The Little ISP That Stood Up to the Government | Hacker News Reader

The Little ISP That Stood Up to the Government

blogs.wsj.com

92 pointsgoodweeds14 comments

So they seem like a decent company, but this article had a couple of sentences on how Sonic stood up to the government, and the rest was about how their products are cheaper. It read as far more of an advertisement than a piece of journalism.

Agreed - the company sounds like a nice company with a good service and vision - but in the end I felt like the article barely mentioned anything about the topic - it felt like a whole paragraph went missing.

Edit: Seems that reading this puts it's it all in to a better context:

https://uloadr.com/u/rA44.png

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020347680457661...

Out of curiosity I checked to see if their DSL is Symmetric. Well, it isn't (too much to hope for, I guess), but they do show their upload bandwidths. Here in France, I know of only one ISP that would tell you about their upload bandwidths, an it is a non-profit (FDN).

I also appreciate they offer static IP (presumably v4) (8 addresses? Like, a /3?), but I wonder why it costs so much. A DSL modem/router typically stays on all day long, so, surely they could offer a single static IPv4 without any additional cost to themselves?

> Out of curiosity I checked to see if their DSL is Symmetric. Well, it isn't (too much to hope for, I guess), but they do show their upload bandwidths.

Well, it's not possible to provide high upload bandwidths on ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+, because you only have so much frequency to play with and your end-user devices can only output so much power (else you get plenty of interference from nearby lines).

SHDSL provides for higher upload bandwidth, but that's because it is limited on the download front. I think the maximum the current ADSL2+ spec allows for is about 24Mbit down/3Mbit up, with Annex M.

I know that with DSL, upload and download compete with each other. My point was more that, if you control the last mile copper, you have the choice of sacrificing download so people have better upload. In conjunction with a static IP, this could be great for home servers, at (presumably) not so high a cost.

So, I wondered if they had made that choice, and they didn't. I can understand that: most customers don't want to give up half their download bandwidth so they can share more with bit-torrent, or host a server they would never care to configure anyway. Lack of education and tragedy of the commons say that download is the priority.

Maybe we would have been better off if symmetric bandwidth was simply mandated by law ("thou shalt propose symmetric bandwidth at no higher cost than asymetric bandwith")?

Best reason to use Sonic: dial their support number, you get a real person picking up right away.

It's the only time I believe it when they say "Thank you for calling, how can I help you?".

Sonic Fusion Broadband subscriber here. Works great. Live in the bay area? Sonic should be your internet provider.

Agreed. Sonic.net has been my ISP for 5 years now, and I've only had a problem with their DSL service once. The problem turned out to be a failing modem, which they replaced, for free, even though the modem had just gone out of warranty.

Can't wait for their SF fiber roll-out.

Damn. I'm stuck in Tucson, between the rock that is Qwest and the hard place that is Comcast. If Sonic operated here—or someone similar—I'd switch instantly.

Just switched last week, and I've had a great experience with them.

Sonic is great; the nice thing about Fusion is you can bond 2 lines together, so if you're in the right position with the CO, you can do 30M/6M with Annex M.

They've also got great customer service; the only reason not to use them is if you're too far from the central office.

I thought this was going to be about Calyx Internet Access standing up to a national security letter. [1]

[1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/nsl-gag-order-lifte...

I wish I could switch to Sonic after reading the reviews here. Despite FIOS being amazing, the second you need Verizon customer service you're screwed.

I switched to sonic about a week ago, and I feel dumb for not doing it sooner.

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