Question about upcoming Bonding and Uverse Plans

[Dan]

Comcast may actually be softening up a bit and their records disagree with mine, but in my
favor. I actually have four weeks to give notice instead of the 10 days I thought, and the
one year renewal does allow for a non-ETF exit, but requires 60 day notice. So I cannot
go month to month, but effectively quarter to quarter.

I was close to giving DSLX a chance, but I can hold off for three weeks and see if Sonix is
ready by then...

[dane]

Comcast may actually be softening up a bit and their records disagree with mine, but in my
favor. I actually have four weeks to give notice instead of the 10 days I thought, and the
one year renewal does allow for a non-ETF exit, but requires 60 day notice. So I cannot
go month to month, but effectively quarter to quarter.

I was close to giving DSLX a chance, but I can hold off for three weeks and see if Sonix is
ready by then...

Sounds good!

[Guest]

Well, then I have to presume that Sonic doesn't really manage the traffic at all. Will our connections via AT&T then be subject to AT&T traffic shenanigans? I'm thinking caps, speed limits, port blocking, etc. Will we be subject to AT&T's AUP such as "no servers", etc.

If DSL Extreme can offer uncapped UVerse then some form of management should be in Sonic's control. Traffic shaping would probably not be in their toolbox since trueSTREAM customers have AT&T IPs. I would also guess if AT&T decides to pull the Netflix card those chokepoints will also affect reselled UVerse customers.

That is interesting. So basically DSL Extreme's UVerse actually uses AT&T for the IP connectivity as well and not DSL Extreme's own network. Seems like with the sonic.net using AT&T U-Verse, it will basiclally use AT&T all the way for everything including IP connectivity, the question then is what would make one want to use a sonic.net based AT&T U-Verse when you can just get it directly from AT&T unless the pricing is cheaper with the sonic.net version. I was hoping that sonic.net and DSL Extreme would use AT&T U-Verse for the transport but the actual IP connectivity will go back to sonic.net's network for IP connectivity like the legacy sonic.net AT&T DSL did.

[wa2ibm]

I was hoping that sonic.net and DSL Extreme would use AT&T U-Verse for the transport but the actual IP connectivity will go back to sonic.net's network for IP connectivity like the legacy sonic.net AT&T DSL did.

I was hoping the same thing. On top of that, I was reading elsewhere that AT&T uses CGNAT (Carrier Grade NAT) for the WAN side of the gateway (10.x address space). When combined with local NAT for the LAN, you're already looking at double-NAT. Of course this only applies to IPv4.

Supposedly, they provide a public IPv6 subnet for the local LAN. I don't know if that's native or through a v6 tunnel.

It also appears that Sonic is looking at a VPN appliance that would tunnel into the Sonic network to provide actual public IPv4 addresses, either dynamic or static. I would prefer that.

[Guest]

the question then is what would make one want to use a sonic.net based AT&T U-Verse when you can just get it directly from AT&T unless the pricing is cheaper with the sonic.net version. I was hoping that sonic.net and DSL Extreme would use AT&T U-Verse for the transport but the actual IP connectivity will go back to sonic.net's network for IP connectivity like the legacy sonic.net AT&T DSL did.

The benefit is no transfer caps. DSLextreme offers this benefit, too. Another benefit for me is Sonic will provide phone service of some sort without us having to subscribe to an ILEC and you're not bound to a year contract. Agreed that having an AT&T IP is not a benefit. I am on the fence about the possibility of using a VPN so we can be on Sonic's infrastructure. It's not as bad as having an AT&T IP but I would have preferred to have less overhead. But VPN was only a consideration for static IPs and they have not decided.

[polpo]

Seems like with the sonic.net using AT&T U-Verse, it will basiclally use AT&T all the way for everything including IP connectivity, the question then is what would make one want to use a sonic.net based AT&T U-Verse when you can just get it directly from AT&T unless the pricing is cheaper with the sonic.net version.

Benefits: less money going directly to AT&T, AT&T won't upsell you on adding TV to your U-Verse package, and support through Sonic.

I was hoping the same thing. On top of that, I was reading elsewhere that AT&T uses CGNAT (Carrier Grade NAT) for the WAN side of the gateway (10.x address space). When combined with local NAT for the LAN, you're already looking at double-NAT. Of course this only applies to IPv4.

I'm using DSLExtreme's resold UVerse right now (I jumped the gun... should have waited for Sonic's offering!) and have a real IPv4 address.

Supposedly, they provide a public IPv6 subnet for the local LAN. I don't know if that's native or through a v6 tunnel.

