Gotham Communications Research

To All,

Here is an outline of a new plan for BROADBAND.

At this time, I'm looking for provider members. Provider members (PMs) are key to my proposal.

A PM is a home owner who would allow additional hardware to be installed in their residence. PMs provide the IP connectivity for their neighbors.

The plan identifies 3 types of internet connection.

o direct T1.
o node on the overlay network.
o end user wireless 802.11b


Several technologies for the overlay network shall be evaluated. An evaluation will be done to meet the following requirements.

o The overlay network will provide service to PMs that don't have a T1.

o The overlay network must be robust and equal to the reliability of a T1 line. It should provide access to multiple T1 PMs. The overlay network will solve all distance issues between T1 PMs and non-T1 PMs.

Here are some hints about how to qualify to be a Provider Member.

o Try to attend PM meetings. I need to get to know you.

o Begin talking to your neighbors.

To be a T1 PM you'll need a list of neighbors that have agreed to be serviced from your home. We will notify the comunity about this project. Individuals in your area will be directed to you for addition to your list. You can get a head start by talking to your neighbors and finding out where they stand.

The current magic number is 20. 20 homes at $50 per month = ~ 1 T1.

The T1s will be ordered and paid for by my company which may be Gotham Communications Research (GCR).

If an account falls behind it will be GCR that shuts off your neighbor so, a PM should not be a target of retribution.

There are number of policy topics to be discussed. I hope to hear from many PMs on these issues.

One last thing to get you motivated. This shall be the "real internet". There will be no usage policy that tramples free access and innovation.

This will be a very liberating alternative to the usage policy of cable providers.


-joem (Joseph Marceau)








joem@iim.com

Edited by - Joe on 11/21/2002 13:30:03

Edited by - Joe on 11/21/2002 13:41:14

Edited by - Joe on 11/21/2002 16:22:06

Edited by - Joe on 11/21/2002 16:22:49

Edited by - Joe on 11/23/2002 15:00:28

 

Joe,

Is this related at all to the Wireless network we've been discussing up to this point or is this something new to get things going? If this is unrelated to wireless, where does that leave the wireless network? Is it still a go project?

Is this Gotham Communications Research plan one that has been discussed at any of the wireless meetings?

Basically, what the heck is going on and who should we be talking to for broadband besides Adelphia?

Thanks,

Another Joe

Joseph Maloney

 

Joe,

My plan for broadlands has nothing to do with the CWC plan.
This has not been discussed at a web committee meeting. I
plan to attend the Dec 10th meeting and I'll answer
questions.

My posting is simply to declare my desire to do something
to move us forward.

-joem (joem@iim.com)

joem@iim.com

 

I'm also interested in any alternative to Adelphia. Whoever gets their initiative going first, sign me up.

Dan



Edited by - Dan on 11/24/2002 17:31:54

 

I have been contemplating broadband access for some time. After reading the Adelphia forum's trail, I'm not interested there.

Although new , I am definately interested in the GCR proposal. I'm on travel next week and can't attend the meeting, but I'll be checking back.

A novice question here...how wide an area can be serviced by a particular PM? I live in Section 13 (Truro Parish and Stillbrook/Chicocoan) and we only have ~ 60 homes in here. I need to have an idea, so I know how many neighbors I need to talk to.

Dan Crisp

Dan Crisp

 

Dan,

I've had mail bounce to your address, please send me email.

A Provider Member (PM) is an individual willing to have additional equipment installed in their home to service their neighbors. I plan to be a PM. My plan is to drill through my garage door headder area to expose a small antena (~5 inches) at the corner of my home (just below my gutter). I expect anyone on my street with a window facing my garage should receive a good signal inside their home.

All PMs should then participate in the development of a mesh network. (There is a company called mesh networks that sells equipment for this.) The goal of the mesh network is to connect PMs with other PMs. Possibly hop by hop over to a PM that has an internet connection via T1. It would be nice to have enough PMs to give each home in broadlands coverage by 2 PMs. About 30 PMs? The number of T1 PMs should be 4-8 to give the network a way to heal when we loose a T1 PM for any reason.

-joem


joem@iim.com

Edited by - Joe on 12/08/2002 16:58:51

 

I just picked up on this, and was wondering what the status was, etc. etc.

I missed the December 10th meeting, so if anyone has the minutes, or just the outcome, that would be appreciated.

However, I do have some general questions, so here goes.

The talk is of 802.11b, any idea on the equipment for the WAPS?

Are the WAPS going to be acting as bridges (I'm assuming not because wireless NIC's usually only have a range of 100')?

