speed test...

[John Larkin]

I signed up with Comcast for, I think, 30 megabit cable internet. I
had a service problem a while back so they upgraded \"for free\" to 50.
I just ran a speed test and it\'s 920+38 Mbits. This is with a CAT5
cable right from their modem.

At work, we have a MonkeyBrains dish. We pay for 50+50 and get
500+500.

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

I signed up with Comcast for, I think, 30 megabit cable internet. I
had a service problem a while back so they upgraded \"for free\" to 50.
I just ran a speed test and it\'s 920+38 Mbits. This is with a CAT5
cable right from their modem.

Is that a fibre to premises circuit? Mine out in the wilds could only
supply ~300M on a nominal 500M line on a \"free\" trial so I opted to fall
back to the 150Mbps service that I had ordered (I get 100% of that).

At work, we have a MonkeyBrains dish. We pay for 50+50 and get
500+500.

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK they
invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such speed upgrades
which means a lot of people are still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or ever
increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile data.

--
Martin Brown

 

[bitrex]

On 9/12/2023 10:18 AM, John Larkin wrote:

I signed up with Comcast for, I think, 30 megabit cable internet. I
had a service problem a while back so they upgraded \"for free\" to 50.
I just ran a speed test and it\'s 920+38 Mbits. This is with a CAT5
cable right from their modem.

At work, we have a MonkeyBrains dish. We pay for 50+50 and get
500+500.

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

A lot of those multi-hundred megabit connections will go to a wireless
router where all user devices are connected to it via 802.11n or
802.11ac in a super-cluttered RF environment, and topping out at 50 or
100 megabits throughput on a good day

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 11:23:54 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 9/12/2023 10:18 AM, John Larkin wrote:
I signed up with Comcast for, I think, 30 megabit cable internet. I
had a service problem a while back so they upgraded \"for free\" to 50.
I just ran a speed test and it\'s 920+38 Mbits. This is with a CAT5
cable right from their modem.

At work, we have a MonkeyBrains dish. We pay for 50+50 and get
500+500.

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

A lot of those multi-hundred megabit connections will go to a wireless
router where all user devices are connected to it via 802.11n or
802.11ac in a super-cluttered RF environment, and topping out at 50 or
100 megabits throughput on a good day

We have a coax into the house, cable TV and internet and POTS.

My household WiFi is much slower, 7+3, downstairs in my office.
There\'s steel and concrete in the way.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:
I signed up with Comcast for, I think, 30 megabit cable internet. I
had a service problem a while back so they upgraded \"for free\" to 50.
I just ran a speed test and it\'s 920+38 Mbits. This is with a CAT5
cable right from their modem.

Is that a fibre to premises circuit?

No, cable TV coax.

Mine out in the wilds could only
supply ~300M on a nominal 500M line on a \"free\" trial so I opted to fall
back to the 150Mbps service that I had ordered (I get 100% of that).

At work, we have a MonkeyBrains dish. We pay for 50+50 and get
500+500.

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK they
invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such speed upgrades
which means a lot of people are still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or ever
increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up with
competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a couple sources
for Gbit fiber.

We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone twisted
pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it rained. Comcast
threw in POTS telephone service for free when we got their internet
service. I unplugged the phones because all the calls were spam.

 

[Don Y]

On 9/12/2023 8:23 AM, bitrex wrote:

A lot of those multi-hundred megabit connections will go to a wireless router
where all user devices are connected to it via 802.11n or 802.11ac in a
super-cluttered RF environment, and topping out at 50 or 100 megabits
throughput on a good day

Like running POTS via a SLIC96. *Unused* bandwidth doesn\'t buy the
provider anything. Better to let customers THINK they have a good
deal and talk it up to their friends (cheaper than PAYING for advertising)
and, when the fixed bandwidth eventually gets consumed by those
referrals, they can fall back on the contract language:
\"*UP* *TO* x Mbps\"

We downgraded our (microwave) link -- but, keep it running at
advertised speed 24/7/365 (much to the chagrin of our provider
who would rather we pay for a fatter pipe that we use intermittently)

 

[Ricky]

On Tuesday, September 12, 2023 at 11:24:03 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

On 9/12/2023 10:18 AM, John Larkin wrote:
I signed up with Comcast for, I think, 30 megabit cable internet. I
had a service problem a while back so they upgraded \"for free\" to 50.
I just ran a speed test and it\'s 920+38 Mbits. This is with a CAT5
cable right from their modem.

At work, we have a MonkeyBrains dish. We pay for 50+50 and get
500+500.

