Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: ketinkrad on January 26, 2010, 01:22:16 AM
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Is Cat 6a Ethernet cable the best on the market now or is there something better? Thank you Ketinkrad
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Is Cat 6a Ethernet cable the best on the market now or is there something better? Thank you Ketinkrad
Depends on the money. If you don't have the bucks to shell out for a fiber optic setup in the house then Cat 6 is good. Much better then the Cat5/5e that's pretty much the standard today. Just make sure your router/switch is capable of handling Gigabit. Cat 6 will be/has been replacing Cat 5e now for a few years.
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Cat 6 is Gigabit standard but...your ISP is only going to be 20 Megabits max...in home between systems with a Gb switch and Cat5e or Cat6 cables you will have really fast connections...on the web, your connection is going to remain the same as it has been.
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Also remember most domestic routers and switches will work at the lowest common denominator speed, so if you plug in 3 machines capable of gigabit ethernet and one 10Mb/sec legacy machine, everyone's running at 10Mb/sec.
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Also remember most domestic routers and switches will work at the lowest common denominator speed, so if you plug in 3 machines capable of gigabit ethernet and one 10Mb/sec legacy machine, everyone's running at 10Mb/sec.
Errr no, dunno where you heard that one?
That used to happen for hubs, about 10 years ago, and even then you typically had switching hubs where the 10mbps and 100mbps networks were different segments.
And gyrene81... maybe 20mbps is the top speed in hicksville, but the rest of the world has moved on. Though I dunno what your point is in regards the the original question.
ketinkrad yes Cat 6a is where you want to be.
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And gyrene81... maybe 20mbps is the top speed in hicksville, but the rest of the world has moved on. Though I dunno what your point is in regards the the original question.
Really Vulcan? You sure about that?
ATT DSL:
AT&T Elite has all the features you need including:
* Downstream Speed: Up to 6.0 Mbps
* Upstream Speed: Up to 768 Kbps
http://www.attoffer.com/13/internet.html (http://www.attoffer.com/13/internet.html)
ATT Uverse:
AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet Max Plus
Top-of-the-line High Speed entertainment for just an additional $65 more per month with a TV package.
* Download files and web pages with downstream speeds up to 18 Mbps
http://www.attoffer.com/13/u-verse_build.html (http://www.attoffer.com/13/u-verse_build.html)
Charter:
High Speed Internet Max
Download Speed Up to 20 Mbps
http://www.charter.com/Visitors/Products.aspx?MenuItem=37 (http://www.charter.com/Visitors/Products.aspx?MenuItem=37)
Comcast:
Need More Speed?
Downloads up to 16 Mbps with PowerBoost. Perfect for families!
http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Learn/HighSpeedInternet/highspeedinternet.html (http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Learn/HighSpeedInternet/highspeedinternet.html)
Road Runner:
Upgrade to Turbo!
Get up to 15 Mbps with Powerboost™ for only $10 more per month
http://www.roadrunneroffers.com/ (http://www.roadrunneroffers.com/)
You must know something the ISP's in the U.S. don't know...
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You forgot FIOS. I know my Brother has it in DC and when I visited I did a Speed-Test and it rated it at around 50Mbps. According to Verizon's site "Fiber optics all the way to your home brings download speeds up to 50 Mbps and the fastest upload speeds."
Course if you were talking about widely-available Internet then, yea, FIOS would be out. :)
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You forgot FIOS. I know my Brother has it in DC and when I visited I did a Speed-Test and it rated it at around 50Mbps. According to Verizon's site "Fiber optics all the way to your home brings download speeds up to 50 Mbps and the fastest upload speeds."
Course if you were talking about widely-available Internet then, yea, FIOS would be out. :)
Yeah, I considered it...limited availability and you have to have a verizon phone account...at $100/mo just for the internet connection, I'd have to be making money with it. I just considered the highest availability ISP's.
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maybe 20mbps is the top speed in hicksville, but the rest of the world has moved on
Well here in the St. Louis metro area (not exactly cutting edge, but far from 'hicksville') we can get 20Mbps through Charter. I think AT&T's U-Verse offers 30Mbps... but no FIOS available yet... even so... 1024Mbps = 1Gbps (Gigabit) so even if you found an ISP offering five times the speed I can currently get through Charter... it's still only 10% of the home network speed...
Personally, I feel that 90% of the time internet speeds are nothing more than marketing hype. For gaming, low (or at least consistent) latency (lag) is much more important than actual download speeds, and my Netflix-On-Demand playing a HD movie doesn't even come close to touching my current speed of 5Mbps... so unless you have a family where several families are downloading HD movies at the same time... anything past this IMHO is overkill.
