Tag Archives: broadband

Marriot Residence Inn Speed Test #2

2007.06.03 – 6:38 pm PDT

I am again staying at the Costa Mesa Marriot Residence Inn while here in California. Quite bored, and with a lack of anything better to do, it’s [tag]speed test[/tag] time.

Apart from staying in a different building, the main difference this time is I brought my La Fonera with me so I wouldn’t need to be tethered to anything. The last time I was completely unable to get the Ethernet working, and only able to use the USB port to function. This time the ethernet is working just fine, and I had to use my laptop to get the La Fonera up and connected.

The internet access here, like most, uses a web based captive portal to force you to read and accept something. It also asks a couple questions, like would you prefer to have a public IP address? The La Fonera is obviously not going to be able to answer any of the questions, so it just sits there. Being unable to talk to the world, something inside of the La Fonera also triggered the captive portal for the encrypted “myplace” SSID, which then makes it impossible to use the [tag]wifi[/tag] to enable the internet access for the room. At this point I decided to use an extremely helpful Linux utility, macchanger, and switch the laptop Ethernet mac address to my La Fonera’s. I then went through the captive portal, gave myself a public IP address, restarted the interface, and it was gravy. I plugged the Ethernet and power back into the La Fonera, and a couple minutes later I was in business. It’s almost been 24 hours since starting this session, so soon again I will have to go through the portal. Maybe this time the La Fonera captive portal won’t trigger.

Enough background story on to the numbers.

speed test image San Francisco, CA
speed test image Palo Alto, CA, USA
speed test image Los Angeles, CA, USA
speed test image Parsippany, NJ, USA

Note: There is a huge difference in speed compared to my last stay.

speed test image Miami, FL, USA
speed test image Palo Alto, CA, USA

[tags]boredom, hotel, broadband, California, travel, Costa Mesa, Marriot, notes, Residence Inn, speed test, Internet Access[/tags]

By px | Posted in internet, notes, travel | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

my thoughts on broadband.

2007.05.18 – 6:37 pm PDT

“What speed is really Broadband for you?”

Our CPU’s are much faster year by year and all this new user generated content has to come from somewhere. Let the users be free of their upload constraints!

Here’s my semi un-formulated explanation for what I feel should be considered “broadband” today and tomarrow:

I’m quite complacent having not used dial-up in almost 10 years. My first 1.5mbps symmetrical DSL line in 1998 was great, and inexpensive. Even @Home back in the day, provided 10mbit symmetrical for a good price. Nowadays these 8mbps/512kbps cable speeds are expensive and slow. In a perfect world all internet connections would be symmetrical. In this reality upload speed should be minimally 1/4 of your download.

I have a pretty old Ethernet hub from the early 90’s, it’s a 10mbit hub. Today, a 10mbit asymmetrical internet connection should be termed Broadband for cable, and DSL customers. For those of us lucky enough to live in an area with Fiber Optics, 45mbit asymmetrical, with minimally 1/3 available for upload.

Now, in about another year or so, the port cost of 1gbit home switches should transition to where 10/100mbit switches are in price. Spending $40 to get 8ports is a deal today. The lower cost in the near future will then make it a standard on most every computer bought. There by signaling ISP’s to turn up the juice, and that the term broadband needs an upgrade to 90mbit symmetrical. and a minimum speed of 45mbit asymmetrical for transitioning providers, or about 1/4 of the available bandwidth for a 100mbit Full Duplex Ethernet. Again if your lucky enough to live near fiber, then 125-200mbit with 1/3 upload speeds.

[tags]broadband, internet, Internet Service Providers, blogs, commenting, Ethernet, asymmetrical, full duplex, symmetrical, Digital Subscriber Line, cable, fiber optics, user generated content, transitioning, bullshit, home networking, upload speed, download speed, $40[/tags]

By px | Posted in blogs, internet, technology | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Marriott Residence Inn Costa Mesa Internet Speed Test

2007.02.13 – 11:52 pm PST

My dad and I have both been having pretty silly issues with the supposed High Speed Internet here where we are staying.
From having to re-login to their captive portal every 24 hours, even if your in the middle of something, drag ass slow access to my dad’s work VPN. OK, so I think the internet here is only fractionally better than dialup. It’s a stretch, but for the most part very true. I hate how companies can get away with saying Broadband is anything faster than 192kbps on average. Just because you can use the service with an ethernet cable or fancy USB connection doesn’t mean anything unless the bandwidth can make a dent in the size of it’s upstream pipe.

