Author Archives: Jesse

Caps Without Meaning: Japanese Telco NTT Caps Uploads at 30GB… Per Day

By | |
3 Comments

It seems like caps are popping up all over. Comcast, Time Warner, Sprint and Verizon Wireless all have talked about or instituted caps that make users weep, wail and gnash teeth. Now that Japanese telco NTT is getting into the business of caps, we have to wonder if it's just trying to make American ISPs look silly. Their plan? Cut you off after 30GB per dayof upload with unlimited downloads.

What the deuce? That's nearly a terabyte of uploaded data each month, more than even a heavy BitTorrent user is likely to stack up. The implication is that some users, who are shelling out a cool $42/month for a 100Mbps line, are exceeding it by enough to be causing a problem. Meanwhile, US ISPs keep on boosting speeds to make you reach the caps even faster than before.

Apparently the secret sauce in avoiding really small caps is to invest in infrastructure. Verizon's FIOS has no caps and neither do French FTTH providers. XMission offers a generous 500GB soft cap per month on UTOPIA. It's time to get on the fiber bandwagon, guys, instead of pretending that you are.

ICANN has .cheezburger: New TLDs Approved for Sale

By | |
1 Comment

ICANN decided to open a virtual Pandora's Box and approve the sale of any domain name that can be dreamed of. While it's no secret that the existing domain space is really REALLY crunched, letting imagination run wild seems to just be another invitation for spammers and phishers to snap up domains by the thousands. It should also be noted that a fair number of anti-spam and e-mail verification systems depend on a known list of valid domains to help speed up lookup times. I'm also wondering how the DNS root is going to look now. There's already been concern that the root servers are heavily taxed and adding a significant number of new registrations is going to make DNS much trickier.

The move is intended as a revenue generator. Companies can pay anywhere from $100K to $500K for the privilege of being the sole registrar of their own TLD. There are some important restrictions: no copyright violations and squatting, nothing similar to an existing TLD (no typo-squatting), no registrations for communities or companies that don't exist and the ever-nebulous nothing immoral. There's also an application and review process.

I would note that the last attempts at creating new TLDs was a fail. Almost as soon as they were introduced, .biz and .info were overwhelmed with cybersquatters, spammers and all kinds of nefarious elements. TLDs like .travel haven't taken off either (yuk, yuk). Despite a run on .com, .net and .org addresses, many companies have gotten creative by using international domains (last.fm, del.icio.us, etc.) and creative company names (Flickr, Meebo, etc.).

Not all is bad, however. ICANN also voted to move forward on allowing domains with non-Latin characters including Chinese characters or the Cyrillic alphabet. I'm sure there's a lot of non-western countries who are pleased as punch at the idea of having domains in their native tongue. And domain tasting? Arrowed! Apparently the spammers would keep on passing a tasted domain back and forth between entities, keeping the domain locked up for months or years without paying a dime for it.

Anyone who operates network equipment should be doing some upgrades Real Soon Now(TM) to avoid problems in the future. Adding UNICODE support and ditching reliance on a fixed list of valid TLDs would be highly recommended.

Mstar Customers on iProvo Lose Phone Service Because Mstar Didn't Pay Their Bills

By | | ,
34 Comments

In an unbelievable move, around 200 Mstar customers on iProvo have been without phone service since Friday after New Global Telecom, the VoIP provider that Mstar uses, cut them off. NGT claims that Mstar is behind on their payments for iProvo customers and that UTOPIA customers are not affected. John Hansen, Mstar's interim president, says the claims of non-payment are bunk and blames the problem on iProvo customer service staff.

Broadweave managed to do an emergency transition of most of the affected customers to their network but it is still struggling with the last 200 or so. Phone customers are still able to receive calls and place 911 calls, according to NGT. Customer experiences have been mixed with some reports that the customer service lines are busy and others saying that they've been able to get through. For some odd reason, Broadweave's PR consultant has stated that they're waiting for the affected customers to call them to get the issue sorted out instead of aggressively trying to contact those customers.

