OT: VERY SIMPLE HOME NETWORK

[Bill Vermillion]

When asked his whereabouts on Mon, Dec 27 18:58 , Fairlight took the 
fifth, drank it, and then slurred: 

> When asked his whereabouts on Mon, Dec 27, 2004 at 05:38:53PM -0500, GCC
> Consulting took the fifth, drank it, and then slurred:
> > Mark,

> > As you are aware, I have Cablevision's broadband service which is fiber
> > to the house.

> > My downstream connection speed is better then 5 Mbs. However,
> > today I am running a bit slow, 1.6Mbs. More then likely it
> > will be back to "normal" a bit later in the evening.

> Right, but you're subject to the segment's limitations on
> cable. During peak hours you can get really downgraded
> performance.

I think that my be part of an "old wive's tale" that doesn't
apply to modern cable systems. A company who came into a
client of mine to build a video system and take over all their
networking [ who have since been declared persona non grata
after non-performance] told the client they needed to get off of
cable and onto DSL as cable would slow down in the afternoon and
evening when everyone started using it.

I usually measured about 2Mb/sec almost all the time. Any
slowness was usually the target site. And RoadRunner in this area
has improved their infrastructure with better peering so things
are faster this year than they were last year. With all the fibre
in the newer cable networks you don't see those problems.

The hardware and routers driving all of this are getting better and
better.  Providers moved from Cisco to Juniper and others and now
everyone is faster - and the newest Cisco carrier switches are
in the high terabit range - with prices into 7 figures.

If you think of the cable at the typical 2Mbs that is certainly a
lower bandwidth than the the 23HD channels on locally.  Normal
video is in the 2Mb range with Mpeg2. I don't know the typical BW
specs for HD.

Locally the VOD [video on demand] pay channels have been augmented
with free VOD on A&E, BBS America, Cartoon Network, CNN, Comedy
Central, Court TV, DIY, FOod, Kids, HGTV and music on demand.
If you dont' count the pay movies, the pay sports channels there
are about 225 channels.  With an avarage of 20 different choices on
each of the VOD freebies you are at about 350 channels and throw in
about 50 music channel and 23 HD channels you can see that there is
a very large capacity in the systems.  All metal systems would be
straining, but the hybrids aren't having problems at all.


> Now, the same is true of DSL, with the ATM cloud (which it is,
> more or less...) at the DSLAM. However, it's far less likely to
> show significant impact compared to cable from the people with
> whom I've spoken on the subject. Probably the most you'd ever
> drop on DSL -should- be about 20KB/sec. I've never seen a drop
> more than 10 that wasn't explainable by other factors (weather,
> etc.). Cable...I've heard people say their 3mbit cable drops
> down to as slow as a v.90 modem. :(

They could be on an older system.  The cable systems and the telcos
are going head to head getting things faster and faster.  Telcos
are worried that cable is going to take over the phone services,
and the telcos are offering everything that cable used to.
BellSouth has a package that includes local, long distance, DSL,
and DirecTV. IOW if you have any wires installed anywhere you want
to offer everything.  The BS has a promo rate of $9.95 for DSL for
the first 6 months when you sign up for year with the final 6
months going to full rate.

> And then there's my brother's university. Oh boy. He said
> downloading and definitely gaming performance used to be
> okay, but things went to hell. Looking at their route, I can
> see why. They come into the main state-wide network and his
> particular university is THREE whole ATM clouds in from that
> level, including going through one other university's main ATM
> cloud--and if any of them is congested, everything downstream
> of the log jam gets hosed. Their "network engineers" need their
> heads examined. I'm surprised you can get -anything- through to
> them, honestly. The topography was -not- pretty.

When you get into University and education arenas a lot of things
come into play including politics besides money.

When it comes to carrier grade in the last year or so the local
Level 3 facility has upgraded all their OC-192 connections to 
OC-768, and who knows where they will be in a couple of years.
As the speed increases you'll be able to run filePro remotely and
have it almost as fast as on a local Unix system.

That means the 10Gb links are now 40Gb and there are dozens and
dozens of them.

And there is no sign of things doing anything except getting faster
and faster.

This of course is far from the orignal topic of "A VERY SIMPLE HOME
NETWORK"

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com