High speed intarweb choices

The DaveR · #1 08-31-2006, 08:24 PM

So my new apartment building has a dedicated T1 line. I've been here for 3 weeks. Last week, the line started slowing to a crawl around 7 pm. I wasn't home over the weekend. But since I got back it has been crapping out in the same way every night.

So I talked to the management office, and they said talk to the their vendor. I talked to the vendor today. It turns out that the building actually has 3 (!!) T1 lines and that he didn't know that the connection was slowing at night. At 3 pm every afternoon, however, the same thing was happening. It's a big building, like 300 residents.

The likely problem is that someone or some group of people are eating all the bandwidth. The management office is going to try to solve this by adding another (4!) T1 line. While talking to the vendor we both agreed that another line is a dumb solution and that they should just restrict maximum bandwidth usage to each apartment. The management office is pretty dumb. I explained that this was the likely problem to them last Friday, and I could practically hear their eyes glaze over on the phone. I could easily see them adding another line, running into the same problem, rinse/repeat.

So, should I try to convince the management office to do the right thing to solve this long term, or just leave this trainwreck behind and get DSL (the only other high speed alternative). Assume the cost of DSL means nothing to me.

gumpzilla · #2 08-31-2006, 08:30 PM

[ QUOTE ]

So, should I try to convince the management office to do the right thing to solve this long term, or just leave this trainwreck behind and get DSL (the only other high speed alternative). Assume the cost of DSL means nothing to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

If the cost of DSL means nothing to you, why not get DSL AND try and convince the management office to do the right thing? If it becomes too annoying then you lose nothing by giving up, and if it succeeds then you can be an unsung hero to hundreds everywhere (in your building.)

The DaveR · #3 08-31-2006, 08:40 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

So, should I try to convince the management office to do the right thing to solve this long term, or just leave this trainwreck behind and get DSL (the only other high speed alternative). Assume the cost of DSL means nothing to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

If the cost of DSL means nothing to you, why not get DSL AND try and convince the management office to do the right thing? If it becomes too annoying then you lose nothing by giving up, and if it succeeds then you can be an unsung hero to hundreds everywhere (in your building.)

[/ QUOTE ]

I should have mentioned, DSL has a 1 year commitment, so if I get it, I'm stuck, thus I don't care what happened to the building.

Second, management seems pretty dumb overall, and I'll probably have lots to complain about, and having a reputation not as a whiner seems like a good idea right now.

Dale Dough · #4 08-31-2006, 08:52 PM

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Second, management seems pretty dumb overall, and I'll probably have lots to complain about, and having a reputation not as a whiner seems like a good idea right now.

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I like this analogy. Hmm they handle this kind of stupid.. but there's probably more important things that they're [censored] up, and I don't want to look back and regret that I wasted some of my valuable right to bitch at them on this little issue.. so I'll just let it slip.

Still a good point though. I say if you can't convince them in a matter that won't paint you as a whiner, [censored] it and get DSL.

Patrick del Poker Grande · #5 08-31-2006, 08:57 PM

How long do you estimate it will take building management to get up to about 60 T1 lines?

The DaveR · #6 08-31-2006, 08:58 PM

Oh yeah, if anyone cares, I had this call with the vendor today, right next to the Chicago Bears. They were eating lunch.

stinkypete · #7 08-31-2006, 09:42 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Second, management seems pretty dumb overall, and I'll probably have lots to complain about, and having a reputation not as a whiner seems like a good idea right now.

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I like this analogy.

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that's an analogy?

Sigurd · #8 08-31-2006, 10:09 PM

Maybe you could point the management to some kind of network guy, who knows what he is doing.

Where I live, we have some kind of box (the exact setup is a pretty well kept secret) that distributes the bandwidth according to how much bandwidth you have used the last 30 days or so. High usage = low priority.

I think your best bet at getting the management to actually purchase something like this is to find someone who sell and install the stuff yourself, and then tell management that your cousins friends monther in law has heard that so and so sell solutions to this kind of problems and that if they talked to them, they could probably find out how to put an end to all those whiny complaints about their network.

Kneel B4 Zod · #9 08-31-2006, 11:19 PM

Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?
Ted Stroehmann: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the excercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.
Ted Stroehmann: Right. Yes. OK, alright. I see where you're going.
Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted Stroehmann: I would go for the 7.
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.
Ted Stroehmann: You guarantee it? That's -- how do you do that?
Hitchhiker: If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B".
Ted Stroehmann: That's right. That's -- that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you're in trouble, huh?
[Hitchhiker convulses]
Hitchhiker: No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 minutes? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel.
Ted Stroehmann: That -- good point.
Hitchhiker: 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 doors. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
Ted Stroehmann: Why?
Hitchhiker: 'Cause you're [censored]' fired!

toostoney · #10 08-31-2006, 11:32 PM

T1's aren't really all that fast, they are 1.5Mbit/s(~190KB/s) and no matter what in a shared building like that its going to be horrible at night when everyone is on. Cable is sort of like that too, it tends to slow down in the evenings because of all the people using it. Get the DSL, much better then dealing with a shared connection like that.