Recommend an ISP in Lawrence

[Matt Linzer]

Hello all,

I'll be moving back to Lawrence in a couple months and I would like to get your advice on an ISP.  I know that Sunflower will be the fastest (21Mbps/1Mbps) and has a bandwith cap (50G).  AT&T DSL is in the 6Mbps range with much lower upload speeds.  What other options are there?  What is everyone else using and what do you recommend?

A couple thoughts about our situation:
* There will be five people sharing the connection.
* Two of us work from home two days a week, so decent upload is desirable.

Looking forward to your thoughts,

--Matt Linzer

[Nick Anderson]

Matt Linzer wrote:
> I'll be moving back to Lawrence in a couple months and I would like to
> get your advice on an ISP. I know that Sunflower will be the fastest
> (21Mbps/1Mbps) and has a bandwith cap (50G). AT&T DSL is in the 6Mbps
> range with much lower upload speeds. What other options are there?
> What is everyone else using and what do you recommend?

There is also kitusa if you are in need of an actual static ip. They
piggyback on ATT so you have to have an ATT phone line to get it. There
is also freenet which bursts in the 6-7Mbps range but you cannot sustain
that kind of transfer. I would recommend ATT, u-verse is in some places
in lawrence and you can get up to 18Mbps but mostly since you wont ever
have to worry about bandwidth overages. If your a light consumer then by
all means go with sunflower. But if you have months that you stream
video, stream audio, download isos etc ... skip the sunflower bend over.

[Karl Schmidt]

I've not talked to someone using freenet as their primary that liked it -- haven't tried it my self.

KitUSA is the deal if you go static IP - I think they also offer DHCP so you don't take the BW hit
like you will from AT&Ts PPP.

They are putting in new AT&T boxes everywhere so you should be able to get a pretty short copper
length with DSL.. (kitUSA uses At&T wire)..

Every time I was almost ready to sign up with sunflower they changed something it their program that
turned me off - If you are a TV addict and not so heavy with BW usage you might like sunflower.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl Schmidt EMail Ka...@xtronics.com
Transtronics, Inc. WEB http://xtronics.com
3209 West 9th Street Ph (785) 841-3089
Lawrence, KS 66049 FAX (785) 841-0434

As a bright friend explained as to why he doesn't watch any TV;
All we have is time - best not to waste it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Steve Nordquist]

All we have is time; best to have something that can record Vimeo.
Those Aren't Muskets is some interesting skit work. It's like they
have synchronized several John Waters-alikes (the sound mixing LVL EQ
is off.)

It's Lawrence, I expected he could rent OC-48 for $120 a month (ca.
$150,000/mo. actual), or get a cellphone plan with those HDSPA
channels opened up to fake a T-1 for ...erm, under $300/mo.

[nick....@gmail.com]

I've had experience with both Freenet (as a technical volunteer,
contractor, and current user) and Sunflower (as a former user).
Here's my thoughts.

Freenet:
Pros: 6-7Mbps burstable down, 1Mbps burst up, no cap, low price,
permits laptop use anywhere in the coverage area in addition to your
regular connection, 10% of your bill is a tax deductible donation.
Cons: Coverage does not include the whole city, can't be far from a
mesh node, PePwaves are more expensive than cable modems, speed can be
variable.

Sunflower:
Pros: 21Mbps/1Mbps, more support infrastructure, business options,
guaranteed coverage within city, more stable speeds.
Cons: Caps, price, its Sunflower.

Either will give you a static IP for a price if you ask.

Freenet's speed and reliability is dependent on line-of-sight distance
to a mesh node. I have very good LOS to a node about 350 feet away,
and the signal strength meter on the 400mW AP shows "full bars." I
can pick up another mesh node also with a lower signal strength in
case the good one fails. As far as reliability goes, I've had radio
link uptime in excess of one month. A lot of their reliability
problems have been fixed so they are generally pretty good for regular
use. Its about like having DSL, but not as asynchronous.

A Sunflower business line won't have caps, but even they can have
problems. I needed trucks rolled out on a few occasions to fix
something that had broken in the vicinity of Bob Billings and
Wakarusa, but I think this was when they were performing network
upgrades in that area. On the whole though, it "just worked" and the
performance was pretty good. Running a mail server might be tricky.
With a business line you can, but you have the problem of being in a
cable modem IP range, and could be subject to blacklisting, I had this
problem.

They both have their ups and downs. Do a site survey and see what
kind of wifi signal you pick up for SSID "Freenet" around your house.
That will give you an idea whether or not it is a viable option.


