 4 hours on the ground fascinated watching them put it up, but Rich's photo from the air is even better. Kudos to EW Marine.

These towers are very cool, even if I am biased to 3 mbps speed now.

JohnAckermann · Post by **JohnAckermann** » Fri May 02, 2008 4:44 pm

Dwight, for what it's worth, I've used Nortel VPN while using Central Solutions wireless in town both using the pay-by-the day option and as a guest at a house. It worked just fine.

I think the issue with satellite connections and VPN is the latency -- the trip up to the bird and back down is long enough that the timing tolerances of the VPN protocols are screwed up (just a guess).

By the way -- you and I are neighbors, twice -- our place is just north of you at 30910 East Side Drive, and we spend our mundane time in Dayton. Howdy!

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » Sat May 03, 2008 8:46 pm

JohnAckermann wrote:I think the issue with satellite connections and VPN is the latency -- the trip up to the bird and back down is long enough that the timing tolerances of the VPN protocols are screwed up (just a guess).

Both physical (~650 ms) and imposed through traffic shaping / scheduling / accelerating wrapper by consumer satellite options.

I think over any satellite encrypted protocols aren't going to be stellar, but over consumer satellite it seems the priority is on http and "every man's" use so you see things many times worse for vpn/ssh/other encrypted protocols than they could be over high-dollar satellite options.

Wildblue has been a lifeline for me until DSL became available, and I was thankful to have it. In 2005 wildblue "changed the rules" of the consumer satellite industry -- before that with hughes for example, for 100 kbps real-world upload you needed $1000 of equipment. Wildblue came on the scene and for $299 of equipment they delivered 250 kbps upload, quite an improvement. (Hughes went from 60-100 up plans to 300 and 500 plans to match a short time later, and I believe they would have not done this had it not been for wildblue.) Also when wildblue was new many things that had been very problematic over starband for the previous 3 years "just worked on wildblue." However, once wildblue got past tens of thousands of customers and loaded up their gateways more, in November of 2006 they changed the scheduling routines at their gateways in order to maintain advertised speeds for larger file transfers, but at the expense of non http and latency sensitive protocols.

2005:

Code: Select all

# Wildblue 2005 
Pinging yahoo.com &#91;66.94.234.13&#93; with 32 bytes of data&#58;

Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=648ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=727ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=730ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=726ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=723ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=723ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=641ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=642ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=654ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=643ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 66.94.234.13&#58;
Packets&#58; Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 &#40;0% loss&#41;,
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds&#58;
Minimum = 641ms, Maximum = 730ms, Average = 685ms

became this instead:

Code: Select all

# Wildblue 2007
Pinging 66.94.234.13 with 32 bytes of data&#58;

Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1367ms TTL=45
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=2491ms TTL=48
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1471ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1414ms TTL=46
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1234ms TTL=45
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1556ms TTL=49
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1346ms TTL=45
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1603ms TTL=45
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1258ms TTL=45
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=1302ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for 66.94.234.13&#58;
    Packets&#58; Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 &#40;0% loss&#41;,
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds&#58;
    Minimum = 1234ms, Maximum =  2491ms, Average =  1504ms

Not only is the average much higher, but the deviation is huge now as well and those spikes can really make latency sensitive applications frustrating now. Uploads or downloads over 1 MB still go at or over advertised speed, and over a few months from when they made the change http browsing seemed to be re-accelerated to nearer previous speeds, but "chatty" interactive and encrypted protocols really suffered for me. Hughes delivers a bit lower pings now, but no where near the original 2005 wildblue near-physical satellite latency (they do have the new spaceway satellite, but I fear that they will actually deliver less performance than they could to consumer accounts over the new bird in order to not have to upgrade all the existing ku customers right away and so they can clear out their 7000 inventory, keeping higher performance for their big high-dollar enterprise customers on that new satellite with switching in the sky.)

As we move more and more to encrypted protocols and 'ajax-y' web pages, wildblue was and is great compared to dialup, but no comparison to low latency "everything I throw at it works quickly" goodness.

Code: Select all

# TDS DSL 2008 
Pinging 66.94.234.13 with 32 bytes of data&#58;
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=122ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=122ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=114ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=109ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=118ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=137ms TTL=55
Reply from 66.94.234.13&#58; bytes=32 time=125ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 66.94.234.13&#58;
    Packets&#58; Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 &#40;0% loss&#41;,
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds&#58;
    Minimum = 109ms, Maximum = 137ms, Average = 121ms

JohnAckermann · Post by **JohnAckermann** » Sun May 04, 2008 8:26 am

Hi Jeff --

Thanks for the info about the Wild Blue latency. Don't want to turn this into too much of a geek-fest, but here's a link I found that explains at least one problem with VPN over satellite:

http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages ... 27542.html

They point out that the way VPN encrypts TCP header info defeats some of the tricks that satellite links use to speed up data transfer. As a result, VPN performance over a satellite link can be verrrrry slow.

I may have been wrong about the latency causing authentication problems, but another article I found says that the IP spoofing that satellite links use (again, to improve performance) can defeat VPN authentication; IP spoofing needs to be turned off to allow VPN connections to be established.

Chamber of Commerce · Sun May 04, 2008 12:37 pm

Reply from 66.94.234.13: bytes=32 time=125ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 66.94.234.13:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 109ms, Maximum = 137ms, Average = 121ms... Said Jeff
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