Internet Autobahn next exit... (part 4 - the finale)

All I can say is FAAAAAAAAAAST.

That is for both, the speed and the install. Within 1 week of requesting the service, I have a full 8 Mb/s synchronous speed (tested via 2wire.com) and 27ms response times from pinging yahoo.

Install was simple - they put the antenna on the roof, drilled a small hole in the side of the building, ran 1 single CAT5 cable and then connected the Cisco 1800 router. I received a block of IPs 10 minutes after the tech left via email from their tech coordinator. Plugged in and we were connected. Too simple :)

Once we have it connected to the rest of our network and we have completed some real testing after 1-2 weeks, I will give a review.

Internet Autobahn next exit... (part 3)

Quick post - Wednesday the techs came out again to try to get a signal link to their wireless tower. After the "two grumpy old men" (the techs - quite funny retired guys doing this for fun) spent about 40 minutes on the roof, they came down and said they had a really strong link.

I was surprised -really. I thought after Monday that there was something in the way - game over.

So, hopefully on Friday we will be speeding along @ 8Mb/s!!!

(I hope there are only 4 parts to this series)

Internet Autobahn next exit... (part 2)

The site survey tech was way early today (usually a good thing unless you scheduled your day to be offsite in morning and no one is available to let the tech in). The tech was worried about the pending snow storm would come during the survey in the afternoon -for good reason.

Anyways, after calling our business neighbors (http://www.littlegreencube.com) to let the tech in, he finally got access to the roof. I got a phone call about 2 hours later, indicating that they were NOT able to get a signal. However, it maybe due to poor weather conditions blocking their visual line of sight from points on the roof - making it difficult to position the antenna.

They will be back on Wednesday for another try!

In parallel, I have continued to let Covad attempt to get T1s installed. Plan B...

Internet Autobahn next exit...

I got a little excited and posted that I was having the site survey for TowerStream completed on Friday, the 22nd. Well, that was wishful thinking and it will be on Monday, the 25th. After the survey TowerStream has suggested the install may happen as early as Wednesday.

Let me say my biggest concern so far is TowerStream's early termination clause. They want the remaining payments for the remaining months of the term of the agreement. This seems a bit excessive.

Also, after speaking to the sales rep and badgering him with questions, I did learn that they only have 75 current installs in Chicago. Venturality will be #76 (should I feel special? or a little concerned as we are early adopters?) TowerStream guarantees 99.99% uptime in their SLA - I hope this is the case!

From country road to Internet Autobahn

In my impatience, I went with what I knew about internet connectivity for the new office. T1s right? (for those of you that aren't techies - a T1 is the telephone company's old standard for data lines for corps )

However, we are starting to do quite abit of hosting - the Computing Cloud (V-Cloud) effort seems to have some legs. Well, our ISP of choice was Covad. Covad was offering 2 bonded T1s @ 3Mb/s for $679/month. I was excited at first - their sales rep was very knowledgeable and helpful (super great guy actually) and they seemed to get things moving quickly.

Then the sequence of events went down hill quickly. AT&T runs the line from their facility to the office location phone room. AT&T can't seem to get it right. Covad also didn't deliver the router and their service tech was less than helpful. So it has already been 3 weeks and probably another 2-3 weeks for either party to get it right.

What to do... What to do... How about some out-of-the-box thinking? Actually, one of the Venturality team members (Jitesh) said a group that he knows of just installed 10Mb/s in the loop for $900/month. So I started searching again and found a fixed wireless provider, TowerStream, that can do 8Mb/s for $999/month! The best part is that Venturality is in the coverage area. (picture me doing the "running man" for excitement). The service is scalable to 100Mb/s and can be installed in days not months.

Well before I get too excited, lets see if they deliver. They will be out for a site survey today to see if we are in the line of site with the Hancock building.

I will keep you posted!

VentureLabs - Houston, we have landed.

Quick post -

We got the keys to the new office on Friday, 15th. So I spent Friday and Saturday unpacking and building desks, chairs and servers. It was good to see my power drill get use outside of hanging pictures for the wife.

I will upload pictures when I get a few moments this week. Busy, busy, busy - we already have guests coming to the office throughout the week.

Honestly, I feel like a proud papa - getting the new office feels like seeing a child ride its bike for the first time.

VentureLabs - Our new home!

Venturality has finally decided to make the leap from virtual to real. With our server farm and bandwidth needs growing quickly - my basement was no longer going to cut it. So, I don't like to do anything in a small way - I decided that we needed plenty of space with plenty of hardware and bandwidth. (insert plenty of Tim Allen grunts of excitement here)

Our new commercial loft space is ~1500 sq ft @ 1802 W Berteau #201. It reminiscent of the .COM era startups - love it, love it, love it.

Some pre-move-in pics (not much to look at, but we move in on the 15th and that is when the furniture arrives) -

BTW - for any techie reader - we have 3Mbs of T1 connectivity for our little selves also and

3TBs of SAN RAID5 storage

multiple dual proc machines

VMWare partitioning to share the sandbox!