Social Feed

JSheridan said:

AT&T runs First Net which was set up so first responders have a signal almost everywhere, which is the case around here and up and down the east coast when I've been traveling. In my experience T-Mobile has the fastest network but patchy coverage while Verizon has a slow network and also patchy coverage as well. We also have a iPhone on T-Mobile and one on Mobile-X which uses the Verizon network, so comparison is easy.

Click to expand...

EarDemon said:

... Since AT&T can't sell their home internet service in NY State, I don't expect big things from them besides the enhancements to FirstNet.

Click to expand...

JSheridan said:

We're in NY and we can now. We're an AT&T retailer and have been selling AT&T Internet Air for a few months. It's $35 a month if you're an AT&T post paid subscriber, $55 a month if you're not a subscriber.

Click to expand...

Almighty1 said:

The AT&T Internet that everyone has access to is AT&T WorldNet aka att.com which is the same backbone created in 1994 that is a joke

Click to expand...

comfortably_numb said:

JSheridan is referring to ATT's (relatively) new 5G cellular home internet.

Click to expand...

Juan said:

Which connects to a backbone network

Click to expand...

comfortably_numb said:

Fun fact.. the backhaul to the tower in Drexel, MO for both VZW and ATT is provided by CenturyLink

Click to expand...

Juan said:

Backhaul only connects to the backbone...any cell phone tower in the verizon region ( core)..has to connect to the verizon backbone in some fashion..same with att..no matter what provider you use...the actual network ( routers and such) are owned by the cell phone company determine the speed of your cell phone connection

Click to expand...

comfortably_numb said:

And yet the fiber to that tower is still provided by CenturyLink... so my point still stands, no?

Click to expand...

• Peoples Telecommunications (Peoples Services): Operates extensive localized fiber facilities directly in the Drexel and Louisburg area, functioning as the primary regional CLEC/independent carrier on the ground.
• MoKan Communications (MoKan Dial): Maintains contiguous fiber routes right along the Missouri–Kansas border surrounding Drexel, often interconnecting or leasing dark fiber to neighboring towers.
• Conexon Connect: Builds and operates middle-mile and last-mile fiber networks across Cass County in partnership with local electric cooperatives, providing modern fiber transport paths through rural pockets around Drexel.
• Craw-Kan Telephone Cooperative: Holds an adjacent fiber footprint on the southern/Kansas edge of the Drexel exchange area that supports regional carrier transport.

Multiple access to the Internet via BGP4 protocol | BGP.us

BGP routing protocol was implemented when extensive routing tables started to significantly slow down the routers’ operation. Classless routing technique (CIDR) eliminates many bottlenecks and increases the stability of the Internet.

www.bgp.us

comfortably_numb said:

JSheridan is referring to ATT's (relatively) new 5G cellular home internet.

Click to expand...

JSheridan said:

Thanks, that's exactly right. AT&T wired or fiber is not around here. Unfortunately this is Verizon country.

Click to expand...

Almighty1 said:

No, Fiber to the towers is not CenturyLink for Drexel, MO because it can be either ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) or it can be CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier).
CenturyLink which has been known as Lumen Technologies is not the incumbent carrier in Drexel. In the Drexel, Missouri wire center and surrounding Cass/Bates county lines, alternative fiber and Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) with active transport infrastructure include:

• Peoples Telecommunications (Peoples Services): Operates extensive localized fiber facilities directly in the Drexel and Louisburg area, functioning as the primary regional CLEC/independent carrier on the ground.
• MoKan Communications (MoKan Dial): Maintains contiguous fiber routes right along the Missouri–Kansas border surrounding Drexel, often interconnecting or leasing dark fiber to neighboring towers.
• Conexon Connect: Builds and operates middle-mile and last-mile fiber networks across Cass County in partnership with local electric cooperatives, providing modern fiber transport paths through rural pockets around Drexel.
• Craw-Kan Telephone Cooperative: Holds an adjacent fiber footprint on the southern/Kansas edge of the Drexel exchange area that supports regional carrier transport.

