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The Internet

On the Reliability of DSL Providers... 587

Posted by Cliff from the seeking-broadband-consumer-testimonials dept.
vt@home asks: "It so happened that I have to find a provider again. @Home is not available at my current location, US West says my location is not good enough for DSL, yet, many DSL providers (Verio and Bazillion, to name a few) claim that they can provide me with at least 144K connection. It's alarming that most of the people who have any opinion about DSL, have a negative one (see DSL Reports for one), and the positive opinions look suspiciously like stroturfers. Additional points of concern are the 1 year commitments, and the unusually long time wait time before the service is activated (4-6 weeks on paper could turn into months). So the question is, what is a reliable source that rates the DSL providers? Do you guys have anything to say about your DSL provider, no matter good or bad? If you ever switched from the cable modem to DSL (or back), how was it? Responses about Phoenix Metro will be much appreciated."

As someone personally suffering in DSL Limbo, I can understand vt@home's frustration. I ordered my DSL way back at the end of July and was told "6 weeks" by the company that's offering DSL in my area. Of course, it's now nearing the end of September and although I was promised that Bell-Atlantic (now Verizon) would make the necessary connections last Friday. It's Tuesday and nary a Verizon truck in site with my line. I can't blame the company I initially signed up with. They made the offer in good faith, but we both have been screwed by the local telco. Strike withstanding, I figure I should have seen someone by now, yet I haven't. This story is not unusual in the pursuit of DSL.

So if you have DSL, please share your experiences good or bad and tell us what you think of your provider. If anything it might help the next person in search of broadband prepare for the long waits and the excuses if their service isn't delivered as promised.
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On the Reliability of DSL Providers... More

On the Reliability of DSL Providers...

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  • I have SWBell in Dallas - I've had nothing but good experiences with it. I think I've had about 1 day total of downtime over the past 3 months, which is pretty good compared to what I was getting over dial-up. I'm getting terrific speed, despite not being all that close to the box.

    On the other hand, some of my friends have really gotten reamed by them.

  • IDSL (Score:4)

    by NetJunkie ( 56134 ) <jason.nash@CHICAGOgmail.com minus city> on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @08:08AM (#749509)
    The 144Kb quote the others give is for IDSL. It's basically ISDN. It can go a lot further than ADSL, but costs a lot more. We are outside the range of ADSL and use IDSL and it works great. Just don't expect great speeds.

    You'll probably have to go to a 3rd party providor, we use Speakeasy and are VERY happy with them. Most Telcos won't deal with IDSL. They prefer the quick ADSL installs. People that pay more for IDSL are usually "expert" users and require more service (DNS, More IPs..etc). They prefer to make the quick buck on web surfers.
  • I have 608/128kbps service with SpeakEasy [speakeasy.net] in the Boston area. I ordered it in the beginning of May and was given an install date two weeks later. It's been running at the full 608kbps speed ever since, has never gone down, and the company is great in terms of catering to people who know what they want (i.e. multiple static IPs, encouraged domain and web serving, etc). I'd highly suggest them in any area, for that matter.
  • I've got Toad.Net DSL here in Alexandria, and I have had nothing but positive experiences with them. I'm at the edge of their limit (I'm at 11,000 ft from the exchange, the limit is 12,000) for DSL, but I get great bandwidth (1.5Mbit) for a reasonable price ($80/mo) and their customer service rocks my world!

  • I had a huge customer-related service issue with Speakeasy. They apparently sent an email stating their terms of service to one of my Hotmail accounts. In this email was a contract I "didn't have to sign", saying if I wanted to quit their service they'd charge me close to $300.

    Since I never saw the email, and they never had me sign or click OK on a contract, I was more than a little angry when I tried to disconnect a month later. I wrote them saying I doubted the legality of emailed contracts, and how did they know I approved of it? They shrugged me off so I wrote the Better Business Bureau.

    Beware of Speakeasy. Their contracts are very dirty and the speed was nothing to write home about (350 kbps on a 608 connection).

  • I've given up (Score:3)

    by rkent ( 73434 ) <rkent@post.ha r v a r d . edu> on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @08:15AM (#749526)
    I live in Tucson, so I'll be watching these responses closely as well :) As of now, I've basically given up on DSL. PSN.net promised me they could do it, but USWest assured me that the phone lines in my building weren't good enough (I live in an apartment - doh!).

    I was looking at alternatives, including cable modem, and one of the other things I came across was sprint wireless. The price looks about the same as DSL, and installation is free at the moment. However, the "details" section on their product page pretty much said "this is fast internet service." Thanks. Does anyone have any experience with this? What IS the service, actually? Does it depend on existing phone lines at all? If not, could be the way to go...

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Re:US West (Score:3)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @08:16AM (#749528) Homepage Journal
    In the half year I've had DSL with US west in the twin cities, I've only had ONE outage(2 weeks ago). I confirmed with tech support the area was down, and it was up in less than 8 hours.

    As for DSL providers, I was originally told I didn't qualify by us west. I checked into another company(shoot, forgot my name), which said they did reach out into my area, but the pricing was horrible. 1 year commitment, HUGE up front fee. Any change to your service(up/down on your bandwidth) had a charge, miss the tech showing up to your place, you get charged.

    ALL of these charges were in the 3-figure range, so I suspect they were catering to businesses.

    Half a year later I sign up for US West's deal, now being qualified. I was up in running within a week of me calling. I haven't been dissatisified at all with them. Maybe I'm just lucky.

    They even bumped up my bandwidth from 256 to 640 for free.
  • I'm in Richmond Virginia, and I ordered DSL with verizon at the very beginning of July. I'm still waiting. Just 3 days ago, they called me up to tell me that it was on, and that I should go for it. I tried, but I couldn't get it to work due to a problem with syncing up with the central office. They said that they'd look into it, and that it would take 24 hours. I'm still waiting. I've tried to get DSL through other companies, and I've had experiences that were as bad or worse. I tried through one company, and they said that they'd wire everything up and give me all the equipment for $100. I told them that I was in an old building and they said that was OK, that old wires were actually better for DSL (???). When they came, they decided that I would need an extra $300 worth of wiring. I told them what they could do with their wire. I've basically been trying to get DSL since March, and haven't been able to do it, even though I live in a reasonably large area, and the telco is quite close to me. When you add wiring to verizon employees striking to employee incompetance and sprinkle in some good old huge company red tape, you get an extremely frustrating experience. So that's my story...that it's next to impossible to get DSL, and the people that I know that do have it say they have connection problems at least once or twice a week, requiring intervention by the telco (usually syncing problems) that take 2-3 days to resolve PER ISSUE. Ain't technology grand? I realize this isn't everybody's experience, but in terms of what I've seen, 9600 baud modems are much more reliable and faster, since they actually work.
  • Don't get connected directly through Bell Atlantic. Their connection speeds are abysmal, and their support can be technologically insulting.

    I bounced from them to Speakeasy (yuck) to Comcast and settled on their cable service. It's extremely fast and I'm quite happy.

  • Tried Wireless? (Score:3)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @08:19AM (#749536) Homepage Journal

    Check to see if there are any wireless Internet providers in your area. The rates in the SF Bay area tend to be higher than for a hard line of the same speed. However, it may be viable in rural areas where it's all too easy to be more than DSL's maximum 15K feet from the central office.

    Schwab

  • shop around. I found a couple DSL providers that don't require one year contracts. Currently I'm using linkline, but I think they're only in the southern california area. I had a hell of a time getting my service sorted out with them... I was supposed to have 768k sdsl, but I was getting 256k/64k adsl. It took about 10 calls within a 2 day period to get it all sorted out, but it works great now. If you're having a problem with your DSL, call early and call often!! If you're waiting for action on an open ticket, call every 4 hours or so to check status. That's the ONLY way I actually got anything done dealing with them. If you can, try to find a provider in your area that will allow you to do a self-install. I got my modem shipped to me within a week of my order, and it was turned on two days later. Waiting for an appointment for a DSL guy to show up can take MONTHS.
  • It's alarming that most of the people who have any opinion about DSL, have a negative one (see DSL Reports for one), and the positive opinions look suspiciously like stroturfers.

    If that isn't a trollish statement, I don't know what is. Is the poster really trying to indicate that a minority of DSL users have a positive opinion about it? That this is an issue worthy of 'advocacy' and astroturfing?

    Look, DSL has lots of known problems. Technological (distance limitations), Market structure (competing vendors that are supposed to be cooperating), and Organizational (too much demand, slipping deployment schedules). This leads to lots of pain and "bitch boards" like DSL Reports. Yeah, there are problems, but a vast majority of users can't be having them, could they?

    On top of that, in most places in the US, cable and the telcos have an under-the-table non-compete agreement. Most people either get one or the other (or neither). That means that people don't really have choice in the matter and therefore have no interest in trying to promote one tech over the other.

    When I got DSL, it almost went wrong when the installers miswired everything (fortunately the 'old vet' caught the f-up), and my ISP screwed up the billing. But, on the other hand, PacBell upgraded the CO equipment right before installation, and I get 1.1-1.5K speeds easy. Did I run out and tell everyone on DSL Reports? Did I feel the need to evangelize DSL over cable or 2400baud modems? No, I pretty much just got on with my life.

  • IDSL (Score:2)

    by Big Boss ( 7354 )
    I have been looking into this for a while now. Here's the deal. IDSL is ISDN with a few changes to make it "always-on" and to use all the bandwidth in a single channel. Thus you get 144K rather than 128K in 2 64K channels. It has the longer range of ISDN though. This is nice for those like me who are out of range of "normal" DSL service like the stuff USWest offers. It's a pain to get installed though. I've been waiting for quite some time. Apparently there was a line issue USWest had to fix. They were supposed to be here 9/20 but no word yet one week later. This order is a coupple months old now. If you do order it, be prepared to WAIT. It will take a while.

    I'm going through SpeakEasy because of the good reviews on DSLReports.com. They also offer a decent price for the service and have static IPs and a reasonable use policy. The total end cost is close to what I was paying for 256k RADSL service and the ISP charge. As I don't actually have a line yet, I can't comment on the quality. ;)
  • Business DSL in Canada is getting quite good. They install within a couple weeks and guarantee uptime of 99.5% (they'll have someone on site in 4 hours if there is an issue). Plus they give 2.2MBps and 32 static IPs. All for $300 a month (in US$). In some areas the service is better than that (in BC some people have got 4MBps).

    However on the residential side some of things many providers (such as Sympatico [http]) are moving to a PPPoE config. This has caused a lot of problems, as the supported clients are lousy. The reliability of the PPPoE clients is sorely lacking. The one provided by Sympatico, called Access Manager isn't supported on linux or NT/2000. There is however another client called EnterNet [nts.com] that will work with the Sympatico system. However, it costs $30 (US I believe). I strongly urge you to stay away from any DSL company using PPPoE. Go for one that uses straight DHCP instead!
  • I've had a 256k line through USWest (now Qwest)
    for about a year and 9 months, and I've been
    pretty pleased.

    The speed is pretty reliable, but doesn't go over
    35kbyte/sec as often as it used to. (When I first
    got the line 60-70k was fairly regular...)

    There's been some downtime, but it's usually only
    an hour or so, and pretty rare...I'd say all in
    all about two days downtime total in a year.

    My only complaint is that you have to go to 'business service' (50-75% more expensive, same speed) to get a static IP.

