RE: DSL rocks

Stefan Savage (savage@cs.washington.edu)
Thu, 13 Aug 1998 09:27:46 -0700

Sounds a bit faster than ISDN. The difference in BW you see may be due
to compression. You might compare the BW you see sending a text file vs
sending binary. I'm curious what USWest lets pass through their
network... can you do traceroute? can you do it with the source route
option turned on? Can you send spoofed IPgrams?

- Stefan

-----Original Message-----
From: Neal Cardwell [mailto:cardwell@cs.washington.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 1998 12:59 AM
To: syn@cs
Cc: Richard Fromm
Subject: DSL rocks

They finally got my DSL setup working today (a week after it was
supposed
to be on). I love it!! Never having had ISDN, i don't know how it
compares with that, but i'm definitely happy with it...

I ordered 256Kb, and i seem to be getting about 55KB/s=440Kb/s for long
TCP transfers and 25KB/s=200Kb/s for short ones. It's interesting to me
that their price list says they charge $62/mo for 512Kb but they seem to
be letting me have a lot more than my 256Kb that i'm paying $40/mo for.

Browsing the web is pretty close to the performance from Sieg. I suspect
the web browsing goes well relative to a T3 because for small transfers
TCP is RTT-limited, and the RTT is reasonably small thru USWest - about
20ms to MCI or Alternet in Seattle and 60ms to Silicon Valley through
Alternet.

If you're interested, here's the URL:
http://www.uswest.com/com/customers/interprise/dsl/

They said it would be (no bill yet :-) $110 setup fee, $40/mo for the
"256Kb" line, $20/mo for the ISP (you can pick someone other than
USWest).
Plus whatever they're charging for the modems; i should be getting mine
free through their early-bird promotional deal. Not sure if that's still
on. The DSL modem just has a 10BaseT jack, and we're just getting IP
addresses through DHCP, so i'm unning it through a hub and splitting the
cost with my roomie.

neal