Unless you do a lot of transfers from one computer to another on a home network (or maybe even have your own file or media server set up), there will be no difference between a 100Mbps and a 1Gbps network connection.
I will say this though... They screwed up and accidentally gave my modem a cap of 20Mbps for a short while a week or so ago, and while it was nice having some downloads go extremely fast, at most it only saved me a few seconds here and there, and since many web-servers won't even upload at those speeds, many connections had no difference at all.
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Really Vulcan? You sure about that?
Yeah actually I am. We're just starting a bunch of fibre rollouts, gigabit to the home, in some of our medium-smaller towns. In NZ. The deployment costs around US$500 per home. ADSL2+ goes to 24Mbps, VDSL2+ to 100Mbps. We've had VDSL2+ deployments here for a while now offering 30Mbps sync speeds. Plus there's other technologies kicking around.
Are you telling me the might USA is being left behind technology wise by little old NZ? Somehow I doubt it.
So, yes, I'm sure.
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Yeah actually I am. We're just starting a bunch of fibre rollouts, gigabit to the home, in some of our medium-smaller towns. In NZ. The deployment costs around US$500 per home. ADSL2+ goes to 24Mbps, VDSL2+ to 100Mbps. We've had VDSL2+ deployments here for a while now offering 30Mbps sync speeds. Plus there's other technologies kicking around.
Are you telling me the might USA is being left behind technology wise by little old NZ? Somehow I doubt it.
So, yes, I'm sure.
America's broadband infrastructure is far behind Asia and Europe (and apparently NZ). Pipelines are oversold and overfilled with traffic. The largest US cities have better infrastructures, but America is a fairly large country and a relatively spread out population in suburbs. The surrounding metro population where I live in Wisconsin is ~500,000. Fastest internet I can get is 15Mbps.
Just ask Skuzzy.
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The City where I live, Comcast gives me 50 MBPS. Ketinkrad
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The City where I live, Comcast gives me 50 MBPS. Ketinkrad
Where do you live? The best I could find advertised was that 16Mbps with "powerboost"... :headscratch:
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Are you telling me the might USA is being left behind technology wise by little old NZ? Somehow I doubt it.
Yea, actually. Aside from the fluctuations in population density, USA's infrastructure is ruled by the ISPs. Think of it like the oil producing countries. They got it, you want it, and they can charge an arm and a leg for it. My house is a good example. I pay 45$ a month for the possibility of getting 15 megs down. Problem is I live on a street where there are 5 apartment complexes, each ranging 50-250 units. I'm lucky if I get 1.2 megs down. Average speed for a DL here is 900 kilobits a second. All these apartments are sharing the same pipe. Funny thing is I tried to downgrade our service to 3 megs down (I'm not getting nowhere close to what I'm paying for, why pay for it?), and Time Warner told me it would be more expensive. :huh Apparently when we got our service, we got a "special deal" where we got the 15 meg service for the 3 meg price a year ago. They told me with the price hikes congress put in place (words from their mouth) it would be 57$ a month for 3 meg service now. A QOS agreement would cost me anywhere from 200$ for 3 megs up to 2000$ per month. I'm not happy with these people but I don't have a choice. It's either AT&T, Time Warner, or Grande communications. AT&T can't provide service because the apartments are to old (wiring couldn't handle it), and Grande doesn't provide service to my apartments (the apartments won't let them in, they have a deal with TW). Another further out is GVTC. A buddy of mine is running satellite internet because of them. When he went to buy a house (cookie cutter home) he had called them to see what service was out there. They told him his home had Fiber Optic all the way throughout the house. They kept stressing he had fiber optic, the fastest on the market, he got suspicious and called me out to look at it. There was FO all over the place, in the house. Once it hit demarcation, it switched to Cat5e. Bottom line, our Internet is ruled by the bottom line. The providers are in no rush to improve anything, so we're stuck.
Ketinkrad, where do you live? I wanna move there.
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They kept stressing he had fiber optic, the fastest on the market, he got suspicious and called me out to look at it. There was FO all over the place, in the house. Once it hit demarcation, it switched to Cat5e. Bottom line, our Internet is ruled by the bottom line. The providers are in no rush to improve anything, so we're stuck.
Not sure what your point is, cat5e is still capable of 1Gbps speed. You'd need to identify the CPE device and what sort of optics are being provisioned (ie SX, LX, BX, is it epon etc).
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Not sure what your point is, cat5e is still capable of 1Gbps speed. You'd need to identify the CPE device and what sort of optics are being provisioned (ie SX, LX, BX, is it epon etc).
