U-verse Boy: <standard door to door intro>
Me: There have been many AT&T guys here before you, none have closed the
deal. Unless you have something new that they didn't have to offer, you
should save us both some time. I am quite happy with my service bundle
with Time Warner (except the menus are slow and got slower with the
recent upgrade of the on screen guide). I do not have an HD TV yet, I
have digital cable, phone service and 10Mbps Internet service. You will
need to convince me that your product is far superior to get me to
change. The most important thing to me is Internet, and the least is
cost. If you want to continue, please go on...
U-verse Boy: <repeat of standard door to door intro>
Me: So, why do I want it ?
U-verse Boy: Fiber is better faster cheaper !
Me: What is the fastest Internet service you have ?
U-verse Boy: 10Mbps Fiber Optic Internet
Me: But I have that now. How is your 10Mbps Internet service better than
the 10Mbps Internet service I get with Time Warner ?
U-verse Boy: Fiber is faster.
Me: Are you saying that 10Mbps on Fiber is faster than 10Mbps on
Copper ?
U-verse Boy: Yes, it's faster because it uses light instead of energy.
Me: Light is not energy ?
U-verse Boy: No. It's light !
Me: Seriously ?
U-verse Boy: Absolutely !
Me: Wow !
U-verse Boy: It's also better because it's not shared, you get your own
10Mbps Internet connection.
Me: So, when the 10Mbps connection leaves here, where does it go ?
U-verse Boy: Directly to the Internet.
Me: Stop. I'll tell you before you embarrass yourself any further. It
goes back to some CO/POP or some intermediate aggregation point, the
equivalent to the the Cable provider "Node" or "Head End", where larger
connections to other networks are made. These connections to other
networks are NOT large enough for every single customer to use all of
the 10Mbps service at the same time.
U-verse Boy: Yes it is !
Me: No, it's not. Not all the customers will use all 10Mbps at the same
time, so it would be very dumb to make it that big back at this
aggregation point. If you did then there is unused capacity and that is
a very bad thing... it makes stuff cost more. Both AT&T and Time Warner
can buy enough or not enough bandwidth to the other networks to keep the
congestion down, but that has nothing to do with the medium used to
deliver the 10Mbps to each customer from this aggregation point.
U-verse Boy: Ummm...
Me: So, if all of the neighbors here go back to the same POP/Node, and
are all connected to the same other networks, how is that not shared ?
U-verse Boy: It's Fiber and Fiber is better !
Me: OK, I am trying to learn from you in what way Fiber is better. I am
a technical person, so tell me technically, how is it better ?
U-verse Boy: If you sent data to the Moon over Fiber it would take 17
seconds... if you sent it on Cable, guess how long it would take ? 17
days !!!
Me: That's just silly !
U-verse Boy: Really ! I swear it's true !
Me: So, are you saying that the signal through the fiber optic medium is
THAT much faster than copper ?
U-verse Boy: Yes !
Me: So, if the Moon is something like 235,000Mi (I was
quasi-remembering) from earth, and the speed of light is 186,000mi/sec
in a vacuum, it would take less than a second and a half to get to the
Moon at the speed of light. If I recall correctly light through fiber
travels at about 2/3 the speed of light, so still just about 2 seconds
to get there through fiber optic cable. Copper signal cables have
electrical properties of Capacitance and Inductance which will affect
how electricity flows through them at what frequencies. I remember
seeing some stereo cables that were bragging that had propagation delay
of near the speed of light... like 90 percent. So, and I very well could
be wrong here, I would suppose that signal through copper might actually
be FASTER than light through fiber optic cable. Can you help me
understand how if you sent a signal to the Moon it would take two and a
half weeks longer to get there over copper ? Some facts will help.
U-verse Boy: Ummm... Well, it's light man ! It's faster than energy !
Me: Facts mean nothing to you, do they !
U-verse Boy: All I know is that Fiber is faster and better and faster is
better, so Fiber is better !
Me: Wait... what ?!?!?!
I gotta go do some work, but the conversation eventually did cover TV
quality and how 1080p over Fiber is better than 1080p over Copper and
how 720p is also better over Fiber, especially if you don't have a HD
TV.
We covered how with Cable, apparently my neighbors are almost certainly
stealing my Internet service because of something he called "Fiber Optic
Encryption".
He finally called me stubborn ! At that point I told him he had not
proven his case, but that it was OK since the last 4 U-verse Dudes that
came to my door were equally ill-prepared on the technical aspects of
the product they hoped to sell. I reminded him that he shouldn't insult
people he hopes to sell stuff to by calling them stubborn. I pulled my
dog back in to the house and closed the screen door.
U-verse Boy must have had feeling of inadequacy. As he left he fired
off a parting "Your stubborn dude".
--
************************************************************
Michael J. McCafferty
Principal, Security Engineer
M5 Hosting
http://www.m5hosting.com
You can have your own custom Dedicated Server up and running today !
RedHat Enterprise, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and more
************************************************************
--
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