Business Class Internet FTW!

Everyone

had Comcast come out and install their Business Class Internet at my house on Monday. The left my residential service alone and ran new coax to the house. I cancelled my residential service as soon as they were done though.

Advertised speed is 12Mbps down and 2Mbps up. Speed tests are showing a consistent burst to 50Mbps leveling off at 13MBps down, and a steady 6Mbps up.

The best part is the low latency. I tried some online gaming last night, my ping never got higher than 20ms. I can ping my servers at work and get less than 50ms responses. It's good enough to be able to run Outlook in online mode and never see a disconnect message. That's pretty sweet considering it is being done over a VPN connection where I'm in IL and my servers are in OH.

I should mention those response times were also while I was streaming music via Pandora, my kids were streaming Netflix to a TV in their playroom, and my wife was streaming HD content from Netflix to the main TV in the living room.

Ok Nerdgasm over.

ehnde

So no fiber, straight coax? How is it a business connection, do you have an SLA with them?

jibbajabba

ehnde wrote: »

So no fiber, straight coax? How is it a business connection, do you have an SLA with them?

Different contention rates I suppose ...

Everyone

ehnde wrote: »

So no fiber, straight coax? How is it a business connection, do you have an SLA with them?

Yes, SLA.

This is what I have...
Plans & Pricing | Business High Speed Internet Service | Fastest Broadband and Wideband Speeds

My subdivision is surrounded by corn fields, I'm lucky I can get high speed internet out here at all. I can get the 100Mbps down 10Mbps up though, but I don't need that (yet) and don't want to pay that much for internet service right now.

The bandwidth is guaranteed, they have to have someone on site within 4 hours of a reported outage, 24/7, there are no restrictions or caps on the service, etc.

I never had any problems with the residential service, a lot of my neighborhood is empty houses and new contruction. However, they block ports (to try and keep you from running a server at home), and have a 250GB/month bandwidth cap on the residential service. If you go over that cap, they will ban you from service for 1 year.

Since I work from home now, I wanted the SLA and no restrictions on my connection. I can't afford to not be able to VPN in when I have to support messaging services for over 60,000 users.

it_consultant

I have Comcast running at one of my clients on their 100 meg service. The service is good for bursts to 50 but sustained FTP shows about a meg up or down consistently with bursts up to two or three megs. I am very suspicious of Comcast's speed claims and often have found Qwest (CenturyLink now?) to be faster only because they don't do bursting, I get SUSTAINED speeds higher than Comcast even on my 20 down 5 up dsl connection compared to my buddy who has 50 down 10 up through Comcast.

Fiber is rarely terminated in the suite. Normally there is a centralized demarc with ethernet (CAT6 or multi-mode fiber), synchronous DSL, or DOCSIS II or III pulled into the suite. I am not sure how CenturLink and Comcast justify calling it "Fiber", I assume they have a OC type backhaul to the hand-off.

ehnde

it_consultant wrote: »

Fiber is rarely terminated in the suite. Normally there is a centralized demarc with ethernet, synchronous DSL, or DOCSIS II or III pulled into the suite.

We have fiber going out to customer locations. It depends on what the service provider offers, really.

You've seen a CMTS in a suite??
edit:nvm, must have misunderstood you

Lizano

it_consultant wrote: »

Qwest (CenturyLink now?)

Ugh...don´t even get me started on that...

Everyone

it_consultant wrote: »

I have Comcast running at one of my clients on their 100 meg service. The service is good for bursts to 50 but sustained FTP shows about a meg up or down consistently with bursts up to two or three megs. I am very suspicious of Comcast's speed claims and often have found Qwest (CenturyLink now?) to be faster only because they don't do bursting, I get SUSTAINED speeds higher than Comcast even on my 20 down 5 up dsl connection compared to my buddy who has 50 down 10 up through Comcast.

Fiber is rarely terminated in the suite. Normally there is a centralized demarc with ethernet (CAT6 or multi-mode fiber), synchronous DSL, or DOCSIS II or III pulled into the suite. I am not sure how CenturLink and Comcast justify calling it "Fiber", I assume they have a OC type backhaul to the hand-off.

I'm getting 13Mbps sustained on the, which is higher than the advertised speed, so I'm happy. I started a few large torrent downloads last night to test, and had sustained 1.6 MB/sec. With 100Mbps service, you should see 12.5 MB/sec. However if the other end of that FTP has a smaller pipe, you won't see it. Also if either end has other services consuming any of the bandwidth, the transfer is going to slow down too. I'd complain if I wasn't getting the bandwidth I'm paying for. They can get away with that on the residential service, the business class is supposed to be gauranteed, that's why it costs more.