My point is they were trying to sell him on the fact that it was FO all the way thru to the ISP. A lot of homeowners fell for this, they thought they were going to get Fiber Optic speed to the ISP, not just from one bedroom to another. (This was a new construction home, fiber optic connections were installed as wall jacks thru-out the house) no action could be taken because in the fine print it said FO installed in the house. Sort of like that Toyota/Toy Yoda post. My main point is that we're not falling behind because it isn't available, we're falling behind because because it's going to cost the ISPs money. Our service is ruled by their bottom line.
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Not sure what your point is, cat5e is still capable of 1Gbps speed. You'd need to identify the CPE device and what sort of optics are being provisioned (ie SX, LX, BX, is it epon etc).
Vulcan, the point is, your assumptions about "hicksville USA" is pretty much nationwide...and there are still areas that can't even get the lowest level of DSL. In NZ you have what, a total population of 4 million? The state of California alone is estimated at 38 million...think about how much bandwidth that many people use on a 10 year old consumer based internet infrastructure at just 10Mbps...as well as the time and expense of updating that infrastructure current standards for 300 million people. It's happening, but not very fast...and only the densest population areas are getting the availability of faster connections that still connect to the older infrastructure and cost much more than the "shoddy" 3Mbps basic connection speeds.
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I have FIOS in my condo. Fiber comes up to the building, then is bridged into the telephone line using VDSL. Once inside, Verizon provides both a VDSL modem, and a wireless router (the two are connected by a CAT5 cable.) From there, I installed a 16 port gigabit switch and a N access point. I get 20/5 Gb service consistently. Runs $60/month, with like a $15 discount if you bundle with FIOS TV, which I do. I could get 20/20 Gb, but that is not offered as part of a bundle.
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I have FIOS in my condo. Fiber comes up to the building, then is bridged into the telephone line using VDSL. Once inside, Verizon provides both a VDSL modem, and a wireless router (the two are connected by a CAT5 cable.) From there, I installed a 16 port gigabit switch and a N access point. I get 20/5 Gb service consistently. Runs $60/month, with like a $15 discount if you bundle with FIOS TV, which I do. I could get 20/20 Gb, but that is not offered as part of a bundle.
I seriously doubt you got 20Gb service especially if you run it through a gigabit switch that limits your transfer speed to 1Gb :)
A 20Gb network card costs several hundred bucks in itself.
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I switched from Time Warner to Verizon FiOS a few weeks ago. So far I've been quite pleased with FiOS.
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Soda, is FIOS service still PPPOE based?
<S>
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I have FIOS in my condo. Fiber comes up to the building, then is bridged into the telephone line using VDSL. Once inside, Verizon provides both a VDSL modem, and a wireless router (the two are connected by a CAT5 cable.) From there, I installed a 16 port gigabit switch and a N access point. I get 20/5 Gb service consistently. Runs $60/month, with like a $15 discount if you bundle with FIOS TV, which I do. I could get 20/20 Gb, but that is not offered as part of a bundle.
In Megabits (Mb)
Cat5e = 10/100/1000
Cat6 = 10/100/1000
Fiber channel = 200, 400, 800, 1600, 2550, 5100
With your gigabit (1000Mb) switch and N (600Mb) wireless access point...you are not going to see 20/5 or even 20/20 Gbit/s connection speed...especially considering the fastest Verizon FIOS connection available is 50/20 Mbit/s. Perhaps you're just a bit mistaken.
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Soda, is FIOS service still PPPOE based?
<S>
Should be DHCP..
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Should be DHCP..
PPPoE is a data transport wrapper. It converts normal Ethernet framed data packets to PPP wrapped packets. It is a lazy way for an ISP to manage thier networks. It incurs more overhead at the router. It incurs more overhead on your computer. It allows the ISP to do cheesy things to your connection as well.
The DHCP handshake would be contained in a PPP wrapper.
PPP has to be done in the router, or ethernet card, or driver and would require a setting to confirm that type of connection.
I have not gotten a straight answer yet to the question either. I will not touch FIOS as long as it is PPPoE based.
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PPPoE is a data transport wrapper. It converts normal Ethernet framed data packets to PPP wrapped packets. It is a lazy way for an ISP to manage thier networks. It incurs more overhead at the router. It incurs more overhead on your computer. It allows the ISP to do cheesy things to your connection as well.
The DHCP handshake would be contained in a PPP wrapper.
PPP has to be done in the router, or ethernet card, or driver and would require a setting to confirm that type of connection.
