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On the Reliability of DSL Providers...
As someone personally suffering in DSL Limbo, I can understand vt@home's frustration. I ordered my DSL way back at the end of July and was told "6 weeks" by the company that's offering DSL in my area. Of course, it's now nearing the end of September and although I was promised that Bell-Atlantic (now Verizon) would make the necessary connections last Friday. It's Tuesday and nary a Verizon truck in site with my line. I can't blame the company I initially signed up with. They made the offer in good faith, but we both have been screwed by the local telco. Strike withstanding, I figure I should have seen someone by now, yet I haven't. This story is not unusual in the pursuit of DSL.
So if you have DSL, please share your experiences good or bad and tell us what you think of your provider. If anything it might help the next person in search of broadband prepare for the long waits and the excuses if their service isn't delivered as promised.
I have SWBell in Dallas - I've had nothing but good experiences with it. I think I've had about 1 day total of downtime over the past 3 months, which is pretty good compared to what I was getting over dial-up. I'm getting terrific speed, despite not being all that close to the box.
On the other hand, some of my friends have really gotten reamed by them.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Bell Atlantic also claims that I can't get DSL, but several providers claim (via DSLReports) they can get it to me. I'm no telecom genius so I'm just plain confused.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
The 144Kb quote the others give is for IDSL. It's basically ISDN. It can go a lot further than ADSL, but costs a lot more. We are outside the range of ADSL and use IDSL and it works great. Just don't expect great speeds.
You'll probably have to go to a 3rd party providor, we use Speakeasy and are VERY happy with them. Most Telcos won't deal with IDSL. They prefer the quick ADSL installs. People that pay more for IDSL are usually "expert" users and require more service (DNS, More IPs..etc). They prefer to make the quick buck on web surfers.
I have 608/128kbps service with SpeakEasy in the Boston area. I ordered it in the beginning of May and was given an install date two weeks later. It's been running at the full 608kbps speed ever since, has never gone down, and the company is great in terms of catering to people who know what they want (i.e. multiple static IPs, encouraged domain and web serving, etc). I'd highly suggest them in any area, for that matter.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
The only problem I had was at installation when the phone-tech who did it didn't clip out the automatic test equipment in the box outside my house (there's some piece of electronics hidden in the back of that model of box that does loopback testing to the exchange for traditional copper lines).
I've had BellSouth DSL for a couple of months now, without a single problem. I had to do the complete install myself, saving me about $150, but it was fairly easy. The one problem I had was dealt with by, surprisingly, a customer service rep who actually knew what he was talking about.
So, all in all, I like it, even though it means I get my daily ration of spam faster...
NecroPuppy
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Linux... Good! Microsoft... Bad! Beer... Good!
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I've had US West DSL in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area since it was first offered.
The setup process is the worst part of it. Nobody seems to know whats going on and getting your line qualified is a pain, everyone has a different answer.
However, once you get the DSL installed its trouble free. I've had a few issues with the DSL, called up tech support and it's always been resolved very quickly. (From the modem seemingly dieing, to lots of packets that were not destined for my machines coming into my network.)
The tech support folks, and people who answer the phone are generally very clueful. It's just a problem with the people at the CO that do the DSL installation need the clue bat.
--Mark
Remember that the vehement complaints are coming from the minority of people who are peeved. There are lots of customers out there, every day, using their service without a hitch or error. Also, most of the complaints are coming from the northeast (i.e. New York) where the phone lines are crap, in short supply, the unionized labour force is lazy, and your only real hope for good service is to go through the pain of a CLEC.
Put simply, I wouldn't trade my service for anything, but North Texas seems to be, based on reviews, the only place who has gotten DSL right (with GTE no less!).
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So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
I used Mpowered for a year before going to university. Blazing fast, great latency, even if it did go offline every once in a while.
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Up times are good with them, I've been down less then .01 % since I've gotten it. I pay 49.95 a month for a 768 down 256 up connection.. However, their customer service does leave something to be desired, to the point where I just said screw it when trying to get setup on their mail server and just ran my own..
Overall Grade B-
http://www.telocity.net
1) Strike it rich
2) Use SDSL
3) Struggle with it
4) Say "Fuck it", start a web hosting business, buy a T1
5) Make obscene amounts of money, buy a T3
6) Buy AOL/Time Warner
7) Get sued into oblivion, have slashdot suddenly hate you
8) Retire, penniless
9) Post your pleas to slashdot:
10) "Can anyone reccomend a cheap DSL provider?"...
I have nothing but good things to say about my DSL provider. They dealt with GTE when GTE needed dealt with (which can be a real pain) and installation happened, mostly because they made it happen. They don't enforce yearly commitments but instead reward you with price breaks if you choose to (I did). They are BritSys. If you're in the Durham, NC area I'd go with them. Fast, too...
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
I use 768K SDSL at home and love it! Several friends and co-workers have the same setup and have no complaints. We game constantly and get excellent times playing games, and working from home is a breeze now. I am obviously not on USWest or @Home, so I can't speak for their services, but my provider has been excellent - service was even turned up in 8 days.