(Note: While Consolidated Communications—which operates retail services under the Fidium brand—is the historical wireline incumbent in Drexel itself rather than CenturyLink, wireless carriers frequently bypass the ILEC copper plant by pulling backhaul from Peoples or Conexon's fiber rings.)

So when it comes to connecting to the internet, you are really dealing with up to 3 companies whether it's AT&T or Verizon.

With AT&T, it can be up to 3 companies.

The first company is AT&T Wireless or AT&T California (ILEC) which provides the wireless connection or wired circuit to you.
The second company which applies only to physical circuits and not wireless service is AT&T Advanced Solutions Inc better known as ASI as a CLEC who provides the data transport between you and the ISP. If this was wireless, then it would be second company being the ISP. AT&T WorldNet being the ISP.
The third company would be the ISP itself which would be AT&T WorldNet if this was a wired connection.

As far as the Verizon backbone is concerned which is what was known as UUNet aka AlterNet (AS 701) as BBNPlanet (AS 1) later known as GTE Internetworking/Genuity has been sold to Level 3 and then CenturyLink which rebranded to Lumen Technologies.

While it will connect to Verizon's backbone which highly depends on the Access Point Name (APN) as using San Francisco where I am located for example,
a direct Verizon mobile customer will connect to Verizon's backbone in San Francisco. A Comcast/XfinityMobile customer which uses Verizon's towers will not as the first hop as seen in traceroutes can be in Houston, Chicago or Atlanta so to reach someone who uses Verizon across the street, the data packet will travel to one of those first and then travel back to San Francisco using Verizon. In both cases, you will always see Verizon Wireless as the first few hops before it will reach Verizon's Internet Backbone. MVNOs do not use the default APN and usually has their own gateways which in the case for Xfinity Mobile is COMCAST.RSLR.VZWENTP which is read just like internet domain names, in reverse order, Verizon Enterprise-Reseller-Comcast. XfinityMobile originally had high latency because of this reason which I and many others complained about but XfinityMobile ignored the issue until I filed a complaint with the FCC that finally pushed it to Xfinity Mobile's Engineering department which finally made it connect to Verizon Wireless's IP network in San Francisco and connected to Verizon's backbone locally.

So basically the APN is the invisible network you will not see in the traceroutes due to:

Mobile Access Point Names (APNs) – Cellular Networks

A cellular APN (the gateway connecting a mobile device to the carrier's packet data network):
• Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT) and Tunneling: Cellular data traffic is typically encapsulated inside tunnels (such as GTP - GPRS Tunneling Protocol) and routed through massive carrier gateways.
• ICMP Filtering and Rate Limiting: Mobile carriers and core network routers frequently block, drop, or rate-limit ICMP/traceroute responses (TTL Expired messages) for security, privacy, and to reduce router processing overhead.
• Hidden Hops: Carrier-grade firewalls and internal routers may be configured not to reply to probes or decrement TTL in ways that expose their internal architecture.

The backbone one connects to is only one part of the equation as it depends a lot on what sites one frequently connects to and what backbones those destinations are connected with that determines the quickest path between the source and the destination. Some destination sites only are connected to one backbone and some are connected to multiple backbones for redundancy. That is why it matters to choose the ISP that works the best for the sites one connects to if you want the best performance possible as the lowest latency and the speed is the objective of reaching the sites you most frequent. While there are many tier 1 backbones, the ones that carry 90% of the traffic worldwide are the ones that hopefully whatever ISP one chooses is directly connected to. There are also private peering points and public peering points locally so it does not always have to travel to a backbone provided that there is a peering agreement between the networks. All of this is done using BGP4 (Border Gateway Protocol version 4) which is how routes are announced as the path is determined by ASN (Autonomous System Numbers) so the routing table for different IPv4 or IPv6 can route a different way which all depends on the BGP4 announcements that the destination networks announced so like some sites may be just AS 701 100% of the way while other sites may be AS 701 to AS 1 or more and if there is peering, it may not even touch AS 701 at all and just connect directly between ones own AS drectly the the others AS (Autonomous System). AS has nothing to do with physical distance but just the shortest path of getting there.

