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For people who want to run servers at home, I hear Speakeasy is the best broadband ISP. I have also had no problems running web, ssh, mail and dns servers on my broadband connection from Linkline. Though I don't think the TOS specifically allows this, they haven't blocked any ports or hassled me about it in the two years or so I've had my server up and running.

Speakeasy Sorry link didn't work first.

This isn't audiogalaxy's work... This is an (old) service from listen.com, which has been in existence for at least 6-8 months (if not more, I don't remember).

Since I never heard anything about listen.com buying audiogalaxy, it might just be audiogalaxy branding listen.com's service. (That's what speakeasy (my isp) does.)

It's really sad that audiogaxy isn't doing there own thing: their service was so cool :(

Maan

Covad's main business is being a DSL provider, not an ISP. If that part of their business sucks, it's not really a reflection on the important stuff. Speakeasy.net is generally the right ISP to use with Covad DSL in my experience and that of my friends.

For what it's worth, Speakeasy doesn't guarantee any particular rate, but they'll be happy to lower the charge for their plan if you're not reliably getting the rate you're paying for. They'll give you one or more real static IPs and not restrict what you use it for. (I run a publicly accessible wireless gateway, for example.) As far as support for stuff that isn't part of their service, I dunno, but there's a newsgroup for unofficial support that's frequented by their clueful techs.

If you decide to join the cult, tell them I sent you and I'll get some free service. Mmm... cult.

I guess you have never worked at an ISP. The level of control your asking for would require eveyr ISP in the world to hire way more techies. As it is now ISP's are having trouble making money because the mroe responsible you are the less money you make. The closest ISP to responsible i have found is Speakeasy. Ill admit that my one of my home machines (win2k not my linux boxes of course ;)) was rooted a while ago. The attacked took control while i was on vacation and sent spam out. Speakeasy immediatly shut down ALL internet access after spam was detected. I am glad they did it. I got home took down the box called them and everything was fine. If everyone was on Speakeasy then THERE WOULD BE NO SPAM. So if you really want a responsible ISP start with yourself and go with Speakeasy.

speakeasy.net they are great and a linux based shop.

There has been a lot of talk in setting up similar systems (wired and wireless) in Northern Virginia* one of the topics that always comes up during the discussions is "How do you handle issues like people using the line to hack other systems or spamming or sending threats or (insert bad thing here) ?"


*Despite the fact that I live 10 minutes from WorldCom and AOL headquaters my ONLY choices for broadband are IDSL (which I chose) or a T1 (which I'm willing to pay for on my own)!

Khaaaaaannnnnn!

Disclaimer: I am not the happiest AT&T customer.

I would think that if AT&T was truely interested in improving their profits, they'd introduce a 1.5 Down and 750 up, or static IPs, or any of the other things that you can get from a DSL company for the same price.

Quite frankly, having a 30 MB download complete in 20 seconds instead of 40 seconds isn't enough to make me double the price I'm paying. If they went to double the upstream price, that might be enough to make me dig deeper into my pockets.

Point being, I have to concur with other respondents. I think "dot-com" and I think "something on the 'net". Likewise, Speakeasy is a for-profit business, and if I register something of mine, it's going to probably be a ".net" just because I can. =^^=

Why do people still complain about DSL service... go and get a REAL ISP like Speakeasy... personally i dont think cable is an option if you really want privacy and quality of service... cable by its very nature is internet for the lowest common denominator... Speakeasy doesn't care and actuially will provide SUPPORT for running home servers... good speeds and INCREDIBLE uptime... low latency, high thoroughput, and awsome tech support makes Speakeasy put EVERY opther ISP to shame...

The swell ISP Speakeasy Networks is on record saying customers are allowed to share in an article about community wireless networks.

If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.

Are you sure about that? I have residential class service from Speakeasy, and as far as I can tell my TOS doesn't prohibit me reselling the service. If it's not prohibited, then I assume it's allowed, no?

If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.

Are you sure about that? I have residential class service from Speakeasy, and as far as I can tell my TOS doesn't prohibit me reselling the service. If it's not prohibited, then I assume it's allowed, no?