The internet here sucks, but at least it’s internet. (I couldn’t be writing this without it.) The connection is provided by a DSL modem/router which is in the room, which my guess goes to a wiring closet somewhere on the hotel premises next to some possibly ancient looking PBX that looks like HAL 9000. The Ethernet connection from the device works only on my dad’s laptop. Fortunately the Elastic DSL device has a USB port, which Linux happily recognizes as an Ethernet adapter.

[   31.976260] eth1: register 'cdc_ether' at usb-0000:00:03.0-1, CDC Ethernet Device, 00:30:52:05:c4:3c

Using the Ethernet on my dad’s laptop only links up at 10mbps Half-Duplex. The link from the DSL to where it goes, is very slow, both up and down stream.

[note: Thanks to the internet here, I just lost what I've written since my last draft save, bah. Hopefully broadband reports won't mind me redoing the tests.]

Their speed test comes in two flavors; Java Speed Test, and also in a Flash Speed Test. On the Java page, it notes. “Unlike FLASH based speed-tests, our upload payload cannot be compressed, so it gives the correct result even on satellite or wireless connections.” Basically do not trust it’s readings. So stick with the Java one for more correct numbers. I also forgot to copy some of the data I wanted from each speed test. Ohwell.

Palo Alto, California

Miami, Florida
Down/Up
178 / 692 (Kbps)
(21.7 / 84.5 KB/sec)

New Jersey, USA
21 / 521 (Kbps)
(2.6 / 63.6 KB/sec)

Ok, well since I mentioned it earlier, here is my results from the Flash based speed test.


Running a traceroute from my home machine to the public IP address I was assigned, is alright until it hits their firewall as it seems. Most likely blocking incoming traceroutes.

 $ traceroute 216.132.2.226
traceroute to 216.132.2.226 (216.132.2.226), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
 1  XXm0n0wallXX (192.168.48.1)  0.250 ms  0.228 ms  0.217 ms
 2  10.241.64.1 (10.241.64.1)  10.712 ms  8.736 ms  11.765 ms
 3  ip68-0-128-141.tc.ph.cox.net (68.0.128.141)  11.967 ms  10.276 ms  7.982 ms
 4  68.2.13.154 (68.2.13.154)  10.062 ms  14.038 ms  11.619 ms
     MPLS Label=350896 CoS=0 TTL=1 S=1
 5  68.2.13.134 (68.2.13.134)  14.493 ms  12.933 ms  16.501 ms
     MPLS Label=235032 CoS=0 TTL=1 S=1
 6  * 68.2.13.26 (68.2.13.26)  14.571 ms  22.003 ms
     MPLS Label=173265 CoS=0 TTL=1 S=1
 7  * * *
 8  chnddsrj02-ae2.rd.ph.cox.net (68.2.14.5)  15.999 ms  21.430 ms  27.875 ms
 9  68.1.0.232 (68.1.0.232)  29.104 ms  29.012 ms  30.435 ms
10  ge-6-3-0.mpr1.lax9.us.above.net (64.125.13.65)  30.232 ms  28.158 ms  29.797 ms
11  ge-1-0-0.core1.lax.megapath.net (209.249.11.149)  28.261 ms  29.489 ms  27.028 ms
12  155.229.123.208 (155.229.123.208)  54.352 ms  88.281 ms  136.522 ms
     MPLS Label=3066 CoS=0 TTL=1 S=1
13  giga0-0-0.sna-e100.gw.epoch.net (155.229.101.130)  46.077 ms  43.008 ms  43.916 ms
     MPLS Label=3583 CoS=0 TTL=1 S=1
14  206-135-10-18.sna-e100.cust.gw.epoch.net (206.135.10.18)  79.464 ms  65.763 ms  50.747 ms
15  * * *

After attempting to traceroute to my machine from this SlowSpeed, we can see it truly is blocking them. What a crock.

