NYCPHP Meetup

[Paul A Houle]

Mitch Pirtle wrote:
> Was getting a ride from a guy who owned a communications services
> company, and we discussed megabit services in Brooklyn. He mentioned
> that Brooklyn was notorious for having totally substandard wiring
> running down poles between all the houses and buildings, and that it
> was a logistics nightmare for Verizon to manage making upgrades nearly
> impossible - and the result is that pretty much nobody in the city can
> get more than typical 1.5MBps DSL. Better chances for faster service
> in Cambodia.
>   
    Heck,  even rural areas are catching up.  Here's a photo of how we 
get DSL in our neck of the woods:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_houle/3340856649/

    The architecture is that they have 2 DSL lines:  one that goes from 
the box to the CO,  and another that goes to your house.  These work 
pretty well,  though it would be better if they sent fiber to the 
repeaters.  Service is reasonably reliable,  though it sometimes seems 
to go down on the weekend.  Cable is available about a mile and a half 
down the road.  Time Warner has considered running cable down my valley 
but there's not that much demand:  anybody who wants TV already has 
satellite.

    My main beef with the service is with their DNS.  The default DNS is 
(i) slow,  and (ii) points you to a bogus web site for names that don't 
resolve.  Running a local djbdns server makes it feel like I added a turbo.