I guess the inability to run a server ensures that the bandwidth usage is limited to the user's wake hours. I think more and more people are running their own servers, though. I personally know quite a few people who does that, including yourself, and the number is steadily growing. Every computer running a newer Windows operating system has the capability of serving web pages and other services, so I'm wondering when your average John Doe will set that as a requirement for signing up with an ISP.

Wow, thats a very nice upgrade you got there. But here in little Ireland (that small country on the other side of that big pond) getting anyway decent broadband is hassle here. 60 bucks is about 45 euro which is what I'm paying for 512/128 a month, with a 16gb cap, dynamic ip and getting kicked off every 24 hours.

Running a server is a big no no, so they claim. And they are even throttling certain p2p ports.

For a country with ~4 million people in it, there is only 100k activated lines for broadband, and a fair few don't pass the line test cutting that number down even more.

Fixed Wireless is an slightly better option but only if you have LOS in the area and are patient to wait for IBB to get off their ass stop lying about installation dates and come out to your house.

Cable is just as bad, considering its a very limited service area.

Another company has just come into the market with 2MB/128k ftte (fibre to the exchange) services for cheaper then what I'm paying and all us bb fanboys are drooling at the prospect.

No idea where I meant to go with this but I saw, I came, I posted.

I live in Keller, TX and have Verizon FIOS Internet service. I have a Fiber cable all the way to my house. No copper (well, at least not till it get's converted to 100Mbit Ethernet on my end at the ONT).

I get 15Mb/s down and 2Mb/s up. Its incredible. And what's even more nice is that its only $49 a month!

The only problem I have with the service is that they block port 80 inbound so I can't run a webserver. Well, I just run it on a different port but I'd prefer to have it on 80.

Mike

I'm in northeast Ohio (that state with the very random weather). Recently our cable connection got upgraded from 3Mb to 5Mb. Not as fast as yours, but it went up 2Mb. Though, the outbound speed is the same, at a whole 384Mb. It is really slow for uploading, and the only port that is blocked is 25, which is fine because most e-mail services don't allow mail from residential IPs anyway. There is no cap. WE pay less then $50/month. Not too bad.

I really don't like DSL. It tends to be more expensive and slower than cable. And as wonko explained, it is sometimes a hastle to get it installed. Also, we have a VoIP phone system in our house so we sorta can't have DSL.

Why wouldn't your VoIP phone system work over DSL?

Speakeasy has 8 static IP's with their OSTG package... That's the main advantage with them for now.

Sure, but with lots of cheap hardware NAT solutions these days, who actually needs 8 static IPs? That's only appealing to someone running lots of servers (or one server hosting lots domains using SSL), and that's not a large enough demographic to make a profit on.

Grandmas, non-techies, and casual Internet users are where the big profits are, and they don't even know what an IP address is, much less why they might need more than one.

VoIP should work fine on any internet connection that has at least a 56K upload stream. I used to use it on my dial-up connection (just playing around) and it even worked OK on that.

I'd be happy with one 1 or two static IP addresses. With NAT and Host Headers, there really isn't much need for the average Joe to have a bunch of IP addresses. Though, if Verizon offered 8 static IP's I would be the first to admit I would take them. ;)

we have VoIP as our main (only) phone. Its be kinda dumb to have a phone line come into the house for dsl then run our phone through the DSL... also, DSL costs more than our cable service... Also, I've heard of people having trouble with the VoIP through a DSL line.

I use mine for SSL and for email. The last thing you want when hosting your own mail server is to have your IP change on you. Granted, a backup MX service can help (and I use one), but still...

Oh yeah, and because of no server restrictions, that means no port 25 blocking either :) They'll also happily set up reverse DNS for you, so my main exterior IP from my firewall reverses to my own domain name.

I stopped using my Linksys router as the exterior solution; I now have a dedicated ISA 2004 server that can easily handle 8 external IPs. It can also do HTTP and HTTPS filtering so it can inspect all of the data coming into it (inbound).

I used to use ISA on my home network too. But I just decided it didn't give me anything too exciting for home use. I had a dedicated system running a firewall when a little Linksys would do everything I really need.

Come to the east !

Here in Paris, a 15Mb DSL line with unlimited nation-wide calls (plus a local-call phone number), 100+ tv channels (served on the DSL line), is only 29,9 Euro a month. With a static ip and a free dns reverse service.

And low pings on game servers all across Europe \o/

That seems so strange : here in France, I have a provider giving me 15Mbits/s down 1Mbits up, static IP, server allowed, (very) basic cable tv for 29.9€ (which is about 40$). I would have thought US would be ahead from us. How come ?
My basic explanation : in Europe, you pay for local calls by the minute, so when you are a big internet user, it becomes quicly expensive. In the US most people do dialup and it is cheap.

It has a lot to do with the sheer size of the country and the stranglehold (and near-monopoly) large companies like Verizon hold on the telecommunications industry here. In addition, Americans don't tend to be early adopters (although this is gradually changing), so there's not a lot of motivation for these huge corporations with established customer bases to try new things.

The situation is improving, though. Cable and DSL are getting faster (though DSL is lagging behind), and there are a few places where residential high-speed fiber is becoming available for very reasonable prices. It's just not happening fast enough for my tastes.

So through affiliation with Comcast i get a discounted price on their very new just released speeds. I currently ordered the 150mbps down and 50 mbps up, i did a few speed tests and i been getting 170mpbs average down and an average of 65 mpbs up. It normally costs about 120 a month since its brand new but i pay 79.99 so its well worth it in my eyes. My friend whom also has the same bandwidth cap did a test of transferring a 2.4 gig hd movie from me to him and only took 6 minutes and 52 seconds and he lives in PA and im in NJ ….thats not bad at all.