I love sonic. We used them for the reddit office. They were the cheapest and fastest option. Once one of their reps stopped by just to say hi and make sure we were happy.

I've been begging them to let me give them money for my home connection.

I have Sonic at home, and applaud this log deletion policy. There's only one thing that bothers me about Sonic, the marketing vs reality of DSL.

Their marketing: $39.95/m for speeds up to 20Mbps

Their reality: ~$50/m for ~8Mbps

Now I continue to pay despite this discrepancy. I just wish there was more of an 'under-promise, over-deliver' mindset in their marketing dept.

I presume you're referring to their DSL service, in which case performance depends upon the distance between your home and their access node.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/r26910859-New-Fusion-a...

I have Fusion on Sonic and I get around max ~750KB/sec (2.97Mbps according to speedtest.net) downloads. Apparently, I'm at the tail end of the distance from my central office. Sigh.

No DSL provider can do that. Speeds depend on your distance from their facilities. To their credit, they tell you your distance when you fill out the service availability form, which you can use to get a rough idea of the quality of service you can expect.

I'd say sonic offers the best DSL service of any provider. I switched from att to sonic and got much better speeds over the same lines, probably thanks to a better backend setup. This privacy policy is another example of that.

With Sonic, I get 26/6 using annex B near a CO with the two-line bonded fusion dsl at one site. ($80/mo; the next step up would be $1k/mo for 30/30)

6/1 at another site, so there we use Comcast Business instead.

Note the "up to". Also that they probably give you ATM throughput, which adds 20% overhead to IP throughput. But the most important factor you're missing is distance; see these graphs: http://www.pcinpact.com/news/71764-vdsl2-sfr-fibre-optique-f...

I wish I lived somewhere where I could use Sonic. Anyone who does should, IMHO, give them careful consideration when purchasing connectivity.

And... if you live in Sebastopol or, I think, one of a limited number of other trial areas, affordable Gb connectivity!

Aside from just offering better choices, we need Sonic and the like to push the BigCo's to do better. (Speaking as someone trapped in a BigCo oligopoly zone (BOZ?).)

couldn’t agree more. and after reading this and looking into it a bit, as well as seeing all the praise coming-in, really wish they operated in my area. here's to hoping an expansion to the east coast doesn’t take too long.

As a Sonic.net customer for the past 7 years and a friend of Jake's, I applaud their efforts to not keep logs. That said, I'm curious what logs they are talking about.

Assignment of IP addresses, through DHCP or other methods.

Ah, I'm now on a static IP because I was having problems with their dynamic ones recently and they suggested that I switch. I wonder if the config file for that is considered a log.

(I don't work for them, but I have worked at small and large ISPs.)

The law enforcement agency will ask for a subpoena that will ask for "all records, logs, files, documents... relating to or describing the subscriber(s) using the IP address $dottedquad at or around $date(s)". The config file that keeps your static IP associated with a MAC address or whatever will certainly be turned over.

I used Sonic when I lived in SF. Dane himself tweeted back when I mentioned them, and their customer service has been super transparent (you can see on their support page [1] how many calls are on and waiting), extremely honest and helpful, even for a nerd like me.

I have nothing but admiration for these guys.

[1] http://www.sonic.net/support/index.shtml

Yes. Love these guys. Every time I call support I get to talk to somebody with both knowledge and sense. In sharp contrast to when I had AT&T DSL or have to deal with Comcast for friends.

My gripe with Sonic is they pull stunts on the telephony just like the scumbags such as AT&T. In my case they will not supply DSL without also supplying phone service, for which I have absolutely no use. I don't even have a physical phone to plug in and haven't for years.

They claim the phone service is "free", but you get nailed with various taxes and fees. The taxes are a legal requirement. The fees are entirely up to Sonic, although some have regulatory maximums. And Sonic charges those maximums - something AT&T doesn't!

If they were honest they wouldn't hide things like this, pretending something is free when it clearly isn't.

How do you deliver DSL without a phone line in the US?

Even AT&T delivers a phone line on their "direct DSL", they just hide the costs of regulation in the rate.

This, to me, isn't a case where sonic is to blame. This has more to do with restrictive FCC requirements than it does with Dane.

Phones are due for a regulatory rework.

DSL and dial-tone are completely separate services, that only share a copper line. Verizon doesn't require you to purchase dial-tone in order to get DSL. The only reason I can think of for AT&T to do so is to prop up their telephone business.

AT&T will also sell me naked or dry DSL as it is called. It is sonic that insists on bundling "free" phone service and then charging for it through additional surcharges and fees.

You are wrong. After getting a special number ( 1-800-288-2020) i was able to order dsl from att without a landline contract and phone taxes from California. Nothing.