    All in all, tho, I've found it to be pretty nice. Sure beats the hell out of a modem.
    --K
    ---

  • DSL needs a telco box at the customer end (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @08:25AM (#749560) Homepage
    The big problem with DSL is that there's usually no carrier equipment at the customer end that the central office can talk to. The way it ought to work is that the carrier provides you with a small router box, they're responsible for the router and everything upstream of it, and you're responsible for your side. Then they can ping and talk to the router box, maybe even talk SNMP to it or make it do loopback tests for them, and you can ping the router and see if things are up locally on your side. That eliminates any need for telco tech support to mess with Microsoft software.

    Some of the smaller DSL providers do in fact work that way, but the telcos generally don't. Without this, the product is unmaintainable.

    The problem is that DSL was designed when routers were expensive. Small routers are down around $100 now, and dropping, so that's no longer an issue.

  • They'll get my DSL connection when they pry it from my cold, dead heads.

    I have nothing but positive experiences with my DSL connection. I can't sat it any more simply than that.

    The secret to DSL is picking the right ISP. With DSL, at least in most areas, you get to pick your ISP - you aren't just stuck with using the megalopoly that owns the wires. So, I shopped around for an ISP wirh an acceptable use policy that was acceptable to me. I found a local ISP whose AUP was basically "1) Don't hack our systems. 2) Our job is to provide a reliable IP connection. Obey rule #1 and we don't care what you do with it."

    If I ever have to move out of the area, I will miss my DSL connection the most.

  • I have 640K ADSL through Verizon (though the end of my e-mail address is still bellatlantic.net), and it's not that bad. Availability was a no-brainer, as I'm only three miles away from the substation. I even downloaded the infamous Daikatana patch and the Elite Force demo, but that's where the good parts end.

    Lately, my connection's been dropping at the damndest times (usually while searching for or while connected to a Counter-Strike server). It seems that Verizon has done the price yo-yo: originally, the price per month was $39.99, then $29.99. About three weeks later, I saw their ad which said "Connect for the low price of $39.99!" Hello, that's higher! I found out why though: new users don't have to buy a DSL modem; that's worse, since that could be a contract stipulation which could get you in the end. I bought my modem through them, and feel happy that I can just sign up with Covad or Concentric if they start screwing around. Which reminds me, there's been one day of downtime per month; in August, a problem with Qwest's network, then in September, the PPPoE server died.

    This is starting to make me think back to that GameSpy spoof article, "Top Ten Reasons for Lag." Number 8: Covad technicians on crack.

  • Bandwidth is as expected. Throughput the same.

    Waited for six weeks while Verizon and Internet America couldn't get their damn act together.... I'm being reliably told by others that the same is the case all over the place.

    Cable sucks. xDSL sucks. For different reasons, of course, but it's a hell of a lot better than dialup just the same. Faster and no waiting for the firewall to dial up the ISP.

  • Why You See So Many Negative Reviews (Score:4)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @08:30AM (#749578) Homepage
    Basically, people aren't moved to action until something goes wrong. I had DSL last summer in my apartment (summer apartment). Installation was painless. Service was great. I had no problems, and of course, there were no problems with my location. My father has also had DSL for over a year with very little in the way of problems (SWB accidentally switched him off his current ISP to theirs at one point, but a phone call cleared that up).

    However, this summer, I tried to sign up for DSL at my new residence. I was told I was in the self-install area. Then I was told I wasn't. Then I was told I wasn't even eligible. In the span of two months I went from being able to just plug in the equipment to not being able to use it at all. I posted a few reviews, but lost interest. Of course, last summer, when the DSL installation went smoothly, I could care less about posting to message boards; I was too busy exploring the speeds that DSL gave me.

    If you're a business. Put up the cash and get a T1. Don't depend on DSL and don't depend on ISDN. If you're a home consumer, go for DSL, but don't get pissed when it doesn't go your way. It works for some and it doesn't work for others. Get ISDN through an alternate provider if you can't get DSL. They're generally a lot (10-20%) cheaper, and the speeds are about the same as IDSL.

  • Take Notes, Be A Jerk (Score:4)

    by waldoj ( 8229 ) <waldo@@@jaquith...org> on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @08:31AM (#749583) Homepage Journal
    I get my connections through Intelos [intelos.net], a Central Virginia provider. Though I have no gripes about the quality of service, I've got to say that even this relatively-small, regional provider has absolutely abysmal install times. They like to blame it on Sprint, but it's quite frequently not Sprint's fault.

    I've had about half a dozen installs from Intelos, all have been at least a month late. One was five months later than the four weeks that was promised. I really pushed on them hard for my home install about six months ago, and found that my sales representative had never filed any of the paperwork, despite his repeated assurances that Sprint was just slowing things down. Unfortunately, it look four weeks to find that out.

    My biggest suggestion is this: take notes Everytime that you talk to a potential provider, record the date and time, number that you talked to, name of who you talked to, and what you talked about, complete with quotes. I've hit dead-ends so many times because I can't tell the Latrinas from the Britannys after a while. And it's assumed that I'm lying if I can't tell them the exact date, time and individual. Don't be a pushover.

    If you do this, and behave like a complete asshole, you'll probably get good results.

    -Waldo
  • Everyone I know who has DSL had trouble with the installation phase. Some had trouble with the installers keeping appointments, others had to have multiple visits, and some had reliability problems that started with the install and continue to this day. Opinion writer Holman Jenkins in today's Wall St. Journal, in a piece titled "How a Telecom Meltdown Will Cause the Next Recession" (if you can get yourself a copy, I recommend reading the whole piece. If you subscribe to the WSJ online, here's a link to the story [wsj.com].) had this to say about DSL: "Verizon, formerly New York Tel and now merged with Bell Atlantic and GTE, has been pretending since May to get my high-speed DSL working. Why do I begin to suspect Verizon only wanted to stall me from signing up for Time Warner's competing cable modem access?"
  • YES!!! I want to help you denounce the evil that is slashdot!
    As soon as I finish posting this I will email you to..... oh wait, you posted as AC... STUPID TROLL! get a life!



  • The experience I've had with Pac Bell is horrible, namely because their tech support is horrible. I administer the system suespammers.org [suespammers.org], which sits on one of their DSL lines, and 45 minute waits are the norm when calling their tech support line.

    A few weeks ago, we were having severe (>9000 ms delay) latency problems, and upon our first call to them, they told us things like "clear your cache". Morons. After about 2 days, and them finally sending someone over to the place where the DSL line is installed, we finally determined that the problem was on our LAN. Had Pac Bell bothered to do something so trivial such as to ping the DSL modem from their location, and see that ping times were normal, they could have avoided having to come out in the first place. (Yes, I should have pinged the modem myself, but I missed that step in my troubleshooting..)

    The full story about our experience with Pac Bell can be found here [claws-and-paws.com].

  • I'm down a bit farther south from you in Hampton roads. I don't know if Cox Cable is avalible in your area, but they have been pretty good to me.

    The downsides are that they (usually) don't meet their claim of 3.5Mb/sec. and the IPs are dynamic (static isn't avalible period.) Also, your not *supposed* to host webpages etc off of your own computer, but instead use their provided webspacd

    On the positive side, my connections have been reliable all but for 2 occasions (in the past year and a half) when whole area's were down. Their speeds are usually well over 1.5Mb/sec. and their usually very responsive and helpful when their is a problem.

  • I can tell you straight up as an engineer at MegaPath Networks that provisioning DSL is one of the hardest things on the planet to do. Especially as a nationwide ISP. You have all of the baby bells, each one doing things completely different (and wrong). DSL isn't like cable in the sense that you get repeaters on the line or any one of a million other things that the telcos use to provide phone services to places in the boonies.

    DSL is a terribly complicated technology. In theory a telco or an ISP should be able to just hook up a line to your phone box and get you a nice fat 1.5 symetric connection for 20 bucks a month. However combined with all of the technical difficulties you also have anticompetitive behavior from the baby bells trying to under cut the competition "because they can!". Remember that with DSL you also must deal with third and fourth parties, sometimes even 5th parties. You have the telco (ILEC) then you have the CLEC (Northpoint, Covad, Rythmes, New Edge), then you have your ISP (MegaPath, Mindspring), and in some cases, quite a few actually ISP's will have resellers. Going through so many channels leaves a lot of room for error. God couldn't gaurantee an install with this going on. Cable service isn't plagued with this (yet!).

    Now as a shameful plug for my company I must say we do the best job and are the highest rated company because we work extremely hard and have positioned ourselves in a way that lets us work with our CLECs rather than against them. This has proven very difficult to do, especially now that we have 3 CLECs. As an ISP you must be flexible and scalable. These two issues are the two main reasons why DSL providers are dropping like flies. You really need a balance between sales and engineering. Most ISP's around today were founded by engineers who really have no business sense let alone customer service skills. Yet as my old business teacher once told me "If you're not growing, you're dying". These companies must expand but in most cases expansion is in the wrong direction.

    I'm all for competition, but in this market competition is whats killing the technology. Everyone is fighting over the market, under pricing their services, over selling and then folding leaving other ISP's such as MegaPath to clean up the mess. Go work at an ISP for a month and you will see endless droves of CEO's from other providers coming in to pimp their company off to the highest bidder because it's failing and they need to run for cover. No one wants to build something anymore. It's the IPO bandwagon, make something quick and cheap, sell it for 100 times it's worth and get fat on the beach in tahiti. Investors woke up back in April, they realized what was going on. DSL had become a buzzword used to suck in venture capitol. When the market crashed so did a lot of ISPs and rightfully so. It does make my companies job harder though. We have to fight off the bad reps of these other guys while maintianing a much higher level of customer service because thats whats expected.

    I love the internet and I love my job. However I have a strong hatred for the over night millionaires that have done so much to destroy a great technology. How many millions need to be made before it's "enough"? When does it stop? Why can't we just run our business without constantly fighting off the vultures.

    My company is more expensive than others, no doubt. We won't deny that, however we are very worth it. It's the difference between buying a pinto and buying a cadillac. One can't hold a candle to the other.

    Enough of this rant, hope it helps someone make the right decision though.

  • I've got Bell Sympatico ADSL installed, and I've been extremely pleased with it - low ping times, transfer rates near the theoretical max (I pull 108Kbytes/sec continuous to local servers) and only one evening of unconnectable time in the last six months. Hardware installation was extremely straightforward, and everything runs beautifully under Linux (DLink card, 1Mb Nortel Modem, PPPoE using RoaringPenguin). Given that most of my cable using friends have trouble with availability and ping times to ostensibly local servers due to ridiculous routing, I'm pretty happy.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • A bit of background info. My father worked in an engineering office for one of the baby bells. His job was to design the facilities that would be needed to get service to a particular location. For example if your subdevelopment needed 20 new cable drops, he would decide what equipment was needed, what had to be installed, etc, etc. This is how I know what (admitedly little) I know, so please pardon me if my terminology isn't exactly correct.

    A huge part of the problem with getting DSL service rolled out is that the phone companies simply do not have the facilities to properly do the job. Several years ago (~10) some genius decided to go from two cables per houshold, to one cable per household. This was shortly before the real explosion in demand for non voice services. (read the internet, fax machines, etc) The long and the short of it is that the phone companies are facing a fairly significant limitation in the availability of facilities to offer new services from. This means that in many cases they often can't offer DSL service even to places that might otherwise be able to get it.

