Comments | syntonic_comma: fiber in my neighborhood!

syntonic_comma

fiber in my neighborhood!

May 14, 2005 11:01

[I fixed the bad table that hid the comment links.]

This posting's 98% geek, so feel free to skip it if it's not your bag.
So -- we get this card in the mail last week that says Verizon FIOS is available in our area. And I go to the web site and put in our phone number, and it to says yes, we can get fiber right to our house. (Funny though -- ( Read more... )

verizon, comcast, fios, cable tv, internet, fiber, hsi, dsl, tv

Comments 3

"Fios"? eviltomble May 14 2005, 19:35:08 UTC

Jeesh, and there's me, dreaming of having ADSL instead of stinky dial-up! :D

I hadn't heard of this "FIOS" thing before, those downstream speeds are very very impressive... but would they make your experience of the internet any better after all that? I hear much of the time, many people are more limited by the bandwidth of networks in between their ISP and the remote site, and aside from that, a lot of the slowness of the web is down to crappy latency and overloaded servers (probably from serving too many broadband users ;) ).

Still, the upload speeds sound good, and I suppose you could achieve the sorts of download rates described if you downloaded lots of big things in parallel (from totally different servers, that is)... but would the latter be worth it? And does FIOS have a monthly bandwidth cap like most broadband services keep quiet about? It sounds as though you could probably exceed it in about half an hour!

/saw the "cheaper" comment too, but didn't quite get how it was

Re: "Fios"? syntonic_comma May 15 2005, 16:40:23 UTC

Jeesh, and there's me, dreaming of having ADSL instead of stinky dial-up!

I'm feeling very lucky to have this new option. I feel all high-speed internet is overpriced, but this is an improvement. And I do get a lot of enjoyment from the connection we have now. (And while it took me (and several others) a long time to get annimal to start using computers, I don't think she'd want to give up HSI either.) As for dial-up -- it could be worse. I remember using 300-, 1200-, and 2400-baud modems when they were the best there was. (I didn't have a computer in the 110-baud days.)

those downstream speeds are very very impressive... but would they make your experience of the internet any better after all that?

It would make for some improvement here. 4Mb to 5Mb is not that big a change, but cable bandwidth is shared in your neighborhood and often drops significantly. FIOS users report that they're actually seeing those quoted speeds. And the upload speed increase from 384Kb to 2Mb will really matter to me.

I hear much of the time, many ( ... )

Re: "Fios"? eviltomble May 17 2005, 03:37:50 UTC

but cable bandwidth is shared in your neighborhood and often drops significantly. FIOS users report that they're actually seeing those quoted speeds.

Hmm, that's a point. So FIOS isn't shared? That's an even bigger bandwidth difference then...
we often have 2 or 3 computers on here sharing the connection.

In which case I agree, you'll probably be able to make very good use of it :) But I've heard how numerous ISPs put in their terms that you're not allowed to do that, or are only allowed to share it between machines you've told them about, or something. But that could be another example of something they'd expect you to do on such high bandwidth lines.
They would be shooting themselves in the foot to do that, since this product is aimed directly at the people who want to suck in a lot of data.
Heh, I'd have said the same thing about broadband services in general ;) You may be right, but it seems strange to suppose that the bandwidth costs for the ISPs would be less when they're for FIOS users than for ADSL/cable users, and there the ( ... )