Catch is, the advertised price of $25/mo for 6mbps only last one year, and you have to sign up for two years, paying $55/mo on the second.

Still beats paying $40 all around for the crappy cable latency i get here (at One block from the att repeater building!)

Look, the 2882020 # is not special... That's the main AT&T customer service number.

You're wrong. If you call AT&T, inside of their systems, they can only group dsl orders based on phone numbers. So even if they tell you you're not getting dial tone, in their system, you are getting dial tone.

This has to do with very interesting regulations from the FCC which I don't care to dive into now.

The special rate you got is the same rate you'd get by walking into an AT&T store...

So in both cases you pay $960 for 2 years, except in one case you don't get a phone line.

My math comes out differently.

your math is off. And i don't get a phone in either cases.

one option is ADSL without a phone line taxes.

other option is cable. also, without a phone for obvious reasons

So, basically, your gripe is their billing contains line-item entries towards phone service. If they were to simply not show you these and instead have: "DSL Service: $40. Taxes & Fees: $7.99" you would be happy?

The same provisioning taxes & fees apply to the phone line itself, regardless of your usage. Sonic doesn't own the telephone line itself. AT&T or whomever does. And you can be sure they aren't letting Sonic use those lines for free.

My gripe is that I want DSL only. They say this:

DSL service: $40

Phone service: Free

Actual bill comes in:

DSL service: $40

Phone service taxes: $3

Phone service fees, surcharges etc, discretionary, levied by Sonic whose entire proceeds go back to them: $12

ie the "Free" phone service I do not want and do not use costs an extra 30%. If they were honest they would say this:

DSL service: $40

Mandatory phone service: $12 (no additional usage charges)

Mandatory taxes: $3

Yes.

I've always been fascinated by the 'show me the tax' mindset. I'm probably in the minority but an all inclusive, up front pricing structure will always make me happier than one that has a base + taxes + fees.

I have no illusions of being able to convince you that one pricing structure is 'better' than another. But there are a lot of us out there who really don't want to know about all the components of the price.

Separate itemization of tax may be a legal requirement in some areas.

I signed up for a tmobile plan the other day. I talked to them online and then in a call, and asked what the taxes and surcharges would be. They said they could not tell me because it was impossible for them do so until after they generated my first bill (which coincidentally is the point at which it is too late to cancel). I did try using logic ("you already have code to calculate tax") but that obviously did not work.

Even if what you say is an issue, they can still show totals just as plane tickets do. They can say the total is $55/mo of which $13 is taxes.

I'm not sure this actually helps you, but I'm pretty sure there's a statutory Buyer's Remorse period where you can cancel within 14 days with no penalty.

I'm thinking that the first bill would probably be generated after the buyer's remorse period.

It's not -- I just signed up for a postpaid plan on T-Mobile yesterday, and the receipts included the first and second months' bills (for service and taxes).

If you do it on the web they make it very plain that $0 is due now. They do say the plan will be $45/month but there is absolutely no indication what their additional fees will be nor what the taxes will.

I'm in California. Maybe you are in a state where they actually have to provide this information?

I'm in Oklahoma, which traditionally doesn't have much in the way of consumer protection or information laws. It's possible, though I think it's probably because I bought it in a physical store.

Totally agree. Check out condointernet.net for a great example of an amazing product with a flat fee of 60 bucks a month for 100mb down, no contract required. I lived in Seattle the last two years and was blown away by their service, pricing, and the overall experience. We need more like them.

UK equivalent: http://aa.net.uk/

"We have no so called black boxes to covertly monitor traffic and/or pass traffic monitoring to the authorities or anyone else. Obviously the law is such that we may have to add such black boxes, but we would resist as far as possible. We may even find we are not allowed to change this web page if ever that happens. However, I, as director, am happy to answer direct questions on this matter on irc (user RevK) or on usenet and you can get paranoid if I refuse to." -- http://aa.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html

Your ISP should, unless you live in a country that does prevent that. There's a law in European Union requiring us to keep logs between 6 months and 2 years. Oh, and there are countries like Poland, whose government asked to prolong that time, as 2 years is not enough (thankfully that was rejected).

It's still a surprise to me that USA doesn't have anything like that. It's like the first time EU is first at something ;)

It's because Law Enforcement in the US has been lobbying for longer times. From the article:

DJ: I would speculate it would be an unpopular move that might result in more friction with law enforcement. Law enforcement has been lobbying to pass laws that would require service providers to keep 18-36 months of logs. It’s in their interests.

Oh cool... Polish government tried to enforce 10 or 15 years. We were discussing whether to keep it for them as printouts in 4 points font, or just as single copies of cheapest dvds ;) Thankfully, they were not allowed to do that.