Is anyone considering 802.11a (as well as 802.11i (security extensions))?

Size of Antenna's? Some of the better, however slightly larger and more expensive ones have 5 mile ranges, however, they do require an FCC license to use them.

What is the CWC plan?

Thanks.

 

dgreene,

I can only speak for my plan. From the Provider Member to the end user the answer is "whatever works". I assume that a "bridge" device such as those by linksys (~$100) would work best. As an end user, I would attach my current Linksys back to back with the bridge device so I could pick WEP keys and a channel for my home. The PM would choose the channel for my street. PMs should try to get their antena external to their home. End users should place their bridge near a window. I do not know the exact foot print but I assume that a PM can cover 10 homes. If the farthest home from a PM installs a repeater the foot print for a PM could be dozens of homes. This needs to be tested but there are websites that lead me to believe that this is possible.

I expect that any mesh network between Provider Members would be 802.11a speed although the technology may be something else.

The key to success is to understand and implement everyone's role. Gotham Communications will be the company that pays for the T1s and collects money from the end users. PMs distribute bandwidth for their neighbors and connect to T1s through robust mesh network. End users should have coverage by more than 1 PM.



joem@iim.com

 

Well, that at least puts things in a bit more perspective for me.

I currently have 2 WAP11 Linksys WAP's.

The thing I do like about them the most, is that one can be put into "client" mode, in which it acts more like wireless NIC, bridging a physical network to a wireless access point.

I also run 2 Nortel WAP's at work, and they, nor can any WAP that I have encountered yet, support being both a bridge and an access point.

Given this, I'm assuming that everyone who is a PM will bridge to another PM until the network is complete to a physical network with a T.

This sounds good, however I think that the $100 linksys's might be slightly more problematic to start out with.

I live in the Miller and Smith town house development off Demott(sp?), and if I was a PM, and the next PM was in the newer section at the end of the development, we would not be able to communicate without some sort of modification to the antenna.

The Nortel WAP's that I use at the office allow for interchangeable antenna's that will give range from 500 feet, to 5 miles. However at the time of purchase, the WAP's were about $1,000 and the 5 mile antenna's were about the same price as a single WAP.

I myself would be willing to participate and experiment in this endeavor.

Is GCR going to attempt to cover the upfront costs for this (I am not familiar with GCR in any way), or will the PM's have to contribute hardware up front?

Also, what, if anything has been considered for securty?
I'm assuming that if GCR is going to handle cut off's for non payment, that there will be a form of firewall in place that will either do MAC or IP restrictions, or some sort of third party software will be required and the user will have to authenticate to gain access.

Which of course then brings the OS support (not relevant, but I am leaving the line in case someone has read this already), and security from MAC and IP spoofers etc.

I don't know if the plans are built out that far, or if it's a "we will cross that bridge when we get to it" kind of thing.

Of course, as this is a business run endeavor, I may be asking questions that are considered out of bounds, and for that I apologize in advance.


However, in the end, I'm willing to be a PM or contribute in what ever way I can.




Edited by - dgreene on 12/13/2002 15:06:19

 

Not trying to start a flame war but...

Why is everyone looking for at all these other alternatives for high-speed internet when Adelphia seems to provide the most bang for the buck?

I currently use Adelphia for my high speed internet.

Here are the results of a speed test I just ran near peak at 11:30PM:
Your download speed : 415863 bps, or 415 kbps.
A 50.7 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 131169 bps, or 131 kbps.

All of this for $45/month if you already subscribe cable TV with them ($55/month if you don't subscribe to cable TV). I would strongly suggest looking at them. They also have other plans that provide static IP addresses to you.

I have had Adelphia internet for almost a year now and I have had about 1 week of problems/downtime with them. Considering all of the stuff that company has gone through (bankrupcy/reorganization) and the amount of growth to their network in Loudoun county, 1 week of problems is a pretty good in my book. Not to mention they have really done a "180" in improving their network backbone/peering.

A T1 shared by 20 neighbors seems way oversubscribed.
Here is my calculation (assuming everyone is given an equal slice of the bandwidth since these 20 homes will be power users ):

T1 bandwidth = 1.544 Mbps
1.544 Mbps/20 homes = 77.2 Kbps per home

That is barely faster than high-speed modem (V.90 dialup is roughly 56 Kbps).

What is really so bad with Adelphia?

Wes

 

Too many things.

Adelphia will not let you run servers. We want to run our own home web servers, email, etc. You can't even run a simple game server.

Adelphia will not give you a public IP address.

