Sorry about the random focus drift and the occasional harsh edit I had to do to cut around the worst of it! Not sure what went wrong with auto-focus, but will fix it! Edit: Someone smart figured it out below! When I rock back in place (hello, autism) I uncover the little face of the panda on the toolbox behind me, and the camera grabs autofocus on it!

@y00t00b3r

3 ай бұрын

misbehaving cameras only add to the authenticity of the video. don't worry about it.

@Cdshakes

3 ай бұрын

I actually came to here to comment about this-- not sure what kind of camera you are using--but apple and samsung is always touting "it's our best camera ever" in each model. (well, duh, i hope so), but i wish they'd add a feature of "focus lock" for people making videos. I know there's pro level manual focus available, but most users want to use auto focus. Once focus is set, then lock it-- so if something comes into frame for a moment, don't shift focus please. I see this a lot in videos where people are making something-- woodworking-- etc-- their hand will into frame for a moment and it'll completely shift focus....so annoying.

@soulvibe2007

3 ай бұрын

It's the little white toy on the desk behind you. The camera thinks it's a face and is focusing on it.

@MmMerrifield

3 ай бұрын

Hey! My wife is on the spectrum so no worries. Everything seemed great

@DavesGarage

3 ай бұрын

@@soulvibe2007 Holy cow, you might just be a genius! It's a little panda and he's new this week, so it'd make perfect sense.

I worked for a major phone company recently and it's amazing how many solutions rely on the one person who can fix it (the Dennis factor).

@UmVtCg

3 ай бұрын

Dr. Dennis Factor, MD is an obstetrics & gynecology specialist in Dallas, TX and has over 62 years of experience in the medical field.

@NoName-zn1sb

3 ай бұрын

@@UmVtCg Laughing Out Loud!

@svensubunitnillson1568

3 ай бұрын

we also had a dr. in telephony. If SIP systems went down, a hired gun so to speak. sadly he passed away a couple of years ago. youngsters nowadays don't learn old tech and it's even hard to get a junior network technician. It's sad really cuz it's a nice industry to work in and still lot's of fun to be had.

@DavesGarage

3 ай бұрын

They say take the square root of the number of employees and that's how many people are doing half the stuff!

@Baulder13

3 ай бұрын

Yup. We somehow still have a PBX system in use and the only guy we could find that could fix it was 50 miles away after our last guy retired. Shows up each time it has problems and fixes it (always shows up hours late). We needed to go remote during Covid? Somehow the dude made it work with call forwarding and remote VOIP phones. Guy is so weird but also a bonafide wizard because when I go try and manage that software its straight out of the 80's.

I can't believe i sat and listened to a guy talk old tech and service installations for nearly 20mins. and i enjoyed it a bunch! totally encapsulated the pains of ISPs over the years!

@00tich

2 ай бұрын

a stroll down memory lane for us old farts

@bshingledecker

2 ай бұрын

I have an old AOL floppy around here somewhere.

@p20071

Ай бұрын

Same. No need for upload bandwidth so switched to Starlink some time ago. Hope @davegarage could take a look into Starlink setup and Security and so on.

@danewesterdahl3451

29 күн бұрын

He had it easy. I tried early satilite service 25 yrs back and wireless broadband. The history of promised high speed service every few months made me crazy and even ended up with a few non working home interface boxes....

@ElectronFieldPulse

27 күн бұрын

This video made me realize how rich he is. I knew he was well off since he worked for Microsoft and everything, but he seems to be living the high life

That fact that you said 'months' multiple times in this story is mind-bending. I would lose sleep trying to solve these issues, and I can't imagine enduring that for months; multiple times.

@ibrudiiv

3 ай бұрын

Yep it sucks. I recently had an issue with a WAN DHCP lease on my fiber line (3rd party router, yea I know) and didn't bother to even call support. I would have had to directly communicate with an engineer because of the technicalities of the issue that basic support is just not trained for. Put up with it for a few months and decided against pursuing the matter, it's a residential line anyway and technical stuff like this probably wouldn't even get acknowledged just because I was using a 3rd party router. But then why even offer DMZ+/passthrough on a residential fiber gateway device? :-/

@nathanlowery1141

3 ай бұрын

@@karlwithak.can confirm this. I’m a technician at an isp. The people on the phone have a very basic understanding of the equipment.. they usually try to tell customers what is wrong and are usually incorrect

@nathanlowery1141

3 ай бұрын

@@karlwithak. yeah good luck with that. I’ll tell you what, come in the field and I’ll show you just how wrong you are. Actually wish that was possible, perhaps to teach phone agents how rf works so they set reasonable expectations.

@samhillebrand

3 ай бұрын

Yeah, I've seen the same thing. These technicians and phone support reps rarely know how to work with technical issues that aren't in their script or that aren't extremely common but they also don't need to know much about WAN, LAN, networking, or fiber to get that job and aren't extensively trained so basically it's the long time techs with experience that are the most effective. @@karlwithak.

We got fiber a little over a year ago. $50 pre-install. 2 months later, once they ran all the fiber optics into our neighborhood, we had fiber. The best thing ever. No more weather issues from cable. No more rate hikes and dam dependable service. Paying less than half of what cable wanted for 3 times the speed.

I knew exactly who you're talking about because I used to work for a company they did a merger with ~10 years ago. We were told it was to be an equitable 50/50 merger, but that turned out to be a lie. Their leadership came to our office, lied to our faces, and the very next day laid off almost every single employee in our entire company. Entire departments destroyed. So not a single thing you described surprises me one bit. And I won't be surprised at all if your service continues to get worse and your bills go up.

@Horus9339

3 ай бұрын

If you take one bit, you can never take a byte. Sorry, I'll get my coat.

@richardbrobeck2384

3 ай бұрын

Exactly I know who you are talking about I also had friend who lost their job too now they work for the cable company!

@kr0my

3 ай бұрын

hmm i know a story about something like that in detroit recently

@CM-xr9oq

3 ай бұрын

Ziply upgraded me from 50/50 to 100/100 for free and I've not had any problems with it. Xfinity on the other hand was terrible.

@rfichokeofdestiny

3 ай бұрын

@@Horus9339 I'd like this comment, but it already has 8 likes.

I started climbing telephone poles in 1984. I have worked for every major cable company, Telco and most every major fiber company as either a technician or a corporate executive. To listen to your story was both humorous and heartbreaking. Mostly heartbreaking and completely avoidable with more honest communication, better equipment and technical skills by your numerous service providers. You are a patient man my friend! Best of luck with your KZread channel.

@seymourwrasse3321

3 ай бұрын

remember when political correctness went and calling them telephone poles was frowned on because there was other things running on them, like power, cable etc. are there still telephone lines anymore? Remember glass insulators on bare line telegraph poles?

