CitEscape Back and Rocking
September 11, 2007

As you guys may have noticed, my Internet connection has stabilized a great deal over the last few weeks. It seems like whatever damage that was done by the storm has availed itself. I would terribly hate to be in CitEscape's shoes when the storms come blowing through, since all of their equipment's so high in the sky - but damn it's nice when it's back. I was incredibly thankful, when the Quake Wars demo was released yesterday, that everything was working and I was using such a kick-ass ISP. I kicked on the .torrent download before leaving for class, and everything was ready to go when I got back. I still can't get over having 50ms ping times with my Internets flying many miles over the free air and then getting routed all the way back to St. Cloud.

Anyway, it's back and I'm glad that I stuck it out.

Citescape Service Issues
August 29, 2007

Sooo... the Internet was down again today. I woke up this morning to a lovely whole-lotta-red on my stability graph. Maybe I will have to sign up for Joyent hosting for my main sites.

Three Weeks with Citescape
July 20, 2007

So, its been three weeks since Citescape came out and hooked me up with their Internet service. How's it been? I've had enough time to kick in the tires and I have to say that its been awesome. There was a small hiccup right after I got signed up, but everything else has been leaps and bounds above Charter. I've got better ping times and much better download speeds. What's the best part? It's INTERNET service, not WWW service. There is no "optimization" that only work on HTTP, there is no relevant port blockage and best of all there's no P2P filtering. I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to download the latest anime, demos and open source projects at a normal speed.

What's the coolest part? I've got super high speeds while living in the boondocks. Rock on.

Quick Note
July 10, 2007

Phew. The Internets are back. Citescape was having some issues over the weekend, but everything appears to be in working order now. I'm up to my ears in stuff to do, so I'll be coming back with posts soon.

Moving In...
July 02, 2007

Well, we moved in yesterday. I've got plenty to keep me busy over the next couple days, so don't expect any updates.

What you can expect though is better availability and speed with this site. Why's that? Jesse's boys from Citescape came down to hook up service this morning and loe, I has Internets. I even kicked in the tires with a little Quake4 run and the lag is definitely better than with Charter. Now, to really test it and download the latest Ubuntu release via BitTorrent.

Citescape Updates
January 16, 2007

Well, it seems that I write about failed products or services here just a little bit too much. I've noticed a lot of incoming traffic here looking for info on Citescape. My last few postings on Citescape have been about problems with our services. I wanted to give a few updates on how our service has been running here at $WeMakeLegalResearchSoftware to better reflect the service that we've been getting.

Long story short, it's been going perfectly. The speed is phenomenal, the price is right and nothing's filtered. That's right, you can grab the latest Linux ISOs and large open source apps from BitTorrent without worry that you're going to have a huge hit in performance.

The stability is amazing compared to my experiences with Charter. Our last notable issue was back in November, and we haven't had so much as a hiccup since then. So, if you're looking for a top notch ISP here in the St. Cloud, Minnesota (MN) area - be sure to give them a try!

David: I want to hear about how gaming works over their connection. I get really great ICMP ping times here, but I've obviously never had the chance to try gaming with this link.

CitEscape Update
August 21, 2006

Well, I wanted to give an update on the whole situation with Citescape where I work. After a lot of troubles with the installation itself, and a few hiccups during the first month or so of service everything has leveled off. The service is fast, responsive, and reliable. In the last few weeks we've had zero issues with the service. No hiccups, no bad domain servers or any internal routing issues. Flawless.

I also wanted to point out the joys of the lack of filtering. We've currently got a full stack of services running that let us do what we need to do, with no fussing whatsoever. Charter's currently got everything blocked on our business line, even port 80. I really don't know why in the hell you would pay for a business account that did nothing but charge you more money than the residential one.

I digress.

Working With CitEscape
June 30, 2006

As some of you may have noticed while following my blog; we switched over to CitEscape recently at my office. I wanted to detail how it went, and how wonderfully citescape's been treating us.

After talking with Jesse Sams (their GM) on my blog and through e-mails for awhile (and having seen how terrible Charter had gotten) I decided to give Citescape a go at our offices here at $WeMakeLegalResearchSoftware. I figured, what the heck. Jesse was willing to allow us to sign up, get everything setup, and back out if the service wasn't what we were expecting. Only a little time lost on my part if things don't work out, right?

After talking with Jesse and getting everything setup, Jesse let us know upfront that they were experiencing bandwidth issues and were already at their maximum for their subscriber base. He told us to wait a little bit, and he'd get us hooked up as soon as their new line was put in - so that they would be able to service us properly. Wow, a company who cares about providing the service they describe to their customers.

Fast forward a few weeks. The installation and testing took a little longer than Jesse had expected/told us, and we were getting antsy. I finally got the message from Jesse that installation was going to go ahead. Great! This was right after Charter murdered one of their main routers again.

Sometime that morning their technician's showed up and started mucking about on the roof. Our office is in a condominium style situation, so there's a management station onsite and we are not the only tenants. Loe, but did the secretary at the management station cry out; "Get down from that yonder roof!". Long story short, they had to scramble and regroup while someone else in our building (who was also signing up for service with Citescape) argued with the management. Luckily, the other individual managed to convince them to allow the installation (as nothing was getting mounted directly to the roof).

So, Citescape returns the next day and begins installation again. Avast! More problems! The subscriber module they had purchased was malfunctioning, and they were again forced to disappear to order a new one.

A few days later, they returned. This time the SM worked! Wonderful! Citescape's technicians mounted the hardware, and ran all the cabling (through the dropped ceilings) into our office and plunked it down right by our router.

Thankfully, the technician hooked the cable up to his laptop (An Apple!) and plugged away, making sure it work. We then got the cabling hooked into our firewall, and everything worked perfectly. Great!

All was not well though. After Citescape's technicians had gone home we noticed dropped connections occuring with alarming frequency. I ran traceroute's and determined that the dropped connections were directly related to their own gateway, and dropped Jesse a line about it.

Jesse responded promptly, and within the next day he had dispatched his technicians to look into the problem. The technicians arrived, and they instantly began checking out their equipment. Note, they began checking out their equipment. This is where Citescape began to diverge completely from other companies. The first thing they did was look at their equipment, not tell us to "reboot our computer and call them in the morning". Nice!

So, they determine that the antenna was improperly (physically) configured and went onto the roof to swap stuff around - and hoped that they had fixed the problem.

Sadly, the next day connections started dropping again. I was getting miffed, my users were getting miffed, and stuff just wasn't going right. I let Jesse know - and that same day he delivered more technicians to my doorstep.

Thankfully, they had somehow managed to secure a better location on a nearby building to place their SM - which had a direct line of sight to their own broadcasting tower and had hoped it would provide better connections.

On top of the fewer drops, Citescape managed to coax out a huge amount more bandwidth for us than we were initially signed up for. We're now managing 4Mbp/sDown and 1.5Mbp/sUp; which provides more than enough consolation for the initial problems with setup.

So, how's the service you ask? The actual ISP end of it? It's amazing. Citescape is a wonderful ISP who gets you onto the internet, and then gets the hell out of the way. Port filtering? None. I was able to download the latest Ubuntu release at full tilt thanks to the joys of BitTorrent. Traffic shaping? None. I've observed steady net speeds of 4/1.5 with no issues. Amazing.

Summing it up. We got off to a rocky start with Citescape, but they've truly pulled through with both their superb customer service and their amazing abilities as an ISP. Here's to hoping they stay the same as they grow!

(CitEscape is a St. Cloud, MN area "wireless" ISP using Motorla's Canopy broadcasting system to get to their main data connection)