    There are other issues too. DSL is a clever technology which permits the phone companies to use a percentage of the current infrastructure for a purpose it wasn't really designed for. (it was designed for voice communication) If you live in a rural area, forget about it. If you don't happen to live near a central office, forget about it. They can't afford the upgrades to "do it right", so you will either get some alternative (cable, wireless, sattelite) or you will be waiting for quite a long time. Given the problems the telco's are having getting their infrastructure problems solved, is it really that surprising that the service itself is not of the highest quality?

  • I'm on the San Francisco Peninsula, and I currently have 416K SDSL. The ISP is Best/Verio; the DSL provider is Northpoint. I'm currently paying... er, a lot. Once I get my act together, I'm planning on jumping over to Speakeasy.net which offers similar speeds for much lower prices.

    I am about 2000 feet from the central office, so I can crank to 1.5Mbit if I want.

    Installation was relatively painless. The first scheduled day they didn't show; they were very apologetic. The second scheduled day they showed up, patched in the line, and tested the line quality.

    The day after that, the Netopia R7100 DSL tranciever/router arrived, I plugged it in and... Nothing happened. I called Best, who called Northpoint, who called me back. After a quick conversation, they said, "Try it now." I did, and it worked.

    And it's worked ever since. Actual speed, sans network stalls, is closer to 470K. Occasionally one of Best/Verio's routers in Palo Alto or Mountain View will spazz out and drop packets all over the place, but otherwise it's been very solid service. Of course, once Verio assimilated Best, they "integrated" the customer support functions and things started to suck. For example, I used to be able to phone the 24-hour NOC number and get a knowledgable technician within two minutes. Now calls to the NOC get routed to the main Verio call tree, where I get to wait at least ten minutes and speak to... Someone else. sigh

    Schwab

  • I've been with Speakeasy of Seattle for over a year now. I'd guesstimate 99% uptime. Last night it went down for maybe 5 minutes, a few weeks ago maybe 4 hours. But as a whole it's been very reliable. I run 3 shoutcast/mp3 streams, a quake3 server, ftp server, website and a DNS server off a 768k (both ways) ADSL line. It costs my roommate and I about 130 a month. This also comes with 8 static IP's offers unlimeted up and down

    I've been very happy with it. I'm moving down to Austin soon and hope to find such good service. Anyone have any tips on DSL in Austin? Id like to have at least one static IP, I don't think I'll *need* 768k, at least not up and down.

    -Jon
  • I'm in the same boat. Anyone from Littleton, CO have some advice? ADSL with multiple IPs would, of course, be sweet... It's funny really. I live less than a thousand feet from the HEADQUARTERS of TCI (at least it was till a few months ago). Is there cable modem service? ohhh, no...

  • "I ordered my DSL way back at the end of July and was told "6 weeks" by the company that's offering DSL in my area. Of course, it's now nearing the end of September and although I was promised that Bell-Atlantic (now Verizon) would make the necessary connections last Friday. It's Tuesday and nary a Verizon truck in site with my line.

    Between the time I ordered my DSL and when the signal was activated, I didn't see a truck either. I tested out the DSL modem before the signal was supposed to be on, and it looked like it was actually connecting! Trouble was, the server for setting up an account was down. So I called Verizon and set up an account. The surprising part is, I called during the second day of the IBEW strike! Nice to know that there actually are Verizon workers who don't succumb to greed.

  • Well they suck...
    I am in brooklyn, new york and I use them:

    Points for:
    You have to go through verizon even if you use another service. So I chose them since I would rather yell directly at them, than yell at the Support person at another place who has to yell at them.

    If you complain about downtime they will give you a pretty hefty rebate.

    They used to give a hundred dollar credit for referrals.

    Points against:
    They go down often, sometimes for minutes sometimes for days.

    Their first tier support is for shit, I tricked them into telling me their setup one day, they are
    localized in the south east and their support people read off cards, 90% of their solutions are "is your modem plugged in, is the computer on?"

    They do NOT have any access to network status, they wait until several people call in to complain about outages in an area and then they ask someone to look at it.

    I use Mac OS 9 which they do not support, so I have to lie to them and tell them I am on OS 8.x
    to even get them to talk to me.

    They Use PPPoE so you have to use their stupid little connection app, that is pure garbage. This makes it a nightmare when I boot into linux (yes I know there are linux PPPoE solutions, but they are very rough right now) I basically cannot use them under linux.

    It took them weeks to hook up the service even though I did the install myself, they kept insisting that the service was on, I said it wasn't. Two weeks after that they sheepishly explained that they forgot to "flip the switch".

    I had a friend who signed up before the strike, a month and half later they called and said he was too far away to get DSL even though they had already signed him up and told him it was ready. They overcommitted their service and are now straight up lying to people about the service.

    This my friends is textbook example of why monoplies suck.

    But it still beats a dial up any day of the week.
  • US West blew me off for about a year after I moved here (Po-Dunk Colorado.) I kept getting the "You're 2000 feet too far away" and "You'll be in range Real Soon Now" story from them. Then a friend of mine told me to check out Covad. 2 weeks (!) later I was online with 768 both ways through speakeasy.

    I have seen a few problems with the connection, but generally Speakeasy's pretty responsive and gets things fixed pretty quickly. I get transfer rates that are pretty consistently 75K except to a few providers such as TuCows who seem to lock connections to 15K (FTPing Loki demos from Germany is usually 4 times faster than any of the US mirrors Loki names.)

  • The system they have is primarily for installations. I chose to get my account disconnected approximately 7 days after the 30-day trial period.

    At that point they charged me $300 for "breaking the good will contract" that came in the email. That, coupled with the $200 installation meant I spent $500 in a little over a month. I still haven't received my rebate for the installation as promised.

    Personally, the install for Comcast was so much faster and less painless that I can't see why more people don't do it. The speed is always at a reasonable level, and I think the cable speed worries are a little unwarranted. I've had several of my friends on the same street get Comcast and the speed hasn't gone down whatsoever.

    Besides, from a technical standpoint, can't they simply add more routers at the local stations as traffic grows?

  • I'll start this off by saying that everything works fairly well, now. 768 SDSL, FlowPoint Router, block of IPs.

    It took quite a while to get to this point, though. After a lot of reading, I decided to go with Internet Connect. I heard about problems during installations, but mostly with ADSL, and it seemed that once things were up and running, they stayed up and running (so it has been).

    A few weeks after signing my contract, I received an e-mail asking me to verify the details. They had everything right except the phone number, which was a work number at a completely different location, that I told them was for daytime contact only. I should have known then this wasn't going to be fun...

    After this, I found out that my contact at the company had left when they moved their office location. More confusion, I finally got a new point of contact, but he was not technical. Not at all. I reverted to using the regular tech support/installation status people when I needed to find out what was going on.

    When I was finally given an install date, I took the day off work, stayed home, and did not find out until the following week that there was a problem with the line. Or so they said.

    Another install date, another day off work, same thing.

    I tried to work my way up the tech support ladder, but to no avail. I got a different answer from everyone, and they were all wrong.

    Enter Northpoint. They are a sort of go-between, doing the onsite install piece, and setting up the installation with the local telco (Bell Atlantic). I gave them a call, talked to a few people, and found out that Bell Atlantic hadn't done anything yet.

    During the next few weeks, I talked to Northpoint a number of times, and everyone there was extremely helpful. The few times I tried calling Internet Connect, I got the same wrong answers to my questions, and no new information.

    Since Northpoint doesn't send the router until the line is active, I had been checking line status every day so that I could get the router in and configured ASAP. On the day it went active, they had sent the router out overnight before I even asked. Again, very smooth on their end.

    So they schedule their tech to come out, and I call Internet Connect again to inform them of this, since they have no idea what is going on. I ask for my block of IPs, which I had requested when I signed the contract. They had no idea what I was talking about.

    So when the tech arrives (from Northpoint), the router gets installed, and it has to be configured for NAT. Simple enough. I've configured routers before, I can change it.

    I get the block, configure it, and nothing. Hours on the phone with tech support. Nothing. Then it is discovered that the block of IPs is set to router to California. I'm in Virginia. All the while, the tech support people think I am either nuts or inept. But when that route was fixed... Suprise, suprise, it all worked. Guess it must have been my fault after all, huh guys? :)

    If you are ready to deal with this sort of hassle, by all means get DSL. It is great when it finally works. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
  • While we're trashing DSL providers i thought i'd throw in my two cents. As some of you may or may not know, Colorado (where i live) was one of the only states to allow the Qwest/USWest merger to complete without any stipulations. We're paying for this in every aspect of the game.

    If you can get it reliably, DSL is a very nice choice. I'm not sure that the peak bandwidth is as good as cable (from what i've seen) but it's a reliable bandwidth.

    The lesson i've learned. Make SURE you can handle the DSL. In the past three weeks, because of the DSL, we have gone ~12 days without any form of phone service because of, first a blown transciever or some such at the CO, next a bad drop line, and then our super smart linemen decided that it would be better to disconnect the particular jack i was running my DSL on (go figure).

    Note: this wasn't a situation of "maybe you can get DSL, we'll try it and see" - this was a sure thing, as far as USWest was concerned.

    Be careful...your DSL *can* be more trouble than it's worth. Make sure you know what you're getting into (when it's on, it kicks ass).


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • Telcos and other lower forms of life (Score:3)

    by Old Man Kensey ( 5209 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @08:55AM (#749660) Homepage
    Here in Charlottesville, your choices are Sprint (our ILEC), Ntelos (formerly CFW/Intelos, a local CLEC/ISP), or Cornerstone (a recently-acquired subsidiary of Ntelos).

    Sprint being the sleazy telco they are, and their ADSL offerings being way overpriced anyway, I didn't even look hard at them. They also will tell you things like Linux and NAT "won't work -- people have tried, believe me" even though they do (at the moment at least). Basically if you don't have Windows, or at least say you do, they won't talk to you.

    CFW's service is MVL. What I can find about MVL leads me to believe it essentially sacrifices top-end bandwidth to get greater distance. I got CFW's 384K MVL service (the other option is 768K) last year, and had it till I moved in June. The service was great, but getting it installed and getting a correct bill from them was a nightmare. They lost my first payment and only recently did they agree to credit anything to my account. This is nothing new for them apparently -- I found at least 3 other horror stories of CFW billing screwups.

    Now I've ditched them, and I'm getting service through their subsidiary Cornerstone. This should be a lot better, because I'm actually getting responses to my questions and I know a lot of people there, so billing disputes should be practically nonexistent.

    Tips:

    • Investigate resellers. The only thing they provide is customer service, and they know it. They also know you can usually get it from the source cheaper, so there's incentive for them to get things right.

    • Know how to contact your state utility regulation board. In most states telcos are a regulated monopoly, so there's usually some oversight board. Here in Virginia that duty lies with the State Corporation Commission, and they wield the baseball bat of authority with a will (a call from them just got me a big chunk of "late fees" removed from my old CFW bill).

    • Don't let the telco stonewall you. If they say the signal test was bad but you're in reasonable range, ask when the test was done. If it was a long time ago, tell them to test it again.

    • Be ready to forgo support, but don't hesitate to escalate things if you know it's not a problem on your end. If the LINK light on your modem goes out, don't hesitate to demand to talk with someone in Ops/engineering, regardless of their support policy re: Linux/other freenix -- after all, how could that be an OS problem?

    Basically be ready to fight tooth and nail for your consumer rights regardless of what you're told. But then as Slashdotters most of us know that already.

