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I hate Qwest with a passion; but, I will say that opting out is relatively easy.

You might need to look your customer ID (the three digits after your phone number), but it's simple, otherwise. They'll send you a brief email confirmation.

Oh, and don't forget to complain to the FCC while you're at it.

-cheers, csb

Yes, switch now. I did earlier this week (still waiting for the actual cutover to take effect.)

Go to the Qwest DSL partners web page and find a few ISPs in your area, click through to check out their web sites. Some will have, right on the first page, instructions as to how to switch to them rather than get stuck with MSN. In my case, 4DV.net listed the Qwest phone number that got me right through (well, after some automated phone menus) to a rep to do the switch

Not only that, but depending on the ISP you'll probably get a better price than Qwest.net (and definitely better than MSN, which is higher), and some of them will throw in static IP numbers for a reasonable price if you want to run some kind of server.

My main reason for not wanting to use MSN (besides it being MSN), was there was only one pop email account (and 10 hotmail accounts, yea ;-).

I ended up switching to www.blarg.net (I live near Seattle), and the switch was pretty painless. Qwest even waived the $30 switching fee after extending it to 1/9/02. Qwest said it would be 7 days before the switch would happen and it happened on the day they said it would.

So basically, I switched to a cheaper ISP, and I don't have to use MSN.

The page is not easy to find, but you can get a list of alternative DSL ISPs here.

I can recommend Visi and USFamily.net. I am sure other folks can recommend their favorites also.

Since it's MSN and Qwest were talking about here it's almost a gut reaction to want to beat them up. I mean, come on, who really likes the phone company anyway? They are such an easy target these days that it's like shooting fish in a barrel. However, if we want to jump on their back over something there are plenty of other more substancive issues to call them on. And MSN? Need I say more? But I still don't see how either company is doing anything here other then what you'd expect them to. And the 'MSN makes it hard to switch' part? Totally out of place. Note what it says in the article:

Customers who leave MSN within one year are charged $150 if they used a special sign-up offer...

Does this really apply to former Qwest ISP customers switching to MSN? I doubt it. This looks like a seperate issue to me and it's not really fair to include this in the same article. While MSN may well jerk their customer's around over the 'special sign-up plan' it's not really fair to blame Qwest for that or to include them in the deed.

I don't want to be an appologist for either MSN or Qwest, 'cause frankly, they haven't done anything for me lately to warrant it. But if the Minnesota Commerce Department is going to call them on the carpet for something it should be more noteworthy then this. Why waste time on non-issues when there so many other real issues, like how Qwest jerks LECs who want access to the COs, that are calling for attention? That seems like a wiser way to spend the taxpayer dollar.

Just my 2 cents.

Seems like DSL providers are failing left and right. Is yours one of them? You don't want to take chances with your DSL. Qwest is a well-established national leader in broadband technology serving thousands of customers. You can count on us -- we're here to stay.

Soon all companies will spread FUD routinely! Like negative campaigns, FUD must work on stupid and brainwashed Americans because it's used so much. It is why I call anxiety the drug of choice for most Americans (just watch TV for an hour some day). But I digress!

What bothers me about this: Although some people say that MSN doesn't have a stronghold on the ISP market, their presence continues to increase. They are now the second largest ISP provider with 9%, after AOL, which has a whopping 33% [1].

But Microsoft isn't a monopoly. It's now metastasized into something much larger, as it has its tentacles into gaming, ISPs, aw, hell, you guys know the routine by now. And I'm not just spouting FUD. This is fact.

I was at a Pub one evening (I live in Montreal) and I happened to meet their sales manager... ms. Jen Goldfinch. Although I had seen the Hyperchip building on many occasions, I had never inquired as to what they do. After meeting this woman, I was given the impression that their routers are actually in use by some of the big players in the digital pipelines game. She was actually pretty clear on that, although I can't seem to find any exact information concerning their customers on their website. Perhaps some questions to nortel, and qwest folks might clear this up. The only thing that make me dubious about her claim of widespread adoption, would be that if their products are so much "better" (for the lack of a better word) than the competitions, then why is abilene using cisco products? Unfortunately I don't have that kind of time on my hands.