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.
A lot of those multi-hundred megabit connections will go to a wireless
router where all user devices are connected to it via 802.11n or
802.11ac in a super-cluttered RF environment, and topping out at 50 or
100 megabits throughput on a good day

I don\'t find speed tests to be very useful, because they are not measuring anything I use often. What I find, is that I can get a very high speed on the test, but when using the web for the things I mostly do, the delays are caused by latencies. A web page may have many MB or even GB of graphics involved, but they are all separate files. So they get downloaded when they get downloaded. Web pages often show up at a much lower speed number than the streaming speed tests show.

A streaming speed test might show something useful for watching videos. But I never need more than 12 or 15 Mbps for that. So, web based speed tests are not particularly useful to me, other than telling me there\'s nothing wrong with the connection.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Martin Brown]

On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK they
invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such speed upgrades
which means a lot of people are still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or ever
increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up with
competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a couple sources
for Gbit fiber.

That seems very socialist. It surely makes more sense for them to
extract at least some additional income for increasing your speed. UK
telcos are considerably more mercenary about upgrading their customers.

We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone twisted
pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it rained. Comcast
threw in POTS telephone service for free when we got their internet
service. I unplugged the phones because all the calls were spam.

I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an all
digital VOIP service offered over their backhaul. This is causing a lot
of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out \"Digital Voice\" over an
unwilling population of mostly elderly people who depend on features of
copper based POTS for living independently. Notably that POTS phones
still work if the mains fails and various alarms and care on call
services will only work correctly with a true copper physical line.

ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is
something fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my
village - no-one past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

However since I now have a fibre connection I don\'t care. The failing
junction box (think black plastic policeman\'s helmet with multicoloured
wire knitting and joints inside) is buried in the verge in front of my
house. If the water table rises it floods and shorts out circuits. When
the guys come to sort it out it sounds like maracas when they shake it!

In theory I think it is supposed to be water tight but in practice
rodents do for the catches or seals and after a few years it isn\'t.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Ricky]

On Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 4:35:14 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK they
invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such speed upgrades
which means a lot of people are still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or ever
increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up with
competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a couple sources
for Gbit fiber.
That seems very socialist. It surely makes more sense for them to
extract at least some additional income for increasing your speed. UK
telcos are considerably more mercenary about upgrading their customers.

That\'s one of the strangest comments I\'ve heard anyone make... even here.

Competition is the core of capitalism. If they are upgrading the neighborhood, it may well be they simply don\'t have the slower speed anymore, or that they\'ve changed their rate structure so that the higher speed is the same price as the old lower speed.

We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone twisted
pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it rained. Comcast
threw in POTS telephone service for free when we got their internet
service. I unplugged the phones because all the calls were spam.
I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an all
digital VOIP service offered over their backhaul.

Maybe for new installations, but this is an area where the rule applies, \"if it ain\'t broke, don\'t fix it!\". The POTS home connection works very well once in place. Even if they install fiber, they don\'t remove all the POTS wiring.

This is causing a lot
of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out \"Digital Voice\" over an
unwilling population of mostly elderly people who depend on features of
copper based POTS for living independently. Notably that POTS phones
still work if the mains fails and various alarms and care on call
services will only work correctly with a true copper physical line.

Yeah, a friend moved into a retirement community some years ago and they use fiber to the home, but he\'s actually has voice with his cable service. No 911 location info and when power goes out, so does the phone. I gave him a UPS for his cable box, and a non-powered phone plugged directly into the unit. So, as long as the rest of the cable system works, he can get a call out. But, they\'ve also given him an emergency alert unit that is supposed to work in a power failure. I just don\'t know who it summons.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Don Y]

On 9/14/2023 1:35 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

That seems very socialist. It surely makes more sense for them to extract at
least some additional income for increasing your speed. UK telcos are
considerably more mercenary about upgrading their customers.

Your *guaranteed* speed usually doesn\'t increase. Your \"up to\"
(maximum) speed can be increased for zero cost -- because they
don\'t have to GIVE you that bandwidth if they can find another
buyer!

I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an all digital
VOIP service offered over their backhaul.

Exactly. You can even find \"home phone service\" that\'s a fixed-in-place cell
phone wired to your home\'s internal wiring.

This is causing a lot of trouble in
the UK with BT rolling out \"Digital Voice\" over an unwilling population of
mostly elderly people who depend on features of copper based POTS for living
independently. Notably that POTS phones still work if the mains fails and
various alarms and care on call services will only work correctly with a true
copper physical line.

Yes. People move away from a dedicated pair to <whatever> and then
wonder why their *phone* is out.

City workers came out to install \"speed humps\" (broader than \"humps\")
in the neighborhood. The outer edges of each are to be marked
with an upright post, carrying \"warning\" markings (for drivers
who can\'t see the bright zebra-stripes painted on the ELEVATED hump).

