two questions

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

WRT: dialup services. Most ISPs maintain a ratio between the number of 
modems they have to the number of customers. (Note that many ISPs 
also contract out some of these). 
AT&T BB is not giving you a connection on demand. The connection is a 
permanent 24X7 connection. DHCP simply obtains an IP address. Most 
Mediaone customers in this area get the same IP address unless they 
decide to renumber an area. They also maintain a DNS record for your 
hostname and some of us have maintained hostnames == email 
addresses.

While I don't know what ratios they currently use, Mediaone used to use 
a ratio of about 300 subscribers per head-end. If they went above that, 
they would break out more fibre. One reason for this is simply reliability. 
The weakest link in the hardware chain is the repeaters, and one failure 
will take down the entire neighborhood.

By adding more customers per head-end, they will have more customers 
sharing the bandwidth, so you will experience a slowdown. 
On 6 Apr 2001, at 14:15, Chris Janicki wrote:

> Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but there's nothing in my 
> Mediaone/AT&T/RR/FlavorOfTheWeek contract that guarantees service 
> quality/availability.  And I have heard at least two reports of analog 
> modem ISPs that bounce all connections daily. Mediaone may not care now 
> since the service is new, but as their customer base continues to grow 
> and their bandwidth is stressed, they will likely look for ways to 
> conserve bandwidth without allocating new resources.  
> 
> It won't be hard for them to figure out how bandwidth is being used.  
> Once the numbers are significant, they'll take some action (annoyance 
> tactics likely, not legal-related).  Till then, enjoy.
> 
> BTW, I'm betting they'll start bouncing connections by January 2002... 
> any takers?  ;o) 

Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
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