@pfifo_fast

3 ай бұрын

By admitting that you have worked for every company your also admitting that you have gotten fired from every company.

@seymourwrasse3321

3 ай бұрын

@@pfifo_fast only in your pea brained mind

@larryappelbaum2245

3 ай бұрын

@@pfifo_fast Quite the opposite my friend. After my 18 year old girlfriend put a gun to her head and 90 days later my mother committed suicide, I quickly learned the value of my time and of my life. I have never been fired from ANY of the jobs I spoke about. If you would like to compare resumes I am happy to do so. For you to judge me like that on a public forum without knowing me and what I have done to get to where I am in this life is an unfair judgment. You are entitled to your opinion but until you have strapped into my WestCo boots and my Bashlin gaffs, you have no understanding of my technical skills, nor my abilities. In 1997 I was appointed a seat on the FCC board of the ATSC (advanced telecommunications service commission) in Washington DC. As part of the digital encryption technology group. Please share with us all your life story and technical skills?

@bshingledecker

2 ай бұрын

@@pfifo_fast Not necessarily true. With the mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, downsizings, reorganizations, spinoffs, buyouts, and a couple others I'm sure I forgot, You dont have to be fired to work at a dozen companies.

My favorite issue was when the company I worked for moved off of using T1 lines over to using T3 lines. When the T3 line that they had just installed a couple of months ago went down, the same guy that I had worked with on the T1 lines showed up again with a volt meter telling me that it was probably an issue with voltage because the building was at the end of the run. I just "smiled" and waved at him as he walked into the closet to test the T3 line with a volt meter. After a little bit of time passed I could hear him on his cell phone telling the head office that there was no voltage. At that point, I walked into the closet and stated to the technician, "You do understand that the T3 line is fiber optic don't you?" he quickly responded, "Yeah, but I should still get the correct voltage". At that point, I left the room and just laughed! Needless to say, the T3 line remained down for a few days. In this case, the old copper-savvy technicians didn't understand how to test and work with the fiber optic cables and services that the company was now selling.

@LordMegatherium

3 ай бұрын

I mean technically we still have photoelectric phenomena so if he brought a really sensitive voltmeter he might've gotten something... but I personally probably would've screamed because it breaks my faith in humanity whenever I know more about something than somebody who really should know more than me,

@whummer98

3 ай бұрын

T3s or DS3s were typically delivered in a pair bnc coax copper connectors. They usually came off another loop, likely fiber and maybe an oc3 or similar. T3s were typically copper though.

@aiverneverminder

3 ай бұрын

This is story not about technichian, but about his company that could not teach their tech stuff to work with new technoligies... It us not a rocket science to set up and connect fiber network, especially with hardware standard for your company.

@davidsimpson2824

3 ай бұрын

I used to work on T3/DS3 daily. Every one I've seen were handed off on coax.

@RobHoffman83

3 ай бұрын

We switched to digital phone service through our local phone company and every few weeks a phone would go down. We'd call repair and it would come back up. After several months, the repair guy told me the problem. Another tech would be testing circuits, didn't get a dial tone on our lines, and disconnect us.

Your point about internet speed limits is an excellent one, and something most people just don't realize. It's why I have never bothered upgrading from the base FiOS package. They keep pressuring me to get me to upgrade, of course, telling me how much better my life will be. Marketing versus reality. I stick with reality.

@KoS32

3 ай бұрын

@cweaver4080 seem what is mentioned in this video is due to a hybrid infrastructure issue (copper and fiber system), I work for Verizon and today's FiOS services is provided through a all fiber infrastructure. The only copper techs deal with is at the customer's house. You might be on an older system call BPON which speeds are limited due to older tech. Verizon is trying to merge their customers on that system to the new GPON systems that will give you speeds up to 1gig. If you experience pixelation on your TV service it could be due to BPON system, plus why would you like to stay on a legacy system will limits you I'm the future. Also copper infrastructure are more costly than those of fiber, so keep that in mind. And also I'm not here to upset you in anyway possible, I just would like to put some info out there. Tech nowadays is growing fast, so these older copper system are not as reliable as fiber.

@FantasiePolitiek

29 күн бұрын

Where i live we are being forced into fiber. Either you take fiber or you have no internet. Unless you use 4G/5G/satellite. Greets from the ever so perfect (not) Europe.

@FantasiePolitiek

29 күн бұрын

My problem is fiber is not available where i live so im stuck with 4G. They already took down copper and coax.

Oh my gosh, Dave. I was a field technician for a cellular phone company the last 23 years of my working life. When I started, the backhaul to every cell site were copper T1's. Some busy sites would have a dozen T1's coming in. I got really good at troubleshooting T-carrier problems, and often spent hours trying to convince the phone company that the problem was on their end and with their equipment. I had to laugh when you said the old tech's name was Dennis. Our local telco had an old T-carrier tech named Dennis! That guy forgot more than all their other techs combined ever learned. Great guy. Eventually he even gave me his personal phone number. Thanks for a great video, as always.

@user-gu2yy6kq9y

3 ай бұрын

I'm not waiting for a plumber. My toilet flushed just fine. 😊

@aaron74

3 ай бұрын

I worked for a telco and my supervisor was a Dennis, and he had been with the company 35 years at that point. lol

@jpm1211

3 ай бұрын

Every ILEC POP had a Dennis, whatever his name was. The guy who knew where all the bodies were buried. About a year ago, our Dennis stopped by my office and said, "hey, do you mind if I go down in your basement and collect a few of those T1 cards that are sitting there? My stash is running low." He remembered from 15 years ago that we had a bunch of T1s terminated in our building, and as various ones at other customer sites around town burned out, he'd scavenge replacements from his customers. It was safer for him to do it that way, than to collect them all back at the warehouse where someone would steal them or toss them out. He used to watch the trouble ticket queue and grab our tickets if he could, said he liked our coffee and the bathrooms in our office.

I am a radiologist that works from home and I have been trying to get fiber run to my neighborhood for several months now. When I asked one of my partners that had been through this process for advice he said it would be easier to just move to a neighborhood that had fiber service already. This video clinches it. Thanks for sharing.

@jfbeam

3 ай бұрын

Simple, pay for the $$$$/mo commercial/business service. Pretty much anyone will string fiber anywhere if paid to do it. But when people are only willing to pay sub-100$ for residential service, you get whatever you get.

@brodriguez11000

3 ай бұрын

@@jfbeam Long as it's reasonable, but there are the stories where it's the customer basically paying practically everything. At that point they should own it all, but...

@Dick_Dawson_Rad

3 ай бұрын

@@jfbeam AT&T is the company that owns the fiber that literally runs next to my back yard. I have called them multiple times with the same results. I am transferred to multiple people who have no clue how to handle the situation, then told someone will call me back but no one ever does. Cost is not the issue.