(1) http://www.infoworld.com By Jessica Hall

When i called the number, it asked if I was calling about the phone I was calling in on(option 1, the one I chose) or a different phone(option 2). After selecting option 1, I was informed that qwest is closed for the holiday, and gave me a number to use in case I had a service emergency. This doesn't sound like the opt-out procedures I have been using for the various financial institutions over the past year.

I don't know why the guy was complaining about the questions the website asked, it was all stuff that is on the front page of your phone bill, phone number, name, address. My complaint is that the site has no security and is passing this information as plain text across the internet.

Too bad qwest is back to having a virtual monopoly on dsl service in my area, or I would drop them and give the 1 non-qwest company that is offering local telephone service a try.

ObOfftopic: I recieved a letter from a credit union that I had an old savings account at, explaining their new privay policy. They had absolutely no provisions for opting out of their information sharing policy. I immediately sent them a polite letter , requesting that they remove my information from sharing pool or I would close my account. No response. I then faxed the same letter, plus an addendum giving them the option to remove my name from their sharing lists or close my account. I got a check in the mail 2 days after the fax was sent. I guess they are making enough money off this list that they can afford to lose customers over it.

Um, why do I see "[qwest.com]" in my text after the URL? The vast majority of folks can see where a link is going to take them just by holding the mouse over the link.

As we develop new services, we want to maintain your trust while continuing to meet your service needs with innovative products. By sharing account information among Qwest's family of companies, and by
aggregating information to learn more about trends and purchasing patterns, we can serve you better.

So this would include MSN? Are they part of the big family too?

Wouldn't surprise me - them sharing information. Glad I'm no longer on Qwest DSL and Phone.

I would go so far as to say that the explosion of distributed networks is a backlash against the slow stratification of the Internet into commercial, government, and educational....and NOTHING ELSE.

Look what happens to P2P networks if they step on any non-corporate toes. The Bad Guys go after them, and shut 'em down.

I think commercialism is great as long as there's a lot of it. Once you get a small group of high-powered, expensive contenders, it limits the power of supply and demand. Capitalism works best when there's lots of competition.

Don't forget, though, that most nerds, myself included, don't care about capitalism and economics. The main problem with the scenario of the Internet being controlled by a few companies is that do-it-yourselfers cannot readily rig up something that feeds into the Internet without a lot of money, or without being rigorously controlled by vast, completely soulless entities. :)

I was referring more to the @Home/AT&T fiasco, but you are correct. ISP's in Denver are not um, the best. I've had pretty good luck with IdComm Communications, my father has used them for years. So when I had the chance to have DSL I used them and got a few static IP's (for pretty cheap I might add!). Now that Qwaste and MSN have buddied up it really is a good idea to use another ISP for you DSL service.

I guess Internet2 is nice in that it doesn't have to share traffic with the commercial Internet, but I still would've expected an academic network to have faster connections than what the rest of us get to use :)

There is also no support from Qwest when you have the internal Intel PRO/DSL 2100 Modem. That is because there are no XP drivers. But the Windows 2000 drivers work just fine ...

I live in a brand new subdivision that basically has no hope of getting any kind of dsl/cable broadband any time soon (God bless Qwaste and the Deathstar).

Then a neighbor told me about a small isp (Mesa Networks) that was offering fixed 802.11b connections for residential service in my area with 1-mbps up/down for $58/month. I called them up, arranged an installation time for a week later and have been up and running with no problems for a few weeks now.

Since then, it occurred to me that small shops like these offering fixed wireless access are a perfect compromise between the bloated-beauracracy-from-hell providers (ie here, here and here) and the unreliable, unmanaged, unavailable you-get-what-you-pay-for communal neighborhood nets that have been spawned as a backlash. It's become obvious that turning a profit offering broadband where last mile wiring is involved is extremely difficult if not impossible. But, the infrastructure to manage fized wireless seems a lot more manageable from a small business perspective to me

Anyway, I don't have the time, inclination or expertise to professionally manage an isp network and I really hope that the model these guys are pursuing pays off - I think small local providers have a much better chance of tailoring solutions that can cost effectively meet the broadband needs of neighborhoods and communities.

