Broadband 100.0? Not Yet

As reported in the Lexington Herald Leader and on Broadband Reports, Insight is testing a 100 meg broadband service at one location in Louisville. We are pushing the limits of speed on our network as an early part of a process that will lead to more extensive hypersonic speed testing in the future. In this test, a doctor's office is using the service to electronically transfer medical imaging to and from his office.

Our business services group, Insight Business Services (IBS), is conducting this test for us. We are able to provision for just about any bandwidth requirement for IBS customers and what better result is there -- to help doctors treat their patients more efficiently and effectively. In order to increase speeds to 50 or even 100 meg for residential customers, we plan to utilize the new cable modem open standard of DOCSIS 3.0. We're doing a lot of preliminary work to get ready for DOCSIS 3.0 but don't yet have a timetable.

Meanwhile, we are watching DOCSIS 3.0 tests that are underway in other markets and we're extremely encouraged with the performance of the new technology. A couple of questions being asked by interested customers have do do with upstream speeds (some are testing 5 to 10 meg) and whether you will need a new modem (yes).

We have been a leader in pushing the limits of speed having been one of the first cable ISP's to break the 10 meg barrier followed by our early launch of our premium 20 meg service. Going much beyond that requires a whole new standard for cable modems which eventually will increase speed capabilities into the triple digits. We are going to be absolutely sure DOCSIS 3.0 works well in a large-scale deployment before we launch. However, knowing us, after we take it out for a test drive, I wouldn't be surprised if we find we can't help ourselves and look to press the pedal to the medal soon after we break in the new speedster.

Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline [Washington Post]

Here's a win for the good-guys in the fight against spam, botnets, and lots of other nasty stuff on the Internet. This week, the ISP that provided the McColo Corp. with their connection to the Internet cut their connection. McColo was recognized by the network security industry as a notorious spammer (sending up to 75% of global junk email) and controller of botnets. As a result, McColo is no longer online and able to send spam.

This is the second such story I've seen in the last few weeks about ISPs shutting down spammers, and I'm glad to see that the good guys are on the offense in light of the news in this next article. Now let's see if someone else fills the vacuum immediately or if we're going to see a reduction in spam. I'll check in with our network managers and let you know in a few days.

Net bombarded by heaviest ever attacks this year [ZDNet]

Malicious botnets are now launching the heaviest distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks in the history of the Internet. Those attacks have reached up to 40 Gbps, according to a recent survey of ISPs. And attacks in general are 67 percent larger than those last year. It's important that ISPs and users remain vigilant against these attacks. Protect your PC with a solid antivirus and firewall program, and keep them up-to-date to prevent malicious attacks against your computer. These attacks are often an attempt to co-opt your system into a botnet, so that hackers can use your computer to attack other networks.

Google now tracking flu trends via search [CNET News]

Not feeling well? Looking to Google to give you some advice about how to deal with flu symptoms? Big brother will be watching. Yesterday, Google announced that it will be using flu related searches to track the spread of the flu throughout the U.S. So if quite a few people start searching for "aches" and "fever" on Google, that data is aggregated along with other similar searches in the same geographic area, telling epidemiologists that the area those searches are coming from is a flu hot spot.

FCC Chairman to Open Up Quiet Period for Comment [Marketwatch]

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has decided to open up a public comment period for a quiet period on retransmission agreements during the digital transition. This is a necessary first step toward helping consumers avoid confusion about the digital television transmission. As I've said here before - this move is a no-brainer. Cable operators, broadcasters and the FCC all need to be working together to ensure that the transition is successful, and the quiet period is one critical step in that direction.