I have had excellent luck with DSL in Lincoln, Nebraska. I have a 2G/mo. transfer limit, 6 static IP addresses, and the reliability is really good. I've probably had 3 or 4 days in the last year where I couldn't get past my provider, and those were resolved quickly. I've been watching reports from other areas of the country, though, and have discovered that not everybody is so fortunate.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Since you are in Phoenix, that would be your best choice if DSL and COX@HOME is not available.
I've had SBC in the Houston area a couple of times. The experience was horrible. The most recent time, I was without even a phone for six months. Of course I was still getting BILLED for everything (about $100 a month in total), but no service. Their solution was to transfer me between departments. With hold times starting at one hour, I could only do this a couple of times a day.
My advice, avoid SBC, Southwestern Bell, and Ameritech like the plague.
funny munging
I was looking at alternatives, including cable modem, and one of the other things I came across was sprint wireless. The price looks about the same as DSL, and installation is free at the moment. However, the "details" section on their product page pretty much said "this is fast internet service." Thanks. Does anyone have any experience with this? What IS the service, actually? Does it depend on existing phone lines at all? If not, could be the way to go...
I've had DSL for the past three years, I was the second person to get it in the Minneapolis area. The first install I had was from USWest, and it was about a month overdue, but they hadn't even gone public with it, I just convinced them to hook me up early. When I moved almost 2 years later, it was a friggin' nightmare. USWest had no clue what their other departments were doing, my line didn't work reliably, and the customer service reps were complete assholes everytime I called. I kept a log of the time I spent on the phone with them, and it was 11.6 hours on the phone in only 2 weeks. After they swore up and down the reliability problem was the wiring in my house, they finally found that the box down the block needed some wires replaced, and then it worked fine. I had USWest.net as a provider this whole time, and if you can get through to the actual network admins, you can get something done, but the tech support people are totally brain damaged. My bill at my last place was screwed up from day one and they screwed it up worse and worse every month.
I just signed up again about a month ago at my new place, install was on time (about 2 weeks from the ordering date), and I went with goldengate.net. USWest seems to have cleaned up their act on the install side of things, and when it went down the other night, the tech I talked to actually went in and reset the equipment at the CO while I was on the phone, which fixed the problem.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I'm in Richmond Virginia, and I ordered DSL with verizon at the very beginning of July. I'm still waiting. Just 3 days ago, they called me up to tell me that it was on, and that I should go for it. I tried, but I couldn't get it to work due to a problem with syncing up with the central office. They said that they'd look into it, and that it would take 24 hours. I'm still waiting. I've tried to get DSL through other companies, and I've had experiences that were as bad or worse. I tried through one company, and they said that they'd wire everything up and give me all the equipment for $100. I told them that I was in an old building and they said that was OK, that old wires were actually better for DSL (???). When they came, they decided that I would need an extra $300 worth of wiring. I told them what they could do with their wire. I've basically been trying to get DSL since March, and haven't been able to do it, even though I live in a reasonably large area, and the telco is quite close to me. When you add wiring to verizon employees striking to employee incompetance and sprinkle in some good old huge company red tape, you get an extremely frustrating experience. So that's my story...that it's next to impossible to get DSL, and the people that I know that do have it say they have connection problems at least once or twice a week, requiring intervention by the telco (usually syncing problems) that take 2-3 days to resolve PER ISSUE. Ain't technology grand? I realize this isn't everybody's experience, but in terms of what I've seen, 9600 baud modems are much more reliable and faster, since they actually work.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I've been using Verizon (previously Bell Atlantic) in Massachusetts for about 3 months now and I haven't had any complaints, until about two weeks ago. Basically, DSL went down for about a day. Couldn't connect, log on or anything. It came back up that evening and ever since then, throughput has been iffy at best. (Used to average about 512K download, now I'm lucky to get 250K, but it fluctuates.) The good news is that Verizon seems to be aware of it and is trying to figure out what's wrong. I just wish they would hurry up.
I, too, checked out dslreports.com, and I also found that the vast majority of users had absolutely nothing good to say about DSL. (Verizon customers in NY must really have it bad!)
It seems to me that the ups far outweigh the downs. I've found that it's just as reliable as my dialup used to be, except it's about 10x faster. (Not to mention cheap for the speed, I pay about $40 a month.) If you can take the occasional headache, it's a great deal.
How you see the world is how the world sees you.
Now that's just me. We Cincinnatians are lucky to have such a good telco (Cincinnati Bell owns ZoomTown). I know that Bell South runs a pretty good DSL service. I think the only way to find good broadband, is to move out of the sticks.