$ traceroute px.ns1.net
traceroute to ip68-225-53-142.tc.ph.cox.net (68.225.53.142), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
 1  198.18.0.1 (198.18.0.1)  726.732 ms  239.889 ms  57.909 ms
 2  * * *
 3  * *

Ohwell, that’s enough of this. I’m tired, and should start thinking about trying to sleep.

[tags]internet, speed tests, costa mesa, California, Marriott, residence inn, DSL, broadband, narrowband, traceroutes, boredom, hotel[/tags]

By px | Posted in internet, notes, travel | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

The Limits of SpongeBob SquarePants

2004.10.05 – 3:54 pm PDT

One Canadian’s Wireless Neighborhood Network Could Someday Serve Us All

By Robert X. Cringely

Like many of us, Andrew Greig put a WiFi access point in his house so he could share his broadband Internet connection. But like hardly any of us, Andrew uses his WiFi network for Internet, television, and telephone. He cancelled his telephone line and cable TV service. Then his neighbors dropped-by, saw what Andrew had done, and they cancelled their telephone and cable TV services, too, many of them without having a wired broadband connection of their own. They get their service from Andrew, who added an inline amplifier and put a better antenna in his attic. Now most of Andrew’s neighborhood is watching digital TV with full PVR capability, making unmetered VoIP telephone calls, and downloading data at prodigious rates thanks to shared bandwidth. Is this the future of home communications and entertainment? It could be, five years from now, if Andrew Greig has anything to say about it.
…

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040930.html

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FIBER! Fiber to the Home comming to Huntington Beach!

2004.07.19 – 2:37 pm PDT

Wow I wish I still lived in HB.
__________________________

Verizon Communications has stepped up its battle against cable operators with plans to debut a broadband-over-fiber service later this summer.

The service, called Fios, will be launched in Keller, Texas, and later parts of southern California and Florida, the company said Monday. At up to 30mbps (megabits per second), Fios is a quantum leap compared with Verizon’s DSL (digital subscriber line) service, which runs at a maximum of 1.5mbps.

Fios can reach these speeds because it’s based on fiber-optic lines that serve Internet access at a much higher clip than the traditional copper wires that support DSL.

Verizon also unveiled plans to sell cable television over the speedy Fios connection in 2005, boosting its strategy of offering customers a triple pack of services–voice calls, video and broadband–sold at discounted prices if purchased in a bundle. Cable operators have been using their own “triple play” strategy for several years to woo customers away from Verizon and the three other regional Bell operating companies

The launch of Fios opens a new front in a war between the Bells and the cable industry. Both sides are trying to lure the millions of Americans who are upgrading from slow dial-up services to speedier broadband connections. Cable leads in overall broadband market share, but the Bells have kept pace largely through aggressive DSL discounts and promotions.

Some of the Bells, such as Verizon and SBC Communications, see fiber as an answer to their problems. The Federal Communications Commission plans to allow the Bells to invest in fiber without requiring them to share their infrastructure with third parties, as is the case with copper wire networks. For many years, the Bells have protested that the line-sharing rules on copper wire networks are unfair, because cable companies are not required to share their lines.

Of the four Bells, Verizon is considered the furthest along with its fiber plans. It reiterated on Monday its goal of reaching 1 million homes and offices by the end of the year, with a third coming from expansion in Huntington Beach, Calif.; Tampa, Fla., and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas.

“Fiber from Verizon is coming down their streets and heading straight for their doors, and the excitement in these communities is building,” Paul Lacouture, president of Verizon’s network services group, said in a statement.

Fios will be only slightly more expensive than Verizon’s DSL plans, even though it will be much faster, and Verizon will supply the modems needed to make the switch to fiber, a company representative said.

A 2mbps to 5mbps Fios connection will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon’s local and long-distance telephone service. The service will cost $40 if purchased alone. A connection of up to 15mbps is available for $45 a month if purchased as part of the same telephone service bundle, or $50 alone. The company did not reveal pricing for the 30mbps plans.

http://news.com.com/Verizon%27s+fiber+race+is+on/2100-1034-5275171.html?part=dht&tag=ntop

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Bad Behavior has blocked 836 access attempts in the last 7 days.

>>>>>>> .r246