  • However on the residential side some of things many providers (such as Sympatico) are moving to a PPPoE config. This has caused a lot of problems, as the supported clients are lousy. The reliability of the PPPoE clients is sorely lacking. The one provided by Sympatico, called Access Manager isn't supported on linux or NT/2000.

    Access Mangler is probably best forgotten, and once you switch to Linux, Roaring Penguins PPPoE user-client is an easy install and setup, requiring no kernel patches. I've had NO problems at all with this setup and fast connection speeds (>100Kbytes/sec). If you are stuck on Windows, any PPPoE client should work - there doesn't appear to be anything particularly special about the Sympatico arrangement. Then of course the PPPoE support is supposed to be much improved in the 2.4.x series of kernels, so life should become even more flexible as these roll out.

    CHeers,

    Toby Haynes

  • I've had my DSL line from about July of last year (right around when they first started installing it in Denver).

    I've been pretty happy so far, but have had some frustrating experiences. I thought I'd share the mix, then tell you after my plans for the future...

    The Good:

    The install was great. Not that they didn't encounter technical problems - it turned out the eiring in my house for my primary line didn't really cut it for DSL, but the secondary wiring was OK so we just re-wired all the jacks in my house to use the second wiring. The installation guy really knew what he was doing, and spent about three hours on my install!

    Another nice thing was that even though I signed up for 256k service, ever since the start it's been 640k down (still 256k up though). Just recently, they sent out mail announcing my downlink was being upgraded to 640k for free! Seems they decided to turn a technical problem into a marketing advantage.

    Customer service reps I've actually found to be pretty friendly and helpful. If you are patient and nice to these people, they can do a lot for you... there are some non useful people but I really haven't had as many bad experiences as others have had.

    The Bad:

    About once a month or so, the DNS server seems to go down. I've had about four instances where my DSL has been down all weekend, a major bummer to say the least.

    I have an early Netspeed DSL modem. At one point, it had a flaky power supply - the lights all seemed to indicate things were fine, but the DSL line didn't work! After three days on the phone with helpful (but ineffective) US West (oh wait, I forgot to say "US West is now Qwest") people, they finally sent two techs out. One of them knew phone systems, but had no idea about computers. The other one knew all about computers, but nothing about phone systems. Between them they knew nothing at all about how to solve a problem. After an hour tailing along behind them, it was eventually myself who diagnosed the power supply as the problem.

    I also do not think U.S. West the ISP has the best of network connections.

    The Ugly:

    I think US West DSL is rather expensive - between my phone bill, by DSL line, the US West ISP, and my eight static IP's (you can only buy them in blocks of eight and you have to turn on business service), my phone bill is about $116 a month. I'm trying to sign up for Sprint ION [sprint.com], which should save me a bit of money while increasing my DSL speed by quite a bit and adding another phone line. I can't seem to get them to return my messages though!

    Right now I'm still not sure if DSL is better than a cable modem, though I still want to go that route to avoid future congestion. I think at some point I might get both just to have a reliable connection.
  • I have Bell Atlantic DSL. And I love it.

    They have had one major outage in the last year and a half. It was down for about 12 hours, and they gave me a month off (when I bitched enough :P). The rest of the time, the service has been fast and reliable. They now use pppoe, but it's standard, so rp-pppoe works fine with it. I leave my computer on all day whilest at work, no problems at all.
    --
    Matt Singerman

  • SpeakEasy is Politically Aware (Score:3)

    by LionKimbro ( 200000 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @09:04AM (#749685) Homepage

    That's interesting; I've only received nothing but the kindest of service from SpeakEasy.

    SpeakEasy is the most politically aware and open network, having made an explicit commitment to freedoms in their mission statement [speakeasy.net] and terms of service [speakeasy.net]. I had to turn down several ISP's (such as InternetConnect) because of their draconian TOS (which included that they can charge me $1,000 if I potentially infringe on IP). SpeakEasy [speakeasy.org] is the only ISP I trust.

    Just recently, Nader spoke at the SpeakEasy cafe off 2nd and Bell, downtown Seattle. SpeakEasy has lent the back room to Free Radio Seattle as well. If SpeakEasy isn't a safe ISP, I don't know who is.

  • PPPoE: great if you connect to multiple ISPs or networks (e.g. Sympatico and the university). The biggest problem that I have with it is the hit on the first hop (70ms), and the non-standard nature of the supplied client (other clients such as the free RASPPPOE, or WinPOeT, or Enternet, can be disconnect by the server without the client's knowledge.)

    Sympatico was great for me until about the 15th. I could live with the 120kbs upstream speed due to the reliability of service. I'm used to speeds in the region of 820 kbs, but recently I'm down to 550 or 270, with constant interruptions from the modem momentarily losing sync. I probably can't get anything done as I'm above the minimum 256kbs they guarantee :(
  • My experiences trying to get DSL have been pretty trying.

    I tried to get DSL through my local telco. (US West.) I am the proper distance, but US West claims that there is "something wrong with the line". When asked what the problem is, they cannot give me an answer.

    I try going through Covad and Northpoint. I get the answer that there is "electronics on the line". My only option given is to order IDSL which is basically an always on ISDN connection. (At ISDN speeds, which is much less than DSL.)

    It turns out that in order to save money in my neighborhood, US West has used hardware compression to make more voice lines fit on the trunk. Everyone in my neighborhood is screwed when it comes to DSL.

    Furthermore, the regulations for phone lines are so ancient in Oregon that you are pretty much SOL getting anything beyond a dial tone. And data? Don't make me laugh! They don't guarantee ANY sort of quality for data. And to make matters worse, they have gotten DSL exempted from the rules covering phone lines all together.

    Basically you are at their mercy if you want DSL.

    I am exploring other options to get high speed data into my house. So far, I have had few options and those become more vapornet as time goes on.

    "The more I deal with the phone company, the more I understand terrorism."
  • Just my $0.02: SWBell the ISP is much less clueful than SWBell the Telco/xDSL provider, in my experience. So you may want to go with SWBell for DSL but if possible stay away from the ISP side.

    Unfortunately I have had them as my dialup ISP for years now and don't want to go through the hassle of changing e-mail addresses, etc. again (it was bad enough when I ditched NetCom way back when - anybody remember NetCruiser?). I got a pretty good deal by signing up for a combined swbell.net ISP and DSL deal - 1.5 down/384 up, single dynamic IP, at around $40/month, free install & equip. (NIC, DSL modem, cables, splitters) w/1 yr. commit. The two (2) techs (!) they sent out to install were really on the ball-they rewired some taps, etc. to get me going at the full rate, and did a great job.

    Of course they also tried to keep charging me for dial-up after I cut over (a few phone calls fixed that). In general the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing over there - their tech support will walk you through all the clueless newbie troubleshooting steps every time you call, even when you KNOW it's got to be a problem on their end (several times they have had to reset the DSLAM to get me back up & running - nothing was wrong on my end at all, despite their initial protests). However SWBell has apparently outsourced most of their xDSL hardware support to another company (can't remember the name, but I think they handle all of SBC (SWBell + PacBell) DSL tech support at this point), so maybe that explains it. Also, they are trying to cut everybody off of plain ADSL with DHCP and are signing new home users up only with PPPoE (which means you must use their Win or Mac PPPoE software, or figure out how to run PPPoE on Linux). Finally, they recently rate-limited downloads from mail and news servers to 384k which put a severe crimp in my alt.binaries.* habit....

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

  • PacBell DSL, 6 Mb/s (Score:4)

    by davidb54 ( 120923 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @09:11AM (#749701) Homepage
    I have had DSL through PacBell for most of the past year. By sheer luck, when I moved to San Francisco I picked a location which happened to be about 2 blocks from a phone office. When the guy came by to check my line for my maximum download rate, he said "8.3 Megabits per second". Pacbell doesn't let you get away with that kind of speed but they do give you 6 Mb/s if you pay some extra. So naturally I paid extra. It's worth it sometimes, although not as often as you might think. Not long ago I downloaded a 288 MB file (Oracle 8i for Linux) in about 3.5 minutes. That was cool, but most of the time my download speed is limited by the other end of the pipe.

    A friend of mine who works in the ADSL group at Texas Instruments told me that the falloff in bandwidth with distance from the phone office is actually pretty negligible until you get to about 2 km. After that you start losing bandwidth due to signal attenuation (AC conductivity of copper goes as 1/f^2 where f is the frequency of the alternating current, and ADSL uses frequencies up to at least 1 MHz IIRC). The point is, if you live within a mile of the phone office, life is great. If you live within 3 miles, life is tolerable. If you live farther away than that, then you should move or figure out some other broadband solution.

    Dave Bailey

  • I live in New Brunswick, Canada.

    Cable service in my area is a joke (it MAY have changed recently with Rogers and Shaw trading off cable rights). Cable modems are DOWNSTREAM ONLY. You need to use regular dialup for upstream (requesting pages, uploading files, etc). They charge you by the hour, and there is no always-on service. Like I said, it's a joke.

    DSL service isn't TOO bad, but I have the choice of a whopping ONE provider (my telco) to get DSL service from. I've had it for over a year now (DSL) and it goes down regularly, for 10 minutes at a time. It IS always on, and I can pull in 1/4 meg a second from a machine within the province if it can put out that much. (menace.csd.unb.ca is my friend mmmm local linux mirror with VERY few users #1 of 1000 usually.)

    Anyway, I hope I never piss off my telco, because I don't even OWN a modem anymore, and Cable service isn't much better than dialup here.

  • I am a DSL Provider (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe a comment from an actual DSL provider might be a little twist. We (the company I work for) are an independant phone company (a small independant in southern ontario). We offer DSL service in a surrounding town that isn't our territorty it's in Bells. We are still allowed to provide the service in Bells territory, but the service is frustrating to say the least. In our territory, if somebody orders a DSL, we have it hooked up and online in 2-4 days. That's right, I said days, not weeks. In *Bells* territory, we have to order the LDDS / Class A's from them. It takes roughly 5 days for them to give us an installation date which is usually another week away. As you can see, this is roughly twelve days. Now, this is still better than what Im hearing from some of you people, but there are repeated problems with Bell losing our orders, not showing up, not giving us proper documentation (ie. what pair to bring the DSL in on) etc etc etc. We have had installations take a month and a half to complete. We have even had a situation where Bell refused to take any of our orders for roughly 2.5 weeks for the reason of "we were told not to, you must speak to so-and-so (who is on vacation for a week ofcourse). Compare this to our 2-4 day installation and you can see how it can really cramp are business. The customers generally think their getting ripped off, because the people in the next town over get it in 4 days max. As a business we must listen to the customers complain about wanting free installation because it takes so long, and losing customers to the local cable service that can offer better installation dates. All in all, its much too common for companies of this magnitude to provide this level of service. I don't have a solution for the problem, I just felt like bitching on Slashdot for a few minutes.

    -phraud (I forgot my userid and passwd and didn't want to look for it)
  • I ordered DSL from Onvoy (formerly MRNet) (major ISP in MN) in January of this year, and it was a major headache to get working properly.

    Due to "problems" in the CO I'm served from there was a six week delay in getting DSLAMs up and running. I could have lived with this if I didn't have to find this information out from another ISP in town. Instead I got all kinds of runaround from my ISP asking when I might see installation.

    The telco portion of my install (my DSL service runs off of a seperate, "clean" pair @ 768Kbps) was actually the only thing that went correctly, and maybe because my house once had a second line and all they needed to do was patch me into this pair at the J-box at the end of the block.