You know you're screwed when the only internet access available to you is from Ma Bell, because the other Ma Bell refuses to serve you. That's me, screwed! And Teledesic won't be available for years...

Alternatively, disabling the Web access completely will also prevent this vulnerability from being exploited. This can be done by entering the following command while in enable mode:

cbos# set web disabled

You can find Qwest's current recommendations to Washington DSL custoomers at http://www.qwest.com/dsl/customerservice/downloads /Red_Virus_Patch.pdf

If you are trying to argue that these two documents are incorrect, then I would like to see a bit more than an anecdotal "I did this to make sure Code Red wouldn't affect me," because I did considerably less and also remained unaffected. I disabled web access to my 678 the day I got it from Qwest -- long before Code Red. I haven't upgraded the firmware, changed the web server port number, or re-jiggered NAT.

That says to me that if Qwest had followed accepted procedure and disabled the unused service in the default configuration supplied to customers, then the problem of infinitely looped DSL routers never would have surfaced in the first place.

Quoting from article:

Scenario. Some idiot is driving a poorly-maintained car which was ill-conceived at the design stage. Maybe he didn't even know he was driving...

A wheel breaks off and his car plays Guardrail Ping-Pong on the turnpike.

The ensuing traffic jam shuts down the city's busiest artery, halting all commerce in the city. Your newspaper doesn't arrive as a result.

Multiply that by many, many cars at the same time.

Why don't we go after the bigger problem and charge the jackasses who designed perpetually failure-prone cars and the jackass owners who don't maintain them?

Going after them instead of the local highway contractor seems like a better idea to me.

Especially since these drivers have no excuse for not knowing how dangerous their flawed little cars are.

Anyone stupid enough to base their business on xDSL without some form of backup needs to just suck it up when access is down. xDSL is not meant for reliable connectivity (even most ISPs say so, I know PBI does). If you want that, pay the price and get a fractional or full T1. Hell, if you're doing hosting off of an xDSL line that is going to lose you money if it goes down, co-locate it. If you're just complaining because your internal users couldn't get outside access, have backup ISDN if nothing else.

US$5K worth of business lost? Get real. If it cost you that much money, spend some proactively to be prepared. What if your xDSL modem fried and you couldn't get a replacement ASAP? I recall when I got my ADSL that it had statements stating that they wouldn't be held liable for any revenue lost, etc., from loss of service. Qwest has something simular:

Actual speeds you experience may vary due to line or weather conditions or other factors out of the control of Qwest

Code Red would fit "other factors out of the control of Qwest."

A common modem used by Qwest is the Cisco 675 & 678 which has web based management that can be enabled.
Qwest claims here that all you have to do is disable this feature and the router will be fine. This is not true. Even with CBOS 2.4.2 with the webadmin disabled, the incoming code red packet can still crash the 67X. Their solution? Power cycle it. Not a good solution for business where its all locked in a closet 250 miles away. I guess having the 678 hang hourly for the last 3 weeks is acceptable. um, not. And the 5 bucks, gee thanks.

http://www.qwest.com/dsl/customerservice/win675ups .html

I think that 2.4.1 was one of the patches that resolved this security issue:

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/CBOS-multiple .shtml

Even ISP Reports (A DSL rating site) did not have a easy way to find all the ISP's connected to Qwest easily. So still have to visit them and do some more research *sigh*

For all you other Qwest DSL users out there, here is the list of alternative ISPs you can use with your Qwest DSL line. Looks like we have till November 4th to switch.

that a company with this background would eventually pull a stunt like this?

Qwest has a help page up with instructions to prevent Cisco routers from hanging after being probed by the worm.

http://www.qwest.com/dsl/customerservice/csco675up s.html
http://www.qwest.com/dsl/customerservice/csco678up s.html

http://www.qwest.com/dsl/customerservice/csco675up s.html
http://www.qwest.com/dsl/customerservice/csco678up s.html

http://www.qwest.com/dsl/customerservice/win675ups .html

http://www.qwest.com/about/qwest/QwestCyberCenters /NA_IP_Network_map_large.jpg

http://www.above.net/network/index.html

It's wonders what you can do when you also own the dark fiber/DWDM gear... Split a few lambdas off for yourself, sell the rest to cover your costs... Not too bad if you can afford it.