@jfbeam

3 ай бұрын

@@Dick_Dawson_Rad AT&T commercial fiber, or residential fiber? Are you calling the "Uverse" office, or the enterprise sales office? Those are two very different things run by two very different organizations. The Uverse guys are useless, even for their own crap. The enterprise guys (usually) are not. (they know what they're selling, and their massive bonuses are tied to it.)

@gofastwclass

3 ай бұрын

@@Dick_Dawson_Rad I've been in your situation. We moved into an existing home in the country and didn't realize there were zero options for internet service at the time. Even though there was old equipment on site (noticed when we looked at the home), no one was interested in connecting it. Everyone said "we don't service your area." I even inquired about running fiber to our home / and or neighbourhood as a new install, no dice. Simply put, all the first level people in residential have no clue. None. We were fortunate, an internet company (not my first choice) came through a couple years later and ran fiber to the homes in our slightly rural area. Being in the technology business and having done this for work, I can tell you the thing you need to do is contact your chosen companies business division and discuss the installation with them. The residential people can only work with areas they have availability listed on their maps. Even if that map stops one street away, they don't have the connections or determination to get the job done. Several years ago, the company I worked for built a building and opened a new office. During the process one of our guys contacted the local internet company in the area and they said "that address is a field." He replied "it WAS a field, it is being built into an office building." The phone agent was clueless and couldn't go farther. I spoke to our sales rep for the business class internet we were currently using at the main location and a few months later we had a deal to get fiber to the site and their tech was asking me where on the building's blueprints it was going to land.

Ah Dave, you have the effortless delivery of a radio pro. Every few moments I’m expecting (hoping?) to hear some elegant, homespun high tech wisdom.

Watching this brought back a lot of memories. I used to be a network engineer for a Fibre-to-the-premise network, and was involved with a lot of telephony issues over VoIP. We made a lot of stuff work like your old PSTN/POTS gear, including - 30 year old pulse dialer security systems (using pulse-to-DTMF conversion), fax machines and custom medical dialer equipment, not to mention POTS telephones. It all ran over the fibre. The key to understanding and resolving failures in these types of scenarios is to perform a packet capture at the telco level to analyse the point of failure (this would be done by 'Dennis'). And because you can't always identify problems looking at signals on a screen, repetition of trial-and-error testing was necessary. Strategies vary, but as you mentioned, in-band and out-of-band approaches are common. Then you have variability in consumer equipment itself. Whilst one POTS phone may work, another may not when attached to the same ATA, simply because the voltage or lag in the signal lies just slightly out of spec compared to what the ATA can handle under the configured settings. Your issue where the gate gear stopped working after 20 minutes very much sounds like a keep-alive timeout that's failing somewhere. Dennis might like to examine the packet capture =) You also want to ensure that you're running a good quality media codec that can capture all the detail in modulated signals that may go in-band. If nuances in the modulated signals are lost, be it due to jitter, insufficient codec bandwidth, or compression, a transmission may fail. I wish you the best of luck and look on with fond memories of an age gone by for myself. =)

I appreciate the level of calm you have achieved, despite the inordinate amount of money, time, and frustration involved.

@brodriguez11000

3 ай бұрын

Wonder if the ISP being something other than telco or cable would improved things?

@DavesGarage

3 ай бұрын

I've had time to calm down... had I made this video 3 months ago, it would have been a lot more angsty :-)

I am old enough to remember when Ben Franklin posted that quote on Prodigy.

Hey Dave. I also have ASD and enjoy your point of view. Glad the algorithm pointed out your Channel! Finally! When I saw the camera focus on the background, I assumed it was chasing your chair moving backwards and just overran each time. But reading the face detection is probably more likely. Fun stuff! I have an ISP story! Unfortunately it's not fiber related, but it is cable versus DSL. Was having a hell of a time service wise for a cable connection and me working in IT helped a bunch. I had top of the line equipment - Cisco switch and modem, and a SonicWall Router. This was for a 25/3 connection at the time. Internal people said it was my equipment and the techs would find nothing wrong and say it's not me. It took an Old School Tech to understand what was going on. This infighting went on for almost a year. So I looked into getting AT&T DSL. The map said I had service so called up for install. Unfortunately, the house was 3 years old on a row of new houses on a private street. They only ran power and coax. Our house was 600 ft away from the aerial power lines that had that sweet AT&T DSL. Would have run conduit through three different private properties to get service. Had quotes of about $7,000. So said nope cancel it! The Billing department didn't get the notice and long story short sent me to collections for not paying my bill for a DSL service that was activated months prior..

I love the image of Dennis doing a wheelie & driving into the sunset, wire crimper in hand. Thank you for that.

Your deadpan delivery of a (painfully)hilarious story got you a sub. I had an ISDN with 2 B's back in the late 90s, good times...

I don't think that I have ever told a channel developer this before but, I really like your channel. Not only are your videos educational as well as entertaining, you are very easy to listen to. No wonder you have been so successful in you career. Congratulations.

@DavesGarage

3 ай бұрын

Thanks for the kind words!

Other than the reference to US companies during the historics, it all brings back memories of my younger years here in Oz. Thanks for sharing Dave.

I’m quite a young guy, born in the 00’s. I used dial-up internet until about 2012. Then the 6Mbit upgrade happened in the house, and then 12Mbit on the same line which we still use today. I have resorted to using my phones hotspot to facilitate any kind of high bandwidth activities, peaks at about 200Mbps. Nobody else my age knows the dial-up connection “jingle”, or sharing the house phone and internet on the same line. I always felt this sort of experience made me more interested in tech

The fact that you know about all the industry standards and how it all works is amazing. Imagine what it's like for most of us who are utterly dependent on the so called 'Experts' that show up to fix an issue. And yet you still had to go through what we ignorant folks go through, months of intermittent service, stuff working right up until the the service guy rounds the bend at the end of the street.

The Unifi UDM SE will get you 3.5Gb with IDS/IPs enabled vs. the 2Gb you mentioned in the video for the UDM Pro. Disabling applications that are not used (protect, ...) will reclaim CPU and memory that will help with the routing so you can likely get more than 2Gb on the UDM Pro. I know you mentioned the cost being an issue for the 10Gb plan, but the service they offer is truly unmatched from a tech perspective for home usage. You get straight fiber from their border router to your router (no ONT, OLT), and the associated reduced latency alone are just amazing. You also get static addresses, and IPv6 dedicated ranges.

I have a fiber conversion from my ISP, and that's all from my ISP. I am allowed to use my own router, and not forced to use the super snooper from AT&T. I get .8G of 1G "service". I'm fine with it, 80% isn't bad all thing considered (no at&t😁). Thanks for another great video.