Speaseasy is my ISP and althoug its not high upload its everything else... you get fast enough down and they are what a true ISP should be... they cost a little extra but *GASP* they give linux support... call em at 3:00AM and they have a linux techie waiting for you with no wait time... even during peak hours its only maybe 5 mins to get a person on the phone... personally for me internet is more than your "up" and "down" speeds... im tired of people wanting raw kbit speed when thats not what they even really use... low latency is most of the time a bigger issue as a high down really only helps thsoe divx files come down... when your latency is low your games run smooth and the pages load faster... is 512kbit going to feel slower than 1.5mbit when its a 10k page???

I'd suggest Speakeasy.net. They have excellent prices and speeds, encourage running "servers," good customer support, and unlimited usage. They also don't use the broken-by-design PPPoE protocol, and really stick it to Verizon.

i use Speakeasy...

they are giving away a free geforce 4 to nbew users people AND they host an rpm service... come on... what more do you WANt from an isp... i recently switched to them and they OWN...

Screw their corporate mentality, and go get your connectivity from a company that has a correct philosophy of what the Internet is, and encourages you to make the most of it.

If we all ask them really nicely, maybe Speakeasy would take them on. I mean, they're one hell of an ISP and mirror RPMfind too...

The problem here is that there were a bunch of people running Excite@home; at least after the merger with a vision of the internet as the next generation of television broadcasting. Commercially produced content from central servers was gonna rule. Combine multimedia formats + the bandwidth to transmit them clearly and become a media conglomerate (overnight, please)

Cable companies have their own vision of what they think the net should be, or, more precisely, the direction they wish to steer their subscribers contractually, and in marketing terms. This is still unfolding now, but enough has transpired since November to illustrate their desire for an AOL-type service of tight user control: overmanaged, overintrusive, restricted to the point of uselessness and treating their customers as a byproduct of their business goal of selling information about them and their preferences and interests to marketeers. How well is this working out? Going by the fact that there are so many millions of complaints they can't afford or maintain supervisory control over the staff to answer them all is an indication their surefire plan to become overnight billionaires isn't very likely to happen either.

Customers who use the net know what they want to use the net for, and in almost all cases it isn't television nor a substitution for a trip to a shopping mall. ISPs, and especially broadband ISPs who just get that point and provide a reliable affordable carrier will succeed in the long run - not become billionaires overnight (which is a flaky ambition anyway) but they'll be around 10 years from now.

Another good analytical article is posted here on C|net

The really ironic thing is that the architects of the original @home network got it so right. I used it here for 2 and a half years and recommended it because it was demonstrably competitive: Static IP, OS agnostic real and complete internet, and the service was reliable - not perfect, but reliable. That's competitive.

The replacement comcast.net service unfortunately isn't, but I'm fortunate to be within DSL range so was able with some effort to move everything of mine over to these guys and so for me at least for now, all is well.

@home got it right, but it got derailed by a societical bollock stew of venture capitalists, pundits, investors, cable companies, regulators (by doing nothing) and finally it reached baknruptcy court which did the best they could with the mess; leading to my question:

Is America failing?

Only one problem in 6 months. Tech. support is fine...if you don't need to call them ...if you do need to call them...forget it, mostly you only get support through email...and their responsivness is poor. They do seem to be trying to improve though.

However, on the whole, not too much worse than anyone else I've dealt with, other than Netsight (Chicago, IL)...they were horrible. Never returned calls, email down once a week...on the plus side though...it took them months, and months to bill me

I've got Speakeasy DSL which runs about $100/month for 768 down, 384 up. It may have come down a bit (my better half handles the bills), and I might be able to shave off a few more bucks if I trimmed unnecessary services (like the shell account), but it's still more than the local telco (PacHell), which is cool by me because Speakeasy is really customer focused. They happily set up reverse DNS for my (static) IPs, they have no problem with me running servers, they give advance notice of outages, and much more. I believe that level of service is worth paying for. Most people I know don't. They're happier saving $10 month.

I think the head of Sweden's telco is probably right - that does sound cheap and people will not voluntarily pay more, but guess what: if those rates are raised $10, people will still pay - they'll just complain about it. Remember when AOL raised rates from like $19.95 to $21.95? It made headline news in the states. I remember everyone grumbling about it. But a month later everyone forgot and AOL continued to grow exponentially after that time (I'm sure they've leveled off since though). One thing I'd be curious about is how are they able to keep rates so low in Sweden? Was part/all of the network government sponsored? Does the unique low price of broadband give Sweden a competive edge to attract high-tech companies to set up shop there over other countries? I don't think the existing customers will be much of a factor in any price increases, but I think they should keep bigger issues like these in mind.