While this problem isn't Broadweave's creation, it's their baby now. Mstar doesn't have much incentive to make sure the transition is a smooth one and can easily put egg on Broadweave's face by dropping a problem in their lap that they don't quickly resolve. It makes you wonder how many customers will unbundle services even if it costs more money to do so.

NGT also claimed in their statements that Mstar would be selling off the phone customers on UTOPIA to another provider. Obviously, UTOPIA can't comment one way or the other and there's nothing from Mstar to confirm or deny that claim. Any insiders want to clarify this in the comments?

(Read more from the Daily Herald. h/t: Capt. Video and Thomas Perry for sending along the stories.)

The Need for Speed: Comcast, Verizon Start Boosting Bandwidth

By | |
1 Comment

The race for the speed crown continues as Verizon rolls out 50Mbps/20Mbps service to all of its current FIOS customers. The super-fast tier of service comes at a price of around $150/month, not far off from what Qwest is charging for inferior 20Mbps/896Kbps DSL service. This also prepares Verizon for a fight to the death in the Lone Star State with AT&T's inferior U-Verse service where it plans to overbuild to 600,000 homes in the GTE territories it purchased. I'm sure Qwest is sweating as well; it also borders several Verizon markets and can't compete on speed either.

Comcast also made some speed announcements, bumping upload speeds on the 6Mbps and 8Mbps tiers to 1Mbps and 2Mbps respectively. I've independently speedtested this claim and found that I'm getting a solid 1.3Mbps of upload on my 6Mbps plan. While the plan is to roll out 50Mbps service in multiple markets after testing in the Minneapolis area, that will also come with all kinds of protocol-agnostic throttling and potentially a 250GB monthly transfer cap.

Despite all this increased speed, we're still doing terribly in broadband availability and adoption. OECD numbers show us slipping to 15th out of 30 with China stealing the crown from us for most fixed broadband connections. Caps and throttling are also going to prove highly unpopular as we approach a new variant of Moore's Law that shows IP traffic doubling every two years through at least 2012. Maybe its time for companies to respond to consumer demand for more bandwidth instead of trying to smother it with a pillow, you know?

Clearwire Promises Open Network; Is This the Mythical Third Pipe?

By | | ,
2 Comments

Everyone was buzzing about the prospect of a wide-open network during the 700MHz auction (don't hold your breath on Verizon making good on it), but Clearwire is giving it to us now. The company, a joint venture with Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner and others, is promising open everything on its new WiMax network. Bring your own device? Check. Use any application? Check. Pick your own retailer? Check, and that's the real measure of the open network.

Continue reading →

Website Updates: WordPress 2.5.1, bbPress 0.9.0.2

By | |
Leave a comment

Since the old forums have stopped working and WordPress was badly out of date, I decided it was time to do some big upgrades. The website is now running on WordPress 2.5.1 instead of 2.1.3 and I’ve updated a bunch of plugins to match.

Bigger news is that I’ve ditched the old phpBB forums in favor of bbPress after we heard from a responsive web design in Perth Australia company telling us all this information. It’s from the guys at WordPress and seems to be a much more modern and clean design inside and out. It also has the most excellent Akismet spam protection, an area where phpBB just flat-out stinks. Unfortunately, all of the old posts and user accounts registered for phpBB will not be migrated. There wasn’t much content and the pain involved in figuring out how to do it? No thanks.

Let me know if you encounter any oddities with either the site or new forums. 

Shakeup at Mstar: CEO and Chief Marketing Officer Part Ways With Company

By | | , ,
22 Comments

After several rounds of laying off the rank-and-file, it looks like executives are among those now leaving the company. Mstar CEO Ben Gould and Chief Marketing Officer Kirk Tanner are no longer with the company, reportedly having departed voluntarily. The word on the street, according to the Daily Herald, is that Gould got an offer to go elsewhere whereas Tanner's status is unknown. John Hansen of Chicago Venture Partners LP, Mstar's owner, has taken over in the interim and there aren't plans in the near future to hire a new chief marketing officer.