This is why I have a mix of pfsense and unifi. pfsense for my router/firewall and unifi for Switches/APs. Been rolling 10Gb for a while now and have a solid and stable setup! Built my own pfsense router vs buying one as I could add my own cards and change what I wanted.

Some of what you discussed was over my head. What I found fascinating was the willingness of the provider to leverage your capital layout for standard services to other users. That and the company’s inability to train technicians to know what they are providing the customer.

I just had a ticket for my job today with a similar yet confusing story from an ISP. My initial confusion was that they were simply refusing to address packet loss on their circuit. Upon further investigation with our vendor the ISP is forcing the upgrade to Fiber and abandoning all copper services. Also looks like Unifi just came out with the Unifi Dream Machine Pro Max which supports those higher throughput capabilities with IDS/IPS. Best of luck with your new fancy Fiber!

the jump from 33.6 to 56k was awesome, really noticeable. All the little local ISPs competing for our dollars, half were advertising 56k the other half were 56Flex. Ended up with an external 56k USR modem because you could reboot it without restarting your whole pc, which back then could take several minutes.

As one of my company's 'Dennis', I have some ideas and Comments. 1 -- By a used Adtran 908 Series. You will not use the ISDN / T1 ports, but the Analogue ports have some of the better chipsets. Find out if your current provider will let you do something like that, or port the numbers to one that will. 2 -- There is a good reason why they want you off the old Analogue lines. A lot of the parts and equipment supporting copper lines are turning into unobtainium. Additionally, there are fewer and fewer people to work on it. 3 -- It looks like you are on an ONT 'mass market' infrastructure. Your bandwidth is shared. I do not know how much your internet is used for business, but you may want to upgrade to a Dedicated Internet / Business type service. 4 -- I remember using PLATO in 1980 with a 9600 baud private line allocating 1200 baud to each terminal. 5 -- How far is your gate? Could you connect your gate to your Panasonic phone system?

@jimmichaels5058

2 ай бұрын

Back in the 1990's I had an extension of my Office Panasonic PBX over 6 miles of leased phone company wire to my house. The only time it failed was when power went out at the office and we realized the Panasonic interface box was not plugged into a UPS.

Who age 60 plus can’t associate with this flashback and ISP stories we all experienced. Thanks Dave (& Dennis)

Still got copper to the cabinet at max 54Mbps pegged at 49Mbps and 15Mbps up. A good solid line. This gives us full 4K films, an electronic bookkeeper business, TV, kids/teens on gaming and general surfing with no problems. The system went down owing to outside cable failure so we bought a portable router which runs at plus 450Mbps through satellite 4g and works well BUT there is no difference that we can see or hear over and above our current wired system which was restored after a few days.

greybeard stories are the best

Bonus points for the WKRP clip with Dr. Johnny Fever! :-)

My electric co-op decided to build a gigabit fiber network out here and they're running the lines alongside the power lines right now. We had dialup that never got above 24kbps and was more typically below until the end of 2008 when we were finally offered wireless data. I'm cautiously excited about the speed available out here going from the ~4mbps I just tested to,ideally, 250 times as much at a thousand.

Years ago I worked for a cable company and several of the franchises that were run out of our offices had very rural areas. This was pre digital satellite so to watch TV you had either an antenna or cable. Some people were quoted prices up to $25,000 to have cable installed. In some cases there were right of way fees that had to be paid, poles installed and essentially a small distribution network designed, it wasn't just pull cable.

I remember in the early 2000s getting Comcast @Home at 3MBit. Maybe a year later I was wondering why it felt slower and almost gaslit myself thinking it was never that fast. But sure enough, Comcast had cut the speed to 1.5MBit without telling anyone. Bastards.

The whole "it was faster to drive to work and download it there" definitely hit home 😂 I'm an Electrical Engineering grad student with an office on campus. My friends used to live right down the road and their landlord was a crusty ol guy who had the mindset of "eh the most basic internet plan will work". That basic plan was shared amongst like 5 people and all over an ancient wireless router. They were trying to download a new game to their PS5 at their house and it was downloading at like 5 Mbit. It was estimating total download time of around 8 hours.... I told them to cancel the download and lets go to my office. My office is in a new engineering building where each and every single RJ45 connection in the building is full gigabit (symmetric). Plus each floor has its own IT room with a dedicated fiber link. I don't know how fast those fiber links are but I have run 5 speed tests at the same time from one of the labs and all 5 gave 1Gig up and down. We plugged in their PS5 in my office and they game downloaded in like a minute. They were blown away 🤣

@matilija

Ай бұрын

No it didn't, 5 Mb a second at 8 hours would be 18 GB of data, even on a full 1 Gb connection with zero playstation network bottlenecking, that would take a minimum of 2.5 minutes to download. At least make your story believable without including fabricated numbers.

Back in mid 00's I was a part of this experience in a different way, and this brings back horrible memories. I worked for a cable provider that started offering VOIP service, and the ISP did a terrible job informing customers that if the cable goes down (which it did constantly due to oversold nodes) then they would not have any phone service at all, and of course the struggles with VOIP not working with house alarm systems. As scummy ISPs do, they were fairly good about legally covering their own butts via a lengthy TOS that literally none of the customers ever read. I would bet money that someone ended up dying because they couldn't dial 911 for help when their cable went out. That job just about broke me and I was so happy once I quit working there when I did.

Man, I was thinking about what was happening right from the point you said "worked for 20 minutes" - The billing system MDE (mass data entry) is going "wait, this address doesn't have fiber" and cancels it - The billing system for "phone" is going "wait this address doesn't have fiber" and switches it back to POTS. The ATA adapter should have been obvious. I can't believe how many people missed that. An ATA is basically a reverse analog modem, and probably could have been configured to not do short DTMF tones, but at least you got a solution. The one thing you didn't say, and I was expecting was "turns out 5G requires a 6000 dollar managed ethernet switch, otherwise you only get 10G or 1G"

Hi Dave, I watched your video and then had my wife watch it. We both chuckled at your story. You see we are retired techs from a telephone company. In addition we were the “Dennis” techs of our area. We both retired before fiber was introduced but know all about T1/T3 transmission and the issues that go with them. We now have fiber in our home and fast internet and reliable IP phone service. Our friends live in a rural setting and are relegated to DSL. I suggested that they try 5G cellular data from any of the big 3 Cell providers 18:50 . It may be a problem child too as it is a new technology. You may want to try it. Most offer 30 day “try before you buy” deal. Good Luck.

Based in Tokyo vicinity and my workplace-to-be will be on 10Gbps from the day one. No bragging, and certainly no offense to you or your telco, but I am just happy that our telco has been doing decent work over two decades now.

