[10844] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Two-way Internet service from Continental Cable?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Karl Denninger)
Sat Mar 12 03:33:51 1994
From: karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger)
To: sundar@ai.mit.edu (Sundar Narasimhan)
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 23:34:19 -0600 (CST)
Cc: fidelman@civicnet.org, jmm@merit.edu, merit.com-priv@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <9403112356.AA08255@fiber-one> from "Sundar Narasimhan" at Mar 11, 94 06:56:20 pm
>
> >Two-way amplifiers on the cable. It lets them do essentially ethernet
> >over cable.
> Yup -- actually I heard 4 ethernets over a 6MHz cable channel.
>
> But I was disappointed with the pricing. 100$/month for metro access (read
> other CCTV customers) 125$ for internet access. However, this is just
> for ONE computer in your home. If you have a little subnet running at
> home (now -- let's see now, how many of us are there), the price jumps
> to 1K$/month for routing stuff.
>
Are you surprised by this? Further, there is a problem with this setup --
you are on a broadband connection, which means it effectively <is> an
Ethernet -- that is, you are sharing the wire from the repeater to the house.
This means that you're working with a shared MAC arrangement, and thus the
<actual> bandwidth you can expect is not really the entire thing. The
level of engineering is very, very important, as well as how and when they
decide to split areas to have more segments.
Like Frame Relay with a CIR of "0" that is unadvertised (unless you know
to ask about CIRs, and what they mean), in a sense, unless you have
contractual guarantees (ie: a CIR of more than "0").
Is it a bad deal? Probably not. But is it one that a few people will be
"surprised" by? I bet so. I have long advised people on the possible
perils of Frame Relay service, and the first question anyone should ask in
that case is "what's the CIR of my tail circuit AND your backbone".
Signalling rates are irrelavent if you're overcommitted.
In this case it is harder to evaluate, since there is no such thing as a
bandwidth reservation. It will be interesting to see what real people get
in real applications using this technology once it comes online for real.
--
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Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.COM) | MCSNet - Full Internet Connectivity (shell,
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