These are supposed to be fastened to the asphalt in the gully
(allows water to flow around the hump) on each side of the hump
as that\'s so close to the edge of the road that no driver
should be that far over (except those who want to avoid the
hump with their OUTER set of wheels).

Joe Rocket Scientist opted to drive the post into the soil
in the \"hell strip\" alongside the hump

(<https://www.ecolandscaping.org/05/designing-ecological-landscapes/native-plants/hellstrip-plantings-creating-habitat-in-the-space-between-the-sidewalk-and-the-curb/>)

And, because they aren\'t supposed to work too hard, he uses
a pneumatic impact driver to ram the metal post through the
soil (which, admittedly, is VERY hard, here).

EXACTLY *through* the CATV feed for the neighborhood, taking
out every subscriber\'s TV, phone and internet service! Of course,
the pneumatic driver didn\'t flinch at the obstruction so there was
no way for Joe Rocket Scientist to realize what he\'d just done...

ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is something
fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my village - no-one
past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

(All) Our services are below grade. And, after 40 years, water infiltration
means things like phone go to shit. (even the power cables are overdue
for replacement)

Was a time when you couldn\'t carry on a VOICE conversation on our pair;
the noise floor... wasn\'t! <frown>

The solution, of course, is to just move you to a different pair
that *seems* better... *now*. The cost of actually running new cable
(or fiber) is just not in the cards for the folks who are just
trying to squeeze every last gasping nickel out of a rundown
technology.

[Which is amusing as their biggest asset *is* the last mile!]

However since I now have a fibre connection I don\'t care. The failing junction
box (think black plastic policeman\'s helmet with multicoloured wire knitting
and joints inside) is buried in the verge in front of my house. If the water
table rises it floods and shorts out circuits. When the guys come to sort it
out it sounds like maracas when they shake it!

In theory I think it is supposed to be water tight but in practice rodents do
for the catches or seals and after a few years it isn\'t.

Our \"network access points\" aren\'t particularly watertight
but the connections between the house and network are
behind rubber seals and high in the box (which would never be
able to HOLD water). The problem is always somewhere other
than at YOUR access point (\"If we have to send someone out
and we discover its a problem in YOUR wiring, we will bill you
for the service visit!\" \"Well, the house is disconnected
from your network and you\'ll note the test YOU just ran
shows a fault so I\'m REALLY confident this is on your dime!\")

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:35:03 +0100, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK they
invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such speed upgrades
which means a lot of people are still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or ever
increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up with
competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a couple sources
for Gbit fiber.

That seems very socialist.

Capitalist competition is the opposite of socialism. Compete or die.



It surely makes more sense for them to

extract at least some additional income for increasing your speed. UK
telcos are considerably more mercenary about upgrading their customers.

We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone twisted
pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it rained. Comcast
threw in POTS telephone service for free when we got their internet
service. I unplugged the phones because all the calls were spam.

I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an all
digital VOIP service offered over their backhaul. This is causing a lot
of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out \"Digital Voice\" over an
unwilling population of mostly elderly people who depend on features of
copper based POTS for living independently. Notably that POTS phones
still work if the mains fails and various alarms and care on call tly
services will only work correctly with a true copper physical line.

The AT&T POTS twisted pair worked direcly into an old analog phone. I
guess some people here still do that. It was expensive, with a big
\"long distance\" charge. I think most people here just use cell phones,
with wi-fi connection at home.

ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is
something fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my
village - no-one past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

However since I now have a fibre connection I don\'t care. The failing
junction box (think black plastic policeman\'s helmet with multicoloured
wire knitting and joints inside) is buried in the verge in front of my
house. If the water table rises it floods and shorts out circuits. When
the guys come to sort it out it sounds like maracas when they shake it!

In theory I think it is supposed to be water tight but in practice
rodents do for the catches or seals and after a few years it isn\'t.

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:02:42 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:35:03 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK they
invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such speed upgrades
which means a lot of people are still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or ever
increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up with
competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a couple sources
for Gbit fiber.

That seems very socialist.

Capitalist competition is the opposite of socialism. Compete or die.



It surely makes more sense for them to
extract at least some additional income for increasing your speed. UK
telcos are considerably more mercenary about upgrading their customers.

We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone twisted
pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it rained. Comcast
threw in POTS telephone service for free when we got their internet
service. I unplugged the phones because all the calls were spam.

I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an all
digital VOIP service offered over their backhaul. This is causing a lot
of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out \"Digital Voice\" over an
unwilling population of mostly elderly people who depend on features of
copper based POTS for living independently. Notably that POTS phones
still work if the mains fails and various alarms and care on call tly
services will only work correctly with a true copper physical line.

