Webpass is insanely fast as an ISP!

[sevans]

Anyone else use them? They're apparently property specific in the Bay area but for $45/month or $400/yr the speeds are incredible. I'm just waiting to find out what the eventual catch will be.

http://www.web-pass.com/

Typical speed test through a linksys router and over 802.11n

[Coded-Dude]

wow.......

[Joe]

Damn those are impressive speeds

[Joe]

I recently upgraded my router from an outdated netgear router to this medialink router. BEST router I've ever had. Reliable as hell and fast! my old tests used to be 8 mbps download and 3 mbps upload from this comp

http://www.amazon.com/Medialink-Wireless-802-11n-Internal-Antennas/dp/B0044YU60M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299228802&sr=8-1

[BOFH]

Great price, can't beat that even with a 'catch'. I am on a 50/20 connection and its much more expensive.

[caoboy]

Maybe there aren't that many people on the ISP yet compared to others? Usually when it's a 'new' service it is fast, then more people hop on it in your area and the company has to divvy up the connection and you get 'bottlenecked' and lose the awesome connection...

[digby]

there is no eventual catch.

Ive been on it for close to 3 years now and when more people in your building sign up, they simply double the connection. I think our building is now at 100mbps.

Love that you can pay the year in advance for $400. $33 a month for a ridiculous connection, no throttling and now download caps. Its going to suck when I move out of this place into a house.

[caoboy]

Oh wow. That sounds really good then! I guess the only catch is you can't take it with you!

[sevans]

there is no eventual catch.

Ive been on it for close to 3 years now and when more people in your building sign up, they simply double the connection. I think our building is now at 100mbps.

Love that you can pay the year in advance for $400. $33 a month for a ridiculous connection, no throttling and now download caps. Its going to suck when I move out of this place into a house.

That's exactly what I was hoping to hear.

It's been outstanding so far.

[audiophil2]

I don't want to frighten you but this has been done before. I hope by now all the kinks have been ironed out as this is a great way to get a reliable connection.

I worked for a company that did this all over the US that went bankrupt quickly due to poor planning to put it mildly. The apartments I worked in were by Lake Merced and out in Walnut Creek. I was hired to build out Chicago and while it was a great service at the time I saw how the company was blowing through cash like it was water. The CEO even had a DS3 microwave antenna going to his home from downtown Seattle to Lake Merced. As a former Worldcomm telecom president he was used to wasting money.

Here is a pretty good story on its rise and fall.

http://everything2.com/title/Reflex+Communications

[gunn]

What's the underlying technology? The FAQ calls it a wireless mesh network based technology. That's all well and good but what is it powered by (plenty of mesh network technologies have come and gone). While overall throughput is nice, I'd also be concerned about a) how resiliant the connections are with weather (a potentially bigger deal in places that actually get thunderstorms vs. SF but still a concern) and b) how laggy the connections may be (ping times).

While the business model sounds similar (big pipe into a multi unit building, sell service to users), the technology seems significantly different. I had Reflex communications at an apartment in Dallas, TX in ~2000 but the underlying technology was pretty weak and completely different from what these guys seem to offer (vDSL to a shared T1 IIRC).

I do believe Audiophil's comment is relevant though. As a private company, you really don't know the health of these guys. Will they be there this month? Probably. Next month? Sure? Next year? Maybe -- but I personally wouldn't stake $400 bucks on it (just to save $140).
I remember with Reflex they shut down abruptly -- but left me a modem that I peddled on eBay after unsuccesfully attempting to return it.


-g

[Nose Nuggets]

the downside is the limited availability. Their network is wireless based, so the building you live in needs to have an antenna on their roof to pickup the base signal. it then deliveres that connection through copper to the individual subscriber.

one of my clients operates a new condo building in SF, and the building manager used to work with some WebPass guys, so they just got it in the building. customers seem happy, and they want me to move all the building employee systems and their server to it. im a bit hesistent myself right now, not knowing much about the service. but on paper, it looks great.

OP: almost 10MB/s a pretty damn impressive. you will be limited from the server/host side on downloads more then on your ISP and gear. that's always a nice feeling