This is better explained here:

Multiple access to the Internet via BGP4 protocol | BGP.us

BGP routing protocol was implemented when extensive routing tables started to significantly slow down the routers’ operation. Classless routing technique (CIDR) eliminates many bottlenecks and increases the stability of the Internet.

www.bgp.us

As I own and run a ISP, a lot of sites are actually local on the network as it's all on Akamai Technologies CDN (Content Delivery Network) servers which are physically hosted at our location so if one was visiting Apple, Microsoft, etc, the content is already on the Akamai server so it usually does not even need to travel the entire internet to get to it.

But on my home connection which is Comcast, it does travel all the way on Comcast before it hands off to Akamai's network in San Jose, CA before it reaches the Akamai server in Los Angeles which is probably located at One Wilshire Blvd in LA.

tracert www.apple.com

Tracing route to e6858.dsce9.akamaiedge.net [23.199.1.26]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms 192.168.2.1
2 4 ms 6 ms 4 ms 10.0.0.1
3 15 ms 19 ms 20 ms 10.22.121.18
4 21 ms 19 ms 28 ms po-54-rur01.sfmission.ca.sfba.comcast.net [162.151.1.129]
5 16 ms 9 ms 11 ms po-100-xar01.sfmission.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.85.57.245]
6 26 ms 10 ms 10 ms po-2-xar02.sfmission.ca.sfba.comcast.net [96.216.230.178]
7 22 ms 21 ms 16 ms ae-246-rar01.hayward.ca.sfba.comcast.net [96.216.231.69]
8 17 ms 18 ms 18 ms be-399-ar01.hayward.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.86.143.89]
9 18 ms 13 ms 17 ms be-36321-cs02.9greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.93.133]
10 32 ms 34 ms 22 ms be-2211-pe11.9greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net [96.110.32.246]
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 12 ms 13 ms 11 ms ae11.r02.sjc01.icn.netarch.akamai.com [23.207.232.38]
13 25 ms 19 ms 22 ms ae7.r23.lax01.icn.netarch.akamai.com [23.193.113.12]
14 28 ms 34 ms 26 ms ae0.r22.lax01.mag.netarch.akamai.com [23.192.3.66]
15 28 ms 28 ms 26 ms ae1.r22.lax01.ien.netarch.akamai.com [23.192.3.99]
16 25 ms 25 ms 26 ms ae22.r04.border101.lax01.fab.netarch.akamai.com [23.203.155.29]
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 22 ms 21 ms 20 ms a23-199-1-26.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [23.199.1.26]

Yet to reach Charles Schwab compared to Apple, it will actually use a Akamai server locally in the Silicon Valley on Akamai's network.

tracert www.schwab.com

Tracing route to e245857.x.akamaiedge.net [23.11.207.235]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 2 ms 15 ms 192.168.2.1
2 5 ms 4 ms 6 ms 10.0.0.1
3 14 ms 14 ms 16 ms 10.22.121.18
4 14 ms 9 ms 10 ms po-54-rur01.sfmission.ca.sfba.comcast.net [162.151.1.129]
5 14 ms 11 ms 11 ms po-100-xar01.sfmission.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.85.57.245]
6 15 ms 24 ms 13 ms ae-246-rar01.santaclara.ca.sfba.comcast.net [69.139.199.149]
7 17 ms 19 ms 21 ms be-299-ar01.santaclara.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.86.143.93]
8 50 ms 48 ms 53 ms 50.219.153.14
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 11 ms 10 ms 20 ms a23-11-207-235.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [23.11.207.235]

The *'s just means that ICMP ping packets are blocked or ignored as long as the latency looks normal. If it's some high number, then it means there is packet loss.

Click to expand...

MikeD-C05 said:

Wow ,who would of thought there was this much to talk about when it came to phone companies?

Click to expand...

reubenray said:

What would be a ballpark cost of getting into HAM radios? This would be for the equipment, antennas, etc.

Click to expand...

WhiteBeard said:

if you want to put up a 50+ foot tower with a tri-band antenna and rotor - that would cost several thousands of dollars.

Click to expand...