It's worth noting that due to the PATRIOT Act, they do not delete your logs after 2 weeks if they receive a NSL. NSLs include a gag order, so you will never know if they stop deleting your logs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter

The feds issue hundreds of thousands of these, and they require no warrant or judicial oversight.

NSLs can not only be issued to individuals under investigation, but "communities of interest" - so basically the social network of anyone under investigation.

Interesting back-and-forth, but seeing sites like this really makes me appreciate having Readability one button away. The combination of the huge banner and the facepile on the bottom of the screen make it very distracting to read.

Not to mention my Ghostery Chrome Extension found 25 tracking sites on the page.

  * 24/7 Media
  * Advertising.com
  * AppNexus
  * Bizo  
  * BlueKai  
  * DoubleClick  
  * eXelate  
  * Facebook Connect  
  * ForeSee  
  * Gigya Beacon  
  * Gigya Socialize  
  * Google +1  
  * Google AdWords Conversion  
  * Google Analytics  
  * Invite Media  
  * Krux Digital  
  * Legolas Media  
  * Media Innovation Group  
  * Right Media  
  * ScoreCard Research Beacon  
  * ShareThis  
  * TargusInfo  
  * Turn  
  * Vertical Acuity  
  * Visual Revenue

I think that's a little excessive, especially for an article about keeping logs.

Many of our programmers and writers agree. We're an advertising-based business (free online news) so I view this as one consequence of that

A small chunk of these are due to social and other 3rd party features, a good chunk plain old analytics tracking, and another small chunk are due to our "brand lift" advertising guarantees (e.g. in some cases its ensured that readers are actually seeing your below-the-fold advertisements before we charge you for them).

That said, yes, more than a few Ghostery hits are so we can, e.g., buy an ad to reach Forbes readers when you're visiting Adweek.com or something. Ghostery is great and a useful instruction tool for showing the "boiling frog" that is pixels.

Tell your programmers to get informed on the safee standard being proposed at iab. Name may change.

My name is Alex Poon. I am the head of engineering at Visual Revenue. Being a provider of analytics and optimization services, it is hard, if not impossible to piggyback on other data providers for data. We pay great attention to user experience of our customers and work to ensure that we don't cause any delay or breakage to their sites. Regarding individual user logs, we delete them immediately after data is aggregated.

Glad to see you guys reading HN too

> I think that's a little excessive, especially for an article about keeping logs.

Well, it's a corporate decision on the part of Forbes, so there's no point in blaming the journalist who wrote this particular article.

maybe you should recommend them some other tracking sites, so that they can add them to their collection ;)

The link is to Page 2 of the article, could a mod update it to link to the first page?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/06/22/ceo-of-...

sorry; noticed that right after i posted.. if someone could update it that would be great.

I think this is a great idea, but I'm curious... -- so I'm playing devil's advocate with this question -- Couldn't there be some risk that it would be tough to build a case against someone involved in illegal activity? Like how much harder is it to build a case against CP offenses with only access to two weeks of logs?

There's no way to answer that question broadly, since it depends on which other sources of information law enforcement can consult in a given case.

For what it's worth, unless you retain data forever, it's always possible to delete it the day before you need it.

We have sonic.net in San Francisco. Unfortunately the speeds in our neighborhood (Haight Ashbury) are dismal. 7.5 Mbits/s, for the premium service. $90 /month.

I love the ethos of the company, but we're suffering here and will be switching soon.

Dane Jasper is awesome - met him a couple times at SF Night Owls - follow him here https://twitter.com/#!/dane

I really wish I could use Sonic.net (for my home). Unfortunately (up to) 20MBps is just not good enough.

I wish we had Sonic in SoCal. Only option is basically Comcast and they fucking suck.

Don't be too jealous, I'm in Mountain View and despite being a few blocks away from Google I have the same options. It's baffling.

Only SF realistically has Sonic available to them. Supposedly some backwater in Central Valley has it too.

Most people I know in Mountain View have the Comcast Business internet connection, which is basically a different company from Comcast. (Different customer service, different billing, different equipment, etc.) Apparently you can even negotiate the rate down to $75 a month, which is a lot less than I pay for Time Warner's "we are a monopoly so fuck you with a stick" package in Brooklyn.

Why does this monopoly exist? Is it related to law? Or is it related to needing a massive infrastructure to support such a business? Why can't a company "start-up" to offer fast competition in a city like Los Angeles?

In theory, they can serve most of the state: http://www.sonic.net/sales/maps/ but in practice, DSL distance limits apply. I would expect most densely populated areas of the northern SF bay counties, most especially the Santa Rosa area to be well served. OTOH, the 805(SLO) & 661(Bfd) area codes appear to be lagging.

Can anyone give a recommendation if my ISP choices are Webpass and Sonic.net?

Switching this week. Bye bye Megapath/Speakeasy.