-"Zow"

I believe that Speakeasy.net is port 25 friendly, but their TOS says if one piece of reported spam gets sent through your SMTP server, they cut your account.

That's not what he's asking -- he wants to know about ISPs that don't block an outgoing port 25 connection. That is, the ability to connect to another server on the net via port 25 (SMTP default port). This is a common anti-spam system that the majors (Earthlink, MSN, and I think AOL) use.

FYI for the poster, I think Speakeasy doesn't block outgoing (or incoming) SMTP. They have DSL and dial-up. Personally, I use AOL Timewarner roadrunner, and they don't block it. But cable modems may not be available / desired.

Must agree, Speakeasy is a great DSL provider, just as Drizzle is another one I recommend to cool people in Seattle who got burned by @Home.

And we should note that we'll all miss the Speakeasy cafe that burned down in that fire - luckily most of their servers were in another location so their network never dropped.

As we suffer through the dot com crashes, it's nice to see some of the good guys surviving.

-

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As a user of SpeakEasy.net, one of the few good DSL providers left who don't use the broken-by-design PPPoE protocol, I'm definitely relieved to hear that Covad will be sticking around for a while. SpeakEasy assured all of their customers that in the event of Covad going under they would provide service by some other means, though that's always questionable at best. Great job, guys!

You probably are referring to "Speakeasy" DSL (here)
They provide static IP / SDSL / pick your POP, etc services. They also allow you to run anything you want on your DSL line (servers, IPsec, anything except child porn I guess :) )
Their news server sucks however (they outsource it). They're also relying on Covad's network currently, and Covad is not in the greatest financial condition right now. But they do claim they have "backup plans" if Covad goes belly-up.

You're streaming audio, and that's going to cost. But you've also found a way around that - send people to composers you feature at mp3.com. Also, many composers have ties to academia, where space can be available.

One thing to remember: the site isn't the community. The site is one location, like a coffee house or bar, where some of the community can meet sometimes. I've been webmastering a site for the Jazz Journalists Association since '96. Why? Because I share your belief in the value of encouraging real music. What does it cost? Well, I've built it up incrementally, so it's not a big time drain. Content is donated by association members - it's an adjunct to an already existing community. At first it was hosted at a local not-for-profit ISP I volunteered with (to learn the trade - which worked out fine for me). Then I used a couple of hosting services (service quality was problematic - it was Superb and Pair). Now it's sitting on a Speakeasy DSL line, which actually ends up getting better reports from users than hosting, and is a whole lot more convenient to administer. Plus I've got that connection for other uses, so only a portion of the cost is attributable to this project.

Does it create a sense of community? Well, the Association is growing nicely, although conducting most activities in the real world, which makes most sense for an artform that works best live anyway. Attempts to get visitor discussions going on a BBS-type section haven't gone anywhere. People do add occassional comments to stories - but we're not set up as a weblog. Special events where journalists log on together for a few hours to publicly discuss a special topic, with questions coming in from the public, have some success - especially when they draw in existing communities, for instance from special-purpose mailing lists on the topics.

Money? Nope. Referrals for book and record sales have brought zilch. Taking the Association to a formal not-for-profit and pursing grants is the long-term plan.

But to reiterate: It's rare to form a brand new community. But communities are out there, and adding new service for an existing community can more likely find at least modest success, especially if you can piggyback your hosting and connectivity on systems and lines you have other good uses for.

If they were a little more reasonable about their terms of service, they could have charged a little more. I would gladly have paid a small fee for the opportunity to run my own web server, or to talk to tech support people who didn't think my problems were due to not running windows. I moved to speakeasy because I wanted a more freedom about what to do with my computers and didn't want to be treated like a clueless luser by people who naturally assume that if it is not windows, it is broken

Speakeasy seems to get it.

Speakeasy's Terms Of Service state that customers are allowed "to run servers (web, mail, etc.) over their Internet connections." They also give out static IP addresses.

Speakeasy's Terms Of Service state that customers are allowed "to run servers (web, mail, etc.) over their Internet connections." They also give out static IP addresses.

