Re:SBC/SNET (Score 1)

I've been ecstatically happy since getting DSL through SNET back in April of this year. Having waited so long for affordable broadband, I decided to spend the extra $$ and take the 6Mbs/386Kbs package. But I DID NOT elect SNET/ASI as my internet provider, and am thankful every day for that choice.

I had already had prior to getting DSL, a dedicated dial-up with Netplex out of Hartford (www.ntplx.net), and had a few static IPs as part of that deal. So I went with Netplex as my DSL internet provider, kept the same IPs, and they were very helpful in getting my router configured. I can't speak highly enough about Netplex. They're competent and have a lot of bandwidth at their disposal.

I've had one outage in all this time, and it only lasted about an hour. I regularly see 200+K/sec in downloading large files, and have stacked up multiple downloads for a combined total of around 500K/sec (as reported by the browser's status bar).

For me, it's been the best thing since puberty.

As an aside for those who are still frustrated by DSL or not being able to get DSL: my girlfriend just bought a house in Woodstock, NY, and there were no (affordable) broadband options available to her there. But last week we got a Gilat2Home two-way satellite dish installed for Internet access. So far, it's working well enough, and is considerably faster than a modem. The downside is it's very limited when you go to network multiple machines together. Their system currently uses one IP for Tx, and a different IP for Rx (the Rx IP is an internal address of the form 192.168.x.x). Networking other machines can only work through a proxy running on the Gilat-supplied Dell PC, and you're limited to mail, http, ftp, and a single wildcard port you can configure as you want. In summary, it's better than a modem, and at about $70/mo, not bad if you can't get DSL , Cable or Wireless, but in a multi-machine network, it still sucks rocks.

-wayne