The AT&T POTS twisted pair worked direcly into an old analog phone. I
guess some people here still do that. It was expensive, with a big
\"long distance\" charge. I think most people here just use cell phones,
with wi-fi connection at home.

In the Boston area, I had exactly that until recently, and for those
same reasons, when the local traditional telephone company discounted
all copper service and forced everybody to optical fiber a year ago.
They also thought that they would just sweep in and install the new
equipment in some random place, but there was not space in my basement
for that, so I insisted on doing the physical install myself. They
were balking until I explained that I also had cable, and so if the
telco threw me out, my next call would be to their main competitor -
no install needed. So they sent me the stuff, and I installed it, and
added a dedicated power outlet for it to use.

If the local power goes out, this stops working unless one has a
backup battery, which they made quite awkward (must be a large
collection of ordinary alkaline D batteries; rechargeable not
available for homes, only businesses. So the fallback is cell phones,
until they run out of juice.

ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is
something fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my
village - no-one past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

In the Boston area, many people had ADSL, and the general report was
that it never worked while it was raining. One assumes that a little
bit of water was getting into the legacy cables, and then it dried
out.

However since I now have a fibre connection I don\'t care. The failing
junction box (think black plastic policeman\'s helmet with multicoloured
wire knitting and joints inside) is buried in the verge in front of my
house. If the water table rises it floods and shorts out circuits. When
the guys come to sort it out it sounds like maracas when they shake it!

In theory I think it is supposed to be water tight but in practice
rodents go for the catches or seals and after a few years it isn\'t.

Around here, the rodents seem to have color preferences, which is odd
because mostly this happened in permanently dark places. Must be
taste or smell.

Joe Gwinn

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 15:41:39 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:02:42 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:35:03 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK they
invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such speed upgrades
which means a lot of people are still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or ever
increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up with
competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a couple sources
for Gbit fiber.

That seems very socialist.

Capitalist competition is the opposite of socialism. Compete or die.



It surely makes more sense for them to
extract at least some additional income for increasing your speed. UK
telcos are considerably more mercenary about upgrading their customers.

We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone twisted
pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it rained. Comcast
threw in POTS telephone service for free when we got their internet
service. I unplugged the phones because all the calls were spam.

I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an all
digital VOIP service offered over their backhaul. This is causing a lot
of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out \"Digital Voice\" over an
unwilling population of mostly elderly people who depend on features of
copper based POTS for living independently. Notably that POTS phones
still work if the mains fails and various alarms and care on call tly
services will only work correctly with a true copper physical line.

The AT&T POTS twisted pair worked direcly into an old analog phone. I
guess some people here still do that. It was expensive, with a big
\"long distance\" charge. I think most people here just use cell phones,
with wi-fi connection at home.

In the Boston area, I had exactly that until recently, and for those
same reasons, when the local traditional telephone company discounted
all copper service and forced everybody to optical fiber a year ago.
They also thought that they would just sweep in and install the new
equipment in some random place, but there was not space in my basement
for that, so I insisted on doing the physical install myself. They
were balking until I explained that I also had cable, and so if the
telco threw me out, my next call would be to their main competitor -
no install needed. So they sent me the stuff, and I installed it, and
added a dedicated power outlet for it to use.

If the local power goes out, this stops working unless one has a
backup battery, which they made quite awkward (must be a large
collection of ordinary alkaline D batteries; rechargeable not
available for homes, only businesses. So the fallback is cell phones,
until they run out of juice.



ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is
something fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my
village - no-one past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

In the Boston area, many people had ADSL, and the general report was
that it never worked while it was raining. One assumes that a little
bit of water was getting into the legacy cables, and then it dried
out.


However since I now have a fibre connection I don\'t care. The failing
junction box (think black plastic policeman\'s helmet with multicoloured
wire knitting and joints inside) is buried in the verge in front of my
house. If the water table rises it floods and shorts out circuits. When
the guys come to sort it out it sounds like maracas when they shake it!

In theory I think it is supposed to be water tight but in practice
rodents go for the catches or seals and after a few years it isn\'t.

Around here, the rodents seem to have color preferences, which is odd
because mostly this happened in permanently dark places. Must be
taste or smell.

Joe Gwinn

Why would a squirrel do this?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8b8mz7ppsnypjkz/Cable_Chewed.jpg?raw=1

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 19:19:45 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 15:41:39 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:02:42 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:35:03 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed up for,
same price. The backbone fibers must be moving petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK they
invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such speed upgrades
which means a lot of people are still on rather slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or ever
increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up with
competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a couple sources
for Gbit fiber.