It's through a 6rd tunnel AFAIK. It's terminated on the AT&T router/modem and is seamless.

[Guest]

Good points everyone. How is AT&T's network these days since which backbone are they actually using as the last time I have seen AT&T was they were still on the sbcglobal.net backbone but AT&T otherwise uses three backones.

1) AT&T WorldNet which is the crappy one.
2) AT&T Global Network Services (GNS) which was known as IBM GNS before that is good aka prserv.net
3) AT&T Emerging Network Services (ENS) which was known as CERFNet (California Educational and Research Foundation Network) that was NSF funded and based at UC San Diego's San Diego Supercomputing Center and run by General Atomics.

Both 2 & 3 are good.

polpo, can you provide a traceroute to www.sonic.net, just want to see what it actually looks like and how has latency and such been so far? Any issues?

Maybe the question should be what's the big difference between getting the U-Verse product from sonic.net vs DSLX? sonic.net is still locally owned and operated while DSLExtreme got bought out, forgot who bought it though.

[polpo]

polpo, can you provide a traceroute to http://www.sonic.net, just want to see what it actually looks like and how has latency and such been so far? Any issues?

Code: Select all

traceroute to www.sonic.net (209.204.190.64), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  dsldevice (192.168.1.254)  1.719 ms  1.188 ms  1.023 ms
 2  104-52-4-3.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net (104.52.4.3)  25.125 ms  21.167 ms  21.895 ms
 3  71.145.0.188 (71.145.0.188)  21.689 ms  21.329 ms  22.980 ms
 4  12.83.39.181 (12.83.39.181)  21.680 ms
    12.83.39.177 (12.83.39.177)  23.107 ms  23.241 ms
 5  ggr4.sffca.ip.att.net (12.122.86.197)  112.310 ms  23.433 ms  22.108 ms
 6  be3000.ccr21.sjc03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.11.45)  26.606 ms  26.348 ms  25.799 ms
 7  be2013.ccr21.sjc04.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.106)  27.484 ms  29.891 ms  29.084 ms
 8  38.104.141.82 (38.104.141.82)  25.701 ms  25.686 ms  25.227 ms
 9  0.ge-0-1-0.gw.sr.sonic.net (64.142.0.197)  27.883 ms  28.678 ms  27.826 ms
10  gig0-1.dist2-1.sr.sonic.net (209.204.191.160)  27.689 ms  28.145 ms
    gig0-2.dist2-1.sr.sonic.net (208.201.224.160)  26.980 ms
11  * * *

I really haven't noticed any problems in the 3 months I've had the service. Stuff like Netflix streams well with no buffering. Though I'm sure if AT&T decides they want more money from Netflix that could change really fast. Latencies are probably a little higher than with my bonded ADSL2+ Fusion service I had with Sonic.

Maybe the question should be what's the big difference between getting the U-Verse product from sonic.net vs DSLX? sonic.net is still locally owned and operated while DSLExtreme got bought out, forgot who bought it though.

Well, one difference I've noticed so far is time to get through to support. Before my install I had to reschedule my installation date and had to wait about 15 minutes on hold with DSLExtreme listening to the same loop of awful smooth jazz over and over again, without the options that Sonic has like waiting in silence or getting an automatic callback. And I probably wouldn't have had to wait that long on hold in the first place.

[Guest]

Thanks polpo for the information.

So basically they still call it sbcglobal.net in some parts but it's connected to AT&T WorldNet ip.att.net for pretty much connectivity to the outside world.

The latency does seem to be high for the first hop as on my 6Mbps/768kbps legacy sonic.net via AT&T ADSL, it's 6-7ms for the first hop even on a wireless connection.

I could get fusion but the problem is the 13,000 feet loop making it 1Mbps/768kbps connection. I hope sonic.net's offering will be similar in pricing to DSLExtreme while being a little higher if one wanted the telephone service option for both dynamic and static IP's. It seems sonic.net uses a CIDR/24 255.255.255.0 netmask so the 8 IP's is actually 8 useable IPs for the static IP option while the U-Verse option is CIDR/29 255.255.255.248 netmask so the 8 IP would end up being 5 useable static IP's. I figured that support with sonic.net had to be better and sonic.net was even better when they had the livechat option for chat support since there are some things that is easier to show in writing than talking on the phone in real time.

[Guest]

polpo, forgot to ask but what speed for TruStream did you get and what was the highest available for your address? I see 45Mbps for mines but not the 75Mbps option.