Free ISPs for Linux?

Rob Gibson asks: "I have heard stories of people using free ISPs under Linux to connect to the internet, and was hoping to do so myself. Many of them have slow connection speeds or bad support. Almost all have ad banners. The one that I love under Windows is Worldspy.net, which offers fast access and good coverage with no banner ads. However, I am digressing. I called Worldspy's tech support number, and they are not giving out any information as to how I could connect in Linux. Has anyone had success using Worldspy's access? Any free ISP using the MicroPortal technology? One thing that would be helpful in my attempts to figure this out is some software that would passively monitor the modem/COM port for incoming and outgoing data while in use with another program. Does anyone have suggestions for Linux or DOS/Win?"

Comments

Re:Netzero is easy

[Andy Dodd]

Your username is :username@netzero.net, and your password is the "encrypted" one. In the Windows PPP log, it'll show as being 1 character from the end of the password, seperated by some unprintable character.

UKLinux

[arafel]

Not sure if the poster asking the question was in the UK or not, but this might be useful for others as well...

http://www.uklinux.net/ is a free ISP specifically aimed at Linux users; in addition to not charging users, any profits made are donated to open source/free software groups. Truly useful. :)

(It still amuses me that my sister's machine, which runs Windows, still helps Linux by using UKLinux as the ISP...)

PNW nocharge.com

[lucidvein]

In Washington and Oregon you can connect free and anonymously thru nocharge.com which is an up and coming free dial up service. No need to use a propriatory dialer so you don't waste time and screen space with ads. They even have linux specific instructions. Now there's a first!

On that note, what are they tracking? The nice feature of nocharge is that there is no account to setup (username: guest, password:password). But do they really intend to make money by selling a list of anonymously hit websites/downloads? I don't think many people are going to be calling the 1-900 number for tech support at $x.x per minute. Doubt it offsets the cost of running modem banks in every major city... But maybe so.

Look at Freewwweb

[zdryer]

Have you checked out Freewwweb ? I remember using this once or twice with my Apple eMate. The service seemed OK. There are no proprietary dialers, banner ad apps, etc., so it should work fine with Linux (it worked on my Newton, after all). Check out these detailed setup instructions for more info. About the only drawback I see to this service is the damn name, which is next to impossible to say. (Free WUH-WUH-WUH Web?)

Re:Look at Freewwweb

[toh]

FreeWWWeb, like most Free ISPs, contracts for ISP service in each city. In my locale they use UUNet, and I do find the service "exceedingly amazing", or at least as good as a v.90 dialup can possibly be - 5+kBps all the time for compressed data, and as good as a modem gets in terms of latency (it ought to be, it's on the UUNet backbone). I have noticed once or twice in the last few months where I couldn't authenticate for a few hours (presumably the smartnet/freewwweb Radius server was down or unreachable) but on the whole it's a darn fine service, and the service terms are totally reasonable. The portal page is even pretty good (as portal pages go), with minimal advertising.

I seem to recall that they use Earthlink for most of the US, so YMMV there (and if you abhor Earthlink for their Scientology connections that may be another issue to consider).

www.freewwweb.com

[RGRistroph]

I know you can get www.freewwweb.com working, because I helped a co-worker set it up for his home machine. As I am moving to a new place where there is no cable modem/DSL, I plan to use it myself. He set it up first in windows, then copied the information to kppp to connect from linux. The only hitch was that he removed dollar signs from the password as stored on the windows side, before it would start working.

For linux instructions, check out this link, just one of several revealed in a quick google search: teledyn.

I would like to second the request for some type of "modem sniffer" program. Several times I have been faced with the task of making a dialup connection that worked under windows work with linux; often these had been set up by a program distributed by the ISP and it was difficult to figure out what it did; a modem-logger type of program would have been very useful. I just spent fifteen minutes searching freshmeat and other places which have network sniffers, but I didn't see anything that looked useful for debuging the initial part of the dialup connection.

WorldSpy For Linux

[Bodero]

I am using Worldspy right now, and it works in Linux. They won't tell you this, but I will. ;)

As long as you can connect with Windows, you're in luck. I still use WorldSpy 1.0 and I won't upgrade as it's perfect the way it is now. Connect to the internet with it, then disconnect, then open up your Dial-Up Networking properties. Somewhere in the mangled world of Windows menus is an option to prompt you for information before dialing out. Find it and make sure it's checked. Next, start up the Worldspy software and when it loads, it should list your encrypted username. Oddly enough, your password isn't encrypted. Write down that username and you've got a fully functional PPP internet account which works with Windows and Linux! It may not be fast (I get connected around 31.2kbps), but heck, it's free! Hope this helps.