Alternatives to Comcast

[Thomas Charron]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 10:22 PM, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  Right off the bat, communications overhead, simply due to the
>> encapsulation.
>  Covered in my message to Tom Buskey.  It's always there.

  PPPoE still has additional overhead.  Not a significant amount, but
some of the overhead is simply due to the fact that the PPPoE
additional packet size will end up kicking over the ATM packet size in
many cases, causing an additional packet to be used for each IP
packet.

>> Additionally, you're generally PPPoE into a machine,
>> handling beelions of other PPPoE connections.
>  Ummm... what the heck do think is at the other end of the DSL line
> but "a machine"?  The Internet isn't an actual "cloud", despite what
> network diagrams show.  There really is some equipment involved.  Some
> carriers terminate DSL into something like a router immediately, but I
> believe Verizon's stuff generally goes into an ATM network first.  So
> your frames float around in that before getting to something that
> speaks IP.

  Dedicated IP routers vs general purpose systems.  Yes, it's a
machine.  However, it's wrapping and unwrapping on the fly, all on the
same machine.  It's cheaper for the ISP, and slower for the customer.

>> This means that your packets are going thru a peice of software, and not being
>> routed by hardware, and least between you and your ISP.
>  Um, yah.  There's no such thing as hardware without software, or
> software without hardware.  That's a bogus argument put forward by
> people trying to sell routers.  IOS is software.  Linux is software.
> My PC is hardware.  A Cisco 2600 is hardware.  Where and how it's done
> doesn't matter, so long as adequate capacity exists and the
> implementation is stable.  (That's a big "if", of course.  Especially
> when Verizon is involved.)

  *sigh*  An ATM switch is going to have less of an impact on customer
traffic then a general purpose system handing PPPoE connections.
Period.  Of course there's software, but the equipment AND software in
a Cisco switch, one that I would call 'hardware' is, most of the time,
going to kick the shite out of a primarily software based solution.

>> Additionally, your PPPoE connection will occasionally need to be dropped and
>> reconnected for one reason or another, causing occasional 'blips'.
>  My cable modem needs that, too.  That's because most CPE is cheap
> and isn't designed with self-healing capabilities, not because of the
> protocols involved.

"One reason or another" isn't "There are technical reasons, but built
into the protocol is a maximum connection time".  The PPPoE solutions
which most providers utilize rely on "Cheap Arse"(tm) solutions, built
to stuff as many people into them as possible.

-- 
-- Thomas