Just how fast is 10BaseT with fiber? WinFirst is a company that had a great idea. Take fiber to the house, outbid everyone, and capture the marketplace in eight cities. Based in Denver, the company chose eight cities in which to deploy fiber optic cable to every house and be an ISP for customers. Sacramento was the first city chosen, and as they began laying cable and rolling out the service, the company ran out of money.
So forget the seven other cities— we don't even have enough money to finish Sacramento and now the company is up for sale. Based on this, do you invest in a contract with them when you have no idea what is going to happen to the company?
As you might know, I have IDSL for my company at home through Covad. I chose Covad's IDSL because at the time, they were the only option for my needs. I needed a constant connection so that my e-mail server could collect mail from the Internet.
I also needed a Static IP number so that DNS could handle that server as a constant number that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. My house was too far from a switch, so DSL was not available, and cable modems use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and do not offer any static IP addresses.
I checked out satellite and they have a solution, but again, there were no static numbers available through any company. When I called WinFirst, before they even finished digging up the streets around my neighborhood, they did not offer static IP addresses. So my choice was with Covad, even though it is very expensive.
The problem I have been having ever since I got Covad in this house was that the connection dropped constantly. In response to my complaints, Covad said they could not see any problems. When I telnet into the router and look at the logs, they show the connection dropping many times during the day.
When I pointed this out, Covad asked me to do a series of tests, and the problem proved to be very weird. Only when there was no activity on the router did the connection drop. If I surfed the Net all day, the connection stayed up and I had no problems.
When I went to Spokane for two weeks, the connection dropped the first day and I had no connection until I got back and reset the router. I was very upset, called them and said I wanted this problem fixed now.
The tech came out and looked at the wiring I had in the house and outside. His report stated he did not find any problems locally.
I noticed it was still happening so I called again. I had Covad previously in my last house, so I had an extra Router and Adtrain unit. I swapped them with the installed units after getting an OK from a Covad tech on the phone. Then we downloaded the latest firmware for one of the routers.
The situation was no better than before. I was still having drop-offs. I called again and Covad asked the telephone company to come out and check the signal.
After several days with no improvement, I called again and they sent out another team, who cut a bridge tap off the line that was 450 feet. Covad paid $600 to cut this line. Still no improvements.
Finally, Covad came back out with the phone company technician. They suggested the problem might reside in the card in the CO. They switched out the card and my connection finally worked. I still get drop-offs once in a while, but this is just IDSL and it is common to have this occasionally.
After all this, I decided to give WinFirst a try. They have changed their policy and now offer Static IP addresses, but does not want you to resell the service. If they catch you reselling their service, they will cut you off permanently. It is not worth it.
So by the time you read this, I will have it installed and I can tell you just how fast this connection really is. If you read my article in Tech Talk this month, you can compare just how fast is a 10BaseT connection.
