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This web page has been superseded by an article titled ``Registering in the U.S. Domain (For Free)'' written by R.K.Owen for Linux Journal, issue 39, July 1997.
The .us domain is in the process of melting down, and the locality based names as specified by RFC1480 are still in effect, but they are opening up the second level entities for .us to businesses, non-profits, individuals, anything; to promote an Oklahoma land rush for the .us domain, like they have done for every other TLDs.
Be aware that many of the links in the article are no longer valid, or applicable!
Here are some of the details specific to the San Jose/Bay area on how to register in the US domain.Here was my old dial-up configuration:
- The Internet service provider I use for my connectivity is TychoNet (owner of ScruzNet).
- I pay $25/month for a slip/ppp connection with a static IP address and unrestricted access.
- Including the cost for a second phone line ($18/month) the total cost for Internet connectivity is about $43/month.
- I've included a good overview of the US domain naming scheme here that I found somewhere.
- The delegated authority for the Santa Clara/Santa Cruz area is hostmaster@scruz.net. Read the article as to what you need to do.
For about a year I had DSL, which I obtained through Flashcom, which went belly up (bankrupt). It took two months from the day I phoned my order until I got the first successful packet through. Most of the delay was due to NorthPoint, the people who handle the DSLAM in the phone line central office. My distance was a little past the maximum range, but Flashcom took a chance. I didn't get the full speed (410Kbps), but I was happy to settle for 320Kbps, which was far faster than the dial-up and it was always-on. However, one day the power to the DSL modem was cut, but a connection couldn't be re-established until, a week later, NorthPoint commanded the speed down to 208Kbps. I was still happy with it. I had other problems and every time it came down to NorthPoint and would take 1-2 weeks to resolve. (Because the original speed was set to 320Kbps in the database, whenever the DSLAM went down and would need to be reprogrammed the speed would be commanded back to 320Kbps ... sometimes it would work and often it wouldn't.) The monthly cost was $49/mon.
December 2000 Flashcom went bankrupt and my DSL was transitioned over to Telocity which required a new gateway DSL modem. Apparently, NorthPoint hadn't converted my connection over, the 320/208Kbps problems, and the Telocity gateway all contributed to my decision to try something different, since I have yet to get a packet out with this new DSL configuration.
AT&T Cable, formerly TCI cable in the San Jose area, was not available in my area, because the cable infrastructure is woefully inadequate. The original cable was laid as cheaply as possible ... and it shows.
RCN, fiber optic cable was not available, and only servers high density areas.
Checked out Dish Net's two-way, high-speed satellite internet service offered through StarBand. The only problem was that they offered dynamically assigned IP addresses (DCHP), and was about $80/mon, and no one could answer my question about latency. a 50,000 mile round trip can add significant delays to a signal.
Finally, I read about Sprint Broadband in the San Jose Mercury News. It's a direct wireless connection. You need to have line-of-sight to the Sprint communication towers. Fortunately, I do! I called to order it and within 2 days the diamond shaped dish and transceiver was installed and working! The download speeds have been typically about 3.0Mbps but the upload speeds are considerably slower at approximately 80Kbps. The only problem I've noticed is the high variability in the latency. Doing a ping test to the gateway the typical packet takes a minimum of 3ms, but can take a maximum of 3000ms; however, only a 1% packet loss. The cost is $49/mon, the installation was free (normally $300), and the equipment cost $99 with a 2 year contract (else normally $300).
Sprintbroadband had served me well from Jan 2001 until it was folded up June 2008 because the frequencies they used were reallocated to other applications. At that point I went with Comcast Cable. I even did a comparison with AT&T DSL.
AT&T DSL:
100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 99007ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 17.176/19.372/21.186/1.150 ms long scp to stovokor _etc.zcpio 100% 263MB 53.3KB/s 1:24:18 scp from stovokor _etc.zcpio 100% 4044KB 54.7KB/s 01:14 0.184u 0.080s 1:15.72 0.3% 0+0k 0+8096io 0pf+0w scp to stovokor _etc.zcpio 100% 4044KB 109.3KB/s 00:37 0.196u 0.044s 1:17.68 0.2% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0wComcast Cable:
100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 99004ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 15.409/20.112/60.547/6.109 ms _etc.zcpio 100% 263MB 110.1KB/s 40:49 10.512u 1.740s 41:11.46 0.4% 0+0k 21552+0io 0pf+0w scp to stovokor _etc.zcpio 100% 4044KB 252.8KB/s 00:16 0.176u 0.040s 0:33.58 0.6% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w scp from stovokor _etc.zcpio 100% 4044KB 1.0MB/s 00:04 0.160u 0.064s 0:04.66 4.7% 0+0k 0+8096io 0pf+0w _etc.zcpio 100% 4044KB 2.0MB/s 00:02 0.216u 0.088s 0:02.41 12.0% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0wWe see that DSL and cable have similar latencies (measured by ping), and that DSL was more consistent that way. The differences show up in the bandwidth where cable was at least twice as fast for large files and more for smaller files.
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Brought to you by: R.K. Owen,Ph.D.
This page is http://owen.sj.ca.us/rkowen/howto/usdomain.html