------------------------------------------------ ------------

I know lots of people have had problems getting one or both of the great broadband connections, but I couldn't be happier - except perhaps if high-speed DSL was a little cheaper for me.

FYI, my cable provider was MediaOne/RoadRunner (don't know who might have bought M1 now though) and my DSL providers have been Qwest (line, service, formerly USWest) and BitStream Underground (service). I'm located in the Twin Cities. Tell them all I sent ya, I'll split the referral bonus with ya ;)

- Headius

with USQWEST Choice Tv, I get digital cable and 1mbit internet over a pair of copper wire. Three tv hookups (one happens to go to the TV tuner in my desktop pc), 4 IPs (dhcp). Service has been pretty reliable, even for USQwest. (we're talking about the same co who installed UDC on my lines then had 12 service calls in one month)

linkage from the horse's mouth.

http://www.qwest.com/dsl/learn/pricing.html

The first three are all sold as "256K" connections, but in reality all are 640 down, 272. And the $20 one is Windows-only. So the (monthly) pricing basically goes:

• $30 for 640K/272K
• $60 for 640K/544K
• $70 for 960K/816K
• $80 for 1.2M/1M
• $150 for 4.4M/1M
• $250 fol 7.1M/1M

Firstly, it's a whole hell of a lot easier (though still a bit of a pain) to lay terrestrial cable. Example: Qwest just slapped a plow on a train car and furrowed trenches along rail lines all around the US. Stuff in cable, backfill, and you're done (more or less). You can't really do that with submarine cable. You can also do end-run tricks with microwave and laser for cheap further expansion.
Though the link was already posted, I'll post it again. It's a splendid article Neal Stephenson wrote for Wired, and if you want to hear more than you wanted about laying cable, read it.

So what you've got is relatively cheap terrestrial links, but when you start talking trans-oceanic, then things get hairy, both in effort and money terms. So you only have a few outbound connections from the continent, which means one anchor/earthquake/curious competitor (read the article) and there goes your connectivity.

Note that Arpanet was meant to protect the US military network in times of chaos (i.e. armageddon). It really isn't an issue that overseas connectivity is a somewhat fragile link, since in times of war, it's only the national network that matters.

As for routing issues, well, there are all sorts of wack payment issues at the backbone level. At the top level, the paths that packets take are determined by business agreements rather than efficiency. So you'd have to get on the horn to your competition and beg and plead for assistance (banks do it; they loan each other money all the time and at pretty decent rates, although telcos might enjoy raping each other when asked for help). Also you may get into weird latency issues if you route US traffic over a cable destined for, say India and then somehow on to the US (maybe).

Caveat: This could all be bullshit. Comments?

You can get DSL service from the Incumbent LEC (Local Exchange Carrier), USWest... erm, Qwest, as well as from Competitive LEC's such as Covad NorthPoint, or Rhythms.

Separately, you have a choice of ISP. IMO, there are only two choices. VISI has really good deals on multiple static IP's, but can't compete with Onvoy performance wise, because the former uses expensive Qwest (got it right that time) DSL, while the latter uses Covad.

Of course, there are dozens of different ISP options. Some are overpriced, some offer better speed, some offer better features... it's truly a competitive market out there.

--

Of course, as this part of a tutorial indicates that higher bitrates allow for fewer channels, getting 80 might not be possible, so we may just have to settle for `only' 160gbps.
---

is slashdot going to post a story every time someone at Qwest takes a dump or what?

This article was posted a little over a month ago about how the guys at Qwest did a hundred mile round trip at 40Gbs. Is this really that much more signifigant? It just seems to me that this is the /. equivalent of a front page headline about how Bell called his other assistant a little over a month after he phoned the first one. The overwhelming response from the telephone using public "Whooptie shit!"