    The actual "install" (April 1! I ordered Jan 15!) was supposed to involve techs actually running a pair from my outside demarc point to wherever my computer room was. I got two retards in khakis and golf shirts who had no tools other than a screwdriver. Fortunately I had run CAT5 from my demarc to my office already (I knew they'd do it wrong or crudely if I let them). They didn't even have a ladder and had to borrow mine to do the final cross-connect in the demarc box. How they would have run their wire through the poured concrete wall is beyond me.

    Needless to say, the service didn't work at first. They had a dead card at the DSLAM which took 48 hours to replace. The onsite techs response was "Uhh, leave the modem [sic] on call support if it doesn't work in a day or two." It did come on 48 hours later, but jeeze, what a terrible thing to tell a customer.

    ..And then performace sucked. After another month and a half of battling with the ISP about lame performance (~150Kbps at peak hours, I had a perl script graphing data to a web page every 10 minutes which I advertised to the corporate support list which I belong to because of my job) and talking to nearly everyone at the ISP it finally started working right.

    I haven't checked performance because I don't have the heart to fight them anymore, but it appears to be working well and has been very reliable (only a few, very short outages). But it did take nearly six months from the order date to get reliable service functioning.

  • I've been very happy with it. I'm moving down to Austin soon and hope to find such good service. Anyone have any tips on DSL in Austin? Id like to have at least one static IP, I don't think I'll *need* 768k, at least not up and down.

    I chose jump.net [jump.net] because they have an "any server you want policy". I also get an 8 fixed IP block (with a class C netmask, so I can use all 8 if I want) for an extra $10/mo. (A single IP is $5, so splunge a bit.) The total I pay is $80 a month. If I had their 384K up/1.5M+ down ADSL I would pay about twice as much.

    However, my circuit is provided by SWB, and they really sucked after they were forced to spin off their DSL business to an annoying little company called ASI. So now you have to deal with both companies (and maybe your ISP as well) to get your line hooked up, and there are a lot of problems. Not only that, but they're regularly capping circuits to 384K downstream. Jump.net put a hold on new orders through them because they sucked so bad, but I'm still on a one-year contract.

    I moved up from San Antonio, where I was about 8000 feet from the CO, and wasn't capped, so I got the full 1.5 megabits down. Damn it was nice. But I finally had to move to Austin for the job opportunities. (At least I only had to go 100 miles to do that!) The only trouble I had back in February was they shipped the install kit via two-day UPS on the day before the install... from the other side of town! UPS takes their two-day shipping very seriously, you know. So I got an old Alcatel that the phone guy had in his truck.

    I did have to change my fixed IP when moving to Austin, but that's CIDR for you.

    One of SWB's little tricks is said to be dropping orders when they get too far behind. It was three weeks before I realized they had never taken my order properly. So I had to wait another three weeks (even with a self-install), and then they managed to set up my ATM circuit wrong. At least my Alcatel can't do PPPoE, so I have an excuse not to run that abomination.

    And above all, do not go with texas.net if you're the kind of guy who wants a fixed IP. They have great service if you're a Joe Luser, but they filter their connections so you can't run any servers, or anything which quacks like a server, so they can force you to pay for "business" service. Which is also good if you're not their customer, because that's a lot less machines that can be turned into DDoS zombies.

  • It's alarming that most of the people who have any opinion about DSL, have a negative one (see DSL Reports [dslreports.com] for one), and the positive opinions look suspiciously like stroturfers.
    I can attest that my positive report about Earthlink/GTE service is not a ruse. I wrote an honest report about my experience in Long Beach, CA (90808) in March. I've had 2 service outages since March 1, 2000. That's not bad. Slashdot's had more outages than my DSL connection in the same time period.

    I use my DSL line continuously for telecommuting (the only problem with being able to work from home is working when I'm home....) and an outage means I travel the Southern Californian highways for 26 miles to the office--something I hate. Only once since March have I gone into the office because of connection problems from home.

    The other time I had a service burp I used my Earthlink dial-in option (20 hours/month at no extra charge for DSL customers; that's not fantastic, but I hardly use one tenth of that it turns out).

    Yes, Earthlink via GTE/Verizon is PPPoE, but Roaring Penguin's PPPoE client for Linux works fantastic (and better than WinPoET on Windows, for sure) for my desktop use. No complaints, although I would prefer a true DSL IP connection.

    Look, my DSL service is so good I don't even think about it. Sorry that I can't add to the list of whiners, but I'm a genuinely satisfied customer of Earthlink/GTE DSL service. Go figure.

    Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers

  • My interaction with speakeasy has been horrendous!
    After a long painstaking phone call, explaining how I needed a subnet, just a small network of 24 or 32 IP's and I wanted them to route the line they assured me it would be simple and easy.
    Well, I get the order confirmation almost 2 weeks later [keep in mind, this is a speakeasy internal thing, hasn't gone to Covad yet] telling me that they processed my order and it's ok on their end and I have been approved for a 384KBps line with 1 IP.
    Hmm..
    I call them and tell them they have my order wrong, to which they say, "We have nothing on record for this". Obviously.
    So I corrected my order, they said, Ok, no problem.
    ... wait another 2 weeks ...
    Get an email back, with my new order (this time correct) but a price tag of over $300!!
    I can get a leased T1 for $500/month?? WTF??
    I politely told them I would no longer need their service, and if they would terminate any contact with me.
    That was a little over 2 months ago, I still don't have DSL because it turns out the CO is full for my district, and I still receive speakeasy spam.
    Damn them.
    Damn all of them

    [phpwebhosting.com]
    nerdfarm.org
  • Oh yeah, I forgot to explain a few things (most of you probably already know about these so feel free to skip it)...

    The PPPoE move is to limit their rapidly dwindling pools of DHCP IP addresses. Apparently lots of folks are connecting Ethernet hubs to their DSL bridges and snarfing more than their allotted single dynamic IP with multiple machines on a home network. They are trying to sell those folks the more expensive 5-static-IP blocks. I don't know if you can use NAT/DCHP and PPPoE together on a BSD or Linux firewall box to get around all of this.

    The rate limiting on news/mail was a particularly galling move, but again it is technically SWBell.net (SBIS) the ISP doing this, not SWBell.com (SBC) the DSL provider. Legally they are separate entities (due to some FCC regs or something). You can check out alternative ISP's at http://www.swbell.com/Prod uct s_Services/isp_providers [swbell.com]

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak


  • Okay, they're far from perfect.

    But it wasn't the same hassle as I've heard about from people using Bell Sympatico HSE - mail server brownouts, dropped connections and stuff.

    It's cheaper than @Home - especially if you don't watch TV.

    Installation happened when promised, and worked first shot.

    And if you spend an extra $5/mo, they'll happily give you a static IP.

    Only problem is that they seem to have a lot of downtime when one of their wholesale providers (www.reptiles.org) goes down. (Claimed to be smurf attacks.) Oh, and access to their mailserver is an option or a do-it-yourself thing. (Good thing static IPs are available.)

    $34.95 CDN/mo, +$5/mo modem rental, +$5/mo static IP. 1.2 megabits down less PPPoE overhead, 120 kbits up less PPPoE overhead.

    www.dsl.ca [www.dsl.ca]

    They're not perfect, but I'm still very happy with them.

  • I live in NYC, so maybe it's not a good gauge of availability, but I'll tell you my experience.

    I started with Bell Atlantic. It was cheap, setup was quick, and it wasn't that expensive. Problem was, only was given 1 IP address and getting someone on the phone took forever.

    So I switched to Concentric.

    Yes, it took me about a month and a half to two months to get the connection. But when I got it, it was worth it.

    The downtime for the line has been minimal. Every once in a while they'll notify you about maintenance, but it's usually 15 min or less in the middle of the night, they give you a week's notice, and it's right back up. Haven't had a problem yet.

    The speeds are consistent and quite good.

    Also the tech support is quick, efficient, friendly, and is willing to help you beyond the normal "well, is your ethernet cord plugged in?"

    All in all, i'm sticking with them as long as I'm in my apartment.

    And no, I don't work for Concentric, nor do I own stock in the company.
  • I've had DSL through Southwestern Bell and jump.net since January of this year, and it has been pretty painless. There are loads of different providers in the area (Austin, TX, USA), but jump.net was the only one to offer a static IP and no restrictions on servers. I do pay a bit of a premium, and my service is not as fast (384K down / 128K up) as other ISPs seem to provide in my area.

    Installation was done by southwestern bell, and was in place 3 or 4 weeks after I ordered it, and it was operational on the day of installation. I have had only a few problems (once their DNS went down, when I called they told me they were rebooting it and to try again in a few minutes, and it worked shortly thereafter, and I lost connectivity another time for a few hours). Jump.net appears to be a comfortable size that they can personally and rapidly fix the problems that come up. They have techs who actually answer the phone- when I have had to call, I did not get stuck in voice mail hell. The huge providers may be able to undercut the others on price, but they are going to have a harder time beating them on service.

    Since I had DSL installed early, I've avoided many of the painful waits that people are experiencing around here.

  • Bluestar were the only ones with an IQ in the positive range. You can forget Bell. They are clueless, even if they're not exactly newbies.

    For all that I like Bluestar, and their technical competence, I'd be wary of them, right now. They were doing some kind of deal with COVAD - the number 1 nutcase corporation of the net. Whatever the deal involves, it can't involve anything good for users.

    In short, if you want DSL, and you want it now, hire space in the nearest exchange and hook your own DSL router in. It'll probably work out much more reliable & far cheaper for groups to hook their own DSL services together, and buy a port on an existing high-speed connection, than to try to go via a 3rd-party.

  • I WORK for the people getting you DSL... (Score:5)

    by trims ( 10010 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @09:36AM (#749762) Homepage

    OK, I live in the SF Bay area, and I work for one of the national DSL providers (NOT the ISP, but the people who actually deliver the line for you, and NOT one of the ILECs). I can't name them specifically, but let's just say they aren't Rhythms.

    DSL delivery generally has a couple of major problems (I'm the primary troubleshooter on long-overdue orders, so I see alot of this). If one of these happens, it can take weeks to fix, much of which is due to the back-and-forth nature of fixing problems that require interaction between 3 or 4 HUGE companies. Think: we talk to ISP, determine there is a problem, talk to ILEC, twiddle a bit, talk to ILEC, talk to ILEC, ILEC does something, we look at it, talk to ILEC, talk to end-user, talk to ILEC, etc....

    In general, we're closing about 50-60% of our orders within 1 month. The goal is 75% by calendar year end, and 90% for next year. However, if an order doesn't get closed within 1 month, it averages 8-12 weeks to get closed.

    Unless you work at an I/CLEC, you have no idea how screwed up the physical plant for the phone system is. Line conditioners, repeaters, bad wiring installs, mismatched/mislabeled wiring - it's a wonder people get anything installed. Alot of this can be blamed on the "get it done, and don't worry about it" attitude of the ILEC. However, a large amount is also due to the fact that the phone system was (and is) designed to deliver VOICE PHONE service, and things that are done to improve voice are often harmful for data carriers.

    Another problem is that we're one of the few (if not ONLY) DSL people who actually have an automated ordering system. That is, when you give your info to an ISP, they can automatically enter it into our system, which automatically makes the ILEC loop order, starts the network provisioning, puts in the ATM parameters, etc. Virtually everyone else does this by hand. Our system works about 90% of the time, and getting better. And we're still averaging 4 weeks. Think about the other guys....