-Nick

[Steve Nordquist]

Since you're bonding four peoples' use onto this thing, bonding
cablemodem and/or DSL connections doesn't sound like an awful way to
get high total bandwidth, especially if you are comfortable doing that
and possibly setting a button to optimize for that work uplink thing.
If you are willing to examine DOCSIS traffic and help manage the
health of your link to optimize segment performance, you might get a
decent offer on more suitable bandwidth and cap behaviors. Finding
waterlogged coax from a console on (or just before) a dry warm day is
good prevention work.

[Jim Ford]

I have been a Sunflower Broadband customer for a pretty long time now.  I've found the service to be quite good over the years: quick download and upload, prompt response when the network is down (usually from a storm or other natural phenomena, like hungry squirrels :) ) and a fairly reasonable price even with occasional overages on the bandwidth cap (I currently split the silver package with two roomies and we are all pretty savvy with the content downloading, plus I wfh a couple of days a week with some decently taxing throughput on the line).  That being said, I find it fundamentally pugnacious to have a bandwidth cap when so many around us have "unlimited" access to bandwidth (i.e. Kansas City Time Warner and Comcast customers).  I lived in California for a while and the high speeds with no bandwidth cap was great.  Of course, it was through a crappy 30 year old apartment complex cable line and every day between 3 and 7 pm (peak usage time?) it went down to pretty much nothing, unless the cable guy was out to look at our problem, so there are ups and downs to every situation I guess.  With that said, the way I see the breakdown around here is if you want unlimited bandwidth go with either DSL or Freenet, but buyer beware, because it will be slowwwww (no downloading from rapid share/torrents while one roommate watches the latest conspiracy theory video off of youtube and another is pwnin newbs on Halo 3).  If you want speed, then you are pretty much stuck with Sunflower.  You can get the gold package which is 50 gb a month and I think its like $5/gb over after that and I think you can even get a better deal on overage if you can plan for it (who can do that though!?) and let them know about it before hand, "Hey Sunflower, I'm gonna download the last 100 episodes of Naruto Shippuden this month, so hit me up with an extra 10 gigs."  I don't think that extra paid for bandwidth rolls over though, use it or lose it.  I'm not familiar with some of the other options mentioned and if you want a dedicated line from Sunflower I believe they want you to be a business (though that might be an old requirement, it has been several years since I looked in to it).  Also, with Freenet, you have to be in a good line of sight like Nick said.  I live in North Lawrence and the grain elevator (giant concrete and steel structure) blocks the big transmitter off of city hall and the one from campus isn't strong enough, so that was never really an option for me.  All in all, the high speed internet options around here suck pretty hard, but if you're not too picky you can get by.  Good luck with your decision and if you find a loophole somewhere or something previously not mentioned, post it to the list, because I would be interested and I'd bet a few other people on here would be as well.

Jim

P.S. - Quite a bit of the original crew that helped Sunflower get their monopoly on the Lawrence broadband are on this list, so they might be able to speak to this, but I remember reading something from a while back that said that Sunflower's orginal contract with the City of Lawrence from 1998 or so is supposed to be up soon.  I would guess that as long as the city commission doesn't vote to renew it we would see at that time some exploration in to the fiber lines from the likes of Time Warner, Comcast, etc...  So who knows, you might be able to hold out for a better cable deal and go with the slower options for now. :)

[Dario Landazuri]

Jim Ford wrote:

> That being said, I find it fundamentally pugnacious to have a
> bandwidth cap when so many around us have "unlimited" access to
> bandwidth (i.e. Kansas City Time Warner and Comcast customers).

Sunflower's just ahead of the curve on bandwidth caps - or did you miss
the big brouhaha (sp?) about Time Warner wanting to start trialing/using
caps in markets like Austin, TX and Rochester, NY?

That being said, paragraphs are your friend.

Cheers,
Dario

--
**************************************************************
Dario Landazuri Triangle Fraternity Minn97Ok
da...@landazuri.net
http://www.landazuri.net
**************************************************************
Put 30 kids in a room with an easel, a computer, and a guitar.
You'll get one Van Gogh, one Von Neumann, and one Van Halen
(or Van Morrison). And 27 burger flippers.
-Dr. Damian Conway

[Karl Schmidt]

nick....@gmail.com wrote:

> Freenet:
> Pros: 6-7Mbps burstable down, 1Mbps burst up, no cap, low price,
> permits laptop use anywhere in the coverage area in addition to your
> regular connection, 10% of your bill is a tax deductible donation.
> Cons: Coverage does not include the whole city, can't be far from a
> mesh node, PePwaves are more expensive than cable modems, speed can be
> variable.

Interesting - I didn't realize one could get a static from freenet - what do they charge for it?

