T3/T1/Cable/DSL/ISDN/Dialup

OC-48 at work, Roadrunner at home.

Speed on any network is completely dependent on the amount of traffic - just like driving around Charlotte. That OC48 connection at work is unbelievable on paper, but slow & stuttering in practice because there is so much server lag from so many user requests & queries.

I never pay attention to those speed tests for home use because a lot of the local/gateway servers store pages like that in their cache meaning that you are loading it locally (thereby greatly inflating the results).

Bottom line - I've had 2 cable and one DSL provider at home and I'll never ever do DSL again. Cable is consistently faster (especially on uploads), cheaper, easier for me to trouble shoot, and nearly universal in application these days. The only time I suffer is with high latency at peak times on the local supernode/gateway that most of us connect through in Greensboro (the ATDN backbone I think). From about 7-9pm, you can get some crappy trace routes cause of that bottleneck - even you Charlotte folks (regardless of local service provider) since you're routed up that way.

I've wondered about that several times since we've become so dependant upon this connectivity. A handful of well placed small-than-nuclear explosions at these backbone bottleneck locations could destroy the nation's voice & data connectivity with relative ease. And it's not like the information is secret. You can find USA internet backbone maps all over the web, free of charge.

 

I think it's Raleigh up to No. Va.

 

there's one outta Charlotte to Va too... I've noticed it before on a trace route

 

If you're having THAT much trouble it may be worth it to rewire your network there... an OC 48 line shouldn't struggle that much... well of course it depends on just HOW many ppl you have at your workplace... but on average it should be able to handle most tasks

 

T3 at work.
Dialup at home.