    A couple of things that will speed your DSL order, no matter who you place it with:

    • Make sure you have the correct address/zip code - you have no idea how many problems we have with people not giving us the correct address. By address, I mean the one that the phone company bills you at - this occassionally isn't your postal address. If you're not sure, CALL THE PHONE COMPANY AHEAD OF TIME. As them what they think your phone delivery address is, and not your billing address. Generally, this is only a problem in multi-unit dwellings, or things like rowhouses.
    • Figure out where you want the DSL line to go. By this I mean identify the plug where you want the DSL line to come out of. If you can get your hands on some basic line-testing stuff (borrow one from your work if you can), test that this line is indeed wired into your external exchange. I know this sounds complex, but it really isn't. You just need to verify that the jack is really hooked up.
    • Respone quickly to any email/phone correspondence from the DSL provider. You can save yourself alot of pain by quickly replying to any messages you get. That helps the DSL people solve problems faster, and get your line in quicker.

    DSL is certainly not a smooth install for everyone yet. With the coming of line-sharing by all DSL providers, install times should go down considerably, since they can piggyback on your existing phone line, and don't have to run a new one. Honestly, though, I doubt you'll ever see times drop below an average of 2 weeks. The physical phone plant is just too messy.

    Also, here are some 'rule-of-thumb' distances for various services (note that the distance from the CO is measured in feet of actual wire - it can be hard to figure that out, since wire often runs in a decidedly indirect path between you and your CO):

    • ADSL: 15,000 feet for minimum 384/128. You can usually get about 1Mbps at around 11,000.
    • SDSL: 15,000 feet for 192, 12,000 for 384, 9,000 for 768, 8,000 for 1.1, and 7,000 for 1.5.
    • IDSL: 144 at up to about 22,000, though many won't sell you it at distances over 18,000.
    • RADSL: up to 8Mbps at about 6,000. This is rare as of yet.

    Hope this helps.

    -Erik



  • I think on average I maxxed out at 25K, sec.

    >How fast were you really getting before they did > that bump?

    As for the 3-figure charges on everything DSL service, it was Covad. I went to Strictly Business and they had a booth there, so I talked with the real pretty lady to see if I was eligible. I wonder if I could charge THEM 100 bucks if the tech doesn't show up at the scheduled date. Hmmmmm. Well, I don't have to worry about them anymore.
  • No DSL (Verizon/GTE phone company) and cable modem (Adelphia) services. I don't want to pay a lot for ISDN, IDSL, and DirectPC. They are too slow anyways. My analog modem connection only goes up to 28000.

    I wonder how soon I will be getting any broadband services. :(

  • If you can avoid it, then by all means get an ISP other than Bellsouth.net, the tales below should be enough to scare anyone off:First, some perspective, I have been a broadband customer for years having dealt with ISDN, cable and eventually DSL. I work out of my house doing presentation work for architectural firms and frequently find myself transferring huge amounts (animations, drawings, presentations, renders and large format finals from 50-400 megs in a shot) of data back and forth between myself and my clients. I had the 'fortunate' opportunity to participate in Bellsouth's preliminary install of DSL in my area. Bellsouth used to offer bridged service with DHCP assigned addresses and a fairly decent price for 256k/1.5m service. It was nice if you had a machine on 24/7 (which is usually the case here) because I would find that my ip address would be the same for several months at a time and I didn't have any connect problems at all until very recently (was 18 months of pristine service) when I moved to a new apartment and bellsouth switched to PPPoE. Moving, is where the real troubles began. They were unwilling to even discuss ADSL availability until I was physically at the new address. I had the prior phone number in advance, the tenant was willing to give it a shot as far as ordering and so was the landlord. I get to the new place, place my order and am informed that it will be in the neighborhood of 6-10 weeks for service to be installed. UnF*'n believeable. This mind you is for a self-install where I already had the telco add extra phone lines to my apt. and had wired up the splitter at the NID on the side of the building. Being mildly dependent on my connection for income I would contact Bellsouth almost everyday. Thier support staff wouldn't record information about the calls and hold times average 50 minutes. About 15 days into the fiasco I find out that the have not even cancelled the DSL service to my previous residence. Three hours of calls/holds later they finally cancell my service and I have to start totally over, which I did and was again informed 6-10 weeks from 3 days from today (afterall it would take 72 hours to cancell out the other account in the system). At this point my neighbor orders DSL from them (I tried to talk him out of it) A fairly knowledgable level 2 tech finally comprehends the idea that I am a self install and informs me that they will mail out additional 'filters' and as soon as I have them I will be able to connect. 10 days go by and nothing in my mailbox. I call and find out it is not thier policy to mail anything and I would have to schedule an appointment for a tech to comeout and deliver them, which I do. The appointment comes and goes on 3 different occaisions and now a whole month is lost. It has been 10 days since my neighbor called and a tech is outside his door who is nice enough to give me the 'filters' while installing the neigbors DSL. Great, I have the filters... I hook up, get sync but spend many hours trying to pull an IP address. No dice. I call and wait again for many hours with tech support to findout that I will not have a bridged connection and they will mail me the software... I go nuts. I call raise hell again and now finally have a tech drop off the cd with thier PPPoE client which comes in four flavors W98, NT4, W2K and Linux. The later two of the four not being supported but provided for advanced users. The tarball is corrupt and the W2K version blows up my W2K install several times. I finally get W2K and the client running and get a connect now 6 weeks later. The saga ain't over yet... I have to fight with the billing dept: They had the audacity to charge me for service for the month and a half of no service, and bill me for the 3 different occaisions that thier installer came out (even though nobody ever did) for my self-install and it is a rather nasty two day period of long calls to get the $400 worth of bs off the bill but the actual credit to the account won't show up for 60 days so I have to pay it out to keep my phone service from being interrupted. I still have them for service (though orders are in for another company) but I am now in a position where I will have to keep the service till my credits with them are posted to the account.If they offer you service in your area...run like hell. Bellsouth is the phone company, they don't have to care.
  • Chill out. Didn't see the link. No need to jump down my throat, AC's.
  • I don't work for speakeasy, I'm just a satisfied customer.

    Disclaimers out of the way, I have to say I'm most impressed with Speakeasy. Of all the ISPs I've had, they seem to have great customer service, and a great attitude.

    Specifically:

    • The tech support people seem to know what they're talking about a great majority of the time
    • The terms and conditions and policies are down-to-earth and reasonable, not couched in excessively defensive legalese. For example the IP address allocation policy is essentially "Have as many as you need provided you actually use them"
    • They're explicity Linux friendly. They have a page on how to set up Linux, and how to secure it afterwards.
    • They have an awesome online tool to manage your account with. You can use it to make payments, read your email, even get an up to the minute work log of your DSL order
    All that said, the ISP is just one organisation. Getting your DSL line up and running involves coordination between the ILEC, the CLEC (Covad) and the ISP, and installation can be a very frustrating process.

    Hang in there, and happy surfing!

  • How far away (line distance) from the CO are you?

    I'm just over 17,500 feet, so am *JUST* over the limit, and my local phone company (SNET - Connecticut) won't give me DSL... I assumed everyone had the same limit (which, BTW is more about limiting installation costs by keeping things well within limits, than hitting the limit of the technology).

    Luckily I've got a T-1 connection and a CD-ROM burner at work!

  • DSLreports.com *is* reliable. (Score:5)

    by hatless ( 8275 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @09:53AM (#749796)
    DSLreports.com is reliable in my experience. Extremely so.

    Plenty of people will have perfectly smooth service from a "bad" provider and there will be people with bad service from a "good" one, but trust the overall vibe you get on a given provider on DSLreports. If it seems negative and gloomy, that's because it is. Welcome to DSL.

    I'm not sure what your problem is. OK, USWest won't serve you, but DSLreports found providers that will. So find a decently-rated one and go with them. Or don't. Can't get the speed you want? You're probably too far away from the nearest central office equipped for DSL. Suck it up.

    The thing with DSL is that fast DSL business service costs roughly 1/4 the price of a T1, and you'll likely find you have 4 times the number and duration of outages. You get what you pay for. If reliability isn't critical and you can deal with the occasional 4-10 hours of downtime every other month, you'll be okay.

    As for residential DSL, you may be wondering why fast residential DSL costs 1/4 what the slowest business DSL costs. The answer, as I've learned from experience, is again reliability. Once again, do the math. Assume 4 times the number and severity of outages that you'd get with comparable business DSL. I assume this is because a customer paying 6 times as much gets 6 times the engineering resources devoted to it.

    My Verizon (née BellAtlantic) residential service is down an average of 2 days a month. In the last month, I've had a 4-day outage and a 2-day outage as well as countless disconnects (actually, I could look at my logs and count them, but I don't feel like it).

    Sounds bad, right? But here's the kicker. Though I'm switching my (small but growing) company from DSL to a T1, I have no desire to switch to a cable modem at home, which brings a whole different set of issues. I'm sticking with DSL until something genuinely better comes along. Now I just need to switch out of Verizon.
  • its:

    www.grateful.net/ping.html [grateful.net]

    I have an alcatel 1000 'modem' which hangs quite a lot. I have to enable a ping/keepalive loop using an x10 wireless remote power controller just to keep my dsl line up and running ;-(

    see the top graph where all the redmarks are (and some blue). note that I changed my polling frequency and I broke the top graph a few days ago so there will be no red there (even though my modem does reboot several times a day). but look in the past, about 2 weeks back, and you'll see how unstable pachell's dsl is.

    --

  • I'm curious how much they're charging for it? I'm too far away for ADSL, and the last time I shopped around IDSL was $79.95/mo vs $39.95 for ADSL. A fraction of the bandwidth for twice the cost! :-(
  • I forget about how far away from the CO I am. It's in that ballpark. Covad apparently has their own CO's in a lot of places and they claim they can get the signal farther because they're not also transmitting voice on their lines, something the guy I talked to told me the telco does. They also told me I was right on the edge of the 768/768 range -- if I'd been any farther away I'd have had to go slower.

  • Well, in October 1999, I succumbed to the siren songs of ADSL service. Not having cable, I pretty much had no choice and had to use Bell Sympatico [www.bell.ca]'s service.

    When the modem arrived a few days after my signup, I hooked it up and it worked flawlessly. Then, I found out many horror stories about Bell's ADSL service. I had even the surprise to discover that they were even phasing out DHCP and taking up PPPoE, which was strange, as I hooked the modem straight to my NT workstation, configured with DHCP.

    Turns out that I was in the last pockets of "resistance"... About two months later, DHCP was dropped, and I switched to PPPoE, which worked fine except for maybe three or four times in the further 6 months where I could not connect for about 30-40 minutes.

    Then I moved to another part of the country, where ADSL wasn't available. This is surprising, because I live downtown, 3 blocks from the CO which also serves a very high concentration of government offices...

    I wasn't very hot with the idea of using a cable modem, because I don't relish TV at all, and because of the abysmal level of service that is so typical of cable companies (they hire people not smart enough to work for phone companies)...

    I managed to last 3 months on a 56 kbps hookup, and when the ADSL became available, I jumped on it. So I went to register, was told that there would be a 3 week backlog. I decided to endure the 56kpbs for a while more.

    But I had the immense surprise to see a package arrive by courier two days ago, and the documentation bore a notice that the service would be activated today. So, I just hooked-up the modem, and the service logged-on flawlessly first shot. This is my first post with the new service... :) :) :)

    Interestingly, the box had a sleek-looking Alcatel [alcatel.com] Sp eed -Touch Home [alcatel.com] modem rather than the bland Nortel [nortel.ca] modem I used to have...

