Internet tubes, ITS NOT A TRUCK

[vincent]

High Speed access for the Greater Seattle area.

Sorted by Marketed speed:

50 Mbps/20 Mbps – FIOS

16 Mbps/2 Mbps – comcast

7 Mbps/896kps – dsl (various)

2.0Mbps/256KB – clearwire

600 Kbps/ 500Kbps – EVDO (sprint verizon att “aircard”)

As with everything your mileage my vary (YMMV)

Because of an inane rule about the definition of carrier monopolies in seattle verizon basically has listed FIOS fiber as being available sometime after hell freezes over.

Comcast is shared infrastructure based on neighborhood nodes, which causes wild fluxuations in service and has recently been sued for throttling, and has recently introduced a 250g monthly cap for download ( 30hours of netflix streaming )

DSL offers the best upload, all the way to megs per second but its has physical limitations based on footage from the office, and its still relatively expensive for old tech.

Clearwire is hugely limited by nodes much like comcast, but its also limited by wireless line of sight. They have been accused of overselling service without supplying appropriate infrastructure.

EVDO and other aircards are a nice incremental step in wireless abilities of individual laptops but they are hardly a whole house connectivity solution.

unless you really understand the differences in the technology its really best to ask your neighbors or try more than one service before you settle in on a multi month, or year contract. Also avoid paying needless fees on equipment rental by using google to purchase these items outright, breaking even usually takes a couple of months at best.

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[Anonymous]

Thanks Vincent. A site I frequent for speed tests also offers reviews by zip code from different carriers. These are current daily reviews. You can also look up specific carriers as a whole.

Here’s the zip search:

http://www.dslreports.com/reviews

And here is an example of a carrier (clearwire)

http://www.dslreports.com/comments/2879

And speed tests are under tools if you’re curious:

http://www.dslreports.com/tools

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[Ken]

I recently was told that residential FIOS was going to be available via comcast in Seattle. I find that kinda hard to believe even though there are several strands of fibre (comcast and qwest) in the vault in the sidewalk in front of my house. Until Qwest and Comcast have something to shake up their complacency at their existing cash cows, I suspect nothing will change.

Comcast has used West Seattle for national trials in the past with its original roll out of cable internet in the 90’s. (I did some work on their early datacenter in the Westin building)

Concerning you repost: Knowledgeable people can see the merits and demerits of each type of access or technology for particular uses. Perhaps those of us here who have first hand knowledge of those technologies and their evolution can discuss each one in a way that those faced with choices can benefit from.

I have dealt with fiber in some of it’s earliest incarnations where splices were tedious and luck was as much a part of making a clean connection as skill. I have not owned a splice kit in years but I could probably catch up with current practices quickly and have friends who are currently in the industry.

I know DSL, Comcast MCNS/DOCSIS and even earlier doorstop tech, I wrangled nearly 1000 modems and still remember how to configure one from the command line using only AT commands via the serial port. I have another sprint aircard equipped laptop coming over later today for me to fix.

I only know Clearwire by working on some local customers networks and by their representatives which I found to either be secretive or really clueless. I know for sure that some neighborhoods had better service than others and the speed varied depending on the usual wireless constraints even though the reps and supposed techs would not admit that.

I currently use DSL via qwest and an ISP I used to work for. Others may find other methods which suit their needs better.

But of this I am sure:

Your mileage may vary.

I am waiting patiently for FTTH

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[mellaw6565]

Ken – what’s FTTH?

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[Huindekmi]

Fiber To The Home

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[mellaw6565]

Got it – thanks:) Kind of like Metamucil for your computer – lol!

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[Julie]

Hey, Ken–I used to use one of the old handset modems (the kind where you nestled your telephone handset in the foam) with a dumb terminal. I think it was about 150 baud. You could pretty much type as fast as it could send…. The 2400 baud with the AT commands was such a step up!

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[JoB]

I want to thank those who posted their thoughts .. although the thread disintegrated and got all snarky.

Hubby set up clearwire late last night. it’s fine for me.. i am what someone called a grandma user.

but he will pound on it over the next few days and we will see.

if it doesn’t work out, we will be looking for another option.

we were relatively happy with qwest DSL… sorry they don’t offer it here… but maybe we just didn’t know what we were missing.

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[Aim]

JoB – Let me know how you find it. We had GREAT service through Clearwire, which declined over time. After a few calls to tech support, I took my “modem” in to the physical store in Westwood, and they immediately found that it was old and dead. They traded it out on the spot. I now get 1300 up and 400 down, per Speedtest.net. I’m streaming video without any trouble at all. Definitely talk to the store if you run into any trouble :)

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[JoB]

According to the guy at the store, we are all supposed to be getting new modems and new service soon.

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[Author]

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