Last mile to small town

[kagliostro]

{New topic split from "How to insert an image in a thread..."}

This image is coded to display at 100px wide, but your browser has to download the whole 1980x1200 (2.7 MEGAbytes) to display it.

So the action of the comand width=xxx is on the computer of the member who is looking to the image

OK, I've understand

---

PRR when you say long wires at which download velocity do you refer ?

till 1 year ago I had a 56k line now I run on a 7Mb line

aren't so diffused in the USA "fast" lines ? which is a "standard" velocity for lines there ?

Franco

[PRR]

> aren't so diffused in the USA "fast" lines ?

The US is a big place.

I'm in Maine. Look on a map. (I'm near the coast; "nobody" lives where Google put that pointer.)

There's people in Quebec and in Boston. More in New York and some up as far as Portland. I am many hours north of Portland. People are thin here. (Actually a lot are over-weight, but not a lot of people for all these woods.)

I'm up-against the "Last Mile" problem.

Wire-services (telephone, cable TV, DSL...) make money when there are a lot of people in a small area. It is inexpensive per user to bring a fat data-pipe to a city or town. It is expensive to bring data the "Last Mile" to our house.

I found a statistic "25 homes per mile" to justify a new wire down that street. My street has about 45 homes in 2 miles.  

We do have basic voice-phone (installed when "universal service" was still a Bell Tel goal). It is very basic, long wires. When I had a "56K" dial-up modem here I got 20K on good days, much less if it was raining or hot or cold...

DSL is not going to happen here. The Bell Tel company sold the whole area to a small operator who is overwhelmed. They can barely maintain the system they got, are not going to upgrade small corners of it. (They did upgrade to DSL service in a nearby area with a lot of wealthy people along a short stretch of road. This was so exciting they put "DSL!" signs along the road.)

This area had Cable TV a long time ago, when over-the-air reception was maybe two snowy channels from far-away transmitters. A local guy put up several of the old 4-meter satellite dishes and ran wires along the street. This was later absorbed by the MAJOR cable company, who upgrades as little as possible, while raising rates constantly.

I (finally!!) got internet via Cable TV. Ideally, this is very fast. However the total bandwidth per street is limited. When everybody else is downloading movies in the evening, my connection gets very slow and jerky.

Not just per street. The internet went out for a day when there was flooding two states over. Turns out that ALL of the area north and west of Boston is served by ONE(*) internet connection from Albany through Vermont, and the flood knocked-out that line. (* Actually there is a back-up line but it didn't work....) So that's 3 million people on one wire.

Service was much better an hour outside New York City (50-200 homes per mile of street).

Interestingly, SpeedTest gives decent numbers. By default it connects to a server inside Maine, but even when I change that to a server closer to Hoffman (past the Vermont bottleneck) it isn't bad.

Download 20 Mega bits per second
Upload 1.0-0.5 Mega bits per second

I think I am paying for "Standard - Download speeds up to 10Mbps - Upload speeds up to 1Mbps". I think "Standard" was recently upgraded to 20mbps. So I am getting exactly what they promise. I could get a 50mbps promise for another $50/month.... my time isn't worth that much.

However I used to work on a tightly monitored 10mbps link at a school. It was snappier. I don't think SpeedTest is a good test of overall surfing speed. (I also wonder if the cable company "knows" SpeedTest and gives such packets extra priority.... when I put "speedtest" in Google my cable-company has an ad right above it.)

[kagliostro]

Hi PRR

As I live in a little town I have the opportunity to have ADSL at home, I've a 7Mb contract but if I want I can upgrade to a 20Mb (now I'm satisfied with the 7Mb, I experimented a lot of problems in the last months and only in this last time all is going as it must)

Also I've some suspects about the speed test offered by my telephone company, however actually the speed is acceptable and they give me what I pay for

As from your map link I've seen you live in a (very likeable) large area, may be the difficulties you reported are the price for live in such a nice place  

Franco

p.s.: Google on maps for Treviso Italy

[PRR]

> I live in a little town

Treviso is 80,000 people. 100,000+ live nearby.

My whole _county_ is 55,000 people. On 1,587 sq mi (4,112 sq km) of land. English or US counties are similar to your provinces. But your province (2,477 sq km 956 sq mi) has population like a county in New York or New Jersey, 900,000.