  • I got a client up and running on BellSouth's DSL, and had no problems. The tech was knowledgeable, and the one foul up in the router documentation was quickly corrected byt their first line tech support (This was a business install of ADSL, a new service they offer that comes with a nonstandard (for them) four port router/DHCP server). As far I can tell they haven't had a single Bell South related problem.

  • I have seen several comments from folks about the "issues" with Cable Modems. What is funny is many of them sound like word of mouth and FUD.

    I tried to get DSL and after 6-7 weeks of hell gave up on getting it installed. Changing DSL providers is not an option because they all have to go through the same channels to give you service.

    I had a cable modem installed in two days from the time I placed my order. With the exception of a week of lost packets (hell on my games) I have had great service.

    I download CD mirrors of linux distros, play QuakeIII and CounterStrike with very low ping and little latency. I have seen broadband and I am impressed.

    I currently work for a company that produces the Cable Modem Termination Systems used in many networks. Here are some fiction and facts. For those technologically inclined look up DOCSIS 1.0 and 1.1 specs and find out for yourself.

    Fiction - Since Cable is broadcast one person getting on your cable network can limit the bandwidth accessable to you. Fact - DOCSIS has built in network engineering facilities. Bandwidth can be limited. It is dependant on the service provider to get it right. This is true for any ISP regardless of the network infrastructure.

    Fiction - Look at the quality of your cable TV. That is the quality of your Internet Connection. FACT - The radio frequency bandwidths used for television channels and your data are separate. Even if you have noice affecting the TV signal (which is analog) the digital encoding on the data path will insure the data you receive is what you sent.

    Please, if you do not have cable data service do not go on word of mouth or let the Telco FUD run you off. Use services like DSLReports and other agencies to find out for yourself.

  • I have had DSL at home since February and have had a total of 1 hour downtime. My dad has not been so lucky - it took a while for SW Bell to get things right. Then there was the little matter of them putting my dad's DSL line on my bill - we live 10 miles apart. Then they screwed up my bill a few times and it took forever to get that straightened out.

    At work I have DSL.NET as a provider with a 1.2 Mbit SDSL line. It works slick, though that too was a nightmare. Took over a week for them to finally get our IPs into their DNS servers.

    My only real gripe with the actual DSL service is that SW Bell is using PPPoE in some cases, and DHCP in others. PPPoE seems to really suck big time, and it is the main cause of my dad not being online for hours at a time because the PPPoE stuff on SWB's end goes down or his PPPoE client (NT) blows up. It's kindof a nightmare at times.
    Vote Nader [votenader.org]
  • Most CLEC DSL providers provide a small router or bridge with the service. If you purchase routed service, the ISP can ping you to see how you're doing. Otherwise they will ping your PC.

    sulli


  • ...that they provide ADSL and, if not feasible, that they provide ISDN at an equivalent cost per bandwidth.

    Comment from the founder of the Surrogate Father's Association, in regards to another kind of equal work for equal pay issue:

    "There is no way we are going to provide our service for 8 cents."





    (Dave Broadfoot, Royal Canadian Air Farce.)

  • RASPPPOE is great. I used it while setting up a DSL connected Dell laptop (with a wacky Xircom 56k Modem/Ethernet combo card).
    The software that Sympatico [sympatico.ca] gave me was not, of course, playing nice with the Win2k/wierd card setup. RASPPPOE was pretty simple. I just set it to load the connection upon boot, and the rather computer illiterate owner doesn't have to 'maintain the traditional dialup experience' as the PR blurb on PPPOE states.
  • I've generally been getting good service (about 375/375 via Northpoint's "DSL partnership" with Radix.Net), except that sometimes I find the DATA light flashing red and performance gone to hell. The customer service people's latest theory is that it's a network collision on my end, which seems unlikely since it recurs when I power everything down and then restore power to only the modem -- surely not even Bill Gates can make a computer malfunction without electrical power.

    It's one of those intermittent things that is hard to pin down because it's impossible to tell if it went away because I do something or because of the phase of the moon. Fortunately, it hasn't happened too often.
    /.

  • I also have Telocity in New Orleans (Bell South country). I love them. They are server friendly, Unix friendly, and give me a static IP. There was a problem with my inital install that they could not figure out (not at my end), but since then, I have had good uptime (better than the ISDN at work). I don't know how their service is (I've only called twice, and both times it was a verifiable network outage, very short though), but you can't beat the static IP. I run a web server and mail server from my house. I pay a touch more than I would have through Bell South, but they would have given me a dynamic addy, and acted offended that I was going to share access (This policy has apparently changed though, I hooked a client up with them and they provided the router/DHCP server). Telocity, on the other hand, advertises that they don't mind servers on their accounts. The modem actually came with UNIX instruction (Not that there was anything to it, but I was suprized to see that). All in all I am a staisfied customer (and my wife, whom I had to brow beat into letting me have it, now swears she will never live anywhere that does not have DSL).

  • ...I was promised that Bell-Atlantic (now Verizon) would make the necessary connections last Friday. It's Tuesday and nary a Verizon truck in site with my line... we both have been screwed by the local telco.

    There's a logical reason for this - not a good one, mind, but a logical one.

    Following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the big telephone companies - called ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers like what was then Bell Atlantic) - were required to essentially open up their facilities to their competitors. The competitors, or CLECs (Replace "Incumbent" with "Competitive"), were thus enabled to offer services like DSL over pre-existing telco infrastructure. In other words, Covad [covad.com] and Rhythms [rhythms.com] owe their existence to the passage of that law.

    Here's where it gets hairy. Without going into too much detail, ILECs (like Verizon) are required to provide CLECs (like Covad) with wholesale discounts to colocation services. And since they own all the phone lines anyway, a good portion of the actual premise work (like loop testing) has to be done by the ILEC anyway. If there's a problem, the ILEC needs to deal with it. Translation: the big entrenched telcos have to provide technical support to their competitors.

    Of course, it's a little more complicated than that. The CLECs do have to pay a (nominal) fee to the ILECs to do business in the first place. But ask anyone who does tech support or line work for Verizon which work requests get done first - the ones that pertain to Covad DSL customers, or ones that pertain to Verizon DSL customers. I have friends of friends in that line of business, and they all agree that the ILEC customers get the love first. CLEC clients get sloppy seconds.

    One more note: I'm currently waiting for Verizon to fix a loop test problem so that I can have my Covad DSL line installed, so this issue is something of a sore point with me.

  • If you do this, and behave like a complete asshole, you'll probably get good results.

    Nothing could be further from the truth. Act like an asshole and your rep will not be at the office when you call. Your paperwork will get "lost" and you will sit. The sales rep can keep notes, cover his ass, service others and leave you fuming. Harrasing people without power to get things done gets you nowhere.

    You don't have to be a jerk to avoid being walked on. Keep those notes, but do it quietly. Find out who's realy at fault and go over their head. Talk politely and find out what can be done. In the end, if the service is unaceptable, don't use it.

    Large organizations are set up to get their way. If you want to do something different, be prepared to talk to a bunch of people who lack the authority to get anything done before you reach someone who can help. Many of those people will be rude, stupid and arrogant. All of them will take hours of time. It's all part of the organization doing what it wants. A good office will have someone to talk to and torture people like waldoj. Sometimes you will never get there. Waldoj will forever languish. Figure out what you are trying to do is worth to you.

    If everything goes wrong and contracts are breached, visit a polite lawyer.

  • I posted a longish message before about US West DSL, and that I was going to try switching to <a href="http://ion.sprint.com">Sprint ION</a> - I just called them up for the installation today and thought I'd pass on more details abut thier service.

    The Sprint ION service is more than just a DSL line - they provide you with a central box that has ports for ethernet as well as two or four voice/fax lines.

    Here in Denver, it's going to cost about $119 a month. That seems expensive, but what do you get?

    * Two static IP's
    * Can run as many servers as you like
    * Two voice lines
    * Local phone service with callerID/call forwarding/call waiting (posibly confernencing?)
    * If I heard them right, 400 free minutes of long distance per month
    * 1Mb up/3Mb down ADSL (obviously that can alter, it's what's quoted on the web site).

    For 256k service from U.S. West with everything else about the same (eight IP's instead of two though), I was paying about $116 a month.

    They still are serving limited areas, but if you can get them they seem like a great deal. Finally a DSL provider that doesn't rip you apart for wanting to run simple servers from your house. It's also a major bonus that I no longer will be ties to U.S. West (whoops, Qwest) for service of any kind!

  • I have Telocity in Chicago. They have been mostly very good. Installation was almost on time. Good points:

    • Static IP address.
    • No stupid restrictions. I'm encouraged to run Apache if I want to, masquerade a LAN, etc.
    • No starting cost, and no minimum contract duration.
    • Very little network congestion due to the ISP.
    Bad points:
    • They still haven't produced multiple IP addresses.
    • The installer came when I was away, and cannibalized a voice line that I intended to continue using.
    • Occasional very long down times---most of a day in one case.
    • It takes them a long time to post clear and useful information about the cause of down time.
    • Frequent short loss of synchronization (often correlated with electrical storms, which have been frequent in the late part of this summer).
    On the whole, I'm happy.
  • I am in Canada, Alberta, Edmonton to be exact so you US boys may have some different results. Basically I had DSL and loved it, a deti 128 kbs and a peak DL speed of 178 KiloBytes/sec, what's not to love? But when i moved Telus told me I had to wait 1 month to relocate my modem and that i was on a waiting list : (
    Needless to say, what geek can go a month without highspeed net? Not me, so I called up Videon and got asked them if they could hook me up, the chick on the phone was like " Sure we can, we'll just throw you on the node." Ummm, excuse me? THROW ME ON THE NODE? Prolly with the rest of the block sharing 1 connection...bad omen i though, but got it anyway cause it's got to be better than dialup.
    So my cable was hooked up to my 900 Thunderbird Athlon running Win2K and I was happly DLing at 40 KBs, not too shabby, but then i thought of my DSL and my 128 KBs deti and thought this had to do something comparable. So i tested the speeds and during the night i downloaded a file off Videons server at 400 KBs, wow! almost half a meg a sec! Too bad most the time on the net i got 40 KBs most the time. Also cable has a proxy and i was unable to get my Hotmail cause the stupid thing. Also i had a 1 GIG upload a month and 10 Download, what a ripoff! That may be fine for blow joe occasionally surfing www.smalltities.com, but not for a hardcore geek with a webserver, FTP, intense gaming sessions that go over 6 hours a day in CounterStrike, after a week i had almost reached 1 GIG upload. I hated the idea of cooling my jets and watching excatly how much bandwidth i had left, hoping i dont have to pay a bunch extra that i got for FREE from Telus.
    Well then my DSL came in, I had one P-III 500 hooked to Cable and my Athlon 900 to the DSL. Time for some testing! I went to Microsoft and did the connection test, the cable scored really well, scoring off the charts, the DSL simply got just under a T1, about half as fast...but that was just a synthetic test, how about DLing version 7 beta FULL of CounterStrike?
    Let the games begin! So I started the download at about 6 p.m., the started slow at 30 KBs and maxed out at 80 KBs with an average of 50 KBs, not too bad. The DSL started at 170 KBs and then dropped to it's deticated bandwith of 156 KBs STEADY AS A ROCK, never dropping below 150 KBs the whole time. Needless to say the cable company can shove there proxy, DL/UL limits, extra charges, and lag-ass connection. I took it back a week later and kept the DSL. Not only that but the cable modem would sometimes just "Die" for like 5 min, then suddenly come back on. Sux 2 B U if U are in the middle of a 150 MEG DL like I waz...
    CONCLUSION: DSL has no DL/UL limits, deti 128 KBs and usually more than that, no proxy, no monitoring and one fixed price of 40 a month. Cable has all the monitoring, proxy, monitoring, UL/DL limits and extra charges for 40 a month.
    DSL is simply superior. Ashley Fulks Network Admin Simply Boss inc.

