[wplug] ISP providers in Pittsburgh?

Mike Procario Michael.Procario at science.doe.gov
Tue Dec 5 10:22:10 EST 2000


I would sign up if I still lived in Pittsburgh.  Let me ask a question
about how ISP's work.  I have had terrible experiences here in Frederick
using both Linux and Windows.  I usually connect with a reported speed
of 40-48K. However, I find my average performance is quite a bit worse
by timing multi-megabyte downloads. 

I use kppp which can plot the instantaneous data rate. It consists of
spikes of activity interspersed with periods of no data.  The spikes
reach 6 Kbytes/sec which you would expect for a 48kbps connection. A
particularly bad times the dead periods are much longer the active
periods. This looks like the connection from the POP (point of presence)
to the ISP's "backbone" is being saturated, and that the ISP is time
slicing the connection out of the POP. Is my analysis correct?

After putting up with this for awhile on Mindspring (since bought by
Earthlink). I decided to try some local Frederick, MD ISP's. The two
that I tried were both as bad. I also tried another national ISP, who
also performed badly.  My second question is do ISP's share POP's? 
Might there only be POP in Frederick and all the various ISP are
actually using that same connection out it? In my research an awful lot
of ISP's claimed to support Frederick. If each ran their POP we would
have a hundred different POP's in town.

Mark Dzmura wrote:
> 
> Fellow WPLUG'ers:
> 
> I try to avoid shameless advertising in a forum such as this, but - given the recent
> discussion thread on ISP's - I think folks on the list should be aware that we at
> Digital Mission LLC / digipath (who have been hosting the WPLUG web server
> for almost two years) offer a full line of connectivity services, in addition to our
> hosting and colocation services.
> 
> Our dialup service is normally $19.95/month, but we offer a $5/month discount -that's $14.95/month -
> to Linux users (that is, to folks connecting with Linux boxes - we can tell!).  Our service is very reliable
> and uptime is extremely good (we had a total of 20 HOURS of downtime last year, due to two separate
> incidents (beyond our control) in which fibers were cut - and which brought down other providers and
> hundreds of local businesses.
> 
> Our basic dialup includes unlimited access, personal web page, 10 MB of disk space, etc...
> We are presently testing our web-based secure email access - it needs some polishing on the HTML -
> and expect to have it fully operational before Jan 1 2001.  With regard to specific things that you
> might want: as some of your fellow WPLUG'ers could tell you, we are a lot more flexible than the
> competition, and we understand YOUR platform - our infrastructure is built almost entirely on
> Linux (with a little bit of Solaris for good measure.)
> 
> In addition to dialup, we also offer DSL services.  Due to the nature of the industry, we haven't
> yet found a way to be competivive with ADSL pricing, but our business-oriented SDSL
> services are both price-competitive and high-performance.
> 
> Our managed virtual hosting, managed/unmanaged server co-location, and shopping cart/
> e-commerce services are flexible, featureful, and reasonably priced.
> 
> Once again, I apologize for the shameless commerce, but felt that we have an option that
> WPLUG'ers should know about.  If you are interested in these or any of our other services,
> please contact us as follows:
> 
>     * email to me, Rob Dale, or sales at digipath.net
>     * Rob Dale is usually on IRC
>     * our sales # is 412-429-6002
> 
> Regards,
> Mark
> 
> "Christopher W. Aiken" wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Dec 04, 2000 at 06:06:52PM -0500, Jonathan S Billings wrote:
> > -|Telerama too.  (http://www.telerama.com)
> > -|(I'm happy with them, they have a tux on their front page!)
> > -|
> > -|_______________________________________________
> > -|wplug mailing list
> > -|wplug at wplug.org
> > -|http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
> >
> > Yep.   Telerama.com is VERY good.  Shell access, news servers,
> > 5MB for home pages, AND webmail for us travelers ( along with pop/smtp ).
> > I've had them for over a year.  $20/month.
> > --
> > --
> > Christopher W. Aiken, Scenery Hill, Pa, USA
> > chris at cwaiken dot com,   www.cwaiken.com
> > Current O/S: Debian 2.2 GNU/Linux
> > _______________________________________________
> > wplug mailing list
> > wplug at wplug.org
> > http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
> 
> --
> )))) This email routed via a wireless gateway!! ((((

-- 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Procario                 DOE-Division of High Energy Physics
Phone: 301-903-2890           Email: Michael.Procario at science.doe.gov
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