That seems very socialist.

Capitalist competition is the opposite of socialism. Compete or die.



It surely makes more sense for them to
extract at least some additional income for increasing your speed. UK
telcos are considerably more mercenary about upgrading their customers.

We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone twisted
pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it rained. Comcast
threw in POTS telephone service for free when we got their internet
service. I unplugged the phones because all the calls were spam.

I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an all
digital VOIP service offered over their backhaul. This is causing a lot
of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out \"Digital Voice\" over an
unwilling population of mostly elderly people who depend on features of
copper based POTS for living independently. Notably that POTS phones
still work if the mains fails and various alarms and care on call tly
services will only work correctly with a true copper physical line.

The AT&T POTS twisted pair worked direcly into an old analog phone. I
guess some people here still do that. It was expensive, with a big
\"long distance\" charge. I think most people here just use cell phones,
with wi-fi connection at home.

In the Boston area, I had exactly that until recently, and for those
same reasons, when the local traditional telephone company discounted
all copper service and forced everybody to optical fiber a year ago.
They also thought that they would just sweep in and install the new
equipment in some random place, but there was not space in my basement
for that, so I insisted on doing the physical install myself. They
were balking until I explained that I also had cable, and so if the
telco threw me out, my next call would be to their main competitor -
no install needed. So they sent me the stuff, and I installed it, and
added a dedicated power outlet for it to use.

If the local power goes out, this stops working unless one has a
backup battery, which they made quite awkward (must be a large
collection of ordinary alkaline D batteries; rechargeable not
available for homes, only businesses. So the fallback is cell phones,
until they run out of juice.



ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is
something fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my
village - no-one past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

In the Boston area, many people had ADSL, and the general report was
that it never worked while it was raining. One assumes that a little
bit of water was getting into the legacy cables, and then it dried
out.


However since I now have a fibre connection I don\'t care. The failing
junction box (think black plastic policeman\'s helmet with multicoloured
wire knitting and joints inside) is buried in the verge in front of my
house. If the water table rises it floods and shorts out circuits. When
the guys come to sort it out it sounds like maracas when they shake it!

In theory I think it is supposed to be water tight but in practice
rodents go for the catches or seals and after a few years it isn\'t.

Around here, the rodents seem to have color preferences, which is odd
because mostly this happened in permanently dark places. Must be
taste or smell.

Joe Gwinn

Why would a squirrel do this?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8b8mz7ppsnypjkz/Cable_Chewed.jpg?raw=1

I dunno - never could get a word out of them.

But that looks to dainty for a squirrel. Looks more like mice or a
rat.

The automotive wires that had soy-based insulation of jackets were the
first to go. All rodents like them.

..<https://www.motorverso.com/which-cars-have-soy-based-wiring/>

Joe Gwinn

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/09/2023 11:02, Ricky wrote:

On Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 4:35:14 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed
up for, same price. The backbone fibers must be moving
petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK
they invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such
speed upgrades which means a lot of people are still on rather
slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or
ever increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile
data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up
with competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a
couple sources for Gbit fiber.
That seems very socialist. It surely makes more sense for them to
extract at least some additional income for increasing your speed.
UK telcos are considerably more mercenary about upgrading their
customers.

That\'s one of the strangest comments I\'ve heard anyone make... even
here.

Competition is the core of capitalism. If they are upgrading the
neighborhood, it may well be they simply don\'t have the slower speed
anymore, or that they\'ve changed their rate structure so that the
higher speed is the same price as the old lower speed.

Competition might be, but if the provider can get more money for
shareholders by selling the upgrade to their customers they will do so.
It is very anti-capitalist to give something away for nowt!

In the UK if you aren\'t talking to customer retention at least every
couple of years you will be ripped off. That applies to utilities,
mobile phone, internet and insurance. There is a big penalty in the UK
for being loyal to your supplier since they like to price gouge.
(most people don\'t seem to notice either)

Sometimes the only way to get a decent deal is to switch supplier.

As a concrete example our Village Hall gets its electricity from British
Gas because they were the cheapest electricity supplier when we last
looked at it (there is *no* mains gas in the village!).

We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone
twisted pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it
rained. Comcast threw in POTS telephone service for free when we
got their internet service. I unplugged the phones because all
the calls were spam.
I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an
all digital VOIP service offered over their backhaul.

Maybe for new installations, but this is an area where the rule
applies, \"if it ain\'t broke, don\'t fix it!\". The POTS home
connection works very well once in place. Even if they install
fiber, they don\'t remove all the POTS wiring.