Given their performance problems on iProvo and the decimated customer base from the sale of iProvo, it's not surprising to hear that Mstar went through some more slashing. Their plan is to re-focus on building a customer base on UTOPIA, secure additional financing and pursue opportunities on other fiber optic networks around the country. Also of note is that Broadweave offered a settlement to Mstar to get them to drop their objections to the sale of iProvo.

The question now remains: can Mstar survive? Post your thoughts in the comments. 

The Transition of iProvo Customers: A Rocky Road Ahead?

By | | ,
107 Comments

An anonymous tipster raised a lot of good points concerning the transfer of customers from Mstar to Broadweave. There's less than three weeks left until the planned cutover, yet customers haven't been getting written notice of such. Despite intense media coverage and multiple public hearings, many customers could be left without any idea as to how to obtain technical support or change services. It's also concerning when you consider that the FCC requires at least 30 days written notice when changing channel lineups or pricing, the former of which is highly likely and the latter of which is already confirmed.

Internet customers are likely to be the most widely affected. Mstar customers with static IP addresses are certain to see a change as I'm sure that Mstar did not also sell their valuable assignments from ARIN. Broadweave will also need at least 40 class C assignments from ARIN to provide enough IP addresses just for existing customers, yet they currently have only 12 and is probably using most of them in Traverse Mountain. Veracity has around 16, though a large number of those are likely already soaked up by customers on UTOPIA, Off-Campus Communications and their business customers over Qwest's network. Nuvont doesn't even have a whole class C to bring to the table.

All in all, they're falling VERY short of the necessary IPs to run the network. The only way they'll have enough is if iProvo is also selling the rights on their IP assignments, a chunk of over 70 class C blocks. There's no documentation on the Provo City website to show one way or the other if that asset is part of the deal, but it would be foolish for the city to include it in this environment of tightening IPv4 assignments without a nice premium. Then again, I don't think they've shown that negotiating is their specialty.

If you're a current iProvo customer who will be transitioning to Broadweave, I'd encourage you to leave your experiences in the comments section. 

Centerville Forming UTOPIA Oversight Committee

By | | , ,
5 Comments

Centerville is taking a proactive role in making sure UTOPIA's health stays under close watch by forming an advisory committee composed of both residents and city officials. The city council is currently accepting applications from residents who are interested in participating and the word on the street is that three will be chosen to help provide feedback on UTOPIA and participate in promotional efforts. If you're interested in serving on the committee, contact your city council member. If you don't get selected, there's still going to be plenty of opportunities through U-CAN. 

Time Warner Cable Starts Metering Internet Usage, Others to Follow Suit

By | |
Leave a comment

While we've known this was coming for a while now, Time Warner Cable has finally started a pilot to meter Internet usage complete with hefty overage fees. New customers in Beaumont, TX will have to put up with meager 40GB per month cap, enough for grandma and folks who do light surfing but entirely inadequate for consumers of online media, gamers, telecommuters and file-sharers. Don't want to pony up $55/mo for the highest tier of service? You could get a cap as low as 5GB per month. Overages will run $1 per GB while many retail hosting providers charge less than $0.50 for the same amount of transfer.

They aren't the only ones either. AT&T is considering caps starting this fall, Qwest already boots high-bandwidth users and even Verizon is keeping its options open for download caps on the speedy new FIOS network though it has no immediate plans to do so. Comcast has also been kicking around the idea of transfer caps (albeit at a generous 250GB per month) and has, for the time being, decided on a protocol-agnostic traffic-shaping policy during peak hours only. After months of being hammered for throttling primarily file-sharers, Comcast must be ready for a respite from angry users.

It seems like the age of all-you-can-eat Internet is rapidly drawing to a close as the financial realities of unrestrained data transfer start to roost with providers unwilling or unable to invest in next-generation infrastructure. Compare this with the emergence of competitive unlimited-use cellular voice plans from Verizon, Sprint and AT&T within weeks of each other and the proliferation of unlimited-use landlines from Vonage, Comcast and Cox. I guess everything old is new again.