LOL, great video, brought back some memories. I remember best story I have, is I finally had the option to upgrade to ADSL. Sweet I call the phone company, order an install, wait for the guy to appear with his wand. An older guy starts coming up my driveway, starts to install it all, and as we discuss things, life and how things have changed, he's like, you're the son of Dennis aren't you. Puzzled I was like yeah, how do you know that, he was like, you've been gone away for a number of years, but remember when you stole my mobile phone off the fence. I was your dad's neighbour if you recollect..... The penny then drops, OMG, small world. He was an old telephone technician that helped install his and our phone like back in mid eighties and cabled it all which was a good 4 km down a very rugged dirt road back in the day. Best part of the story though, after he installed it all and left thanks us for the hospitality and left. I went back to work and when got home, no phone worked. Hmmm, call ed the company and arranged a tech to come back. This time they'd sent his apprentice to check the line install. He laughs after a couple minutes, takes a selfie of the connection. Then says, fixed. I ask, so what happened. You've made my day, Bruce crossed the wires and installed in in reverse. Student becomes the master, I had to laugh, poor Bruce is gonna cop it for a LONG time

Retired tech myself, on the spectrum. Aren’t we all? My solution was before switching getting a Sr. Tech out to look at copper line. They previously disconnected the entire block as they thought nobody would notice. I didn’t get a Dennis, but a comparable Ike. The older gentleman left his card. I used him to set up full fibre package while keeping my copper phone line at lowest cost as I’m currently just living on military disability. I would suggest the same to anyone that can pull it off. What they don’t tell you is that ‘free’ Xbox actually costs you an extra 40-50 extra a month on your bill (for std 2years). Might be slightly different being in Alberta, as I know the US telecom just divi up area and profits. Fight for your copper if you got it. The worst is you might have to have it on separate billing. That’s the catch, can’t have copper & fibre on the same bill. That’s the actual policy. (That & trick people off copper if possible)

Been there done that! I had a client with 4 locations moving from copper to fiber. They promised there was service, but didn't tell us until after the contract was signed that we needed to pay the cost of running the fiber into the buildings. We finally got contractors hired to run the conduits, and 20,000 unexpected dollars later, we finally -- got some service. Symmetrical speed is truly a wonderful thing -- makes response so much more snappy.

@stevevarholy2011

3 ай бұрын

Had a similar experience with a CLEC. And we were in a multi-tenant commercial building in the CBD.

This was almost my life story, except for the 5G part. My first modem was 110bps acoustic coupled. You didn't mention a common experience I recall: ISDN line qualification checks. The phone company would require these, but not perform the install. Then they would need to redo it. This would happen over and over. I worked for a company that had ISDN installed, but that only happened because our President played golf with a US West VP. One time I was running 56K and moved to an apartment complex that had multiplexers on all of the phone lines. Suddenly I was lucky to get 4K. I broke down and paid for an IDSL line as a business customer. It was great having 24/7 support, which I needed because of the residential techs disconnecting my business line.

This is like the Unsolved Mysteries of fiber installs. Excellent presentation, thanks Dave!

Your story is so familiar! We had that same company install fiber in our neighborhood about a year ago. My install was reasonably smooth, but some of my neighbors…man, the horror stories! One of the worst is that they told a neighbor they had to trench their own fiber run because it was too long. Oh, they also broke the power pole in one yard., then told them they had to replace their own pole. The entire neighborhood was a mess after this unnamed company was done. Then they kept billing for my old DSL. For 9 months, no matter how much I complained. Frustrating.

I had this up to stage 2 of your quest , at which time i told them to shove it . B.T ( British Telecom ) would come out , replace everything , tell me all was well , show me it working , then leave . What the were doing was testing it with the server down the road which had two banks , the public one and their own . Theirs worked , the pleb one didn’t. Took me 3 visits to prove it to them , as the last guy left i asked where he was going next. “ To put you on the public device “ he said . I asked him to return afterwards and he did, and went pale and stuttery , and left in a hurry , as my service shit the bed for the last time . 20 years since , never used em .

@Renegade1127

Ай бұрын

I was on Plusnet - a part of BT ! and had no problems @ 67mb/s down, 28mb/s up. Then the annual price hike came around. Now I'm with BRSK for £2/month less then Plusnet, and get 530mb/s up and down + VOIP. Happy days 👍

I've also seen most of the different connections and modems in my life. Privately from whistling dial-up to BBS, ISDN, cable, ADSL, VDSL and since a few months finally affordable fiber became available in my house with stable 200Mbps up and down. More than enough for normal use. Often the upload is even faster. That's a whole new unusual, but fun experience. The youngsters of today have no idea what we all went through for even a super slow internet connection. The fights I went through with the various providers are also endless. I feel your pain and frustration.

I had similar experiences. Remember when the internet was the DARPAnet? UUCP was the posting boards rather than email? I started in 1965 with IBM Hollerinth card sorting machines..., hardwire programming. 1972 I put together my first microcomputer from a Heathkit 3400H - 2K ROM and 2K RAM with a hexidecimal keypad and a 8-digit neon tube display. No tape or disc storage. Programmed in binary and/or assembler. 300K modem to 1200 to 56K then ADSL. I've been waiting over a decade for fiber. My ISP refused to run a line to my house even though the main fiber line was less than a football field away. They wanted $25K to run the line and charge me $2500 per month. Ha! So I continue to work with 0-3 mbps download and 0-0.3 upload.

UDM Pro Max just dropped and might be worth investigating. Designed for med to large businesses, but it supports significantly higher throughput.

I loved the WKRP 'Phone Cops' cliip at the end. 😎

Hi Dave, another great video, for the Ubiquiti Consoles, they currently do not have an appliance yet with IDS/IPS that can go over 3.5gbps speeds. You can change it to another appliance firewall like a SonicWall or Cisco appliance then change all the Unifi devices to a cloud key. I've heard rumors that later this year they will be implementing a new enterprise dream machine, and I expect the speeds to reach 10gbps for IDS/IPS or at least half at 5gbps. But if I were you, I would wait otherwise it's going to be a big project and a hassle.

Amazing storytelling Dave! This is the first time I've seen your channel and as IT Infra guy I really enjoyed the history refresher, technical details, road bumps, and personal victories you shared. I also felt the pain of your experience, some things never change.

Hey... great video - wanted to research your "trade security for performance..." quote. It's actually "...trade liberty for temporary security, deserve neither and will lose both." But I get your point and it applies to Security and Performance in the digital world.

Those two episodes of WKRP are some excellent television, no doubt!

At the end of the day, you did something for your community and you don’t see that often it will come back around

A year or two ago, AT&T pulled conduit and fiber throughout my entire subdivision, and there were many karens on Nextdoor complaining about the small patch of grass that was disturbed, even though they now have fiber available for free!

