[NTLUG:Discuss] High speed access.

[Rick Matthews]

I'm in Plano (zip 75093) and I've had DSL through Verizon (my local
phone company) since early in 1997.  Back then you were almost
forced to use a different company as an ISP, and that's what I did
until my isp went out of business in 2001.  To reduce the risk of
experiencing another dying ISP I went with Verizon DSL/Verizon ISP.
That's when I found out that I had been paying a $20 premium to 
use a different ISP.

My service has been excellent.  In the past 3 or 4 years I've probably
had 4 outages (longer than a minute or so).  One was a flaky DSL
modem which was identified by an on-site tech and replaced at no
charge, and the other 3 were system or area-wide (and I learned
about them during the recording that answers the support number...
only spent about a minute on the phone).

I've found my dhcp lease to only be for an hour, but I was reassigned
the same IP from 5/20/02 until 2/21/03, and I caused it to change
then.

I don't know if you mentioned it, but http://www.dslreports.com/ is
an excellent resource when relocating.

Hope that helps...

Rick




> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org]On
> Behalf Of Tim Riker
> Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2003 2:23 AM
> To: discuss at ntlug.org
> Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] High speed access.
> 
> 
> Thanx to all those that replied. It looks like DSL and attbi are the 
> choices. Anyone with either want to offer comments as to reliability etc?
> 
> I'm currently on QWest DSL, but I use a different ISP (xmission.com) 
> cause they are much more reliable and open with updates about network 
> loads, outages and the causes of them, etc.
> 
> Are there folks out there with DSL through SBC/Yahoo? What's the cost, 
> speed, and do they offer static IPs?
> 
> I'd prefer a higher speed upload than 128k. 256k would be fine. I'd 
> strongly prefer a routable static IP address. I'll run ssh, smtp, 
> identd, imaps, pop3s, http, https, bzflag (tcp/udp 5155-5157), dns, and 
> other standard services. If you are on dynamic IP, how often do they 
> change? Assume my server will be on 24/7.
> 
> Are there other DSL ISP choices? They all seem to want a phone number 
> first, and I don't even have a house or location picked out yet. ;-(
> 
> TJ says he's on satelite. Unfortunately I don't see myself playing much 
> BZFlag over a satelite link. ;-)
> 
> A private message comments about *DSL being spotty in some areas. 
> Frankly, getting reliable high speed internet access is very high on my 
> list of requirements for home shopping. With the home I'm in how I 
> grepped the net for the old home owner's phone number and had the line 
> pretested by QWest before purchasing. It went something like this:
> 
> "I'd like to test my line for DSL availability"
> 
> "ok, what's your phone number?"
> 
> "801 *** ****"
> 
> "uh, I show that number as being disconnected"
> 
> "yes, I know. Please test the line anyway"
> 
> "you know that you need to have phone service to order DSL, right?"
> 
> "yes, I know. Please test the line for DSL."
> 
> "I don't show an active account on this line."
> 
> (argh!!!) "yes, I know. Please test the line anyway."
> 
> confused operator: "are you sure?"
> 
> "yes! please test the line."
> 
> "the line passes, DSL service should be available".
> 
> "thank you. Goodbye"
> 
> I'll probably do the same there. ;-)
> -- 
> Tim Riker - http://rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org
> former Lineo CTO - Tim at Lineo.com - http://www.Lineo.com/
> BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun!
> 
> 
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