- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Re: Fiber internet options in Worcester

by John Stoffel

Joshua> My wife and I have been on the market for a home, and we feel Joshua> that Worcester would be a great city for us to move Joshua> to. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Worcester has much if Joshua> any options for fiber internet which is important for both of Joshua> us working from home. The fastest provider appears to be Joshua> Spectrum, and I've heard only bad things about them. Joshua> Last I heard, Worcester has been held down by a monopoly from Joshua> Spectrum, and I don't know if the city government has been Joshua> working to change this with municipal fiber or trying to get Joshua> other ISPs in the area to improve competition. It seems like Joshua> the kind of issue that network engineers from WPI could assist Joshua> with. I'm in Boylston and we have a mix of Fios on some streets, and Spectrum for the rest of the town. I'm on spectrum and it's been quite reliable for 23 years now, with only a few outages. Cost... that's another issue. The only town in the area with it's own Internet is Shrewsbury, but I don't know how fast it is. I don't think it's fibre to the house though. You're going to have to ask carefully if the current owner has Fios or not. But with my wife and I working from home and the kids also at home a couple of years ago, I didn't run into any problems with Charter's up speed generally. Good luck in the search! Tatnuck is a great area, as is the Salisbury or Greendale areas, though you have to be careful where you pick to live. Schools are a concern... not sure if you have kids or not. John

July 26, 2022

Re: Fiber internet options in Worcester

by Clint Moyer

July 24, 2022

Re: Fiber internet options in Worcester

by Eric Martin

When I lived in Worcester, the nodes were always super saturated so you never got the speed you wanted. While there is a contract with Spectrum, I also heard if Verizon offers fiber they have to for the entire city and the multi unit houses are costly to bring a connection into if only a few people want it. This leads to a “doesn’t make financial sense for us (Verizon) to do it so we won’t”. I live in Northborough (20 min east of Worcester) and have the choice of fiber or spectrum and have fiber. We just upgraded to 1000mbps and it’s great since I’m on Zoom calls all day long while the kids are doing other stuff. At the brewery we have spectrum business and it’s passable. It’s fast when it works though goes out 1/month. My $0.02 Eric > On Jul 24, 2022, at 19:46, Joel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote: > > > Unsure of any towns in the Worcester area offering fiber for Internet. > > I have Spectrum the past 10+ years in Charlton and they are pretty o.k. for service based on price. I have their basic tier of speed. > > Eight years ago their Charter DNS servers would all fail more than once a month. Easily solved by pointing router somewhere else for primary DNS lookup. > > They mostly provide the 200mbps down and 20mbps up they claim. Price is reasonable at around $50 a month. > > I like them much better for Internet than I do for cable or wired telephone. > > Have heard bad things about their cell phone service too (service and billing messes). It think they resell / share on the Verizon cell network. > > Joel > > > > > >> On July 24, 2022 4:57:57 PM Joshua Stone via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote: >> >> Hey all, >> >> My wife and I have been on the market for a home, and we feel that Worcester would be a great city for us to move to. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Worcester has much if any options for fiber internet which is important for both of us working from home. The fastest provider appears to be Spectrum, and I've heard only bad things about them. >> >> Last I heard, Worcester has been held down by a monopoly from Spectrum, and I don't know if the city government has been working to change this with municipal fiber or trying to get other ISPs in the area to improve competition. It seems like the kind of issue that network engineers from WPI could assist with. >> >> Anyone have more information on this? >> >> - Josh >> _______________________________________________ >> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org >> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org >> Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ >> Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ >> Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/Y5ACZ… >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/6BD4A…

July 24, 2022

Re: Fiber internet options in Worcester

by Joel

Unsure of any towns in the Worcester area offering fiber for Internet. I have Spectrum the past 10+ years in Charlton and they are pretty o.k. for service based on price. I have their basic tier of speed. Eight years ago their Charter DNS servers would all fail more than once a month. Easily solved by pointing router somewhere else for primary DNS lookup. They mostly provide the 200mbps down and 20mbps up they claim. Price is reasonable at around $50 a month. I like them much better for Internet than I do for cable or wired telephone. Have heard bad things about their cell phone service too (service and billing messes). It think they resell / share on the Verizon cell network. Joel On July 24, 2022 4:57:57 PM Joshua Stone via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote: > Hey all, > > My wife and I have been on the market for a home, and we feel that Worcester would be a great city for us to move to. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Worcester has much if any options for fiber internet which is important for both of us working from home. The fastest provider appears to be Spectrum, and I've heard only bad things about them. > > Last I heard, Worcester has been held down by a monopoly from Spectrum, and I don't know if the city government has been working to change this with municipal fiber or trying to get other ISPs in the area to improve competition. It seems like the kind of issue that network engineers from WPI could assist with. > > Anyone have more information on this? > > - Josh > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/Y5ACZ…

July 24, 2022

Fiber internet options in Worcester

by Joshua Stone

Hey all, My wife and I have been on the market for a home, and we feel that Worcester would be a great city for us to move to. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Worcester has much if any options for fiber internet which is important for both of us working from home. The fastest provider appears to be Spectrum, and I've heard only bad things about them. Last I heard, Worcester has been held down by a monopoly from Spectrum, and I don't know if the city government has been working to change this with municipal fiber or trying to get other ISPs in the area to improve competition. It seems like the kind of issue that network engineers from WPI could assist with. Anyone have more information on this? - Josh