There is fiber to the demarcation point, which is in my backyard about 50 feet from the house. They ran a new coax cable from the demarcation into my house for the new leased business class cable modem (DOCSIS 3).
DSL isn't available in my neighborhood. Choices are dial-up, satellite, or cable.

whatthehell

Damn that is a pretty decent price! The upstream is quite nice!

it_consultant

ehnde wrote: »

We have fiber going out to customer locations. It depends on what the service provider offers, really.

You've seen a CMTS in a suite??
edit:nvm, must have misunderstood you

Its a depends / depends kind of thing. The cost to terminate fiber into every suite in a building is prohibitive and unnecessary in most cases. I have had a plane old CAT6 cable, multi-mode fiber (I think thats what it is, plugs into the GBIC port on my switch) or synchronous DSL handed to me to plug into my equipment. The fastest connection I have seen was a bonded synchronous DSL connection which connected to the Qwest (CenturyLink) Denver area 'fiber ring' which was in the building next door. That being said, our Colo is next to the ATT building in downtown denver, so my servers are right on the fiber ring. Something like 3 hops to Level 3, a couple of hops to Verizon, fast as hell with seriously low latency.

On the CenturyLink fiasco, this is what I will say; it is easier to repeatedly say "Qwest" then "CenturLink" because there are fewer syllables in "Qwest". If you are in Denver, no matter what ISP you are on you are riding on the Qwest coattails. I have heard more than a few times "the interface to the Qwest DS3 is down" from different ISPs.

higherho

it_consultant wrote: »

Its a depends / depends kind of thing. The cost to terminate fiber into every suite in a building is prohibitive and unnecessary in most cases. I have had a plane old CAT6 cable, multi-mode fiber (I think thats what it is, plugs into the GBIC port on my switch) or synchronous DSL handed to me to plug into my equipment. The fastest connection I have seen was a bonded synchronous DSL connection which connected to the Qwest (CenturyLink) Denver area 'fiber ring' which was in the building next door. That being said, our Colo is next to the ATT building in downtown denver, so my servers are right on the fiber ring. Something like 3 hops to Level 3, a couple of hops to Verizon, fast as hell with seriously low latency.

On the CenturyLink fiasco, this is what I will say; it is easier to repeatedly say "Qwest" then "CenturLink" because there are fewer syllables in "Qwest". If you are in Denver, no matter what ISP you are on you are riding on the Qwest coattails. I have heard more than a few times "the interface to the Qwest DS3 is down" from different ISPs.

Fios is pretty sweet in terms of speed / reliability to the home. Were I work we have 6 Fiber switches and all our Desktops / Thin Clients get directly plugged into with Fiber. I only wish we had an external connection coming in on fiber would be the best gift ever.

Now for our Laptops we just have CAT5e I kept pushing for CAT6 but they would not have it =/

Everyone

it_consultant wrote: »

Its a depends / depends kind of thing. The cost to terminate fiber into every suite in a building is prohibitive and unnecessary in most cases. I have had a plane old CAT6 cable, multi-mode fiber (I think thats what it is, plugs into the GBIC port on my switch) or synchronous DSL handed to me to plug into my equipment. The fastest connection I have seen was a bonded synchronous DSL connection which connected to the Qwest (CenturyLink) Denver area 'fiber ring' which was in the building next door. That being said, our Colo is next to the ATT building in downtown denver, so my servers are right on the fiber ring. Something like 3 hops to Level 3, a couple of hops to Verizon, fast as hell with seriously low latency.

On the CenturyLink fiasco, this is what I will say; it is easier to repeatedly say "Qwest" then "CenturLink" because there are fewer syllables in "Qwest". If you are in Denver, no matter what ISP you are on you are riding on the Qwest coattails. I have heard more than a few times "the interface to the Qwest DS3 is down" from different ISPs.

I've got one network I work on that has fiber to every desktop, there's a big room with about 70 desktops sitting in it, all fiber connected, it's crazy. It's not connected to the internet at all though, and never will be.

Ahh Qwest... When I lived out in MT, someone managed to knock out service for the entire state... farmer dug and cut one of Qwest's lines. Network was isolated for hours.

higherho

Everyone wrote: »

I've got one network I work on that has fiber to every desktop, there's a big room with about 70 desktops sitting in it, all fiber connected, it's crazy. It's not connected to the internet at all though, and never will be.

