Washington Post On Comcast Caps > Thanks Comcast!

reply to KrK

Re: Thanks Comcast!

THANK YOU.

In other words, AT&T DSL kicks ass. The chances of you experiencing slowdown at the Node level pretty much approach zero.

Now... How about if you raise the speed caps some

I didn't even say anything about the underground vaults. Those are and could be C.O. 's just on their own.

You can still slow down at a node, it's possible but typically your DSL and your Pots to the RT would have problems. We have whats called a "streaming RT" condition where the RT just keeps sending fragmented packets to the C.O. header and you can send no packets back to the RT or they all fail. Typically a switchover can fix it, however every now and then they have to go to the RT and change cards.

Those repairs are typically less than 4 hours. 90% of the time they are replacing a card at the RT while they are there or switch to the backup card and route that way till permanent repairs can be made. If the RT goes down hard they drive and change.

Now the areas they typically don't have a lot of bandwidth would be say small towns with DSL and such. For instance, say ozora, mo. Town of about 5,000 people and maybe say 300-500 live in town. an OC-48 for those customers might be overkill by quite a bit. Most times here they deploy a big dslam there as a "Master controller" and the adtran Dslams as a slave controller or the customer's side. Now they don't keep a lot of bandwidth for DSL here, but then again, how many customers in a small town are you expecting? You are not going to have say 1000-3000 customers like downtown STL on a given part of town. I can see the point here would be if they are not using enough traffic to really peak a OC-12 why give them a 48? At that point it's just overkill.

I remember last year there was a few different small towns in wisconsin that were getting another OC-12 between them and chicago for backhaul. The one and only OC-12 they had was and finally hit 50%. Before the traffic peaked 65% they had another one turned up and divided the traffic in like 1/2. I remember he said he checked his work like 6 months later and the original OC-12 was at like 30% and the other one just cracked 22%. Now how long was it before the 2nd OC12 was even required, it was 2+ years out. Even then he had it on the books to make them both 48's. Even if he did one this year and one next year, he would still have enough bandwidth available. Now that we have at&t's legacy network and SBC's legacy network, it's going to be interesting how they integrate everything. I am watching the changes on this side of the fence and it's just phenomenal.

I just for kicks and grins looked at my local dslam's percentages. Ya know on patch Tuesday it hit 12%? It's average for the month is 7%. Some days like labor day and Christmas it's at like 0%. I have seen a few days with goose eggs on the report. I am sitting here thinking I would take a pic if it ever hit 50%, but then again, I wonder how long I will be waiting? Or if the equipment or me will be retired by the time it happens?
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That's very good news. Awesome network management, really.

I'm very impressed. It's nice to know that if usage gets to 50% capacity the additional capacity is brought online.

It's overkill... in a great way. It's also pretty forward thinking. It suggests AT&T could deploy VDSL in a flash. Or break out more tiers. I guess the only thing that holds it back is the copper.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!)