SureWest: Local Coverage and Minor Hiccups

Subsequent to the installation of my trial of SureWest’s 50/50 Mbps fiber service 2+ weeks back, I’ve been email-interviewed by two local publications (the Sacramento Business Journal and the Sacramento Bee). The Business Journal writeup was published last Friday, and I thought you might find it interesting. I had no idea until I read it that I was one of only 14 customers who’ve subscribed to the service so far. Considering the price tag, I realize that it’s a bit of a reach for a typical consumer. However, I think it’s a particularly good value for a business that’s, for example, sharing a single broadband connection among numerous computers and/or doing local website hosting, particularly when you consider the relative price tag and performance of the T1 alternative.

I’m generally pleased with the service so far, although there’ve been a few notable bumps in the road. Last week, I was briefly unable to reach EDN, Brian’s Offramp and a few other sites from the fiber connection (AT&T DSL was fine); SureWest’s DNS server was unable to resolve the URLs. And on-and-off, I’m unable to successfully send email to Gmail’s SMTP server through the SureWest ‘pipe’; again, I don’t notice these problems with my DSL line, or with any other connection I use. Outlook 2000 reports three distinct errors; either I get a server timeout, or a generic indication that the TCP/IP connection has been terminated by Gmail’s server, or a more specific but cryptic ‘354 Go Ahead’ TCP/IP termination message.

I’ve tried several fixes for my SMTP woes, so far without consistent success. The technician had set me up with a single DNS server reference (66.60.130.158), which I later changed to the primary (66.60.130.2) and secondary (66.60.130.6) DNS IP addresses I found on SureWest’s support page. The Linksys router also lets me optionally define and therefore route specific services to specific WAN ports, so I’ve attempted to direct Gmail SMTP server transactions exclusively to my AT&T DSL connection. However, since the RV042’s service definitions use IP addresses (i.e. 209.85.147.111), not URLs (i.e. smtp.gmail.com), this SMTP workaround won’t provide relief if SureWest’s DNS servers are the ultimate culprit. If the problem continues, I’ll also look into using alternative DNS servers, such as those from OpenDNS.

Finally, as I mentioned in the Business Journal interview, my perception of the bandwidth improvement offered by SureWest versus my DSL line is highly dependent on what I’m doing with my WAN connection at the time. It’s probably no surprise to you that large upload and download payloads, such as OS X and Windows operating system updates, magnify the differential as compared to light email and websurfing sessions. My perception of the speed differential is also highly dependent on the performance capability of the server on the other end of the line. Right now, for example, I’m downloading the free versions of Bryce v5.5, and I’m only able to ’pull’ around 95 KBytes/sec (760 Kbps) from Download.com’s servers.

In light of that last point, I’ll close by directing your attention to the excellent cover story, Real World Testing: The Best ISPs in America, from PC Magazine’s June 26 edition. Particularly take a look at the Surfspeed utility, which claims to test "real surfing speed" both by grabbing "pages (and page elements) from multiple sites with varying amounts of bandwidth" and by initiating "multiple connections to get all of the page elements". I’ll report back after I’ve run Surfspeed on SureWest; I’ll make sure to test it on multiple Windows-based PCs in order to highlight any computer-vs-computer differences.

Followup: I just found another site that SureWest’s DNS servers don’t know about: IStartedSomething. This is getting a bit ridiculous. I’m switching to OpenDNS now, and will report back on how it goes.