I'm thinking of using it as a backup service (I suppose I could spend a day or two and figure out
how to set things up to use both at once ... hmmm. Right after I bite the bullet and configure
IPSEC -- Who wants to give a talk on Intro to IPSEC and the packages that do it for the uninitiated?)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl Schmidt EMail Ka...@xtronics.com
Transtronics, Inc. WEB http://xtronics.com
3209 West 9th Street Ph (785) 841-3089
Lawrence, KS 66049 FAX (785) 841-0434

Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-- Mark Twain

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[Karl Schmidt]

Dario Landazuri wrote:
> Jim Ford wrote:
>
>> That being said, I find it fundamentally pugnacious to have a
>> bandwidth cap when so many around us have "unlimited" access to
>> bandwidth (i.e. Kansas City Time Warner and Comcast customers).
>
> Sunflower's just ahead of the curve on bandwidth caps - or did you miss
> the big brouhaha (sp?) about Time Warner wanting to start trialing/using
> caps in markets like Austin, TX and Rochester, NY?

This reminds me - I saw some phone guys setting up a new cabinet (9th and Crawford Dr. - ground
level - not in a buried vault - eyesore to some) and they are set to deliver several channels of HD
data. I poked around about DSL and he said they will have that too - but no details. Seems to me
that there could be some really high bandwidth to the home if they wanted to sell it. Anyone know
the inside story on what they will sell data wise?

I can see how the caps could backfire...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl Schmidt EMail Ka...@xtronics.com
Transtronics, Inc. WEB http://xtronics.com
3209 West 9th Street Ph (785) 841-3089
Lawrence, KS 66049 FAX (785) 841-0434

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. -- Mark Twain

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[Karl Schmidt]

Interesting - I didn't realize one could get a static from freenet - what do they charge for it?

I'm thinking of using it as a backup service (I suppose I could spend a day or two and figure out
how to set things up to use both at once ... hmmm. Right after I bite the bullet and configure
IPSEC -- Who wants to give a talk on Intro to IPSEC and the packages that do it for the uninitiated?)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Karl Schmidt EMail Ka...@xtronics.com
Transtronics, Inc. WEB http://xtronics.com
3209 West 9th Street Ph (785) 841-3089
Lawrence, KS 66049 FAX (785) 841-0434

Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-- Mark Twain

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Jeff Schaller]

We Rochesterians made a bit of a stink; TW backed off:

http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/04/16/article/report_time_warner_to_stop_new_pricing_plan_in_ny

Time Warner Cable backed down Thursday and agreed to postpone its test of tier pricing for Internet service in the Triad and other markets after encountering an uproar that caught the attention of Congress.

The company said it was postponing tiered pricing until it could better educate customers on the new fee structure. 

“That has to be one of the top failures in U.S. marketing and pricing history,” said local tech firm owner Sue Polinsky. “That’s up there with new Coke.”

-jeff

[Christofer C. Bell]

Jim, your post is worth a read, but it's impossible to without some
sort of paragraph formatting. I'm reposting it with some rough
paragraphs so folks can see what you're saying more clearly.

Jim said,

Jim

And that's what Jim said. ;-)

--
Chris

[nick....@gmail.com]

Karl,

I have not kept up with their offerings lately. I would give them a
call and ask. They are pretty reasonable folks.

-Nick

On Jul 6, 6:50 pm, Karl Schmidt <k...@xtronics.com> wrote:
> Interesting - I didn't realize one could get a static from freenet - what do they charge for it?
>
> I'm thinking of using it as a backup service (I suppose I could spend a day or two and figure out
> how to set things up to use both at once ... hmmm. Right after I bite the bullet and configure
> IPSEC -- Who wants to give a talk on Intro to IPSEC and the packages that do it for the uninitiated?)
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Karl Schmidt EMail K...@xtronics.com
> Transtronics, Inc. WEBhttp://xtronics.com

[Nick Anderson]

nick....@gmail.com wrote:
> Karl,
>
> I have not kept up with their offerings lately. I would give them a
> call and ask. They are pretty reasonable folks.
>

Their service has been gradually degrading (at least in old west
lawrence) I am only a few hops away from the main office and I have had
far too many outages in the past 6 months.

Its not that I expect uptime to be 100% but what I do expect is someone
to be paying attention to the network. One time I went down on sat and
they called me Monday afternoon to see if I was still having an issue.
There is no one around in the evenings or on the weekends and as far as
I can tell even if you can figure out how to report an outage no one
checks msgs or email until normal business hours.

Well I use the internet at home durning non business hours (night and
weekend) as I suspect most working folk do. Not much help to have no
response during that time.