My town is 1,500 people. 9 miles up the road is a town of 5,000, the only major shopping-town around. 30 miles of empty highway away is a town of 7,000. 45 miles another way through very scenic but empty hills is a city of 33,000, once a major lumber town but now pretty run-down. The capital of Maine is Augusta, 20,000 people, about 2 hours away. 3 hours down the coast is Portland, by far the biggest city in Maine (really the only city, though Augusta and Bangor have city government powers), 66,000 people. Going up the coast from me, the people get really rare. Eastport is a tiny town. I know there are people in Canada, but even Halifax Nova Scotia is not a big place.

Your 'small town' is bigger than Maine's largest city. 80:66.

> a (very likeable) large area

We just finished Tourist Season. It ran a little long, the weather prolonged the red/orange/yellow of the trees so the roads were full of people from away driving very slow and looking at trees instead of the traffic. The road-work department did not expect that, started a major re-paving project (have to do that before the asphalt plant shuts-down for winter) and backed-up traffic for miles both ways.

[kagliostro]

Perhaps both, we should move elsewhere

Siddhartha, attained enlightenment when he realized that in order to produce a melodious sound the rope should be neither too tight nor too loose

As a boy I lived for some years in Montecatini Terme in Tuscany, but I came back a couple of years ago and it was so full of confusion

I like Tuscany very much because of his hills and people, I spend my holidays there in a tiny village, "Sant'angelo in Colle, SI" that is near to "Montalcino, SI" and I like very much his quiet

Try to find it on google maps and see what I mean

Franco

p.s.: I apologize with Doug for the OT

[kagliostro]

Perhaps both, we should move elsewhere

This was referred to move in one other place/town

However I thank Doug that moved this part of the thread in a more appropriate location

Franco

[cbass]

A small town is 80,000 people?My dad grew up in a town called Pumpkin Center.Probaly about 30 people.

I would have to drive over 100 miles from where I am to get to a town with more than 80,000

I don't know how fast our internet is (Cable) but I have no problems streaming movies and such

[EL34]

You can get a rough idea of your up and down speed here
http://www.speedtest.net

I get 7.3 meg down and .53 up

[kagliostro]

I get 6.98 Down - 0.4 Up - ping 51 ms

not bad

K

[cbass]

I get 12.48 down and .93 up ping 257

What does ping mean?

[EL34]

ping is the number of milliseconds from you to the server and back to you

That speed test link will choose a server closest to you
The ping does not really mean all that much for the speed test

low ping is what fast action on line gamers want
In your case (257ms), you would aim and shoot at someone and they would be in a differnt place by the time your bullet arrived  
You would have to lead your shot and hope for the best

Your download and upload speeds are cookin though
Cable usually is way faster than DSL

[Madison]

My town is about 5000 people.
Though we are only a couple of hours by car from Osaka.
The put in fiber optic to all the houses out here a couple of years ago.
I have no idea of the speed is anymore.
I think it's like 100meg or something.
Lost track.
Out internet and cable is bundled for about $30 a month or something.

Did the test on that link.They did it form Tokyo (which is 3-400 miles away from me)
Never did a test like this one.I am on a wireless router, don't know if it matters?
Results:
DL-15mb UL-5mg Ping-76ms
No wonder my friend in the US is always amazed at the skype quality.

I always forget how big the USA is.

[Willabe]

Down 3.18, up .73, ping 19ms.

Not bad.   


             Brad     

[Platefire]

I was raised in a town called Zwolle! So small that the "city Limits" was on both sides of the same sign

[PRR]

> a town called Zwolle! So small that...

Bah. It's got a railroad, two highways (one federal!), historic churches, 1,800 people in under 4 square miles.  (I assume you are not from Holland.)

My town is 2/3 the people in 5 times the space, one highway (partly dirt this month!), no high school, maybe four storefront churches. (True, the tiny city 10 miles north is chock-full of churches.) No post office, no bank, no Dairy Queen(*), nothing like that Weyerhaeuser log-yard.... We had a lawyer but he died.

Hey! Zwolle has a traffic-light! My town doesn't! (One is promised, sometime after the state road gets paved...)

(*) OK, the hot-dog place with the two dead Volvos next to the abandoned playground has a dozen choices of ice cream.

[kagliostro]

My town is 2/3 the people in 5 times the space, one highway (partly dirt this month!), no high school, maybe four storefront churches. (True, the tiny city 10 miles north is chock-full of churches.) No post office, no bank, no Dairy Queen(*), nothing like that Weyerhaeuser log-yard.... We had a lawyer but he died.

Hey! Zwolle has a traffic-light! My town doesn't! (One is promised, sometime after the state road gets paved...)

Well, you live in a good place for meditation 

Franco