RCN vs Mediaone cable modem experiences?

[jc at TRILLIAN.MIT.EDU (John Chambers,,,781-647-1813)]

"Charles C. Bennett, Jr." <ccb at kukla.tiac.net> writes:
> 
>    The MediaOne service (at least in Cambridge), while not providing a
> static IP addr at least provides a stable name in the DNS namespace.
> This allows them to look the other way on the "NO SERVERS!" mandate
> unless you become a bandwidth pig.  I'm not likely to go with MediaOne
> because they keep squeezing the cable lineup...

I'm not sure what that last sentence means, but I can comment on  the
others.  I had a Mediaone hookup for a few months, but they kicked me
off for "hacking".  They refused to give me any info about what I was
actually  accused of, but the three times they terminated the service
(the last time permanently) were while or  immediately  after  I  was
running  a  little  music-indexing program that I've been developing.
This amounted to a small-scale web robot  that  scanned  about  16000
URLs  for  music in a couple of formats, and built a database of info
like titles, keys, etc.  I also have the obvious sort of lookup  page
with  CGI scripts that can deliver music in various formats (PS, GIF,
MIDI, and so on).

(Musicians might be interested in the results, though I  should  warn
the  rest away by saying that by "music" I don't mean recordings, but
rather "sheet music" stuff.  If you're looking for recordings,  don't
bother with my site.  The URL is:
   http://ecf-guest/~jc/music/abc/Index/
It's sometimes handy to have an MIT connection or two.)

Whatever their problem was, it wasn't because I was a bandwidth  hog.
Stats  from  the program showed at most 2 TCP connections per second,
usually more like one every 5 or 10 seconds, with typically a  couple
hundred bytes per connection. Web robots are basically limited by the
speed at which they can make TCP connections, so they tend not to  be
bandwidth hogs. They run forever, making lots of connections, but the
delays in the connect code make for fairly low bandwidth usage.

But Mediaone did send an email message  making  it  clear  that  they
don't  permit  things  like  servers  (even SMTP), and that was their
official reason for terminating the  service.   Their  model  of  the
Internet  is that it's a new kind of TV, and it exists so that we can
download things.  The Internet wasn't built by Bill Gates (or was  it
Al Gore?) so that we can share our files with friends, set up our own
mailing lists, run network database programs,  or  other  such  nerdy
things. They are supplying "blindingly fast" access to the latest Hot
Babes and/or online marketing services, and anything else is a misuse
of the Internet.  This is, of course, not a surprising attitude for a
cable-TV company.

Actually, speaking of Hot Babes, I did find that when I tried using a
browser  in the evening, I often got impressively slow access speeds,
often tens of bytes per second.  I suspect that I was competing  with
everyone else in the neighborhood, and this neighborhood probably has
lots of cable modem users. My web robot ran fairly well then, because
it  didn't  need fast access.  But browsing anything with images took
forever, as did trying to download the latest release of Netscape. So
at  least  here,  their  claim for fast access wasn't true during the
times when most people are  home  and  using  their  computer.   It's
probably  pretty  fast  at 3 am.  But I didn't complain, because that
wasn't why I wanted the service.

I checked out RCN recently, and they appear to be very similar.  Like
mediaone,  they  won't install on a linux (or any Unix) system.  They
also require that you get their cable TV service along with  Internet
access (and you should add that to whatever price they quote you). So
they're basically selling  an  Internet-based  TV-like  entertainment
service, not true Internet access. I'd guess that you can do the same
with them as with Mediaone - Boot  your  machine  to  W98,  let  them
install,  and  them  reboot  to linux.  But this is apparently also a
violation of their service agreement, as is running  anything  but  a
browser  to  access  the  Internet.  If you have a Sun, you can't get
their service at all (since it doesn't run W98).  If you are  one  of
those  computer types who want to use the Internet as it was designed
to be used, you will probably be kicked off, too, if you try  running
any "interesting" Internet applications.

What I wonder is when we Internet nerd types will be able  to  get  a
real  (i.e.,  full-time)  Internet  hookup  at home for an affordable
price.  I have a lot of things that I'd like to work on, which  can't
be done during spare moments at work for many reasons.  They can't be
done via phone links to ISPs, because a permanent hookup this way  is
prohibitively expensive. What is really needed by people like me is a
not-very-fast 24-hour Internet hookup.  A 56 Kb line would  be  quite
usable,  if it puts my machine online full time.  But I don't see any
evidence that any capitalist enterprise sees me as a market  that  is
worth persuing.

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