Compare Skyway to Telus and Shaw

Skyway's Business Class Managed ADSL Service compared to telus

Comparing Skyway's Business Class Managed ADSL services to Telus requires recognizing that Telus markets two streams of ADSL. Their "High Speed Internet for Business" ADSL services target Small and Medium sized businesses while their "Managed ADSL" service is intended for more demanding large businesses and enterprises. Skyway's Business Class Managed ADSL starting at $99/month compares favourably to Telus' $450/month "Managed ADSL" service. Both Managed services include a router, real static addresses and network management. Unlike, Telus, Skyway also provides traffic analysis and security tools. Plus our flexible pricing lets small and medium sized businesses take advantage of the same Internet tools essential to large corporations.

Skyway's Business Class Managed ADSL Service compared to shaw

There are four important differences between Skyway West and Shaw cable. First, Shaw stores copies of web sites and redirects their customers to the copy. This is done using a "Transparent Proxy" which as the name implies, is unavoidable and often unknown to the customer. Caching copies of web sites allows Shaw to avoid the cost of repeatedly providing their customers access to the same site. However, some sites (e.g., dynamic sites, etc.) may not work properly through a caching server and Shaw customers have no way of knowing which sites these are. Caching also violates the widely held principle that ISP's do not modify the traffic they pass through to customers. Skyway does not cache copies of web sites.

Second, Shaw uses traffic shaping technology to restrict the amount of bandwidth used by individual customers for FTP, News and P2P file sharing. Shaw does so to avoid the cost of expanding their network to accommodate these high traffic services. However, Shaw customers are unable to utilize the speed they purchased. Skyway does not restrict how our customers use their Internet connection.

Third, Shaw's practice of assigning blocks of IP addresses to neighbourhoods makes their IP addresses less stable than Skyway's IP addresses. For example, when the number of Shaw customers grows to exceed the block size, every customer must renumber into a larger block. And, Shaw customers moving to a new neighbourhood must also renumber into a new block. Skyway customers maintain their existing IP addresses as Skyway's customer base grows and retain their IP addresses when they move.

Sharing a block of IP addresses means that the actions of one Shaw customer puts every other customer at risk. For example, Shaw customers have been known to have their outgoing mail blocked because another user was black listed for sending spam.

Finally, the "hub" design of the Shaw cable network makes cable Internet more problematic than ADSL Internet. A hub network is one where all customers within a neighbourhood share a common wire and all the splits, repeaters and wall jacks associated with that wire. The unused wall jacks act like small antennas transmitting noise INTO the cable network. This noise reduces the overall signal to noise (S/N) ratio for the entire network segment and reduces everybody's level of service. Some neighbourhoods are much worse than others.

skyway Static IP addresses

Static IP addresses included with Skyway's Business Class Managed ADSL services differ significantly from those included with Telus' Small and Medium sized Business services, other ISP's and Shaw. Skyway static IP addresses are permanently "hard coded" into your network firewall, server or workstation. Telus and Shaw use a DHCP server to lease "static" IP addresses.

telus DHCP IP addresses assigned to mac addresses

Telus does not support hard coding of IP addresses. Instead, Telus and some other ISP's uses a DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) server to assign each machine an IP address when it boots up. The "static" IP address is assigned based on your machine's MAC address. Using a DHCP server and relying on MAC addresses introduces more points of failure into Telus' Small and Medium sized Businesses services. DHCP failures are often responsible for the networking problems that affect Telus customers and customers of other ISP's using DHCP servers.

How Telus.net DHCP "static" IP Addresses are assigned

firewall/server/workstation settings are set to DHCP instead of manual entry
firewall/server/workstation obtains IP address from DHCP server every time the firewall/server/workstation boots up
DHCP server assigns IP address based on firewall/server/workstation "MAC" address
DHCP assigned IP address is leased for a limited period of time
before the lease expires, firewall/server/workstation requests another address from the DHCP server
DHCP server decides whether to reissue the same address or issue a new address

Problems with Telus DHCP IP addresses assigned to MAC addresses

Some devices are incompatible with the way Telus.net uses DHCP, especially firewall network appliances. In some cases it is a breach of security to let the outside world see the firewall's "MAC" address.
Every time you want to allow a new device to access Telus.net, you must first register the MAC address of that device at the Telus web site. This can be time consuming and inconvenient, especially if you have more devices than allowable MAC addresses.

shaw DHCP IP addresses

Shaw offers static hard coded, static DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) and dynamic DHCP addresses.

How Shaw DHCP IP Addresses are assigned

firewall/server/workstation settings are set to DHCP instead of manual entry
When the cable modem first boots up, Shaw's server instructs it to accept a maximum number of MAC addresses specific to the account type. The modem automatically accepts MAC addresses until it reaches that limit, then refuse to accept further.
firewall/server/workstation obtains IP address from DHCP server every time the firewall/server/workstation boots up
DHCP assigned IP address is leased for a limited period of time
before the lease expires, firewall/server/workstation requests another address from the DHCP server
DHCP server decides whether to reissue the same address or issue a new address
traffic from the Internet routed directly to router or firewall/server/workstation

Problems with Telus and Shaw dhcp addresses

DHCP server introduces an unnecessary point of failure.
Some firewall devices are very difficult to configure with DHCP addresses.
Telus and Shaw Domain Name Server (DNS) identify to all other ISP's that the IP's issued their customers are DHCP. However, some ISP's black list email sent from dynamically assigned IP addresses despite the PTR record matching the IP address. Black listed email is rejected by the receiving mail server and the sender may not advised.

Virus Protection

Skyway takes an active approach to indentifying and preventing vulnerabilities from threatening our network and our customer's. We receive Cert advisories, respond by blocking ports for security reasons when necessary and inform our customer's technical contacts when preventative action is taken. Consequently, our customers are largely protected from the frustration of problems like denial of service attacks and attacks to/from Microsoft systems.

Please visit our Customer Internet Security Page for more information.

Telus, on the other hand, has chosen a different approach. Telus ADSL service was crippled September 2003 by their decision to allow viruses to pass through their network to their customers. The resulting problems were covered in the Vancouver Sun on Wednesday, September 17/03. Telus' response, "Blame it on the many viruses floating around the Net, and yourself for not properly dealing with them".