Adelphia has an upload cap of 128kb, maybe 3 times modem speed. A lot of us work at home, and believe me such a slow upload is not fun while working over VPN.

Adelphia has terrible latency, especially in the last month. 200ms is not fun for both games and working from home over VPN. VPNs need low latency (20-30ms), at least for me.

Adelphia has no levels of service guarantee. They don't even have an uptime guaranteee.

And your post about T1's per subscriber is not accurate for real-world performance. Adelphia, just like every other ISP, uses about a 60 subscribers per T1 ratio.

Here is the usage log for 12 people sharing a T1 over wireless in Leesburg.
http://www.geekspeed.net/mrtg/geek-gw.html

Does it look to you like each person is always only getting 77k?

Anyhow, I'm not trying to flame you or Adelphia or anyone. Just pointing out the huge differences. Adelphia is fine for the average home user that just wants to surf the net and do the occasional downloading.

Edited by - hornerjo on 12/17/2002 08:54:33

 

What's so bad about Adelphia?

In two words: customer service.

I had a great experience with Comcast @Home when I lived in Alexandria. So, I was pleased when I found out Adelphia was offering internet service (albeit one-way only).

I had it installed, and it worked well for about 6 weeks. Then it died completely.

For five straight nights, I spent a minimum of 2 hours on hold waiting for tech support. They hemmed and hawed for another 30 - 60 minutes without fixing anything. By the third night, I was passed on to level 2 support. They tried some more stuff with no success. By the fifth night, they told me that they were unable to contact anyone in the local office. (Tech support is provided out of Buffalo, NY). They also told me that they had no way to contact the local office so I would have to find a phone number and call them myself. They then said they were closing my incident, and I was on my own.

No, I'm not kidding. They really told me I was on my own.

I uplugged the cable modem that night, and I took it into Adelphia's offices the next Saturday.

I was absolutely stunned by the lack of customer service. How could tech support not have a phone number for the local tech support guys? How could they throw up their hands and tell me I was on my own? That's not customer service. For what Adelphia charges for their service, I deserved better than that.

Oh, and I switched from Adelphia cable to DirecTV for television service. I have more channels, and it's more than $10 less per month. And the installation was considerably cheaper than Adelphia's.

So, no thanks. I'll never use Adelphia again. If a real cable company were to start service in the area, I'd consider using them. But not Adelphia. No way. No how.


Edited by - section84 on 12/17/2002 12:48:10

 

Adelphia stinks. Ive been a customer, only because its the only game in town right now, since March. There was a 3 month outage where the average download speed was 108Kbps = 13.5KBps (just over 2x dialup) with a latency of over 250ms before you left the Adelphia network. 3 MONTHS! Once they fixed that they increased their fees from $41/mo. to $53/mo.....hmmmm . Well, the connection was great until about October. Then overnight a lot of people's cable modems became unprovisioned, latency is now back up to 220ms from 30ms, and bandwidth is down from 2.8meg to 460k . Tier 1 support can personnel can barely spell their own names and Tier 2 support's brains are hardwired to always tell me that the problem is always my cable modem. Customer service is not there, and internet service is comprimised on a repeated basis for lengthy periods of time. Im looking at getting a fract. T1 put into my home now. Adelphia really stinks. Just my experiences and 2 cents.

DwArFlOrD

 

Is this vulnerability limited to Adelphia or does it also apply to other cable networks? Would this same vulnerability apply to people sharing a T1 connection, as being proposed for a high speed Internet solution? Can a software firewall, such as ZoneAlarm Pro, protect a computer from this vulnerability?

GCyr

 

John - thanks for the comments.

Here are my thoughts (sorry so long, but want to make sure I added some things and addressed some of your points).

According to Adelphia's service agreement, "You may not use Power Link Broadband Service to operate a customer-based server of any type" (http://www.adelphia.com/esafety/pdf/pl_service_agreement.pdf)

Its very vague, but customer-based server to me means something like a web server where you would sell some type of good/services to customers. Granted they block port 80 at your cable modem, you can still run a web server or game server on another port as long as you are not charging people for the goods/services contained within it.

Adelphia DOES give you a public IP address. Although it is dynamically assigned, mine hasn't changed in over a month. Because of this, I use a free dynamic updater DNS service so I can access my personal website using a DNS name. Adelphia also has pricing plans which can provide you with a static IP address.

I connect to my company intranet using VPN and it works fine. My typical ping times are less than 90ms. Why do you need such low latency of 20-30ms to use your companys VPN? I wish I had unlimited upload bandwidth, but the 128kbps cap is more than enough for uploading power point slides and large mail attachments. Other applications like databases and other bandwidth intensive applications work good as well. Even uploading a large 100Mb attachment would take less than 15 min at 128Kbps.