In the early 90s, I lived about a half mile from the local telco switch, right down the street. I routinely got 52-53k out of my 56k modem in my 286 machine. I thought I was in hog heaven! Then I moved to another city where the best I was getting was in the teens, and I looked around for an alternative. Found an LMDS provide that gave me around 150k very consistently, and thought it couldn't get any better!

In the 70's I was excited to have 30CPS. Fast forward to the 2010's, my brother happens to live in an area where he (still) had FIOS. At the time I was living in a suburb, surrounded by fiber trunks but no one was pulling to the residence. My latest iteration is running the house through my cell phone via a directional antenna because it (was) the only cell tower in range. About the time the antenna & transceiver paid for itself, they put another tower that's somewhat closer. Not enough for decent data but it's a whiff of civilization. Punch line: having fiber (As per my brother) means you find out you're faster than most of your favorite websites.

As a Sri Lankan, I requested for fiber connection when the main telco was rolling it out in 2015, only to be told it isn't available in my area. Had to wait 6 years to recieve it in 2021. Huge jump from 16/8Mbps ADSL to 100/50 Fiber

As a former telecom tech I really enjoyed the history recap. As a former computer networking company guy (retired) I can relate to your support issues.

Im 55 Dave, You just described my life since the 80's and on...lol Well done, Im making my son watch this so he can appreciate the speeds we have today. 👍

I remember being in awe at 14.4 and 28.8 "speedster" modems.

I wish I was born earlier and could have experienced the 80s and 90s in tech. Sounds like a fun time.

Back in Russia (Southern Sakhalin), I used dual up connection at around 2007-2010. Expensive bills there were. Also high latency in online games and slow bandwidth. Then, there was a 3G USB modem until spring of 2011 when I was happy with a 128K ADSL connection. However, poor weather and high network latency would break everything for me. Then it was a few megabits, then moving to Kaliningrad and having a 100mbps twisted pair connection. That twisted pair was a huge upgrade, also stable connection. Same was in Ukraine. In Poland, I moved to the allotment where my dad recently bought a land in. Had a dodgy LTE connection until recently, T-Mobile deployed 5G Standalone. Now I don’t need any fiber. The fiber will never be available in allotments, anyways. With the download averaging at around 500mbps and the upload at 50, I sure am happy to have this kind of connection. Quite a story you had with the fiber, btw. I guess 5G would be a good alternative if I need to have a smart house and anything else that’s IoT.

Dave, you get to have all the fun. We live in an acreage community North of Houston. Because the houses are quite some distance apart I thought it was unlikely we would see fiber before I had to move into assisted living. But, lo and behold, I received a note from ATT that said I could get 1Gb fiber! So I signed up and within a couple weeks a tech came out, ran the fiber under the street through the woods and up to my IT closet. He installed the modem and got the link provisioned. He did the whole job in about 4 hours. Absolutely amazing. This was great, so we ordered fiber from ATT at our Makerspace. They installed the fiber into our building but do to some confusion in their system, could not install the modem or do the provisioning. That was a little over three weeks ago, and still no modem. It turns out they have a problem with our address in their provisioning system. So we wait..........

I had 2.5gig fiber at one point because, well, it was available. I did all the work to ensure 2.5gig throughout my network stack and sure enough all the major test sites confirmed 2.5gig up and down. I was delighted. In the real world though I rarely ever saw anything above about 800Mb, if that. When I later moved and could only have 1gig fiber (at a higher cost than the 2.5gig, gee thanks Charter) I wasn’t too upset because by that time I had accepted 1gig was really the most anyone would likely get in the wild anyway. Such is life today. Maybe when Spectrum gets around to offering more at what I’m sure will be a kings ransom cost, more than 1gig will be truly useful.

Reminds me of the changeover from PSTN to the NBN here in Australia. One government said that they would build a new network for the future, a fibre network all around Australia, Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). Would cost $50B. So they started building it, first in cities and new developments. Now I lived in a flood zone with mixed poles and pits. The pits would flood but usually the 'Snot Boxes' would keep everything ok. The poles on the other hand had old boxes that were full of spiders, the insulation crumbling in the technicians hands if he ever had to redo a connection due to the salt air corroding the wires. Now I was 1.5kms from our local exchange. While I got sync speeds of 22Mbps it was unstable, failing after a while, either burning out a port at the exchange, having 'foreign battery' on the line, it it just plain failing. So we found that having a different modulation type limiting us to about 11Mbps would be manageable and stable. Well, until the copper corroded. Now from that very same exchange, new fibre was being rolled out to a new estate 7kms away. I'm sure you could understand my disappointment seeing them roll it out under the end of my street just 300m away. In the mean time, there was a change in government. When the original quote of $50B was slated, the opposition party claimed that they could build the network for just $5B using Fibre To The Node (FTTN). Basically, a fibre bundle would be run down the street to a 'node' which would then have all the houses connect to it over VDSL. With my description of what my old phone lines were like I'm sure you can see the problem with this. Now that this party was in power that's the first thing they did. They changed the policies so that existing premises would get FTTN but new estates would get the newer FTTP. The original network was priced so that the sheer quantity of fibre ordered would bring the price down. Now that that was off the cards, the price shot up, justifying the new parties change in policy...according to them at least. Now remember those pits I mentioned before? Well, they posed a lot of problems in the cities. See, when they were built, we used to use this wonderful material called asbestos. Yup, the removal and mediation work blew the original budget right out of the water. Also there was another problem. All the copper lines and pits were owned by the biggest telco in Australia, Telstra. Now Telstra was originally government owned but was floated on the Australian Stock Exchange in the mid 90ies. Now a public company, they saw the new network as a loss of income as the copper network would be not just redundant but unusable. So naturally they sued, and won, forcing the government to buy the copper network from Telstra. By this time, the roll out was far behind schedule so Telstra was contracted to build the network. Also, remember that development I mentioned earlier? Well half of it was already serviced by Telstra fibre so when the NBN was announced, they stopped installing new fibre and let NBN figure it out. During this time my family and I had moved out of the flood zone to higher ground in a newly released estate. It's was only a cult-de-sac but officially it was a new estate. However, midway through the development the government changed policies again and said that new estates didn't have to be serviced by fibre and you wouldn't get FTTP unless you asked for it would on average would be about $6-13k. So we were stuck with brand new shiny copper on FTTN, 300m from the node. After a few teething issues we got it working and I get a solid 98Mbps down, 19 up with a sync speed of around 110Mbps. But what made things interesting was that I was providing IT support in our area during this time. Because the policy was to move people over to the NBN and off the PSTN, now everything was routed over the VDSL line for those stuck on FTTN. So like your issue of security and fire alarms not working properly, many other things went down as well. EFTPOS machines, Fax lines, multi lines for small PABX systems, panic alarms for the elderly and many other devices that used the PSTN network would go dark. And if you didn't change before certain dates, they would go anyway. In some cases, people had requested to change to the NBN but got hit by delays or even now being in an serviceable area as they were now too far from the node to even get a sync on their modems. So when they requested to go back to ADSL, they were informed they could not because it was legislated that doing so would be illegal. So for some time may businesses had to rely on mobile internet at a much higher cost than what they should have been paying, and at a reduced capability due to their phone reliant equipment going down. Over time some of these issues were fixed, with FTTP having a Voice port available on the fibre termination box allowing for alarms and elderly SOS systems to keep working but that was only temporary as those ports would be soon turned off. And while a lot of ISP modems had support for multiple phone accounts, they are nearly all locked down. You see, all landline phones now use the internal ATA in the ISP provided router with some businesses being offered pre-configured external ATAs as needed. But most of these lack pulse phone support and also encrypt and hid the SIP server details, including the usernames and passwords for your phone service. They do not want you using anything else other than their hardware. Some firmwares even prevent you from exporting and importing configuration settings so have fun if your home network was set up with a different IP pool than what that router wants to give you. Thank goodness for hacked firmwares and bridge mode. Now the NBN has decided to upgrade everyone to FTTP like they were going to do in the first place,for 'free', but only if I up my plan to a higher tier and pay the ISP an extra $25 per month on top of the $100 we already pay. And that will only get me 250Mbps down and 22 up. Ahh, what a time to be alive.