How odd! The reason for installing fibre in my village is precisely
because the corroding copper is on its last legs and I had about the
only good for 5Mbps copper line pair on the exchange. They couldn\'t take
it off me quickly enough once my fibre line was operational.

I\'m on transitional drop cabling which is a figure of 8 profile with the
fibre on one half and a copper line pair on the other. In the air it has
a distinctive whirlygig appearance so you can tell at a glance who has
fibre. The copper line pair is not even terminated just cropped off.

There is a waiting list for copper circuits! They had already DACS\'d all
the copper lines not used for internet connections a long time ago. They
tend to break one copper circuit for every three they try to mend.

This is causing a lot of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out
\"Digital Voice\" over an unwilling population of mostly elderly
people who depend on features of copper based POTS for living
independently. Notably that POTS phones still work if the mains
fails and various alarms and care on call services will only work
correctly with a true copper physical line.

Yeah, a friend moved into a retirement community some years ago and
they use fiber to the home, but he\'s actually has voice with his
cable service. No 911 location info and when power goes out, so does
the phone. I gave him a UPS for his cable box, and a non-powered
phone plugged directly into the unit. So, as long as the rest of the
cable system works, he can get a call out. But, they\'ve also given
him an emergency alert unit that is supposed to work in a power
failure. I just don\'t know who it summons.

It has become a bit of a mess. They can\'t source enough batteries for
the old people they are trying to upgrade and have left vulnerable
people with no phone for way too long. If they had standardised the
optical receiver and router to take power from USB C it would be easier
but as it is they each require their own random choice of voltage and
connector (and two mains sockets nearby to power them)!


--
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/09/2023 20:41, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:02:42 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:35:03 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:


ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is
something fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my
village - no-one past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

In the Boston area, many people had ADSL, and the general report was
that it never worked while it was raining. One assumes that a little
bit of water was getting into the legacy cables, and then it dried
out.

We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as in
flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to last
5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

However since I now have a fibre connection I don\'t care. The failing
junction box (think black plastic policeman\'s helmet with multicoloured
wire knitting and joints inside) is buried in the verge in front of my
house. If the water table rises it floods and shorts out circuits. When
the guys come to sort it out it sounds like maracas when they shake it!

In theory I think it is supposed to be water tight but in practice
rodents go for the catches or seals and after a few years it isn\'t.

Around here, the rodents seem to have color preferences, which is odd
because mostly this happened in permanently dark places. Must be
taste or smell.

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to guide
their choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems on radio
telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Ricky]

On Friday, September 15, 2023 at 6:13:24 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/09/2023 11:02, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 4:35:14 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 12/09/2023 17:57, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:33:31 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/09/2023 15:18, John Larkin wrote:

This seems to be a trend, much faster internet than we signed
up for, same price. The backbone fibers must be moving
petabits.

I\'m surprised that they upgrade you 10x for free. In the UK
they invariably try to extract extra money out of you for such
speed upgrades which means a lot of people are still on rather
slow legacy speeds.

Likewise with phone contracts they try to extract constant or
ever increasing amounts of money from you by increasing mobile
data.

It seems like suppliers here are upgrading for free to keep up
with competition. We could use cable, a microwave dish, or a
couple sources for Gbit fiber.
That seems very socialist. It surely makes more sense for them to
extract at least some additional income for increasing your speed.
UK telcos are considerably more mercenary about upgrading their
customers.

That\'s one of the strangest comments I\'ve heard anyone make... even
here.

Competition is the core of capitalism. If they are upgrading the
neighborhood, it may well be they simply don\'t have the slower speed
anymore, or that they\'ve changed their rate structure so that the
higher speed is the same price as the old lower speed.
Competition might be, but if the provider can get more money for
shareholders by selling the upgrade to their customers they will do so.
It is very anti-capitalist to give something away for nowt!

Exactly, \"IF\" is the magic word. But you don\'t seem to understand what I\'m saying, so I won\'t bother you with it further.

In the UK if you aren\'t talking to customer retention at least every
couple of years you will be ripped off. That applies to utilities,
mobile phone, internet and insurance. There is a big penalty in the UK
for being loyal to your supplier since they like to price gouge.
(most people don\'t seem to notice either)

Perhaps you could read what I wrote and make more effort to understand it. If you continue to focus on your own thoughts, you can\'t learn anything new.

Sometimes the only way to get a decent deal is to switch supplier.

As a concrete example our Village Hall gets its electricity from British
Gas because they were the cheapest electricity supplier when we last
looked at it (there is *no* mains gas in the village!).
We had an AT&T internet connection over the traditional phone
twisted pairs, but it was slow and expensive and died when it
rained. Comcast threw in POTS telephone service for free when we
got their internet service. I unplugged the phones because all
the calls were spam.
I presume the POTS phone service is actually a POTS connector on an
all digital VOIP service offered over their backhaul.

