Speakeasy alternatives

[jboland at citistreetonline.com (Boland, John)]

jerry, sad to say fios is not available in the entire city of boston!
i just checked my house and it is not available, as they have told for
almost the last two years that i've been checking.  not an apartment,
not a condo, a real free-standing single occupant dwelling.

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at blu.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at blu.org] On Behalf
Of Jerry Feldman
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 1:43 PM
To: BLU Discussion List
Subject: Re: Speakeasy alternatives

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:41:29 -0400
"Kristian Hermansen" <kristian.hermansen at gmail.com> wrote:

> I can highly ***NOT RECOMMEND*** RCN.  They officially state that they

> block port traffic and throttle bandwidth for protocols such as 
> bittorrent.  I would really like to get Verizon FIOS, but can you 
> believe they don't have it in Boston?  Something about city landlords 
> not wanting to let Verizon come in and revamp the architecture.  They 
> probably don't want to allow it because it means lots of work 
> (digging, etc) around the properties...
We've discussed RCN before. 
My personal experience with Comcast and its predecessors over the past
10+ years has been very good. I don't recall when I had the last
service interruption. I looked at RCN a few years back and found them
lacking, and other I know who have had them don't speak well of them.
But, neither Comcast nor RCN permit residential users to run servers. I
have never experienced a case where Comcast blocked a port, but I know
this has happened in other areas. For some reason, everyone I know in
Waltham has had from bad to terrible experience with Comcast (and its
predecessors). There are a few of those Waltham residents on this list,
but there were others too. 

BTW: Comcasts bandwidth is [slightly] faster than FIOS ("up to 5Mbps"). 
BTW: FIOS is available in the City of Boston. It is probably not
available in a number of apartment and condominium buildings because it
would require a significant rewiring of the building. (I actually
entered a phone number of someone who lives in Boston, and FIOS is
available. it certainly would be nice to have fibre coming right into
the house. 

One thing I'm not sure of with FIOS is whether it is symmetrical or
asymmetrical. Comcast is asymmetrical at 6Mbps down, 384Kbps up, and
most DSLs are asymmetrical.

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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