July 24, 2022

Re: Last meeting mention of connecting to DISPLAY :0

by John Stoffel

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris (wolcen) Thompson via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: Chris> Great to see you all in the last meeting :-) I was the Chris> skateboarder...who caught me almost falling shortly before I Chris> left? LOL It was good to meet you, hopefully face to face sometime. And I hope you're all staying cool today, it's been a scorcher! Chris> [Insert name I've forgotten here (sorry!)] mentioned that their Chris> users connect to a remote session's root desktop (or whatever Chris> you call the initial/primary display :0 deal that you Chris> initially/locally get). Chris> I would like to do this as well. SSH with port forwarding is Chris> probably my preference, but wireguard would be OK as well. I Chris> don't think I want to directly expose anything like xrdp. Chris> Anyway - could you please refresh my memory as to what was Chris> being used? I'm running i3 in this case (started via Chris> lightdm). I generally have not loved using VNC-based tools, but Chris> if that's what is currently recommended, I guess I'll give it Chris> another go. For a long time I was using NX (or FreeNX) on my work desktop so I could connect between a windows box and a linux desktop using Synergy to map the keyboard/mouse between systems as I moved the mouse between my desktops. That was using the 'nomachine.com' software, though I used the freenx stuff. But after a while it got to be too painful, and now that I mostly work on a windows laptop for work (due to the work VPN requirements) I don't tend to do anything beyond lots of putty sessions in which I run screen. I've tried MobaXterm, but never really liked it, even though it does offer native X display, so you can fire up remote graphical tools. This would work better if I wasnt' 80-100 miliseconds of lag (basically across the entire US) distant from the remote systems I manage and work on. Much as I hate to say it, I've sometimes just fallen back to VNC when I need to fire up a web browser to download a 5-10gb ISO image to do a system install. Chris> ------------ Chris> SSHFS Optimization Chris> Also - I referred to using sshfs internally for myself to my NAS, and Chris> some optimizations for it. This is my current alias to mount it: Chris> sshfs -o cache=yes -o kernel_cache -o Ciphers=aes128-ctr -o Chris> Compression=no -o ServerAliveCountMax=3 -o ServerAliveInterval=15 -o Chris> reconnect -C -o idmap=user server: /mymountpoint Chris> I got a few of the recommended switches from this article that finally Chris> convinced me to just forget about NFS: Chris> https://blog.ja-ke.tech/2019/08/27/nas-performance-sshfs-nfs-smb.html This is a great set of info, because I too have used sshfs at times but cursed to slow speed. I'll definitely try this out. It would be nice if the windows client also supported these options as well at times. Cheers! Joohn

July 24, 2022

Mojotron: Robot Wars

by Dennis Payne

Mojotron is a twin stick shooter similar to Robotron: 2084 or Llamatron. I've been redoing the graphics and fixing up the game. I decided to make a trailer to promote the game. The source code for my update has not been released yet. https://youtu.be/LBEphj6g04c I used Pitivi to create this and another video. The program has gotten a lot better. I no longer have to save after each change because of how often it used to crash. -- Dennis Payne dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@dulsi

July 23, 2022

Last meeting mention of connecting to DISPLAY :0

by Chris (wolcen) Thompson

Hi all, Great to see you all in the last meeting :-) I was the skateboarder...who caught me almost falling shortly before I left? LOL ----------- Remote X [Insert name I've forgotten here (sorry!)] mentioned that their users connect to a remote session's root desktop (or whatever you call the initial/primary display :0 deal that you initially/locally get). I would like to do this as well. SSH with port forwarding is probably my preference, but wireguard would be OK as well. I don't think I want to directly expose anything like xrdp. Anyway - could you please refresh my memory as to what was being used? I'm running i3 in this case (started via lightdm). I generally have not loved using VNC-based tools, but if that's what is currently recommended, I guess I'll give it another go. ------------ SSHFS Optimization Also - I referred to using sshfs internally for myself to my NAS, and some optimizations for it. This is my current alias to mount it: sshfs -o cache=yes -o kernel_cache -o Ciphers=aes128-ctr -o Compression=no -o ServerAliveCountMax=3 -o ServerAliveInterval=15 -o reconnect -C -o idmap=user server: /mymountpoint I got a few of the recommended switches from this article that finally convinced me to just forget about NFS: https://blog.ja-ke.tech/2019/08/27/nas-performance-sshfs-nfs-smb.html Thanks! Chris PS - I used to respond here from an account that was at from a riseup.net account. I have since moved to mailbox.org so it at least 'comes from' wolcen.com...I hate/am terrible at managing email servers. Anyway: all those responses/posts therefore were moderated. I'm not sure ANY of those ever made it though, so I was curious if anyone does any checks on moderated messages?

July 18, 2022

Re: Free lab bench

by John Stoffel

Bench is gone Sent from my iPhone > On Jul 16, 2022, at 10:36 AM, John Stoffel <john(a)stoffel.org> wrote: > > Oh yeah, you can reach me at 508-736_5499 if interested. > > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Jul 16, 2022, at 10:20 AM, John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote: >> >> >> Hi guys, >> Looking to get rid of an 8’l by 30” deep by 36” high lab bench. See pictures. You will have to come get it but I will help take it apart to fit in/on your vehicle. Could be convinced to deliver if you come and help load it on my car. >> >> It’s totally free! >> >> <image0.jpeg> >>

July 16, 2022

Re: Free lab bench

by John Stoffel

Oh yeah, you can reach me at 508-736_5499 if interested. Sent from my iPhone > On Jul 16, 2022, at 10:20 AM, John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote: > > > Hi guys, > Looking to get rid of an 8’l by 30” deep by 36” high lab bench. See pictures. You will have to come get it but I will help take it apart to fit in/on your vehicle. Could be convinced to deliver if you come and help load it on my car. > > It’s totally free! > > <image0.jpeg> >

July 16, 2022