Maybe for new installations, but this is an area where the rule
applies, \"if it ain\'t broke, don\'t fix it!\". The POTS home
connection works very well once in place. Even if they install
fiber, they don\'t remove all the POTS wiring.
How odd! The reason for installing fibre in my village is precisely
because the corroding copper is on its last legs and I had about the
only good for 5Mbps copper line pair on the exchange. They couldn\'t take
it off me quickly enough once my fibre line was operational.

Sorry, by \"copper\", do you mean POTS? If you have significant corrosion in copper lines, there\'s something very wrong with that. The POTS to my house was installed around 80 years ago and has never failed from corrosion. I\'ve never heard of a POTS line failing from corrosion. Maybe this is something unique to the UK. Do they mix in other elements into your copper wires?

I\'m on transitional drop cabling which is a figure of 8 profile with the
fibre on one half and a copper line pair on the other. In the air it has
a distinctive whirlygig appearance so you can tell at a glance who has
fibre. The copper line pair is not even terminated just cropped off.

There is a waiting list for copper circuits! They had already DACS\'d all
the copper lines not used for internet connections a long time ago. They
tend to break one copper circuit for every three they try to mend.

Wow! That\'s some bad copper. Someone should investigate this. It may be something like the massive installation in the UK of foil wrapped power lines where the foil was used as one of the conductors. It was aluminum and corroded over a few years, requiring massive replacements. Or am I getting a detail wrong on that? Sounds very similar to me.

This is causing a lot of trouble in the UK with BT rolling out
\"Digital Voice\" over an unwilling population of mostly elderly
people who depend on features of copper based POTS for living
independently. Notably that POTS phones still work if the mains
fails and various alarms and care on call services will only work
correctly with a true copper physical line.

Yeah, a friend moved into a retirement community some years ago and
they use fiber to the home, but he\'s actually has voice with his
cable service. No 911 location info and when power goes out, so does
the phone. I gave him a UPS for his cable box, and a non-powered
phone plugged directly into the unit. So, as long as the rest of the
cable system works, he can get a call out. But, they\'ve also given
him an emergency alert unit that is supposed to work in a power
failure. I just don\'t know who it summons.
It has become a bit of a mess. They can\'t source enough batteries for
the old people they are trying to upgrade and have left vulnerable
people with no phone for way too long. If they had standardised the
optical receiver and router to take power from USB C it would be easier
but as it is they each require their own random choice of voltage and
connector (and two mains sockets nearby to power them)!

So, on top of everything else, the UK has a battery shortage??? Jeez. I can see why there is so much resistance to EVs in the UK.

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Ricky]

On Friday, September 15, 2023 at 6:21:17 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/09/2023 20:41, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:02:42 -0700, John Larkin
jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:35:03 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:


ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is
something fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my
village - no-one past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

In the Boston area, many people had ADSL, and the general report was
that it never worked while it was raining. One assumes that a little
bit of water was getting into the legacy cables, and then it dried
out.
We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US

LOL You talk as if the US were the size of a city! Do you think the southwest deserts have the same rainfall as the pacific northwest? Is New England the same as Florida? The US is hugely varied.

and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as in
flooding).

I thought you were saying how crappy your phone lines are with corrosion and general deterioration??? I\'m confused.

Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to last
5 or 10 years before they fail badly again.

I don\'t get that. In the US, we have junction boxes that last for many decades without any attention. Maybe the UK needs to outsource some of this?

I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though.

The best way to protect them is to keep the junctions dry in water tight boxes. But you\'ve already said this is beyond the state of technology in the UK.

There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps.

That is easily fixed by proper installation techniques. Again, perhaps the UK should outsource this if you can\'t get it right after how many decades???

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Don Y]

On 9/15/2023 3:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone lines
generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as in flooding).
Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

Are your lines fed from above (e.g., flying off telephone poles)?
Or, do they travel below grade, surfacing just before entering the
subscriber\'s premises?

Water frequently infiltrates our buried cables (including the 100+ pair
that runs the length of the street, below grade). So, a (rare!) rain
can leave you with a noisey line that resolves itself BEFORE the lineman
can get around to actually checking the line, in person.

Connections to the premises wiring are done above ground in a
\"telephone network interface\" box: the utility\'s feed is
terminated in a pair (typically) of RJ11 jacks. The premises
wiring presents as one or more RJ11 plugs. So, a subscriber can
\"unplug\" their wiring from the network to allow the utility
to check THEIR wiring without the subscriber\'s impacting the test.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to last 5 or 10
years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they protect wet wires
from corrosion though. There are places near me with hybrid copper meets
aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies ADSL. So bad that some don\'t
even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave has been claiming these dead zones for
some time - farmers need it.