I have not gotten a straight answer yet to the question either. I will not touch FIOS as long as it is PPPoE based.
I ended up using verizons router...
In their router settings under ISP protocol it says its using DHCP...
Unless I'm looking at the wrong thing..
I'm not exactly a router expert..
(http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g185/s0da72/router.png)
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As someone in the new home construction industry, what should we be installing right now? AT&T paid for FO infrastructure throughout neighborhood we were building at my old company in Reno. The pipe under the streets and up to the home was FO. Of course, we then ruined it by wiring the home with nothing more than Cat 5. How much a FO pipe exists out there that gets you from point A to point B via FO right now? How long until there's going to be a credible FO capability that actually brings increased capability to the customer? I'd love to get educated on this so I know how to market it or make sure I spend their money on something they'll actually get some value out of.
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Fiber channel = 200, 400, 800, 1600, 2550, 5100
What? Seriously stay away from networking conversations.
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Vulcan, the point is, your assumptions about "hicksville USA" is pretty much nationwide...and there are still areas that can't even get the lowest level of DSL. In NZ you have what, a total population of 4 million? The state of California alone is estimated at 38 million...think about how much bandwidth that many people use on a 10 year old consumer based internet infrastructure at just 10Mbps...as well as the time and expense of updating that infrastructure current standards for 300 million people. It's happening, but not very fast...and only the densest population areas are getting the availability of faster connections that still connect to the older infrastructure and cost much more than the "shoddy" 3Mbps basic connection speeds.
bollocks. Places like japan have had 1Gbps to the home for around 6-7 years. Building that kind of infrastructure is not hard nor unheard of. You want to see what the chinese are doing. Deploying solutions in NZ is far more difficult because we have such a low population density over a large area (2/3rd the size of calif with < 1/12th of the population) - not to mention some fairly challenging terrain.
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DHCP enabled means your router will connect to their DHCP server and ask for an IP address. Once assigned an IP number, you'll get to communicate with the rest of the internet. :)
Your PC has DHCP enabled by default, check your services and network settings for it. :) Your router is the home's DHCP server as it's also enabled by default in your router settings, as it assigns your PC's an IP address.
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DHCP enabled means your router will connect to their DHCP server and ask for an IP address. Once assigned an IP number, you'll get to communicate with the rest of the internet. :)
Your PC has DHCP enabled by default, check your services and network settings for it. :) Your router is the home's DHCP server as it's also enabled by default in your router settings, as it assigns your PC's an IP address.
Thanks frog
I knew what DHCP was just didn't know what PPPoE was. SKuzzy explained it nicely though...
I don't know where I would check to see if it's using PPPoE or PPP, unless there some place this can be check like in the router configuration manager.
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Where do you live? The best I could find advertised was that 16Mbps with "powerboost"... :headscratch:
I'm sitting here looking at the Comcast Services and Prices guide:
Extreme 50 (50Mbps/10Mbps) - $114.95-116.95
Ultra (22Mbps/5Mbps) - $77.95-79.95
Blast! (16Mbps/2Mbps) - $67.95-69.95
Performance (12Mbps/2Mbps) - $57.95-59.95 <-- I use this
Economy (1Mbps/384kbps) - $24.95-39.95
Prices with and without cable TV.
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See the section marked "Change User Name and Password"?
If there is no username and password configured, it's virtually guaranteed to be a standard routed ethernet configuration (ie, no PPP encapulation). If it's PPPoE, it always requires a name and password, as that's what PPPoE is - a process that make an ethernet connections "appear" as though it's a PPP dial-up connection so that they can continue to use equipment and processes developed as much as 15 years ago to manage the connection, routing - and most importantly, the billing. It's possible for a standard routed implementation to require a userID and password, but I've actually seen it implemented.
PPP was designed for dial-in connections, when the going baud rate was still 19,200, with the expectation of ~30Kbps "in two weeks". Shoehorning a 50Mbps "always on" into a protocol designed for dial-up modem communications that ran 2000 to 5000 times slower just makes little sense technologically.
<S>
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Most of the FIOS here in the west is plain ethernet. Some areas are still on PPPoE, but those are rare.
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See the section marked "Change User Name and Password"?
If there is no username and password configured, it's virtually guaranteed to be a standard routed ethernet configuration (ie, no PPP encapulation). If it's PPPoE, it always requires a name and password, as that's what PPPoE is - a process that make an ethernet connections "appear" as though it's a PPP dial-up connection so that they can continue to use equipment and processes developed as much as 15 years ago to manage the connection, routing - and most importantly, the billing. It's possible for a standard routed implementation to require a userID and password, but I've actually seen it implemented.
