Wrapping up new network
December 23, 2008 – 8:50 pm
New vehicle livery, at Forestville CO
We started construction in Forestville today. It’s the last of our initial nineteen offices slated for build-out during this initial phase. All of the other locations are nearly done, with just a few loose ends to be tied up over the next few weeks.
Forestville was last on the list, as it’s the smallest town we will be initially serving on the new network. Despite it’s small size, Sonic.net today serves a surprising amount of DSL there, and I’m personally hopeful that it does well. As it’s my home town, I’ve got a best of a vested interest. (No, to answer the obvious question, we didn’t build out an entire CO because the CEO lives nearby. I’m well served today with very fast wireless access.)
Here’s a photo taken late today as the light faded, the central office in the background. What do you think of our new livery?
19 Responses to “Wrapping up new network”
Dig the racing stripes on the back of the van.
By John Fitzgerald on Dec 23, 2008
Glad you like those John. We’re planning to adjust the color in the arc, as it came out too light, and we might narrow the stripes an inch or so.
By Dane Jasper on Dec 23, 2008
The new livery looks great. From a distance, it makes me want to know whose truck that is.
But, great livery or not, don’t block my driveway like the ATT guys do when they work on my neighbors’ services…
By Graham Freeman on Dec 23, 2008
The van looks great! I’ll be watching out for it now.
Interestingly enough, your iPhone is geotagging your photos with approximate GPS coords. in EXIF data.
The tag approximates the location for this photo at 38.42, -122.8572
By Jonathan Lassoff on Dec 28, 2008
Jonathan,
The Geotag is real interesting, I didn’t know the phone did that. What did you use to extract the data and map it?
It’s a first generation iPhone, so it has no GPS. Location data is triangulated, and is not real accurate. In this case, it’s off by about five miles.
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Dec 29, 2008
This is great, its articles like this that make me miss working for a local ISP. Keep up the great work!
Jim
By James Nessen on Jan 3, 2009
Dane,
The tag was stored as an EXIF header. I used a tool I like called jhead ( http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/ )
- jof
By Jonathan Lassoff on Jan 8, 2009
New Livery – What do I think ?
I think a short wheelbase dodge/mercedes diesel van gets 25 mpg… about twice what that panel truck gets… and is probably as clean running.
Over the life of the vehicle ( 250,000 + miles)
you could have saved 50 % on fuel consumption,
a really substantial amount on maintenance costs, and had a more viable work truck also.
These basic infrastructure and “expendible” economies insure better times for everybody.
The current population of Occidental is around 5000… and it is very poorly served. No DSL,
No Broadband, for the most part no cable.
By larry on Jan 14, 2009
Dane,
Love Sonic – I have it at work and home without any problems. I was wondering…who do you buy your vehicle graphics from? We would love to quote you.
Thanks for the great service.
By Audrey on Jan 22, 2009
Audrey,
We use FastSigns in Santa Rosa currently, and they’ve been great about working with us to get the graphics just right and schedule getting all of the vans in. When we are next bidding this out, happy to get a price from you, email me contact info!
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Jan 22, 2009
Dane,
We do appreciate you giving us the opportunity to quote your vehicle graphics next time you go out for bid.
You will need to contact our General Manager, Steve Tubbs at Kresky Signs, Inc. in Petaluma.
You can email him at steve@kresky.com or call him @ 707-762-4554.
Thanks again,
Audrey
By Audrey on Jan 28, 2009
Dane,
This may not be the appropriate place to log a complaint, but it seams when I go through the normal “trouble ticket” procedure, I almost always get an answer like “we don’t see any problems”, etc…
I live on the east side of Sacramento, CA and I am served from AT&T CO on Bradshaw rd at Hwy.50. It is almost a dailey occourance for my internet response to slow down in the afternoons. When I call Sonic’s trouble desk about it they say they do not see any network slow-downs, either through the agragated circuits from Sacramento to your data-center or out through your up-stream ISP’s. There was one time that one of your tech’s actually noted some traffic congestion and/or high dropped packet rates on the circuit from Sacramento to your data center. He said he would bring it to the attention of a higher level engineer. Of course I never heard about it again, and the frequent slow-downs continue. I suspect it is more likly a problem with the link between Sacramento and your dat-center because retrival of my email from your pop-3 servers usualy slows down when internet response does. I have looked at your traffic monitoring and logging web pages but I do not see the Sacramento link on it. Is the Sacramento link being monitored? Does someone actually look at the traffic analysis and investigate possible problems?
I selected Sonic for my adsl service in hopes that you were a big enough company to provide good service but yet still small enough to care about all of your small customers too. Maybe I was wrong in that assumption. Maybe it is time for me to switch to AT&T for $15.95 a month for the same service I get from you for $29.95 a month. If I switch now I can even get AT&T for $10.99 a month for a year contract. Convince me why I should not switch.
Thanks for your time.
Dan Alsup
25+ years in network engineering and support.
By Dan on Mar 3, 2009
Dan,
I cannot provide support via feedback on the blog. I will forward your comments to the support manager to escalate!
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Mar 3, 2009
I was not sure where to post my request and this seemed like the most appropriate. My apologies if I am in the wrong spot!!!
I wanted to say thank you for you help, Tiffany C. was able to help us make our decision to go with your Satellite Service. But my request is that you let people know out here in the boon docks of Santa Rosa that there is another option other than the wireless service provider Broadlink. Most of people I know out here and have talked to would be interested if they knew they really had another option. Keep up he good work and progress……its exciting to see a company doing so well and growing in this current economy!
By Meghan on Mar 7, 2009
Meghan, glad you like the new satellite service!
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Mar 9, 2009
I live on a ridge on the eastern side above the town of Occidental. I can only get acceptable internet service through sattelite. Do you service this area with cable?? Have any plans to?
Provide service in other ways??
By Daniel Celidore on Mar 21, 2009
Is there an update on the Forestville office? I’m wondering it that’s going to make DSL available to more people in the Forestville/Hacienda area?
By Thom on Apr 5, 2009
Forestville is up and running. We have also extended availability of Fusion out to 11,100ft from the CO, so do order and see how it comes out.
Sonic.net Fusion does not go further than AT&T line-shared DSL at this point, so while we’re offering a lot more speed to customers who are closer to the COs, we’re not seeing true expanded availability at this time.
In future when we offer pair bonded Fusion, the bonding of ADSL2+ will mean at least double the speed of a single pair ADSL1 connection, so that’s an interesting development for folks who are limited in their speed choices today due to distance.
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Apr 6, 2009