[Trilug-ontopic] clear.com for linux?

[Jack Hill]

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012, Tom Roche wrote:

>
> Anyone in this area ("the Triangle," esp Carrboro/CHill) have
> experience using clear.com with linux? or care to recommend
> another alternative to TWC for home use? Why I ask:
>
> My GF gets internet-only from TWC/roadrunner (no TV or other services)
> and is looking for a cheaper service. Her usage is roughly
>
> * 1/2 streaming audio (e.g., last.fm, music.npr.org)
> * 1/4 streaming video (e.g., youtube, PBS)
> * 1/4 citrixing into work
>
> on a Mint desktop. My guess is that streaming (esp video) would be
> more painful on Clear; I dunno about citrix or linux compatibility.
> Does anyone have empirical results? or can recommend other/cheaper
> alternatives to TWC in this area? E.g., can one just flip back and
> forth between earthlink and TWC to stay on the introductory rate?
> (I'm guessing they'd whack that, but ICBW.)

We have Clear internet at my house. Overall we've been vary happy with it. 
I don't have speedtest figures but don't have any complaints (doing scp 
to/from a remote host I get ~500kibibyes/s down and ~100kibibytes/s up. 
Subject of course to variation in signal strength and performance of my 
remote host), and should be fine for those uses. Is Citrixing like VNC or 
like X-forwarding? VNC to my grandmother's machine (on the cheapest TWC) 
works great. X-forwarding can get painful because of all the round trips 
(I think this is a protocol designed for a LAN not the Internet problem as 
opposed to a Clear problem though).

You get a modem that gives you ethernet out. Unfortunately it is not 
possible to put this device in bridged mode; it hands out NATed IP via 
DHCP. I have it configured to forward all ports to router/access point. It 
also doesn't support protocol 41 (a.k.a. 6in4), so no IPv6 through a 
tunnel broker (I get that via VPN).

I have no idea if their USB/CardBus/PCI cards are supported by Linux.

I'm in southern Durham (between 54 and Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway), 
with lots of trees.

Best,
Jack