PPP was designed for dial-in connections, when the going baud rate was still 19,200, with the expectation of ~30Kbps "in two weeks". Shoehorning a 50Mbps "always on" into a protocol designed for dial-up modem communications that ran 2000 to 5000 times slower just makes little sense technologically.
<S>
technologically speaking PPP is used for much more than that :) , all your modem 3G drivers, vpn drivers etc, use ppp as a convenient way to hook into a network stack and will happily pump many Mbps through.
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Vulcan, Thank you. I'd forgotten that PPTP was essentially a enhancement of PPP.
Anyone who's ever used a VPN connection to perform some network related task, and then used a non-encapsulated routed connection for the same task between the same devices should start to get a pretty good idea why the idea of PPP encapsulation (when it isn't necessary) is high on the list of things some of us would want to avoid for a high speed connection that we would have to use.
Can it work? Sure! Is it going to on a par with a connection operating on the native protocols for speed, latency and variance?
And IMO the least attractive aspect of PPPoE is that the connection is ENTIRELY in the hands of whatever device(s) are used at the CO to perform the encapsulation/decapsulation. Which isn't much different than saying that your connection is entirely in the hands of whatever routers you pass through, except that it in this case it matters more (IMHO) because largely, the primary reason for using it at all is to leverage a previous investment in older hardware and processes that were designed for analog modem use and as a result are no longer used at anywhere near their original capacity.
Could it be that a PPPoE based FIOS connection is be better than the alternatives in your area? Sure! The question is, would I want to bet a one year contract that it will be, especially with respect to game play, where we need only miniscule bandwidth, but where latency - and worse, any variance in latency - is a killer?
Them's my view and the reason why...
<S>
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Hi Guys,
I just checked my DSL connection................... .......mine is PPPoA instead of PPPoE.
Since this is still a PPP type protocol it is still subject to the same limitations, right?
:headscratch:
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Vulcan, Thank you. I'd forgotten that PPTP was essentially a enhancement of PPP.
Anyone who's ever used a VPN connection to perform some network related task, and then used a non-encapsulated routed connection for the same task between the same devices should start to get a pretty good idea why the idea of PPP encapsulation (when it isn't necessary) is high on the list of things some of us would want to avoid for a high speed connection that we would have to use.
Dunno what equipment you use by I run PPP based VPN connections and they perform flawlessly.
Two examples spring to mind, once my ISP was using a really bad international provider and my traffic to HTC was all over the show. I so VPN'd into work (SSL PPP client) and routed my traffic via there for gaming (only added a few ms to my int'l pings) until my ISP fixed it.
Second time was with a client who had a flat rate int'l connection (typically we get data capped here), so after hours I was allowed to VPN in to get downloads... err linux images and such. Once again an SSL PPP client, they had a 100Mbps national / 20Mbps int'l and I could soak up every ounce of their int'l bandwidth.
Of course if your using some pile-o-crap vpn device that cost $50 then expect low throughputs and performance, or if it was a cisco box expect even worse :D
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Hi Guys,
I just checked my DSL connection................... .......mine is PPPoA instead of PPPoE.
Since this is still a PPP type protocol it is still subject to the same limitations, right?
:headscratch:
Yeah PPPoA sucks though for implimentation, where are you? China or New Zealand? Cos I didn't think anyone else in the world still used PPPoA.
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Dunno what equipment you use by I run PPP based VPN connections and they perform flawlessly.
Two examples spring to mind, once my ISP was using a really bad international provider and my traffic to HTC was all over the show. I so VPN'd into work (SSL PPP client) and routed my traffic via there for gaming (only added a few ms to my int'l pings) until my ISP fixed it.
Second time was with a client who had a flat rate int'l connection (typically we get data capped here), so after hours I was allowed to VPN in to get downloads... err linux images and such. Once again an SSL PPP client, they had a 100Mbps national / 20Mbps int'l and I could soak up every ounce of their int'l bandwidth.
Of course if your using some pile-o-crap vpn device that cost $50 then expect low throughputs and performance, or if it was a cisco box expect even worse :D
So are you arguing that based upon 2 good experiences with VPN's that encapsulation doesn't matter, and therefore that PPPoE isn't an issue?
P.S. I know you really aren't - but the situations are somewhat parallel. MOST VPN implementations do not perform particularly well, and certainly not as well as a routed connection - and I doubt like heck that Verizon's PPPoE really does, either.
{Rhetorical question} If it really doesn't matter, why wouldn't you simply use the VPN based connection all the time?