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

Qwest has a really, really fast backbone with many trans-atlantic links. They use an OC-768 link in North America. Check out their network. Our company hosts our web server (needs like yours...it has international audience) with them and its fast but the only problem is that their customer service sucks (well...from our experience). Many trans-atlantic companies have redundancy plans. The canada to iceland link went down last year (severed fibre) and it routes through satalite. Its slow ping wize but it is still fast. There are also many redundant fibre pairs that they can use in times of failure. If you are affraid of your traffic not making it overseas, don't worry because even if some place looses ALL of their connections they will route through another ISP and people can still get to your web site if the involved parties (including you) have a BGP scheme implemented.

Qwest has done far better, as talked about recently on slashdot in "Qwest Achieves 100-Mile IP Round-Trip At 40Gb/sec"

My only question is why is it going to take 4 hours? If Qwest has been able to do so much better than that in field trials, why aren't they using this opportunity to show their technology in the Real World(tm)? Especially since they claimed in the press release:

More than 750 studio quality streaming video channels can be transported simultaneously

So why can't they do just one in less than 4 hours?

BTW, Qwest had another press relese today about their record breaking speeds.

Qwest has done far better, as talked about recently on slashdot in "Qwest Achieves 100-Mile IP Round-Trip At 40Gb/sec"

My only question is why is it going to take 4 hours? If Qwest has been able to do so much better than that in field trials, why aren't they using this opportunity to show their technology in the Real World(tm)? Especially since they claimed in the press release:

More than 750 studio quality streaming video channels can be transported simultaneously

So why can't they do just one in less than 4 hours?

BTW, Qwest had another press relese today about their record breaking speeds.

Hey every movie, ever made is available online! I guess you just missed the boat. Last night, I even saw a commercial for Qwest Communications touting this fact. It appears they own a run down, highway motel that has every movie ever made available in their rooms. Room service appears to be lacking though -- only coffee and donuts.

Qwest has their fiber-optic lines setup so you don't need to dig them up to replace them. They just yank them out of the conduit. They have 2 conduits set up, one is full right now, the other is empty (if I recall), so they can string the fiber in it, with no digging up the lines.

Older companies like AT&T have to do more work to redo their fiber lines.

BTW, a post further down the line here there is a post which implies that Lucent makes fiber-optic lines for sale. I know they do optical research, but Corning makes the majority of the optical lines sold. Corning's symbol is GLW for interested investors.

I switched my LD carrier to Qwest. There's probably a couple of awful things about Qwest I don't know about, but I'll be O.K. with that just as long as I can stay away from Sprint.

Sprint is horrible. To me its kind of like the Highlander TV-series, everyone you absorb changes you, and Sprint is so bad, it couldn't help but make MCI WorldCom worse. Sprint PCS has to be about the worst mobile carrier on the planet.

Why oh, why, do telecommunications companies suck so much? I can't wait for a break through in quantum communications, just the sort of thing we need to erase large beaureaucratic near-monopolies from the face of the Earth.

On the gripping hand, we can all get DSL and standardize on some kind of voice-o'er-IP standard. That'll show them.

• Sites Disendorsed:
• Sprint
• MCI WorldCom
  Sites Endorsed:
• Qwest

I switched my LD carrier to Qwest. There's probably a couple of awful things about Qwest I don't know about, but I'll be O.K. with that just as long as I can stay away from Sprint.

Sprint is horrible. To me its kind of like the Highlander TV-series, everyone you absorb changes you, and Sprint is so bad, it couldn't help but make MCI WorldCom worse. Sprint PCS has to be about the worst mobile carrier on the planet.

Why oh, why, do telecommunications companies suck so much? I can't wait for a break through in quantum communications, just the sort of thing we need to erase large beaureaucratic near-monopolies from the face of the Earth.

On the gripping hand, we can all get DSL and standardize on some kind of voice-o'er-IP standard. That'll show them.

• Sites Disendorsed:
• Sprint
• MCI WorldCom
  Sites Endorsed:
• Qwest

Use this information wisely, and please don't go researching phone numbers, do you remember what you did to the poor woman at Unisys? Keep the comments rational, and don't overreact just yet, you don't know all the information. Maybe a rational query of Qwest will turn it up.

Anyway, Qwest's feedback page.

Regards,

http://www.qwest.com/aboutqwest/contact.html