Ygnition
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Ygnitition is marketed as an American broadband Internet services company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is held by ComVentures, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. Prior to November 2003, the company went by the name "Interquest Communications." In December of 2003 Ygnition entered a co-branded partnership to distribute Vonage VOIP telephone services.
Ygnition specializes in contract installations for the "Multi-Family Real Estate industry." This kind of contract speciality allows them to limit competiton in the apartment complexes they serve because consumers are not allowed the choice of competing cable broadband internet providers. While this is a typical approach, in general only one cable internet provider owns or has access to the cable infrastructure in given area, this is unusual for the fact that Ygnition is not a cable broadband provider.
Ygnition uses a T1(1.544 Mbit/s) to provide service to 1-100+ subscribers onsite over LAN networked apartments interconnected through cable modems. Individual subscriber connections at an apartment complex serviced by Ygnition can sometimes fail the International Telecommunication Union Standardization Sector (ITU-T) recommendation I.113 definition of broadband Internet. The cumulative T1 bandwidth of 1,544,000 kbit/s(or 1.544 Mbit/s) divided amongst as few as 6 subscribers simultaneously accessing 256kps of the available bandwidth can consume the entire capacity of a T1 resulting in access that falls below the standard recognized as broadband internet
As of 2005, Ygnition provided Internet access to 150,000 apartment units across nine states.
As Ygnition looks to extend its market through aqusitions, it is also expanding the services they offer. Ygnition offers cable TV service and is expanding into the VOIPmarket through partnership with Vonage. Ygnition purchases cable and satellite television service from providers like DISH network, SBC, Direct Tv and others, then redistributes them through their networks. Even as these services are expanded Ygnition continues its practice of providing all of its services through purchased T1 connections routed through local servers. [1]
Ygnition uses Traffic Shaping to prioritize VOIP traffic. Because of the way traffic shaping works, all bandwidth is available to all traffic at all times, with VOIP traffic taking precedence when needed.
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[edit] What is a T1?
The T1 was developed in 1957 by AT&T and implemented through the 1960's. The technology is over 40 years old. It is currently the most used business vioce and data connection in the world.
[edit] Ygnition's Income
Ygnition provides exclusive service to 150,000 apartment units across nine states (subscribers in 2005). At a subscription fee of $49 per month this provides Ygnition with over $7.5 million in monthly billing. Tenants in a Ygnition contracted Residential complex, must choose to either have Ygnition for cable ISP service, or they are limited to Satellite, Dial-up, or no service. They cannot use any other broadband Ygnition competitor, regardless of available local service, which is a typical approach for most ISPs. Ygnition actually provides T1 service through a sitebased cable network, not true cable internet service. Their initial trunk at each site is telephone based.
[edit] Ygnition's BBB Ratings
Ygnition has an unsatisfactory rating with the Better Business Bureau in Houston and Dallas, Texas.[2],[3]
Ygnition has an Unsatisfactory BBB rating in Seatle, Washington. [4]
[edit] Services provided by Ygnition
As per Ygnition's service agreement for $49.95 a month, the subscriber may have 2 Email accounts and;
"Use of IAS, E-Mail Storage. Subject to the compliance by Subscriber with all Terms and Conditions of this Agreement, and in exchange for recurring payment of subscription fees, Subscriber shall have the right to use the IAS for accessing the Internet, and for sending and receiving e-mail. Subscriber shall have the right to store up to and including ten Megabytes (10 MB) of e-mail data on the Ygnition Networks server. Subscriber shall be automatically charged a monthly storage for each Megabyte of data in excess of the Free Storage Amount"
For $74.95 a month the subscriber gains 1 static IP address.
[edit] Services not provided for by Ygnition
Unlike subscriber services on industry standard cable broadband ISPs, website hosting is not a service provided for by Ygnition. No Server space is provided beyond the 10 MB e-mail storage space. However, it is similar to other services in that subscribers are prohibited from hosting their own websites by the no server policy.
Ygnition offers no spam filtering or anti-virus services to its subscribers.
Ygnition offers unlimited internet connection time. They do place limits and restrictions on subscriber internet activities. Access to filesharing and downloading is limited and can, at Ygnition's sole discretion, result in service termination.
[edit] Considerations for the consumer
[edit] Restrictions to services provided by Ygnition
Like subscriber services on industry standard cable broadband ISPs, Ygniton reserves and exercise the rights to restrictions on internet service provided to subscribers. Several of the restrictions are commonsense and including most restrictions on activities considered to be criminal activity. Activities such as spamming, virus writing, harassment, and copyright infringement are widely prohibitted in the internet industry.
Peer to Peer filesharing is a legal, and increasingly common internet activity that Ygnition severely limits. Peer to peer or p2p filesharing is a modern file transfer protocol that is gaining wide use for its ability to offer fast transfer of large files over distributed networks. P2p offers an advantage to small content providers in that by distributing files from several "seeding" computers the load on a single upload source server is avoided. [5] Common p2p applications include azureus, emule and bit torrent.
Ygnition reserves the right to unilateral termination of service regarding filesharing without notice. In the language of the service agreement; "Peer-to-peer file sharing: Ygnition Networks does not support unrestricted peer-to-peer file sharing and related downloads. File-sharing programs, at the sole discretion of Ygnition Networks, may be limited in order to preserve the capacity of the network. Service to Subscribers that continue to use an inordinate level of bandwidth due to peer-to-peer file sharing and related downloads after being informed by Ygnition Networks of the unacceptable usage, may be terminated without notice." Ygnition has not provided definition of what they consider "unrestricted peer-to-peer file sharing" nor have they defined "inordinate bandwidth"
In practice Ygnition service representatives inform subscibers that they do not support p2p filesharing period...
Like subscriber services on industry standard cable broadband ISPs, Ygnition reserves and practices the right to "to discontinue any and all Services to Subscriber at any time, without prior notice or liability, for any conduct which Ygnition Networks, in its sole and unfettered discretion, determines to violate the Agreement or is otherwise harmful to Ygnition Networks interests or the interest of others."
The primary justification Ygnition gives for service termination is bandwidth use. The primary reason they do not allow p2p filesharing is bandwidth use. As has been discussed bandwidth is also the primary limitation to Ygnition service. Competing cable service providers also reserve the right to restrict legal p2p filesharing. DSL and dial-up service providers have only the individual line speed limitations to limit use of p2p filesharing.
In the case of service termination "Subscriber shall have no right to be re-connected, except on terms acceptable to Ygnition Networks in their sole discretion." This should also be considered in light of the fact that if Ygnition refuses to reconnect, the subscriber has no access to competing cable providers even when those providers service the local market. In fact, when Ygnition services an apartment complex the tenant has no access to cable ISP access at all. This is, however, typical of all ISP's, even in residential areas.