<S>
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Vulcan...Just so you get an idea from more than one person here in Alabama we have approximately 4 million people in the state. When you get outside of the 4 main population areas you have to use junky internet connections. DSL service is not widely available and cable internet is still the cats meow in the small towns with populations around 20k or so. FiOS isn't even readily available here in the largest population area at even 5% of the households.
By a large margin the United States of America is lagging very far behind all other nations as far as broadband internet access is concerned.
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I am running AT&T Uverse and how can I tell if it's a PPPOE connection? Call me a dipstick but I'm just not sure how to tell.
All the Best...
Jay
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I am running AT&T Uverse and how can I tell if it's a PPPOE connection? Call me a dipstick but I'm just not sure how to tell.
All the Best...
Jay
Uverse is PPPoE. I have it and it works fine. My only problem is ATT randomly decides to throttle back the speed from time to time to simply handle all the requests they must have from other areas.
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So are you arguing that based upon 2 good experiences with VPN's that encapsulation doesn't matter, and therefore that PPPoE isn't an issue?
P.S. I know you really aren't - but the situations are somewhat parallel. MOST VPN implementations do not perform particularly well, and certainly not as well as a routed connection - and I doubt like heck that Verizon's PPPoE really does, either.
{Rhetorical question} If it really doesn't matter, why wouldn't you simply use the VPN based connection all the time?
<S>
Actually no I'm arguing based on the fact that I consult, sell, and help deploy VPN solutions into large organisations (govt/education/corporate). One of the solutions I designed and rolled out services 25,000 remote users. I'm trained and certified on solutions from the likes of Aventail and Juniper.
If most VPN implementations you've used do not work particularly well then I would suggest either the equipment deployed was sub-standard or the people deploying it failed to do so correctly.
PPPoE and PPPoA are not encrypted, so the overheads in processing are minimal. They also fulfill a need in provisioning subscriber networks across multiple physical providers.
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Vulcan...Just so you get an idea from more than one person here in Alabama we have approximately 4 million people in the state. When you get outside of the 4 main population areas you have to use junky internet connections. DSL service is not widely available and cable internet is still the cats meow in the small towns with populations around 20k or so. FiOS isn't even readily available here in the largest population area at even 5% of the households.
By a large margin the United States of America is lagging very far behind all other nations as far as broadband internet access is concerned.
That's fine, but I'm not sure what the relevance is to this thread in regards to a site where fibre is deployed and in the definitions of fibre performance (and ppp for that matter). All I'm doing is correcting some technical mistakes and misunderstandings stated in this thread.
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Yeah PPPoA sucks though for implimentation, where are you? China or New Zealand? Cos I didn't think anyone else in the world still used PPPoA.
I live in Farmington, NM. USA
My DSL service is being provided thru 65 yr old phone wiring/routing. My service is 1.5 MBps down, .8 up. Tested connection speed is 1.33 down, .7 up so I don't complain too much (I live approx 12,000 wire feet from the DSLAM).
Now you know better.
:D
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That's fine, but I'm not sure what the relevance is to this thread in regards to a site where fibre is deployed and in the definitions of fibre performance (and ppp for that matter). All I'm doing is correcting some technical mistakes and misunderstandings stated in this thread.
Seemed to me that it had degenerated from a technical explanation to a thread where everyone was trying to jump in on you there. I was pointing out that in fact the USA is far behind in terms of broadband internet availability in a vast majority of the nation. Our infrastructure...not just telephony items...is falling apart and needs to be replaced but the telco companies don't want to spend the dollars it would take to redo everything...neither do the other service companies since it would most likely bankrupt many of them and that just can't happen because they are too big to fail.
However that is getting this thread way off base.
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Vulcan, what brands of better equipment? Please tell me the Brands, Models and where to get them. Thank You Ketinkrad P.S. I am always looking for better equipment, there is so much trash out there.
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Actually no I'm arguing based on the fact that I consult, sell, and help deploy VPN solutions into large organisations (govt/education/corporate). One of the solutions I designed and rolled out services 25,000 remote users. I'm trained and certified on solutions from the likes of Aventail and Juniper.
If most VPN implementations you've used do not work particularly well then I would suggest either the equipment deployed was sub-standard or the people deploying it failed to do so correctly.
PPPoE and PPPoA are not encrypted, so the overheads in processing are minimal. They also fulfill a need in provisioning subscriber networks across multiple physical providers.