Which brings to my next point about poor ping times and speed tests.

So right now it is shortly after 6PM. Here is my ping results to www.google.com:
>ping www.google.com

Pinging www.google.com [216.239.39.101] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.239.39.101: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=47
Reply from 216.239.39.101: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=47
Reply from 216.239.39.101: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=47
Reply from 216.239.39.101: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=47

Ping statistics for 216.239.39.101:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 33ms, Maximum = 39ms, Average = 35ms

Here is my line speed test from DSL reports:
2002-12-17 16:10:56 EST: 705 / 125
Your download speed : 705209 bps, or 705 kbps.
A 86 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 125984 bps, or 125 kbps.

30ms ping times and 705kbps down/125kbps are great for my needs. Recently (within the past month) I have seen these same results. Could I be on a different Adelphia network segment which explains my good results?

I know there is no service level agreement regarding speed/uptime, but does that kind of level of service exist at $45/month?

Last time I had to deal with their customer service was about 3 weeks ago regarding a technical issue with my Motorola cable modem. I must of lucked out because the person I spoke with knew what they were talking about. I have dealt with some pretty bad customer service reps in the past, but my recent expierences have been much better.

I forgot to put this question in my orginial post - how much bandwidth (up and down) do you need for your web server, game server, or email server you want to run? I mean if you want to run www.yahoo.com in your basement you are going to need more than a dedicated T1

Wes

 

That security post about Adelphia is very scary, hopefully it wasn't on our subnet that was affected.

However, I think the security issue is even bigger using a wireless shared network among neighbors. Without getting into the security problems of 802.11b, say I did connect to this new service by connecting to a wireless network provided by my neighbor down the street. What prevents them from hooking a sniffer up to their router and monitoring all of my packets and the others in the neighborhood that connect through them?

Wes

 

"Its very vague, but customer-based server to me means something like a web server where you would sell some type of good/services to customers. Granted they block port 80 at your cable modem, you can still run a web server or game server on another port as long as you are not charging people for the goods/services contained within it."\

I'm sorry, but you are totally wrong. I have been dealing with Adelphia for a very long time and I know just about every single policy they have. Straight from their user agreement: (I wont post it all due to the size.

http://www.adelphia.com/esafety/violations.cfm

Server Operation:
FTP servers: Running an FTP server is a violation...

E-Mail: The operation of a mail server (SMTP/POP) on the Adelphia network is a violation...

Gaming Servers: Running a gaming server is a violation...


"Adelphia DOES give you a public IP..."

Don't get static and dynamic IPs confused. I don't care if it has not changed in a month, Adelphia does not offer static IPs to residential services. From Adelphia:


Using a static IP address:
Only the top level of Power Link service, Power Link Small Business Premier, allows the use of a static IP...


I'm not about to sign up for their Power Link Small Business Premier service just to have a single static IP. Which free DNS updater do you use? Last I heard all of them are pay now.

Heck, Adelphia doesn't even allow you to network more than one computer at home without paying an additional fee! If you are, you are in violation of the service contract! Sorry, but no way.

As for your ping times, that's great for you. I require a much lower latency for my connections and for gaming. PC Anywhere, which I run at home over the VPN to my work machine, needs the lowest latency possible. I manage several huge website and the very slow uploads for me are a problem, I'm glad they are not for you. This XMas I'll be sharing my webcam for a video conference with family members all across the US. Unfortunately due to Adelphias slow upload it can't keep up with more than 2 streams without serious degrades in quality. Last time I did it Adelphias connection could barely handle one plus voice.

Like we have said before, Adelphia is fine for the average home user. I'm glad it's working out for you.

Others of us want to run personal websites, email servers, ftp servers and whatnot. We need better service, and wireless will provide that. I'm all for any working wireless solution here.

John

---------------
Got Broadband?

 

The wording in the service agreement that we signed is still vague - bottomline. Technically running AIM, ICQ, or your webcast is also in violation becuase it is a server that listens for incoming connections to allow file transfers and other network messages. I don't see Adelphia cutting off accounts because people are running AIM or using web cams.

I am not confused on the public IP issue. We are given a dynamically assigned "Internet routable" IP address - usually something like 68.71.1.x. How is that not a public IP address? An example of a private IP address would be 10.2.3.4 or 192.168.5.6.

The free DNS updater service is http://www.dyndns.org/dyndns/ I would highly recommend them. I have used them ever since I had my cable modem with no charge.

Wes "average home user"