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A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

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Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#311

Post by driverdan »

icedchai wrote: post #216
ksec wrote: post #173

I am reading this and thinking why does it sound familiar. And then only learned Xfinity means Cable / DOCSIS. Edit: I wish the title could be edited as Cable ISP. It is a common problem with DOCSIS! And has been the case since 1.0 era. DO NOT use Cable if you can. It happens when it is over subscribed, as well as other radio interference. Although common cause is over subscription. You may actually try downgrading y…

I had packet loss on my DOCSIS connection for years, on-and-off. The upstream speed would also regularly drop below a megabit. It became a problem for remote work. I complained regularly, and always had "techs" come out. They would usually claim it was my splitter or my modem. I suggested they go outside and test the line from the street. They'd then confirm the loss was present on the line outside, then escalate it…

> Eventually I was able to get the HOA to allow fiber into the neighborhood.

Crazy that you needed someone's permission to get fiber.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#312

Post by [deleted] »

massysett wrote: post #259
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder why we cant mandate Optical Fibre as standard as well. The incumbents have been lobbying against this heavily, winning state laws banning municipalities from setting up their own fiber in some places.

Why should optical fiber be standard? I want reliable, speedy network connectivity. It’s up to my network provider to determine the best means to do that. I don’t care if it’s tin can and string if it provides the service I need.

[deleted]

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#313

Post by immibis »

Nextgrid wrote: post #250
immibis wrote: post #121

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. An…

Hosting and connectivity by itself is a really efficient cash incinerator - the only way out is to use it as a loss leader and then upsell the customers on other services, or sell them the connectivity as part of a greater package (you're no longer selling "connectivity" you're selling "we maintain and make sure your web service stays online and reachable").

I'm estimating you'll make a profit once you figure out a way to plug thousands of individual homes into your loss-making backbone, and execute on it.

However, the incumbent monopoly might lower prices and improve service quality to match yours. Which is almost mission accomplished, except for the losses you'll be making...

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#314

Post by ptidhomme »

LeonM wrote: post #174

Story time! I've had a very similar problem with my cable internet circa 2010. It must have been DOCSIS 3.0. Multiple times a day my connection would stop working completely. The modem's 'connected' and 'carrier up' and 'carrier down' lights were on, and I had LAN communication with the modem, but no data would pass though on the WAN side. From the management page of the modem (I later learned you weren't supposed to…

Man, I remember when you told this story some years ago, and I still very much like it ! (I have an hnrss.org feed with all comments mentioning OpenBSD, so, I was bound to catch it).

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#315

Post by evilmonkey19 »

Im from Spain and Im surprised. Do you still use copper? Here everything is fiber. Cheaper, stable, good and the cabinets are (most of the times) secured. Im not saying we are better because we have many issues (no ipv6 for instance) but It surprises me how few isp options you have in US. Doesnt the government force ISPs to being you good internet?

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#316

Post by xp84 »

bavell wrote: post #228
xp84 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, here in the US there are geographically tiny pockets in a few major cities that have actual fiber. Most of the country, including a shocking number of dense urban areas outside the east coast, has zero fiber penetration. Of our two telephone monopolies, one installed fiber for 10 years and quit (the East Coast one), and the other basically never installed fiber to the home. So anyway, outside that lucky group w…

This talking point may be a bit outdated now... I'm in a small suburban area in the southeast with 5Gb fiber available from AT&T. Around 500k in my municipal area (50k in the city proper).

Idk but I’m still waiting for AT&T to get off their butts, as is most of my county. And this is a nearly fully urbanized county, basically no rural areas here at all, and all the cities touch.

AT&T is allergic to capex and even if they changed their mind recently they waited an unforgivably long time (20 years!) to start. They and their predecessors were happy to take all those sweet subsidies for doing so in the 90s though.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#317

Post by vedmed »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #245
terminalshort wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing that we now live in a world where AI can instantly an accurately diagnose a network infrastructure problem, but you are still forced to talk to CS drones who tell you again and again "have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?"

Going off on a tangent now, but man, I wish when you called support you could go through a quick technical competency test, and your results dictated who you got support from. Nailing dense questions about network infrastructure? You get to the engineering team. Failing to know what the "G" in 2.4GHz means? You probably just need someone to tell you to restart your router.

This is actually a great idea. For the consumer. Not for a monopoly ISP which can ignore every issue and collect checks.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#318

Post by vedmed »

op00to wrote: post #195
netruk44 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago I lived in an apartment with intermittent connection issues. I phoned xfinity support who said they’d send a tech out at no cost to me. The tech comes, finds bad connections in the shared external apartment box, fixes them, leaves without entering my apartment. Xfinity sends me a support bill for the tech. I call xfinity support to complain saying they said the tech would be free. The support agent says the…

Twitter support escalation worked in the mid 2010s, but basically now the only effective escalation is to send a letter via overnight mail to the CEO office. This has worked for me for major ISPs, cell phone companies, furniture retailers, hell - even the government after some vital records I asked to get duplicates of came unreadable 5 times in a row.

How do you get the CEO's office address?

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#319

Post by vedmed »

thallium205 wrote: post #301

The author lists Starlink at 100mb/s down but I'm consistently getting around 400mb/s these days with the high performance dish and a commitment of gigabit speeds next year. He's got options.

Starlink would have be double natted and I couldn't run my server cluster nor my vpn. And it would have high latency.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#320

Post by vedmed »

supportengineer wrote: post #221

This post tells me that I could leave the Bay Area and move to Sacramento and buy a much better cheaper house and still be able to find smart technical people. I also recently dumped Xfinity cable modem service. It was reliable for 10 years and then all of a sudden it wasn’t.

That's exactly what I did.
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