Indeed. Thank you very much. Your comments along with Ben Scott's have given me some ideas about how we might be able to use it, though not quite in the manner I was originally considering. I still might be able to save some significant cash, and that would be good.
RS On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Tim Evans <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks. There are some good questions here to ask before we sign up. > > > > ...Tim > > > > From: Sam Cayze [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:11 PM > > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: RE: OT: Comcast Business Docsis 3.0 > > > > Ok, I have a little more time now to rant on this... > > > > iirc, the Docsis or whatever it's called doesn't have any SLA. They did > have something when we used it... but it was like: for a day long outage > they would refund a small part of your bill. Great... not. > > > > We actually had a 20 HOUR outage with them once. They had no idea how to > fix it. Many people on their support staff didn't even know what docsis 3 > was, they only knew how to support docsis 2.0. There was also like 3 > pieces of equipment that they had to install - and they all were consumer > grade. And they always froze up. I finally installed a telephone operated > power supply to all 3 units because I had to reboot them all the time. > > > > Also, no local support after hours. Everything is routed to (Denver?) - and > they are complete idiots there. Local support always bitches about the > people in Denver, and vice versa. Each (Local vs. Denver) had a COMPLETLY > different was of doing thinks. > > Seriously, even one of their actually brilliant techs drew out the backbone > of their network to my on my whiteboard. It's terrible. > > If you have comcast business, do a tracert. Then do the same tracert on > another isp - you will notice MANY more hops on Comcast. > > > > They never let us out of the contract even though everyone at Comcast agreed > we had a terrible experience. I didn't bother fighting it, I just dumbed it > down to the $59 a month plan. I got back on fiber VERY quickly. Luckily . > > > > Also, they TREAT SMTP TRAFFIC LIKE THE DEVIL. Do NOT ever put a SMTP server > behind this. (Their techs told me this). They will just sporadically drop > SMTP traffic out of the blue. It's something that carried over from the > consumer side. Everybody at Comcast hates this and wants this practice to > go away - they seriously just don't know how to un-implement it, technically > and on paper. Red tape is everywhere in the company. > > Luckily they told me this upfront, so I didn't put our SMTP traffic on their > IPs. > > > > -Sam > > I wrote this in flash, sorry for any typos. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ben Scott [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 5:44 PM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: Re: OT: Comcast Business Docsis 3.0 > > On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Richard Stovall <[email protected]> wrote: >> Anyone have the 50/10 service from Comcast? Any thoughts or >> experiences? > > I can't speak to the 50/10 service level, but we've had Comcast for a few > years here. It's fine for what I call "disposable bandwidth" -- web > browsing, downloads, etc. Blazing fast and dirt cheap. But I would never > put anything "mission critical" on it. We have another feed (fixed > wireless, through a local ISP) for that. > > Comcast still basically sees everything as TV. If TV is out, it's an > inconvenience, you have some upset customers, you maybe loose some PPV > dollars, but ultimately, it's just not that big a deal. Their phones and > Internet are the same way. They actually work okay most of the time, but > hey, if they go down, no big deal, right? > > Don't put a mail server on it. Simply being on Comcast weighs against you > in many spam filters. > > Maybe 2 or 3 times per year, it flakes out. We have to power off the CPE, > wait a minute, power on to get it to resume. > > Comcast is an HFC (hybrid fiber-coax) system. HFC runs fiber to "optical > nodes", which are large boxes hung off utility poles. Coax runs from the > nodes to your premises. The nodes need elecricity and are supplied by city > power. They might have batteries, but they don't last very long. No > generators. So if power is out in your area for more than an hour or two, > you *will* go down, and you'll be out for the duration. > > We've had two big storms in the past two years where Comcast was out for > days. No power at the node, though we had power at our plant. > Our copper telephone lines never even flickered. The telcos know how to > build a robust system, I'll give them that. (Or they used to know > -- consumer FTTP is another story entirely.) > > Comcast's SLAs are a joke. Their standard SLA says, "If you don't like > the service, you're free to cancel". Their "Symmetric" SLA says if it does > down for long enough, you can get some money back, but it's prorated down to > the hour and *they* decide what "down" means. So packet loss is 30% and > next-hop RTT is 300 ms might qualify as "up". > > -- Ben > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ > <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