1:57 - 1994 could not get DSL in my neighborhood in Occapied Vaginiah, a fifteen-dollar cab ride from Dulles Airport, because our phone service was TOO NEW - there was a digital box on the pole that serviced the subdivsion, and DSL needed to be copper from the house to the phone switch...

Here I was thinking that ISDN stood for "It Still Doesn't Work" 😅 Thank you Dave for being a shining source of light and a wealth of information!

@KameraShy

Ай бұрын

I Still Don't Know.

I'm about to watch this video, and I'm intrigued, because I don't remember Dave doing a video on health issues before. But I guess, like all of us, as he's getting older, he occasionally feels a bit of irregularity, or even outright constipation. And goodness knows, when you need quick relief, high speed fiber sounds preferable to an enema.

Went through that ATA debacle where copper was no longer supported. Found that the local Fire Dept didn't care that you could not get real copper anymore once it was turned off and would not allow non copper FAP connectivity. Wouldn't even allow Cell connection except as a backup to copper. Now it's bad enough dealing with technical luddites but when they also control the occupancy permit its beyond maddening. Took over a year to get that approved and there was silence form the Fire Dept that entire time.

excellent video. i find that most people dont know, or understand their jobs, particularly technical issues. i spend 2 years trying to explain that my neighbor had broadband and that it was available, but due to their records it wasnt. eventually i got the one person who knew their job, and corrected their mistake. 2 years. I am now hairless, lol

Thanks for the video and the macabre tech tale. An interview with Dennis makes perfect sense as a follow-up! The whole world could learn from his sojourn in the analogue desert.

I remember back when I was paying about 8x residential ADSL costs to get Annex M so I could have symmetrical Down/Up of ~2Mbit/s - people thought I was insane but it was necessary for my work at the time. That and hideously slow speeds crush my soul. I'm currently on 1gbps and that's enjoyable enough for now.

Ha! The Supra Modem 2400 at 1:13 brought back memories of me telling Santa (Dad) that I needed that modem to show up for Christmas! Quite the throwback at how painfully slow the internet was back then. I think even with ADSL an image from a website would take many seconds to fully load, and downloading a single song these days in less than a couple of seconds would easily take an hour.

@stevevarholy2011

3 ай бұрын

I still have my Hayes 300 and 1200 baud modems from BBS'ing back in the day.

There are lots of potential customers that wont get fiber in a given service area because there are only so many fibers ran, for example 288 to 144 to 72 to 48 to 24 to 12. If you are lucky and they are willing give you a spare, you are good, or You can split an existing fiber and slow sombody else down to give you a slow fiber (almost never done for obvious reasons), or they can run new cable which they wont do for one customer. My point is, they are not obligated to give you service until a contract is signed even if you are in the service area

The biggest block to any area getting new or updated service is the cost to put the required equipment in that can handle it. Sometimes that could be £100K outlay cost and months of time because infrastructure that supports it is the real cost of the upgrade. Once that is done though, they'll almost be at your door to sell it to you. In some places, many don't want or need faster speeds and therefore won't leave legacy platforms behind, causing additional cost and footprint to keep them running, further delaying the upgrade of others.

LOL - classic! Worked for Ma since 1977 and your story touched my heart. Take care of you and yours Dave.

Excellent video, as always. I upgraded to fiber last year and had multiple challenges along the way - both technical and billing. The most frustrating part was the complete lack of intelligence from the people on the phone and the techs that showed up. They know how to do their specific tasks but cannot think independently. If it is not in the script, they are clueless. I wish we had more Dennisses in the world.

Dave I really feel the pain you had. Not only have I hosted servers at home and have suffered the bandwidth pain all the way back to shoving the handset into suction cups. What made it worse was that I was a senior tech for a large telco provider in the UK and I could not got the issues resolved even for my own service. I even went to the trouble of pulling a brand new 5 pair copper cable from the PCP to my home as the copper was so manky with many, many HR faults on the exchange side to..... The worst part was having to go out to customers with issues like you described. No matter how much hard work you do and care you put in to your work as a tech your assurances to customers are only as good as the management, back end billing staff. I can't tell you how frustrating it can be when you know there is nothing wrong with the last mile and cable terminations on a circuit but the technical support teams on the phones just bounce the job back as a line fault because they simply could not be bothered to sort out the problem and it was easier to just bounce the job back. The stress I suffered due to customers ripping me a new one was intense. I don't blame the customers for getting angry but having to hold back from saying "OK sir I'm very sorry but there is no fault with your fibre or copper pair, the problem is that the management don't have a clue and the technical teams from another country don't know the difference between a com port and a car port" It was so frustrating... I would have loved to tell the customers the truth but I needed my job. As you know yourself it matters not how well you do your job if the next person down the line is totally incompetent. I am glad you met a decent tech at last and your 100% right about the older tech. We had over 500 tech/installers in my area but only 4 of us that they simply called "specialist engineers". Most customers only met us after suffering years of being bounced from one department to another each blaming someone else. I'm my experience the bigger the company is the more this happens. The UK and USA are supposed to be leaders in the tech world but we often have network infrastructure that is old and crusty. Many third world countries have a better last mile and network but we pay through the nose for it.., I'm glad you got sorted in the end Dave .... as for the good old copper, you haven't lived until you have had your arms in a bundle of cables while soaking wet and you get the indescribable sensation that only comes when someone rings a circuit while it's touching your arm 🤯 ... better than a strong coffee 🤣

I have had the same problem over and over with my clients and with myself. I could tell you the same kind of stories.