Which is all well and good, and I don't doubt you in any way regarding your stated design and implementation abilities. But honestly, even if I accept them without reservation, I don't see how your experience and ability in building great VPN solutions changes that fact that as a general rule, most of the ones I've used have performed noticeably more poorly than a comparable routed connection. Nor am I alone I think in this observation - it's generally considered a given that you sacrifice performance and "reliability" (using the term loosely given that so much more can go wrong in establishing and maintaining the connection, interopability issues with products from different vendors, etc) in exchange for security.
But even if I were to concede that my experience isn't the norm (even though I know better) much more germane to this discussion is that I don't really understand why your experience and expertise would help convince me that a Verizon's PPPoE based FIOS solution is not something of a risk in terms of anticipated performance, especially when the main reason for rolling out FIOS using PPPoE is to re-use older, already existent hardware and software solutions that are now idle?
Maybe it's simply a case of differing viewpoints. Perhaps you feel that because it could work equally well it probably will, where I feel that where they are already taking what I believe to be a cost cutting shortcut, it's more likely to have adverse effects.
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We have been down the fibre path quite a ways now in NZ. Primarily in the business end. A point to note is our fibre providers are not necessarily the ISPs (there has been a push to seperate these two in NZ).
So far the implementation's are either route, VLAN, or MPLS based. In my experience so far this has led to many problems, an authentication based PPP solution would have negated these issues.
For example, on our fibre network for a long time you just plugged in with your IP and gateway and away you went. However all it took was some idiot to type his IP wrong and you'd get a conflict on the network and no idea why your connection was flakey. So then they introduced MAC address rules to tie you to IP, basically if you changed MAC addresses within a certain time period it'd lock you out. Problem for me is I often throw a new firewall on to play with. A few weeks back I was trying a Palo Alto box, took our Sonicwall off, PA in... (1 MAC change), PA didn't do something right, took it out put the Sonicwall back in (2 MAC changes and BLAM I was locked out).
What you really want is an Auth system that will backend into different Authorization servers, and nothing else does that as easily as PPPoE.
The alternative is the ISP is locked to the media and visa versa. This gives you no choice in selecting providers.
As for your security/vpn issues, tell me what vendors you deal with, because I'd say 9/10 times that's your problem. I'm cisco certified, done the cisco clone thing for a couple of years, then got out of that. Cisco are a jack of all trades, master of none. They are particularly inept at security and vpn devices. And if it's not cisco then it's a MS PPTP setup which is even worse :)
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For example, on our fibre network for a long time you just plugged in with your IP and gateway and away you went. However all it took was some idiot to type his IP wrong and you'd get a conflict on the network and no idea why your connection was flakey.
Isn't that what DHCP is for?
So then they introduced MAC address rules to tie you to IP, basically if you changed MAC addresses within a certain time period it'd lock you out. Problem for me is I often throw a new firewall on to play with. A few weeks back I was trying a Palo Alto box, took our Sonicwall off, PA in... (1 MAC change), PA didn't do something right, took it out put the Sonicwall back in (2 MAC changes and BLAM I was locked out).
MAC cloning... If firewall/router doesn't support it, you shouldn't be using it...
What you really want is an Auth system that will backend into different Authorization servers, and nothing else does that as easily as PPPoE.
DHCP + IP/MAC binding works just fine. Absolutely no need for any other overhead.
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As for your security/vpn issues, tell me what vendors you deal with, because I'd say 9/10 times that's your problem
I've used Cisco and Checkpoint clients. Excluding the ones I've set up myself, the VPN's I've used have been set up by the particular vendor we need to communicate with, and have either replaced a non-encrypted routed connection or in one instance, a dialup connection. In short, I'm not involved in any way other than the mandate that if we want to keep getting/doing (whatever) - we need to use the (whatever) that they provide.
For my own company, I've used Netgear FVS318 routers to implement VPNs between the office and two remote sites - and I will not argue with you if you want to dis' the quality of connection they provide - on the one hand they definitely can be slower than the same connection "just routed", but on the other they met the budgetary requirements (read "they cost next to nothing"), are fast enough, and most importantly, have been rock solid.
Now, about that PPPoE based FIOS...
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Isn't that what DHCP is for?
MAC cloning... If firewall/router doesn't support it, you shouldn't be using it...
DHCP + IP/MAC binding works just fine. Absolutely no need for any other overhead.
How do you do authentication to multiple authorization servers within DHCP? Let me know when you figure that out :)
MAC Cloning is fine, but likewise it's easy to clone someone elses MAC address and create even more problems.
DHCP + IP/MAC binding offers zero security whatsoever, only an idiot would deploy that solution to clients provisioned on a 3rd party infrastructure.