This is why I cut first level tech off after 5 minutes. I never reinstall my ip stack (if i can't hit something else on my network, i won't call tech support), and I tell them i have windows. I'm just glad i've got a real isp.

As for unsupported OSes, you basically lie. " What do you support? Oh, funny, that's what I have". The way I figure, first level TS isn't paid enough to care about me or if I lie.

Speakeasy, the last decent Boston-area DSL provider, charges $299 a month for 1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps SDSL. That ain't chump change

My guess: Sprint actually figured out that providing that much local bandwidth was going to cost WAY too much to add enough backbone bandwidth to support a widespread rollout, so killed it. Simple economics.

The point is not that Bush is letting Microsoft off the hook

I figured this would happen; called it several months ago. But just like in the case of a certain football player some time ago, the damage has been done, and despite the lack of a serious criminal punishment, in both cases everybody knows what happened. In the one case, a certain induhvidual will never have a girlfriend with brains again, and in the other... well, we'll have to wait and see, but it should be an interesting ride.

--
Sooner or later, in light of all this, you're going to need a Linux guru

http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/business/04 DEAL.html

Yeah, I know, Taco won't change'em so NYT won't bust his chops, but they're gonna bust us all bigtime if we keep swiping their articles straight up... Just right-click, copy link location, paste into new window, make the appropriate edit, and fsck'em. After all, it's not like you were gonna feed'em real marketing data anyway.... right?

--
You need a Linux guru.

Perhaps projects like Galeon can be the saving grace.

I'm typing this on Galeon 0.11.5, and while Galeon is being a memory pig at 39mb, it is pretty fast, and it has a lot of cool features that respond in a reasonable manner (tabbed browsing, icons, session recovery). Yeah, it's got a few bugs, but it's VERY useable, version number be damned.

I have currently on-system Galeon, Mozilla (0.9.3, still very useable but a CPU hog as well), Opera (damn that thing is LIGHT! still some CSS bugs; the Linux version lags Win32 in that respect), Konqueror (plain, but functional, and also light... but no tabs like Opera), Amaya (for standards checking, in case a site acts funny), Netscape (the only one I leave Flash-enabled), lynx, and links. All of them have uses... but Galeon is the one I use the most, just because it's that good, that cool.

Asa and the gang have come a LONG way since M18, and Marco and Ricardo and company have built on that success... I could give a rip about version numbers, what I care about is functionality. If they want to go the Debian route and get *all* the bugs out before releasing 1.0, that's fine with me, as long as they keep putting out milestones. Frankly, except for the way plugins work (or don't), I'm really happy with what they've got now...

Which leads me to the zinger: if we can do all this with BETA software (Mozilla 0.9.3, Galeon 0.11.5, Gnumeric 0.67, AbiWord 0.7.14, openssl 0.9.5a, LILO 0.21, yadda yadda yadda... out of the 631 packages on my Mandrake 7.2 system, 139 of them, including many vital ones like pam 0.72, have version numbers >1.0)... what will the world look like when all that stuff is finally 1.0?

Me, I'm looking forward to it...

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Need a Unix guru?

I have yet to see a ISP let their customers run a web site without extra cost.

Hint: Speakeasy.

Access costs MONEY. Pay it.

What would your reaction be if the post office starting telling you that you're not allowed to receive a letter from someone that you haven't already sent a letter to? Or, if you get an envelope, and inside it is another envelope, inside which is the letter, then that inside envelope can only be pink, but it better not have a floral border.

Whinning 'cause you can't get it free?

Personal Web Page Restrictions:

We believe in the right of the individual to publish information that they feel is important to the world via the Internet. Unlike many ISP's we do allow you to run a server (web, mail, etc.) over your DSL line.

I currently use Speakeasy for DSL and they offer static IPs.

In the US, which is the backdrop for most of this stuff, most ISPs charge for monthly access by a flat rate. For example, if you go here, you can play with Speakeasy.net's packages and see that it costs anywhere from $60 per month to $300 per month... however, you'll notice it lists no per-usage fee. So more traffic actually means less money, since most US broad-band ISPs are unmetered, and charge a flat fee per month.

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Unfortunately, we do not support MBONE connectivity. You could set it up personally with our DSL, but the setup would most likely be suboptimal. You'd need to load all of the proper software kernels and configurations, etc.