  • I also got Pac Bell DSL in Oakland, but more recently (in March), and I also have nothing but good to say about it. It did take most of the day and many phone calls (by the installation guy, not me) to get it activated at the other end (which, as far as I know, was just a matter of the right person flipping a switch), but it was done that day, and it has only been out once, for a day or so, since then.

    I was getting a pretty steady 1.2 Mbps, which is about twice what my friend has been getting on his cable modem. He only chose cable because he was just a bit out of range for DSL (literally, his next-door neighbor could get it, but he couldn't -- I suggested they throw an Ethernet cable over the fence and split the bill, but...). He just found out that they installed a new repeater (or whatever it is), so now he can "upgrade", so to speak.

    Now I've moved, and I'm back to modems -- I've found out that my new house is in range, but haven't ordered it yet. I like the DSL service, but I don't know enough about prices to say how good theirs is. Specifically, how much extra is it worth paying to get the "enhanced" package, which gives you five static IPs (on your own 3-bit subnet, with your own router, I think) vs. the "basic" package's dynamic IPs? They charge about $40/month for basic and $80/month for enhanced. Does anyone know if that's particularly good or bad compared to other providers?

    David Gould
  • If you're signing up for DSL with PacBell (or SWBell or any member of the SBC Global Network probably), don't call them on the weekend or a holiday and probably not on off-hours. Call them between 8-4 Pacific.

    A different office handles calls on weekends and holidays and I've had nothing but trouble when dealing with them. They don't seem to communicate with the other office.
  • DSL can be great, provided your connection to your CO is adequate (short, and copper, basically). After that, the number one factor that determines the reliability is the provider. In my experience, Pacific Bell sucks ass.

    I've had so many problems with Pac-Bell DSL that it isn't funny anymore. They've lost my records twice, resulting in a total disconnection of my service. They also misclassified my connection as "Enhanced DSL", and tried to charge me twice the original price. If you call their tech support, 90% of the time you get put on hold for 15 minues, then you're sent to a voice-mailbox due to the "unusually high delay". If you leave a message, they won't call you back. If you do manage to get through to someone, they'll almost definitely transfer you to someone else, and place you on hold for 10-20 minutes. Most of their support reps are also complete idiots.

    The last straw for me was when they (finally) sent me the CD (when they finally got around to switching bme to Basic DSL, which is what I signed up for in the first place). The CD arrived folded in half. I also noticed that Pac-bell Internet has started charging me for dialup.

    The best part of this whole thing was when a guy from Pac-Bell DSL marketing actually told me on the phone "anything involving DSL is a nightmare". Thanks.
  • We've had NO stability trouble with our IDSL, or the ISDN we had before that. Now, our cable modem is a completely other story. :)
  • OK, I live in the SF Bay area, and I work for one of the national DSL providers (NOT the ISP, but the people who actually deliver the line for you, and NOT one of the ILECs). I can't name them specifically, but let's just say they aren't Rhythms.

    Ok, well, I take then you work for Covad. :-) Really there's only Rythms and Covad and not much anyone else... :)

    Unless you work at an I/CLEC, you have no idea how screwed up the physical plant for the phone system is. Line conditioners, repeaters, bad wiring installs, mismatched/mislabeled wiring - it's a wonder people get anything installed. Alot of this can be blamed on the "get it done, and don't worry about it" attitude of the ILEC. However, a large amount is also due to the fact that the phone system was (and is) designed to deliver VOICE PHONE service, and things that are done to improve voice are often harmful for data carriers.

    I know that and that's why I don't blame the problems I've had with my DSL on either Telocity (my ISP) or Rythms (the people that put the line in). I blame Ameritech (my CLEC or ILEC, I'm not sure which one Ameritech is or what the difference is, but I know they used to be referred to as a CLEC, I don't know what an ILEC is).

    Anyways here's the problems I've had in a nutshell:

    When they put in my SDSL, I was at like 784. I'm FAIRLY SURE that I'm too far for that speed, but they put it in anyway, and it worked, but it would go down for a few minutes several times a day.

    Then they dropped me to 384, and at first it seemed fine, but then there started to be speed degradations at times, and there was still the occasional dropped connection. Interestingly enough, recently the speed degrations and the dropped connections went away (knock on wood) for some reason, but I don't believe it's a coincidence that that happened right after Ameritech was out on my street working on some wires. :)

    All-in-all I've had a rough experience, but since it started working smoothly I can say that I'm pretty happy with it, even if its only 384. I have a static IP, I'm not behind a firewall as with some cable modem providers, and my speed stays pretty consistent these days. (knock on wood). And its only costing me $50/month, equipment included.

  • Well, that's RedHat for you. When I want to update my debian boxen, I only need to download the packages that actually changed. ;-)
  • Virginia...my bad
  • I use Telus DSL in Vancouver. I got in relatively early and have been quite happy with it. I'm near the distance limit so I 'only' get 1.5~2mb down. I currently get ~.5mb up.

    I'd been having intermittent problems with my old amati modem temporarily loosing signal (repeated 1-12 second outages). Telus recently replaced it with a 3com unit. After an afternoon of problems, it's now been pretty rock solid for the last couple of days. (a running ping test has dropped 5 packets out of 84000 in the last day.

    Bandwidth seems clean. I have often gotten downloads in the 25KB~120KB/sec range (as measured by netscape). Evidence from trying multiple downloads with gnapster indicate that bottlenecks are rarely, if ever local.

    I've been paying $70CAN ($50US)/month for the service. When they replaced my modem they seem to have downgraded me to $35/month ($20US). Since I don't loose effective bandwidth, I'm not going to complain.

  • Re:SWBell.Net (Score:3)

    by Mr. Protocol ( 73424 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @02:00PM (#749968)
    Linksys 4-port Cable/DSL routers purport to support PPoE, so you could just hook up one of these and run up to four computers behind it, running any OS you like.

    ObNote: I own such a Linksys box but AT&T Broadband doesn't run PPoE over their cable modem service (yet), so I haven't tested the PPoE software in the Linksys box.
  • I love DSL. It is the greatest net connection one can have for 60 bucks a month.

    But it is also the biggest headache you will ever encounter when obtaining net access (unless your trying to get an OC48 to your apartment)

    I first called in for access in February. I was told it would be about 4 weeks before an install. My ADSL modem, network card, and low pass filters arrived within two weeks. No problems there.

    About the 4 week mark, the tech arrived, as planned, and everything was setup and working properly. Only minor hitch was getting DHCP to work with my linux installation.

    Well, everything was awesome. I was consistently able to get 1.2Mbps download, yes, 1.2Mbps. Upload was about 200Kbps.

    It was pure heaven for a whole week. Then SWbell decides that they need to use PPPOE to authenticate DSL customers, and prevent users from getting 20+ DHCP leases, and tying up IP addresses.

    Well, this fucked everything up. I could no longer get DHCP replies because the routes were fucked, and this left me dead in the water. They would not convert me to PPPOE, and even this wouldnt have solved the problem apparently.

    After two and half months of getting nowhere, I gave in and bought the static IP package.

    I now have 5 static IP addresses for my DSL line, and no worries with DHCP and all that crap.

    And its back to 1.2Mbps.

    Sweetness... as long as it works.

    So, buyer beware, and expect problems, and lots of frustration. It will not be smooth. And if it is, its an anomoly, so be happy.

  • Re:I WORK for the people getting you DSL... (Score:3)

    by Fishstick ( 150821 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @02:37PM (#749984) Journal
    I'm not sure which one Ameritech is or what the difference is, but I know they used to be referred to as a CLEC, I don't know what an ILEC is).

    LEC means Local Exchange Carrier and the I is for incumbent, which Ameritech is. C is for Competitive, which Ameritech is not. ;-)

    All stems from the 1996 Telecom act where local telephone monopoly was supposed to be opened up to all comers (esp, ld companies like AT&T and Sprint). All this about unbundling the local loop (the copper between your house and the central telephone office). Since it isn't practical for the CLECs to lay new copper to everyone's location, they have facilities in the ILEC's physical plant.

    In the case of the so-called "Data CLECs", the xDSL equipment sits at the Baby Bell's central office and taps into the copper loop coming from your house there in what I think they call the DSLAM.

    If you go with Ameritech or another extablished local carrier for DSL, you potentially eliminate some of the back-and forth described in the top post of this thread.
  • "Not long ago I downloaded a 288 MB file (Oracle 8i for Linux) in about 3.5 minutes. That was cool, but most of the time my download speed is limited by the other end of the pipe. "

    That effects slower connections too. I experience it all the time. I'm in Canada (Ontario) with a 960/120kbs connection. I can get 100kB/s from within the telcos network (Bell), and sometimes from other big sites, such as Microsoft. Most of the time though, my connection is dragged down by congestion elsewhere, or slow servers. The worst situations occur when one crosses a larger number of companies' networks - the pings take a jump at each peer interconnection (for me that's often Bellnexxia to Alter.net in Chicago, and then from Alter.net to somebody else between Chicago and the west coast.
  • In my area (Ontatio, Canada), the main supplier only rents modems. Other resellers allow or insist that modems are purchased. I'm happy to rent: at just Cdn$10/mo it would take over 2 years to break even if I purchased. I know that I will have this modem replaced with something else long before then.
  • Who do you work for? Do you offer service without PPPoE? Do you offer 2.2mbs without any crappy transfer limits? I'm in the London - do you service this area?
  • Any chance you buggered with your wiring? I did (installing a new phone jack) and accidently cross-wired a pair (tied 'em down as red-green instead of green-red). Caused me a month of headache before I realized it... flipped 'em and have had no problems since!


    --

  • Here in Tempe AZ (Score:3)

    by leereyno ( 32197 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2000 @06:58PM (#750020) Homepage Journal
    We have DSL and have had no problems with it at all. We're actually too far away from the "home office" (what a BS ridden euphemism) and our line was installed by mistake. Even so, after boosting the voltage the router uses for its uplink we got a 384/256 connection that is stable and hasn't given us any trouble at all.

    We're using USWest to provide the copper of course, but we certainly aren't using them for our ISP. No, we're using another company called Inficad which provides us with a static IP which is always on. We're paying a little extra to go with Inficad, but I know better than to use "UsWorst." To be fair USwest does offer a good 56k dialup service, at least in my area. Even so, I'd heard enough rumors of problems with their DSL to avoid using them.

    One of the nice things about using a small company like inficad is that they aren't bandwidth nazi's. They don't care if I set up apache or even an FTP server (not that I have one, I'm not some lame brained warez "dood"). Also we get 5 email addresses and 50 megs of web space if we want to set up a page on their servers. Not a bad deal for ten extra bucks a month.

    No, I don't work for inficad and no I don't get kickbacks from them. I'm just happy with the service they have provided and wanted to pass this experience on as DSL seems to be taking a PR pounding.

    Lee Reynolds

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