Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

sacbear.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 361 posts

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#121

Post by immibis »

It's way easier than you'd think to start an ISP - at least if you're content to only provide internet to datacenter servers. That's a competitive market. You can buy switches and routers and servers, rent colo space, rent leased lines between DCs, pay for internet access from some upstreams and IXes and sell internet access to others in the same DCs. It's still difficult but it's possible, even for an individual. And you won't make any money on that because it's a competitive market.

The real challenge is then getting that access out to all the surrounding individual homes and businesses. Laying fiber in streets or overhead can be legally difficult and it's also just a ton of physical labour.

If any millionaires or mad scientists are reading this and frustrated with their own internet access, though, please give it a try. There are tons of success stories where someone just created a small ISP to free their small town from an internet monopoly that everyone hated.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#122

Post by mschuster91 »

esseph wrote: post #63
themafia wrote: post #27

The comment at the bottom of the article I believe is correct. I believe this because our neighborhood had the same problem. One day my neighbor, frustrated beyond his capacity, and seemingly very high on something, went outside and started ripping infrastructure out by hand and damaging everything else he could find with a hammer. They came out and replaced a lot of the damaged equipment and did a few upgrades. Afte…

That's a felony in the US by the way, and most will prosecute if they have enough evidence of who it was.

Thing is, even if the neighbors saw something, they didn't see anything when the cops come knocking because everyone is most likely pissed off as well and happy someone is finally doing something that forces attention.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#123

Post by mschuster91 »

rmoriz wrote: post #80

Germany/Vodafone: A couple of years ago my DOCSIS connection that worked flawlessly for years started to fail in almost the same pattern. All reporting and support communication went nowhere, had to use the procedure by German IT/Telco regulator to cancel my contract early. It sucked because VDSL is slower but Vodafone wasn’t interested in fixing. They claim something/someone in the curb is interfering but neither tr…

I don't call Vodafone Würgdafone for no reason lol.

When on a business contract it's ok, but private contracts? Oh hell have they been plagued with scandals.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#124

Post by immibis »

altairprime wrote: post #83
HumanOstrich wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article, it happens on a very specific set of intervals. That's not an RF issue. Downgrading/replacing the device isn't a solution.

There was an irregularly but often transmitting radio antenna tower fifty feet from my home, and the outage duration when an outage occurred was precisely the same each time, because Docsis is very carefully specified in how it starts up. (Don’t remember the duration, sorry.) The outage interval varied based on antenna usage; if OP is suffering a similar circuit break, a continuous transmitter nearby could certainly…

If that's a ham antenna, go talk to the guy and he might know some tricks for either shielding your connection (doubt that's possible though), pressuring Comcast, or else at least making an effort to avoid frequencies that interfere with your internet.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#125

Post by bmacho »

bcraven wrote: post #93
stingraycharles wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think this is a lazy criticism that I am _also_ growing tired of. If LLMs are trained on written information, that pattern of speech was present before they got there. It's a good way to add emphasis.

Was present, so what? It was 1 in 1 million, now it's 999999999 in 1 million. It is perfectly valid getting really tired of it, in fact, this is exactly what "getting really tired of" means and has always meant.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#126

Post by vedmed »

stingraycharles wrote: post #119
vedmed wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used AI to analyze the log for patterns and to make the charts.

You do you, but the least you can do is either not reply, or admit that you used AI to write the copy as well.

I'm not a data analyst. Almost everything pertaining to data analysis of the log is perplexity labs.

I'm also not a journalist and the article I wrote didn't sound professional and was too long. So I had AI change it to have a professional tone and structure and then edited it.

I'm also not an artist and I had AI generate a picture of a bear reading a newspaper. Then I used krita to remove the background and make it transparent.

I also asked the AI to generate 10 headlines, it gave me this one:

How a monopoly ISP weaponizes support incompetence against technical customers

    Calls out systemic issue, appeals to HN's anti-monopoly sentiment
Then I changed it to:

How a monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

Yes I leveraged expertise from three fields outside of my skillset to simplify a task, bounce back ideas, and conclude with a superior end result. It was demonstrably effective and it would have been stupid to spend 4x the effort to receive zero traction.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#127

Post by Kim_Bruning »

stingraycharles wrote: post #87
mh- wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was merely pretty sure that the comment was AI generated as I read it. After reading it, I became a lot more confident when I noticed the username above the comment: Gemini 3 . Is this a Wordpress plugin the blog author is using?

[flagged]

These days it could also be a human being who has been talking with AI. People pick up the lingo of the they're talking with.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#128

Post by HumanOstrich »

altairprime wrote: post #111
HumanOstrich wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outages mostly happened at very specific times during the hour (:29 and :44) for 17 months. It just doesn't add up to being RF interference, especially from a radio tower. But if OP has a radio tower 50 feet from their home, I guess we could consider it. How did you know when the radio tower was transmitting?

The value here is “triage experiment: try an older modem”. If it reveals something, now they’re not stuck. If it fails in the same way, no knowledge is gained.

According to the article (again), he was using his own Xfinity-approved modem. I doubt his neighbor was also using the same model.

There's no point in performing random experiments if you've already ruled out those causes in some way. It would also require either renting a modem temporarily or buying one.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#130

Post by [deleted] »

vedmed wrote: post #126
stingraycharles wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do you, but the least you can do is either not reply, or admit that you used AI to write the copy as well.

I'm not a data analyst. Almost everything pertaining to data analysis of the log is perplexity labs. I'm also not a journalist and the article I wrote didn't sound professional and was too long. So I had AI change it to have a professional tone and structure and then edited it. I'm also not an artist and I had AI generate a picture of a bear reading a newspaper. Then I used krita to remove the background and make it…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN