RE: 202212160543.AYC Re: eMail Conventions

[Kord Martin]

> Most email clients assume that a change to the subject line (other than 
> adding "Re:" to the front) indicates that the sender wants to discuss a new 
> topic related to but meaningly different from the last.

When I managed a help desk, my users would constantly complain that they 
weren't receiving updates on their service tickets. I was able to verify that 
tickets were being updated and that the users were indeed receiving the e-mails 
... however Outlook was sorting them into new conversations and then hiding 
them behind the "Focused" inbox. 

Sometimes you streamline your experience, other times you organize yourself 
into a bigger mess.


K

Re: Upstream bandwidth usage

[Kord Martin]

On 2022-06-10 6:01 a.m., Jared Mauch wrote:

You would be surprised.  The equipment isn't that expensive in
the grand scheme of things.


Especially when you consider that XGSPON and GPON and coexist.

K

RE: FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers

[Kord Martin]

Happy customers are also good for business. 

 

 

K

 

From: NANOG  On Behalf Of 
Mike Hammett
Sent: June 6, 2022 4:55 PM
To: Brandon Butterworth 
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers

 

"I must have read different posts."

 

 

More likely, a lack of understanding. There's a difference between, "No one 
should have this" and "the government shouldn't be paying for people to have 
this at this time."  

 

 

"fortunate few who happen to be in the

good locations"

 

Most people live in locations where such a service could be reasonably 
delivered.

 

 

"A larger market is good for business, no?"

 

It is, but also good for business is not wasting money.

 

 

"Those have been just about managing to keep up to varying

degrees."

 

Keep up with what? Want or need?

 

 

 

 



-
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com

Midwest-IX
http://www.midwest-ix.com

 

  _  

From: "Brandon Butterworth" mailto:bran...@rd.bbc.co.uk> 
>
To: "Mike Hammett" mailto:na...@ics-il.net> >
Cc: "Michael Thomas" mailto:m...@mtcc.com> >, nanog@nanog.org 
 
Sent: Monday, June 6, 2022 11:27:54 AM
Subject: Re: FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers

On Mon Jun 06, 2022 at 09:44:20AM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote:
> " I find it sad that so many would argue for never needing anything 
> more than we have today." 
> 
> Few to none are doing that.

I must have read different posts.

> Upgrades are an organic part of the process. Some places they're
> hard, but most places they're comparatively easy. Let's stop
> putting the cart before the horse just to feel good about
> ourselves. That's too expensive. 
 
I'm not clear what you're suggesting should not be done, I agree with
you, upgrades are good, make them worthwhile ones.

> "totally fail to provide the same to everyone." 
> 
> Why should that be desirable? 

I dunno, maybe it'd be nice if we could provide services to
everyone not just the fortunate few who happen to be in the
good locations? A larger market is good for business, no?
Maybe the less fortunate would do better with access to
the same resources others have.

> "If we had moved to fibre everywhere then perhaps" 
> 
> Negative. DOCSIS works well enough. Modern DSL implementations are good 
> enough. Fixed wireless in many cases is good enough. Next gen satellite is 
> good enough. 

Not really. Those have been just about managing to keep up to varying
degrees.

DSL totally lost it as increasing speed reduced range, the UK ended up
deploying around 90k street cabinets (and it's a small country) to handle
the reduction from km's to 100m's and still failed on ancient cabling.
Rural got left behind as the distance between premises is greater than
the range of a cab. I've deployed FTTH over the last few years to
people who were still on 0.5 - 1MB/s DSL, this was common in rural areas
(lots are installing FTTH now)

Satellite has always been a dissapointment, LEO may do better but is
a huge investment so furthers my point that we do need to invest in
steps up.

FWA has always been a stop gap, largely limited by having to
use shared spectrum here. On my FWA network the advent of 60GHz
is great but for PTMP is too short range for our rural premises.

All are lacking in upload speed, we found that out fairly
quickly in the pandemic when there was a sudden change in
use patterns from what people thought would be fine forever.

> "If you build it they will come." 
> 
> So then build the hypothetical content that needs this? 

Have been. We were looking at turning off UK terrestrial broadcast
in the late 2020s but fibre deployment was insufficient to provide
equivalent coverage. That's changing, fibre is going in all over so
we're looking at mid 2030s or so before we can start making
proper use of IP only distribution and the extra capabilities it
provides.

> Gigabit download level service is available to enough (at least in the
> US) that if such a downstream heavy service were on our doorstep, it
> would work for most Americans.

That's really good then, problem solved.

> Once people got tired of being proven that you need such forward-looking
> downstream capacity in the regulatory world

That's back to cart before horse, no? Did people not get the
Gigabit due to such pressure? Why would it not be good to do the
same for upload?

> they just moved to upstream and cried wolf there too. Yes, many services
> do have mildly inadequate upstream, but certainly not anything to change
> the regulatory environment over. 

Or moved on to the next problem. I think they are setting the goal too
low if it's expected to accomodate a longer term change to home working. 

If your home is where you work, rest, and play why not symmetrical?

brandon

 

Re: FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers

[Kord Martin]

On 2022-06-06 11:32 a.m., Casey Russell via NANOG wrote:


But my point was only that if we keep arguing against change and 
against pushing barriers, then we are what customers (or members) say 
we are.  obstinate, greedy, uncooperative, and unsupportive of their 
goals.  I don't think you're any of those things, I just think we need 
to stop setting limits FOR customers and be open to a conversation 
about how to get to (insert wild and crazy, super cool goal here).  
All the time being as realistic as we can about how to do that.