The intros to your videos are some of the best I've seen! Thanks for being awesome -- well, except for the whole windows activation thing that didn't like me upgrading my system. :)

I have Fiber internet here in Alabama. Central Access is my ISP, and it's provided by my power company. It's not trenched, but it runs across the power lines to my property 20 miles out in the woods. It's a great connection. Its very fast at 500mbps. My Up and Down is the same.

❤ the Phone Cop clip from WKRP. 👍

Done the truck roll dance many many times over the last 40+ years of having cable tv; then cable internet and tv using tivo dvr. Most of the problems I experienced with cable tv/tivo were back end problems or squirrels chewing the cable at the utility pole. But since there is no way to find a person, in the back end, the truck roll has to happen.

I worked for a big ISP that services many of the large urban cities. I was never a fan of the VOIP phones. Complicated as hell and over the phone typically a phone call was at least 15 minutes even on simple systems because we had to trace where the phone calls are routing. Customer had access to most of the same tools but it's requires a lot of know how to get it right and know all the possible active features. Cost more, easier for unknowledgeable employee's to break it and typically only the business owner and other authorized users were able to work it on the back-end. Star codes were usable but like I said it's easier for a employee to make a typo and break something. I feel your pain.

I used to work as a back office engineer for a telecom company. For consumer complaints/issues used to deal with issues in the network only if multiple users are effected due to a same issue. However there were times if a complaint did not close and QOS guys got hold of it we had to assign a dennis out of our team to fix the issue whether we liked it or not. The customer care staff is given guidelines on potential fixes. If its not in guideline the ticket is routed to level 1 or front office support. The front office engineers are totally focused on closing a ticket to meet their own department SLA and will give you sometime hilarious reasons to try to convince you to close the ticket. If an issue is fixed by them always tell them that you will close the issue after 1 day or 2 days of observation. Never close it there and then. If the issue re occurs the SLA will be counted from ticket start time. SLA breach will cause the FO manager to be engaged and after some times the QOS guys. Then and only then the dennis will be engaged.

LOL, very similar experiences. I started with a Radio Shack direct connect modem that I had to flip the switch, because the price came down before I found all the parts to build an accoustic coupler. After 1200 and 2400 I bought the top of the line US Robotics upgradeable DSP modem and eventually was able to upgrade to 56K rated and usually did get those download speeds from a local ISP. For some years I ran my own long-range wireless link because I couldn't get anything better than ISDN. I've had several agreements to install better than DSL connectivity, which have always ended with me getting a full refund and continuing with DSL.

Sounds miserable Dave. I have to say, there is some comfort knowing the ISP's operate exactly the same no matter the scope of the project or account. I use to think it was just to lowly residential customers! Love the channel, just found it.

7:17 "It's not my first rodeo when it comes to contracts..." ...but it sure seemed like it was indeed his first rodeo :D

GOD DAMN!!! The worst case scenario that I had experienced was with ATT. Got a 2yr contract for some Direct TV package, a 500Mb fiber hook up and a traditional land line service. Things were great from the very start and no issues, that is until 22 and a half months into the contract. Out of know where, internet goes out, TV and phone work fine. Then the slog of having to endure the customer service being the typical ATT horrible experience, was of no help, and for some reason refused sending out a technician. After arguing multiple times a day for about 14days, someone finally acquiesces and sends out a technician to arrive in 2days. The technician shows up, he then proceeds to do his "magic" for about 15min, then informs us that the fiber line to the house isn't working at all. The tech then retreats to the comfort and refuge of his service vehicle to make a phone call. 10min later, and like what you would expect these types of stories go, it's more bad news. The reason the line is out, is because, birds took a liking mine and other customer's fiber lines, and pecked out the insulation covering the fiber and exposing it to the elements. Next, he also informs us, to get the line replaced and repaired, it's on a 3month wait for the work order to be filled. As soon as the tech left, a call was made to Spectrum, the only other high speed competitor in my area. While at the time, their speeds weren't up to 500Mb or 1Gb, I had settled on 100Mb internet service, some TV package and their VoIP home phone service. For the good news, Spectrum was able to come out in 3days for the complete hookup. Next bit of good news, once Spectrum did their installation, we immediately called ATT to cancel their service. Despite having about 6 or 7 weeks left on the 2yr contract, ATT allow me to completely disconnect from their services early and without any fees being owed for the early termination, so long as we returned all the equipment (except the dish) to any ATT wireless or other ATT storefront within 48hrs.

Great story! I too loved my ISDN BRI back in the day. Shannon's theorem was not violated, BRI was 40Khz, 80Kbaud 2B1Q encoding to provide a symmetrical 160Kbps (DSL like) line. Two 64Kbps voice/data channels, 16Kbps call setup/signaling channel and another 16Kbps channel used for something I can't remember.

Ive had those old dialup modems too, the wonder years!

Great video Dave! It brought back the memories of the frustration of dealing with telcos trying to fix network problems on ISDN. And I remember the 300 baud acoustic coupler modems and before that the 110 baud ... the PDP 11/34's and 11/70's. What your telco put you through with this installation was bad.

Guess I got lucky. I live in the middle of nowhere and my local electric company decided to run fiber on their power poles. Inquired and had fiber in a few months because they were still installing the infrastructure out to my area. Way better than my DSL which wouldn't even do 1mbs. And was using mobile hot spots for a few years which was better than the DSL but still wasn't ideal. Now have fiber and happy with it.

Dave, really like your videos. Very informative and entertaining, always feels as though you're sharing what you know over a beer. This video for me goes to show the importance of guys like Dennis, we all know guys like this and some of us have become guys like this. Age and experience should be valued not lost from a company. By the way I used to work at a modem manufacturer called Dowty in the mid 90s making their Quattro and Trailblazer modems so I fondly remember what you described. I love a bit of nostalgia!

The newly-announced Unifi Dream Machine Pro Max, about 600 bucks, is supposed to have "up to 5G/sec" IDS/IPS throughput.

Dave talking about dialup like it was ancient history, i was boring in the late 80s in australia and allll the crap you talked about i had in highschool.... hahahah. My dad had a computer store and we had the very latest tech, il never ever forget the jump from dialup and isdn to adsl. When fibre first came out i actually moved house to get it. I new it was there before the ISP and phone company, the battle was long but worth it for a while.