Ahh Qwest... When I lived out in MT, someone managed to knock out service for the entire state... farmer dug and cut one of Qwest's lines. Network was isolated for hours.

In secure environments (depending on the classification) Desktops /Thin clients will have Fiber to them for security purposes.

it_consultant

higherho wrote: »

In secure environments (depending on the classification) Desktops /Thin clients will have Fiber to them for security purposes.

I was about to ask why one would pick fiber over CAT6 other than the distance. I assumed that they weren't running 10GB to each desktop, but I could be wrong.

zaxbysauce

I pay Charter for 18 down and 1.5 up cable, but using my DOCSIS 3.0 modem I bought on Newegg we average 45-50 down and 2-3 up on the various speed test websites. Of course we still have to contend with the 250gb a month data caps, but at least we get that 250 gigs really quickly.

Everyone

higherho wrote: »

In secure environments (depending on the classification) Desktops /Thin clients will have Fiber to them for security purposes.

Bingo.

higherho

it_consultant wrote: »

I was about to ask why one would pick fiber over CAT6 other than the distance. I assumed that they weren't running 10GB to each desktop, but I could be wrong.

Yea not much data does travel across the lines. So really the only reason why is the fact that they cannot sniff traffic as easily. However, I have heard sites sending massive amounts of data and require Fiber although, I've not personally seen it. Also, if you are running a secure environment and a security audit is being performed and they see no fiber then that's a finding / discussion for higher management.

Personally I would take CAT 6a because fiber is to expensive and in non gov situations the only time I've seen fiber used is on backbone networks / core network level (high speed switching / routing) which is a smart thing to do in that case.

ehnde

zaxbysauce wrote: »

I pay Charter for 18 down and 1.5 up cable, but using my DOCSIS 3.0 modem I bought on Newegg we average 45-50 down and 2-3 up on the various speed test websites. Of course we still have to contend with the 250gb a month data caps, but at least we get that 250 gigs really quickly.

LOL sounds like they have your modem provisioned wrong, to your advantage

thehourman

I have a regular Verizon Fios. Now, I am thinking to switch to business class
Small Business Phone, Internet, and TV | Verizon Small Business
The Option 3 would cost me $105/month-no term (25/25Mbps, phone, TV). That is cheaper than what I have now.

the_Grinch

I have FiOS (30/30) and it is amazing. Always get the download speed, haven't tested the upload too much, but I get what I need in that respects. Fiber runs to the side of the house, coax all inside. In the 3 years we have had it, it has only gone down twice.

thehourman

the_Grinch wrote: »

I have FiOS (30/30) and it is amazing. Always get the download speed, haven't tested the upload too much, but I get what I need in that respects. Fiber runs to the side of the house, coax all inside. In the 3 years we have had it, it has only gone down twice.

I same here fiber cable outside my house then all coax inside.
Is that business class Fios?

I thought Business class suppose to be more expensive than regular?

Everyone

I wish I could get FiOS here, but they will probably never bring it here since my neighborhood is considered "rural". I'd have to get business class service with FiOS if they ever did bring it here though... Residential has port blocks and bandwidth caps on it just like every other residential broadband service from what I hear. I'm happy with the Comcast Business Class. Like I said, if I need more bandwidth, I can always upgrade.

Everyone

Double your bandwidth, double your fun!

I hooked up my old Motorola SB5101, so I have both the SMC business class leased modem, and it connected. Then I picked up a pair of Intel Pro 1000 NIC's, and setup pfSense on VMware Workstation. 1 cable modem connected to each Intel Pro 1000 NIC port, onboard RealTEK Gigabit NIC port connected to Linksys WRT300N wireless router. All NIC's bridged in VMWare workstation. Then I configured pfSense to load balance the WAN links.

Speedtest.net now hitting 82Mbps download, and 12Mbps upload, lol. Stupid speed boost crap messes up those numbers. Did a few real world download and upload tests. Sustained downloads of 3 MB/sec (24Mbps) and sustained uploads of 512KB/sec (4Mbps), which is exactly what I would expect to see with 2 cable modems each connected to a 12Mbps down/2 Mbps up package.

ehnde

Everyone wrote: »

Double your bandwidth, double your fun!