I can't tell you how good their service is yet. I only ordered the DSL (768 SDSL approx. $150/mo) on 6/29, but the "loop" line was installed by Ameritech on 7/6, and Covad is scheduled to do the inhouse wiring on 7/11.

Beats my past experience with the now defunct Northpoint (Netsight ISP) by 3 months!

Plus Speakeasy has a great web interface for keeping me uptodate with the state of my order. (And provides 30hr/month dial-up service for free.)

They have a lot of choices for DSL configuration, and allow up to 10 IP addresses for Residential service.

I'm confident that my good experience will continue. Check out DSL Reports for more end-user experiences with this and other ISPs/providers.

---- Sigs are bad for your health ----

I don't even use linux, I'm somewhere between a 'techy' and a 'computer illiterate', and I'm more driven by politics than computers, so I doubt I have the patience to figure it out.

That said, you completely missed the point. I doubt you read what I linked, and you obviously don't understand the difference between a monopolized market and 'competitive capitalism'. Let me try it this way:

AOL/TW vs. Microsoft = Plutocratical

Speakeasy DSL vs. Carolina Broadband = Capitalistic

If you can't see the difference, let me expand on my point: the first group accounts for over 25% of ALL MEDIA in the country; including TV, radio, newspapers, movies, music, software, and the internet. They have no competition because they control the medium through which their competitors would normally be advertising. Once the practice in that story spreads, in places like Charlotte North Carolina (where I live), you won't see any commercials that advertise any product that competes with any product sold by AOL/TW -- because Time Warner provides the ONLY Cable TV service.

And why the hell are you so motivated to be against diversity of choice?? No one here is trying to change the laws from what they were; the Telecommunications Act did that by changing what the laws HAD BEEN FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY. The people who ARE trying to change them, are doing it to put them back the way they were SUPPOSED to be.

pax
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I've repeatedly advocated SpeakEasy.net as a DSL company that are on top of things and cater to those who know what they want out of a DSL service. They offer up to 4 static IPs on a residential connection, block no ports, encourage running servers, and have a request to set reverse DNS lookups on their tech support email page. I think that about says it all. =)

Hi,
Forward and Reverse DNS are totally different ballgames. While your upsteam provider SHOULD provide you with forward and reverse DNS they often do not. Think of it as the white pages; you get the book for free (DNS lookups) and they will list you for free (forward and reverse) -- it should be the same for the internet.

One company, Speakeasy.net is a DSL provider and they will provide a reverse PTR record for _ALL_ their static IP DSL customers. In my opinion this is good service.

With forward DNS, you can get your DNS from anyone -- I run a service called EveryDNS and we'll do it for you for free. Feel free to give it a look at EveryDNS.Net

Like a couple of others mentioned, you can get iDSL to work over a fiber/copper mix. It's usually used when folks had ISDN and wanted to switch. I don't think the telcos do iDSL, but I know Covad does/did. A check of the speakeasy.net DSL price chart shows them doing 144/144 iDSL for $89.99 a month (residential).

Lots of people who live in huge cookiecutter subdivisions plopped down in the middle of old dairy farms in the 1980's usually have this problem, because they've usually got a bit of fiber split into a bunch of copper. And if you live in the city, your phone is full of bridge taps and doesn't have a clean signal. And if you live in the country, you're too far away from a CO. Otherwise, you're one of the dozen people who have DSL....

That was in November, and I've yet to have a significant outage. I'm paying $60/Mo for a static IP, the ISP's blessing for any legal activity I want to host, and 280-640kbs with 128 minimum garanteed. I consistently get 350-500kbs (down), as measured by a couple of different raw bandwidth monitors. I only get 128kbs up, but for the 10(?) people a week that hit my web-server, that's no problem. The price is about $10 more than I would pay for comparable service from USWest, but I've never had to mess with them, which is worth it to me. Besides, they couldn't make it happen, and Speakeasy could.

So this leaves me with just a few questions:

1) What did the USWest tech do?
2) What did Speakeasy say to USWest to get them to do whatever they did?
3) Why did USWest tell me their copper couldn't be made to work, when clearly it could? In other words, why didn't they want my money when I wanted to give it to them?
4) Have others found that their experience is better when using a 3rd party ISP than when using the ILEC for the ISP?

here's a video (windows media .ASF format) of the spectator system in action.

very cool.

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