Dont get me wrong I like the idea of community wireless and I used it as
my primary connection for a year and a half. But service is getting
worse and customer response is worse than that so I did recently cancel
my service and switch back to ATT DSL (dry loop). the 3MB/s DSL is much
more responsive than my freenet was. I consistently saw large packet
loss at their router in KC, frequently as much as 20%.

[Frank Wiles]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Jim Ford<jim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> P.S. - Quite a bit of the original crew that helped Sunflower get their
> monopoly on the Lawrence broadband are on this list, so they might be able
> to speak to this, but I remember reading something from a while back that
> said that Sunflower's orginal contract with the City of Lawrence from 1998
> or so is supposed to be up soon.  I would guess that as long as the city
> commission doesn't vote to renew it we would see at that time some
> exploration in to the fiber lines from the likes of Time Warner, Comcast,
> etc...  So who knows, you might be able to hold out for a better cable deal
> and go with the slower options for now. :)

I believe Jim may be referring to me here :) I don't work at Sunflower
anymore, but the "monopoly" thing is a HUGE misconception, but a
common one.

Sunflower doesn't have a monopoly on cable, phone, Internet access, or
anything else anymore than Freestate has a monopoly on "downtown
Lawrence breweries". They just happen to be the only one offering
that service...

All cable companies (and I believe utility companies as well) have
franchise agreements with their cities to be allowed to put stuff on
poles, in the ground in easements, and basically operate in the city.
It is NOT an exclusive contract. Anyone, Time Warner, Comcast,
Everest, or even KULUA Cable can exist in Lawrence. Just need to fill
out the paper work and reach a similar agreement with the City. In
the past, several of these companies had begun the process, but pulled
out when they realized they weren't really that competitive on
price/services with Sunflower.

Part of the issue is that it is extremely expensive to lay fiber all
over a town. Millions of dollars expensive. The fiber Sunflower uses
is owned by them, not the city. So it's not like, even in the
unlikely event the City wouldn't renew their franchise, Comcast can
just plug in and use it.

I also don't really get the problem with bandwidth caps, in ALL of the
years since Sunflower started this I have only gone over my Silver
plan cap twice for a total extra charge of $14. How much porn does one
man need? :) Also, I believe the overage charge is $2/GB not $5 and
it's only like $0.70/GB if you buy a larger bandwidth package. That's
cheaper than extra bandwidth with my dedicated hosting provider.

I'm sure Unlimited is nice, but realize that ALL of the other
providers are looking into how to do this on their systems in the near
future. Sunflower, as is pretty usual in the cable world, out in
front on this issue. (Remember, Lawrence had cable modems YEARS before
KC, Topeka, St. Louis, Omaha, Dallas, etc, etc,etc. did) It is the
only way they can control their costs in our current
video/torrent/ISO/spam/trojan/virus crazy Internet.

While competition is always a good thing. I just got done reading
yesterday a Facebook thread where several of my friends were talking
about why they won't move here or there because "there" only has
TimeWarner or Comcast or Everest. So I think it's a bit of "the grass
is always greener".

--
Frank Wiles
Revolution Systems | http://www.revsys.com/
fr...@revsys.com | (800) 647-6298

[john joseph roets]

I would second Frank's sentiment...

After moving away from Lawrence in '03, I rapidly found the status quo elsewhere to be horrible service, low bandwidth, and expensive.

I really miss the service we had there.

Oh well.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Frank Wiles <fr...@wiles.org> wrote:

While competition is always a good thing. I just got done reading
yesterday a Facebook thread where several of my friends were talking
about why they won't move here or there because "there" only has
TimeWarner or Comcast or Everest. So I think it's a bit of "the grass
is always greener".

--

john joseph roets
createTank, llc
chief architect
http://createtank.com
j...@createtank.com
voice +1 646 355 8865
fax +1 800 975 8379

[Steve Nordquist]

DSL was almost always listed as 20/20mbits (not as provisioned w/
anything!) with 40 being iffy and never got to test unless someone
wanted to co-loc their own 'local calling' (Bervizon Top 10, whatever;
hi, microwave engineers!) I'm not sure fiber's going to be more
reliable than DSL now that something 50 microns across can have 30
cores, but the caliber of contending squirrels will be satisfying.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Christofer C.
Bell<christof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jim, your post is worth a read, but it's impossible to without some
> sort of paragraph formatting. I'm reposting it with some rough
> paragraphs so folks can see what you're saying more clearly.

I'm kind of torn up by this; on one hand, you're making a narrower
column out of text, and on the other your pager (possibly) doesn't
break lines and you're comfortable occasionally reading pre- or
code-tagged coldfusion or JStruts. Is it a matter of having to move
your iPhone from side to side v. up and down to a certain extent to
read a given list? Maybe you flow all text down 6 monitors and that
wall of text made you think you were renting a car...?