Which ISP sucks least?

Look at this sad network performance.

C:\>ping -n 10 24.82.128.1

Pinging 24.82.128.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=159ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=349ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=533ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=254

Ping statistics for 24.82.128.1:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 28ms, Maximum = 533ms, Average = 139ms

Is it just me or are the major cable and DSL providers in the Vancouver area ripping us off? This has been going on for a week now, with the worst performance during prime time. A shaw support tech informed me this area needs to be “segmented”. In otherwords the company has oversold its infrastructure.

If someone wrote a small background program that monitored the performance of critical services such as my next hop router and my ISP’s DNS and sent that back to a central site I’d gladly run it. It would be nice to know which ISP sucks the least. The anadoctal evidence available now isn’t good enough. I heard some calls for community based monitoring of ISPs as use of deep packet inspection and throttling by providers has increased, but I don’t see much action.

Finally, someone is fighting against non-transferrable software licences

Timothy S. Vernor filed suit against AutoCAD because AutoCAD used the DMCA to have his eBay account suspended for selling used copies of the popular software.

Non-transferrable software licences are unfair. The worst offenders are network appliance vendors who insist that the software powering their devices non-transferrable. They want to prevent their products from being sold second hand for a fraction of their cost. If you bought anything else pre-owned you would rightly expect better treatment from the manufacturer. You would receive warrenty service for a used Xbox as long as you have the original proof of purchase. Hard disk makers provide fair warrenty service in allowing anyone to send in a defective drive and receive a refurblished replacement.

In practice it’s a moot point as people (rightly) can’t be stopped from selling the hardware. If you buy any of these items off eBay don’t expect support even if you have everything in the original box. Some companies won’t even allow you to download security updates without a service contract. Shame on them.

I hope Timothy wins.

WinZip frustration

So I’m backing up my laptop by zipping up my user directory and copying it over to another box. After more than 20 gigs of archive have been created I run out of disk space. What does WinZip do? It aborts! Would it be so much to ask for it to prompt me to abort or retry so I can free up some space and not have to wait forever to do this all over again? While I’m on the subject, backing up my windows boxes is annoying. What is the best software to backup windows?