Our problem is with the hundreds of feet of 100(?) pair cable
that feeds the neighborhood from the main junction box at the entrance to
the subdivision. Lots of places for a partial short or line imbalance
to present.

(The main cable surfaces every couple of houses to allow access to
the pairs in a small -- 20? circuit -- \"pedestal\" usually shared
by two adjacent homes. These are frequently not closed properly
as they sit *on* the ground and dirt often hampers re-placing the
cover -- ours has a set f very large tie-wraps holding it closed...
with a 1\" gap on each side)

<https://i.imgur.com/RlQhw7Y.jpg>
<https://prod-content-care-community-cdn.sprinklr.com/d80f176d-2bd5-487b-b539-b24b3ede5ed6/IMG_20220623_200918-41f1502e-e236-4064-ae22-0aeb98bb665b-530822081.jpg>
<https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgpkus8sr6jm41.jpg>

(note the premises wiring connects to INDIVIDUAL conductors that
present on threaded \"studs\", visible on the left side of the
last photo -- perhaps more visible in the second?)

For these boxes to be in this state (exposed) is common.
And, for them to vary throughout the neighborhood as equipment
is selectively upgraded.

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to guide their
choice of exactly what to nibble. We solved our problems on radio telescope
cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

Various \"burrowing creatures\" are more of a problem with the
AC mains (which are also below grade). Part of the service
procedure for each of the ground-mounted transformers is to
fill the exposed earth *inside* the enclosure with mortar
and wet it to form a bit of a crust to discourage the critters
from gaining entry to the high voltage wiring (fried critters!).

Packrats tend to enjoy feasting on the wire in automobiles,
accessing that from the underside.

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Fri, 15 Sep 2023 11:21:06 +0100, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/09/2023 20:41, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:02:42 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:35:03 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:


ADSL in its various forms shouldn\'t be that unstable unless there is
something fundamentally wrong with the local wiring (as there is in my
village - no-one past me gets more than 2Mbps ADSL on copper).

In the Boston area, many people had ADSL, and the general report was
that it never worked while it was raining. One assumes that a little
bit of water was getting into the legacy cables, and then it dried
out.

We must surely have a lot more rain than in the US and yet our phone
lines generally do hold up for ADSL unless it gets very very wet (as in
flooding). Being on the wrong side of the beck doesn\'t help.

I would assume that in both countries, cable designs suiting their
local environments were chosen.

They connector housings do fail from time to time but they seem to last
5 or 10 years before they fail badly again. I\'m not sure how they
protect wet wires from corrosion though. There are places near me with
hybrid copper meets aluminium phone wiring which partially rectifies
ADSL. So bad that some don\'t even get 256kbps. Peer to peer microwave
has been claiming these dead zones for some time - farmers need it.

I don\'t know of any aluminum telephone wire in the US, ever. Only
copper alloys. (Power wiring is different.)

However since I now have a fibre connection I don\'t care. The failing
junction box (think black plastic policeman\'s helmet with multicoloured
wire knitting and joints inside) is buried in the verge in front of my
house. If the water table rises it floods and shorts out circuits. When
the guys come to sort it out it sounds like maracas when they shake it!

In theory I think it is supposed to be water tight but in practice
rodents go for the catches or seals and after a few years it isn\'t.

Around here, the rodents seem to have color preferences, which is odd
because mostly this happened in permanently dark places. Must be
taste or smell.

There may be a slight difference in texture which is what seems to guide
their choice of exactly what to nibble.

I\'ve heard lots of theories on why rodents like to chew on wire, but
none has ever been shown to be more likely than any other, let alone
proven.

We solved our problems on radio
telescope cable runs by flooding the ducts with dry nitrogen.

That would certainly do it.

In the US, the old dry multi-pair telephone cables were pressurized
with nitrogen, largely to exclude water despite flaws in the jacket.
One would see the nitrogen tanks strapped to telephone poles here and
there. The advent of flooded or filled cables rendered the nitrogen
bottles obsolete. The filling goop is a mineral oil gelled with a
mineral wax.

In the old days, the twisted pairs were copper insulated with dry pulp
paper (newsprint paper basically) cable sheaths were extruded lead,
and the joints were soft-soldered by hand.

Nowadays, the twisted pairs are insulated with low density
polyethylene, and the cable jacket is heavy polyethylene, often with
an aluminum shield/protector just underneath.

Joe Gwinn