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I've used Cisco and Checkpoint clients. Excluding the ones I've set up myself, the VPN's I've used have been set up by the particular vendor we need to communicate with, and have either replaced a non-encrypted routed connection or in one instance, a dialup connection. In short, I'm not involved in any way other than the mandate that if we want to keep getting/doing (whatever) - we need to use the (whatever) that they provide.
For my own company, I've used Netgear FVS318 routers to implement VPNs between the office and two remote sites - and I will not argue with you if you want to dis' the quality of connection they provide - on the one hand they definitely can be slower than the same connection "just routed", but on the other they met the budgetary requirements (read "they cost next to nothing"), are fast enough, and most importantly, have been rock solid.
Now, about that PPPoE based FIOS...
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Righto, Cisco as I said early is fairly meagre. For example the old entry level PIX501's - which were the backbone of their security offering for some time - they only did around 3Mbps *at best* of 3DES throughput. Whereas the comparable Sonicwall and Juniper (Netscreen) products did a minimum of 25Mbps 3DES throughput on their smallest boxes (which incidentally were cheaper). And it was/is like that throughout the entire Cisco range.
Never done much with Checkpoint so I won't go there :)
The entry level netgear type products AFAIK do not have cryptographic co-processors, so they too are not to hot on VPN performance. We've encountered problems with devices like these crashing when VPNing to a proper box (ie Sonicwall/Juniper/Fortinet) because they simply can't handle the amount of encrypted traffic being thrown at them.
Now the ironic thing is you've most probably been using IPSEC clients, and they DON'T use PPP :D . Typically IPSEC clients hack the network stack on the client OS and filter packets as they travel up and down the stack. This mean't that you could never really load more than one IPSEC client on a machine, otherwise you tended to get BSOD's.
So in summary, you experience is with the lower end of the performance scale in hardware and not using PPP style connections.
Any more questions :)
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How do you do authentication to multiple authorization servers within DHCP? Let me know when you figure that out :)
MAC Cloning is fine, but likewise it's easy to clone someone elses MAC address and create even more problems.
DHCP + IP/MAC binding offers zero security whatsoever, only an idiot would deploy that solution to clients provisioned on a 3rd party infrastructure.
Weren't we talking from the ISP's point of view? You don't need PPPoE nor it's overhead to authenticate on network. IPoE is sufficient. Even Verizon figured that out. And that's what we were talking about...
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Weren't we talking from the ISP's point of view? You don't need PPPoE nor it's overhead to authenticate on network. IPoE is sufficient. Even Verizon figured that out. And that's what we were talking about...
Yes I am, and IPoE has still has no subscriber based authentication methods. I suggest you read here: http://www.juniper.net/solutions/literature/white_papers/200187.pdf (Pg 8 specifically)
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Oh no, not Juniper white papers. They're all religious about PPP. Everybody knows they are desperate in pushing their B-RAS hardware. It is their belief that they have an edge over Cisco in all PPP matters.
Question for you. Why would ISP need PPPoE for their downstream subscriber base? Even DSLAMs are now IP based.
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Maybe the ISP doesn't control the DSLAM? If you read the white paper you'd see the disadvantage of IPoE is the lack of subscriber authentication functionality. And as far as Juniper having the edge over Cisco, I'd believe Juniper ;)
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Maybe the ISP doesn't control the DSLAM?
Well, at least in US mostly all carriers (telcoes) are also ISPs.
If you read the white paper you'd see the disadvantage of IPoE is the lack of subscriber authentication functionality.
And again, why would an ISP need this functionality (when delivering internet access)?
And as far as Juniper having the edge over Cisco, I'd believe Juniper ;)
Personally I prefer Juniper over Cisco, but that doesn't mean I should take their marketing crap masked as white papers at face value. Beside that, PPPoE is going the way of a Dodo. It's just the way it is...
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And again, why would an ISP need this functionality (when delivering internet access)?
So randoms don't clone a MAC address and IP and route through them? In reality ISP's don't actually use MAC/IP, they use ports. But if the ISP does not control the device the clients are connected too then an authentication method is require, IPoE doesn't have any authentication method (well, perhaps except 802.1q but that's not supported on edge routers/firewalls).
At the moment the telco's in the USA are managing their own dslams, but as has been noted a large portion of the USA is way behind. If you look at moves overseas (like NZ) the governments have pushed for a separated model where there is a wholesaler provisioning the physical layer and subscribers pick their service providers. This allows more competition with a better infrastructure, as well as giving subscribers the ability to mix services (ie internet could come via one provider, VoIP via another, IPTV via a third).