Comment MediaOne (Score 1) 136
I live in Cambridge, and I finally signed up for M1 last week, after watching them work their way in from the outer suburbs over the last couple years, and waiting for the customer service problems to work themselves out. I have to give them some credit regarding home LANs and alternative OSes. IIRC, they used to charge money for additional IP addresses, (maybe $5 /month), so the whole idea of IP masqing clearly needed to be executed in an underground fashion. Plus it used to be "No Win32 or MacOS when we show up? No install!"
Nowadays, they at least acknowledge Linux with a private newsgroup, they have a Q&A section on their support site regarding multiple computers and home LANs, and I think even have a separate newsgroup for IP masqing/proxy serving, etc. Though there is still some legacy info implying that their system of keeping track of the MAC address is incompatible w/ home LANs (??), and though they still threaten to disconnect a home LAN that's causing problems, they clearly tolerate them. So though I have a dual boot NT Workstation/Linux Intel box, I'm not going to bother hiding my ethernet hub (already have IP masqing running...), or explaining the presence of the 2nd NIC which I put in over the weekend.
The proof is in the pudding, but I'm excited about Mediaone. ADSL is a more elegant and flexible solution, IMO (dedicated bandwidth, regardless of the # of users, choose yer own ISP, etc.) not to mention cooler (all that over POTS copper??). But the millstone of Nynex's poor reputation still hangs around Bell Atlantic's neck, so the less involvement I have with them the better. Plus ADSL (currently vaporware in MA) is gonna be more expensive for less (theoretical) bandwidth. Finally, any company involved causing a runaround as asinine as this iMac thing should be banned from doing business.
Just my $.02.
Nowadays, they at least acknowledge Linux with a private newsgroup, they have a Q&A section on their support site regarding multiple computers and home LANs, and I think even have a separate newsgroup for IP masqing/proxy serving, etc. Though there is still some legacy info implying that their system of keeping track of the MAC address is incompatible w/ home LANs (??), and though they still threaten to disconnect a home LAN that's causing problems, they clearly tolerate them. So though I have a dual boot NT Workstation/Linux Intel box, I'm not going to bother hiding my ethernet hub (already have IP masqing running...), or explaining the presence of the 2nd NIC which I put in over the weekend.
The proof is in the pudding, but I'm excited about Mediaone. ADSL is a more elegant and flexible solution, IMO (dedicated bandwidth, regardless of the # of users, choose yer own ISP, etc.) not to mention cooler (all that over POTS copper??). But the millstone of Nynex's poor reputation still hangs around Bell Atlantic's neck, so the less involvement I have with them the better. Plus ADSL (currently vaporware in MA) is gonna be more expensive for less (theoretical) bandwidth. Finally, any company involved causing a runaround as asinine as this iMac thing should be banned from doing business.
Just my $.02.