I hooked up my old Motorola SB5101, so I have both the SMC business class leased modem, and it connected. Then I picked up a pair of Intel Pro 1000 NIC's, and setup pfSense on VMware Workstation. 1 cable modem connected to each Intel Pro 1000 NIC port, onboard RealTEK Gigabit NIC port connected to Linksys WRT300N wireless router. All NIC's bridged in VMWare workstation. Then I configured pfSense to load balance the WAN links.

Speedtest.net now hitting 82Mbps download, and 12Mbps upload, lol. Stupid speed boost crap messes up those numbers. Did a few real world download and upload tests. Sustained downloads of 3 MB/sec (24Mbps) and sustained uploads of 512KB/sec (4Mbps), which is exactly what I would expect to see with 2 cable modems each connected to a 12Mbps down/2 Mbps up package.

Now that is the kind of badassery I like to hear about first thing in the morning. So all of your traffic is passing through a VM?

Everyone

ehnde wrote: »

Now that is the kind of badassery I like to hear about first thing in the morning. So all of your traffic is passing through a VM?

Yes, everything goes through pfSense, which is running inside a VM. Even the host OS (Windows 7) goes through it. pfSense is acting as a router, firewall, load balancer, and DHCP server the way I have it setup.

I'm in the process of putting together a drawing in Visio and a how-to on how to set it up. I'll also be putting together one for the freeNAS based Virtual SAN I setup. I've got quite the lab going.

wesamess

Everyone wrote: »

Yes, everything goes through pfSense, which is running inside a VM. Even the host OS (Windows 7) goes through it. pfSense is acting as a router, firewall, load balancer, and DHCP server the way I have it setup.

I'm in the process of putting together a drawing in Visio and a how-to on how to set it up. I'll also be putting together one for the freeNAS based Virtual SAN I setup. I've got quite the lab going.

for this post.

Everyone

wesamess wrote: »

for this post.

Alright I finished my guide on how to configure Multi-WAN load balancing, check it out! Budget Laboratory: Part 1 - Multi-WAN Load Balancing with pfSense on VMWare Workstation | Fix the Exchange!

This also happens to be the very first article for my first ever blog that I've been working on. I put a lot of work into this, so let me know what you think, enjoy!

Bl8ckr0uter

Everyone wrote: »

Alright I finished my guide on how to configure Multi-WAN load balancing, check it out! Budget Laboratory: Part 1 - Multi-WAN Load Balancing with pfSense on VMWare Workstation | Fix the Exchange!

This also happens to be the very first article for my first ever blog that I've been working on. I put a lot of work into this, so let me know what you think, enjoy!

Good article. The only think I will say that if you want to "weight" the connections (beyond 50/50) you will need to add the connection in their more than once. So if you want 2/3's X and 1 Y you will have to add the interfaces in the LB pool like this: XXY. Have you used 2.0RC3 yet? As soon as I order my firewall hardware I am going to try it out. My old 1.2.3 box died this weekend

Everyone

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Good article. The only think I will say that if you want to "weight" the connections (beyond 50/50) you will need to add the connection in their more than once. So if you want 2/3's X and 1 Y you will have to add the interfaces in the LB pool like this: XXY. Have you used 2.0RC3 yet? As soon as I order my firewall hardware I am going to try it out. My old 1.2.3 box died this weekend

Thanks.

I haven't had a need or desire to weight the connections, but I get what you're saying.

I have not tried 2.0RC3 yet, I'm going to do that next. I kinda wanted to wait for it to go final though. The main thing I want out of 2.0 are the improvements they made for the Squid package integration. With 1.2.3 if you turn Squid on and setup a transparent proxy, it breaks the load balancing. Squid ignores rules for some reason and always breaks the default route. I've read they fixed that in 2.0.

Believe it or not I just started using pfSense 2 weeks ago. I figured this all out on my own.

Not bad for a Messaging guy eh?

Bl8ckr0uter

Lol not bad at all. There is improved tunnel support as well. I would say don't wait on the final release. It is more than likely stable enough. Do you plan on messing with the snort or AV packages.

I like Pfsense a lot. When I do some consulting for people, it will probably be my platform of choice for SMBs. It can do like 90% of what a SMB needs (well with 2.0 anyway).

Everyone

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Lol not bad at all. There is improved tunnel support as well. I would say don't wait on the final release. It is more than likely stable enough. Do you plan on messing with the snort or AV packages.

Yes, I'll probably come back and do those later. I want to finish my "Budget Laboratory" series first... I'll start a new thread regarding the blog plans though.