After years and years of being told why it's not feasible to build out 
infrastructure upgrades to provide internet service, once I started to 
work in the industry it was pretty shocking to see how customers are 
actually treated. It's tough to gather context from the replies but I 
feel like most of the industry still sees internet service as a luxury, 
and not something potentially life-changing.


It seems like a lot of people are still missing the mark on how people 
actually use the bandwidth. The biggest complaints I hear are from 
people who are learning, teaching, or working remotely, that struggle to 
do basic tasks like move files back and forth from a corporate share. 
You can tell them to "just go to the office", but why should they? WFH 
has become such a life-changing thing for a lot of people, why not 
enable that kind of productivity? Then there's a growing industry of 
content creation; uploading to YouTube, live streaming, online gaming, 
online collaboration. All of that stuff is impossible without sufficient 
bandwidth, especially in the upstream.


When I think about the WISPs that pop up to provide coverage to 
under-served areas and then just collecting the money from customers, 
with no plans to develop any infrastructure. Makes me think of that meme 
... "I want internet" then being told "we have internet at home" but 
it's a 5/1 WISP connection with 600ms pings and 40% uptime.


I don't think the regs need to mandate more speed, because of course 
MOST people will be totally satisfied with a basic connection, but I 
feel like providers have historically used that as an excuse to NOT 
provide a better service to customers that want or need it, where "good 
enough" just isn't good enough.


K

Re: FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers

[Kord Martin]

   I don’t think game manufacturers expand their games based on
   available download bandwidth. I think that games have gotten richer
   and the graphics environments and capabilities have improved and
   content more expansive to a point where yes, games are several
   BluRays worth of download now instead of being shipped on multiple
   discs.

When I was a rural DSL customer, my problem wasn't necessarily with the 
size of the games, but rather that you'd have to re-download the entire 
game every week. It would take almost an entire week to download a game, 
then by time it's finally updated they've updated a tree texture and you 
need to download the whole game again. I understand why this happens but 
customers who didn't have access to broadband just got the shaft.


I still have a lot of friends who don't have access to broadband and 
simply can't play modern games because of the always-online requirement 
and constant, huge updates.


   If the target is a non-fiber service, then 100/20 might make sense.
   If Fiber is being installed, then it’s hard to find a rationale for
   1Gbps being more expensive than any lower capacity.

The question I have for other operators: if you have a group of 
customers that subscribe to a 100Mb service, and all of them suddenly 
switched to a 1Gb service, would you expect an increase in overall 
bandwidth usage?


I've been looking around for some other comments on bandwidth trends but 
I don't know how much of that would/should be confidential based on 
privacy or trade secret.

Re: PoE, Comcast Modems, and Service Outages

[Kord Martin]

On 2022-03-30 12:53 p.m., Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote:
We've run into too many people who hear hoof beats, assume horses, and 
proceed as if zebras are absolutely not a possibility. 


I'll never forget my first major escalation as a young engineer, on a 
phone call with multiple angry executives and CCIEs, asking them to try 
replacing their patch cables.


The problem went away.

K

Re: PoE, Comcast Modems, and Service Outages

[Kord Martin]

On 2022-03-29 5:46 p.m., Joe Greco wrote:

On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 03:42:54PM -0400, Josh Luthman wrote:

There's a certain manufacturer of TDD radio where the CPU clock is at the
same frequency as what Verizon's enodeB will transmit.  Even at miles away,
it can and will cause PIM issues.  Again, don't rule it out.

I'm not ruling anything out, but on the flip side, here in this group
of professional networkers, you'd think lots of people would have piped
up by now with "me too"'s if PoE ghosts killing cable CPE on a 24 hour
cycle were a common thing.


As a small DOCSIS operator, I suppose my sample set isn't large enough 
to be significant but I can tell you PoE has never been an issue with 
our modems.


We've had a significantly higher failure rate due to things such as 
customers driving nails through the modem in an attempt to mount them to 
walls, and concerned citizens shooting birdshot into our overhead 
distribution in an attempt to curb the rodent population.


K

Re: ISP data collection from home routers

[Kord Martin]

On 2022-03-24 10:04 a.m., Giovane C. M. Moura via NANOG wrote:
They can easily profile you and know when you're at home, and when 
you're gone. Some people may find this interesting...


To have a really meaningful discuss on the privacy implications, we 
would need to see the data model, and the frequency that they pool the 
data.


Is your concern that ISPs have access to this information, or that it's 
something they could possibly be selling to a third party? Those are two 
completely different discussions.


K

Re: Authoritative Resources for Public DNS Pinging

[Kord Martin]

On 2022-02-11 10:11 a.m., Mike Hammett wrote:
A system always checking to see if "Internet" is up is different than 
"I think something is wrong, let me check".


Yeah. I've had ping tests fail in false-positive and false-negative 
scenarios and the take away isn't that there IS a problem, but rather an 
investigation should probably take place. I don't think anybody here is 
trying to argue that pings (or DNS lookups) are an infallible 
reachability index for "the internet".



When it comes to customers, ping tests are a non-issue because the 
complaint is normally that YouTube, Facebook, or whatever service isn't 
available and therefore the "internet is down". At some point you have 
to weight the cost/benefit of explaining to customers that the internet 
is a large collection of interconnected networks and not some "cloud" 
that we tap into. It is a series of tubes after all.



K