I bounced from them to Speakeasy (yuck) to Comcast and settled on their cable service. It's extremely fast and I'm quite happy.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I had ISDN for a few years, when DSL wasn't available where I lived. When I moved I was all hopped up on getting DSL, but was out of the area, so I got Cable. I loved cable. I moved one more time, and tried to keep my beloved cable, but I couldn't... So now I'm "stuck" with DSL.. granted its better than a modem.. and the speed is better than ISDN (most of the time).. but frankly the latency SUCKS.. I use pac bell.. and their radius servers are always going down, and it gets slow as hell sometimes. Its kinda like politics.. you choose the lesser of two evils.. and I'll take a shitty DSL connection over a shitty modem connection anyday.. its too bad though that such a cool product is so shitty... but thats what we were saying 2 or 3 years ago when DSL was ramping up.. "gee thats pretty cool... all that bandwidth for 70 bucks a month, but I wonder how long that will last?".. Our upstream provider (i worked at an ISP btw :)), started selling DSL, and in talking to them, they only provisioned enough for a 56k connection for all their customers they planned on having.. so at the beginning it was great.. now it sucks.
-- "I feel a strong disturbance in the for.."\*Segmentation Fault*\ (core dumped)
With the exception of being behind one of the 3 hills here, you can pretty much get it anywhere. I know that Phoenix isnt the only area for that product, but I cant remember what the other areas are.
ALSO, I have a friend who just quit from my current company and went to work for, you guessed it, USWest, working on a new product that they havent rolled out yet....Wireless DSL.
Plus, isnt there some company out there that just got their stuff OK'ed by the FCC to start doing internet access over power lines?
Stuff to think about
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
Check to see if there are any wireless Internet providers in your area. The rates in the SF Bay area tend to be higher than for a hard line of the same speed. However, it may be viable in rural areas where it's all too easy to be more than DSL's maximum 15K feet from the central office.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I have had similar horrible experiences with the setting up of my DSL. First, BellSouth attempts install, spends weeks upon weeks telling me that it is getting done and then finds out that I am too far away from their offices to recieve DSL -- neglecting to inform me of this fact, leaving me to find out during one of my many phone calls to their customer service line.
I call Mindspring to get dialup until cable modem is available, and then they sell me on DSL, assuring me that they will be able to hook it up. They claim at one point to have successfully done so, but they never send me a modem. I attempt to rectify this situation, but every call gets me more incorrect information about where the package is. With an hour and a half wait time on each customer service call, I finally snapped and cancelled the service and am waiting until cable modem gets around to my area.
The whole process took about two months and more than 30 hrs of phone time, much of it listening to Mindspring's fantastic choice of psychosis-inducing Muzak. Basically, I don't suggest using Mindspring/Earthlink if you can avoid it -- Mindspring, as of about two years ago, used to have good customer service, but I see that has gone the way of pet rocks. BellSouth, although still, in general, not the smartest, at least has average customer service that one can reach in a reasonable amount of time.
-Navin
The big measure for me, though, is service/support during outages. There, Covad wins hands down. Northpoint has been unable to find their ass with both hands, a flashlight, a map, and a guide. Telling me they needed to call PacBell to arrange a physical line test the day after the PacBell tech had just done that (and their escalation people had made the request to PacBell, too) was the real clincher - I had to read their test results back to their tech over the phone.
In contrast, the one time I had to escalate with Covad, they were prompt, courteous, and got the problem solved very quickly thereafter. Oh yeah - and they were clueful, the entire time.
I can't give you direct experience with PacBell's DSL service, but my understanding is that it's underprovisioned, poorly maintained, and just not worth the hassle. Install times are much slower than for CLECs, and they're a wholly hellish group to deal with. Take a look at the continuing horror stories in ba.internet as an example - that's been pretty much the tone on PB-DSL for the last 2 years. If you're on SBC, you can expect exactly the same - PB is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SBC, and they operate from the same page.
i had bell atlantic (in nj) as soon as it came out in my area. i think i pissed the ppl off b/c every time they gave me a launch date and missed it, i was on the phone raising hell.
i really didn't have many complaints with them except when their routers went down. it happenned a lot the first month when the service was new, and then became pretty infrequent.
some guy came out to run a splitter for the dsl and he was there on time on the promised date. the whole thing about bell coming out to the poll is a farce. they just have to flip a switch in the office and the signal is sent to your phone. now that they have those line filters, you don't even need anyone to come into your house. plug the modem in, and all normal phones to into the line filters and you're good to go.
a lot of ppl at work wanted bell(verizon) and i know they were delayed b/c of the strike, but there really should be no reason they should be that back logged. they ship you the modem, all the rest is a flip of a switch.
then i moved and couldn't get dsl, so i switched to cable modem. now i'm moving again, and i can't get a cable modem, so i don't know what to do. i find it hard to believe that union city, nj can't get high speed access being 15 mins away from nyc. cablevision tells me november, but they are idiots too. i don't think it's worth it to go back to dsl only to want to leave again for the cable modem. i'm tired of spending money on hardware.
i'd recommend bell b/c i didn't have many problems w/ them.
-Jae
The Speakeasy contract specifically allowed me to set up a web server, but has a few exceptions (porn, warez, stuff like that).
Also, Speakeasy has a provision in their contract that if the price of the service ever comes down, I automatically get the better price (but the price cannot go up (until my year contract is up)).
Oh... and their service works perfectly (and was VERY easily configured) with both my Linux and WinNT machines.
I work for an ISP that is reselling DSL from our parent company that leases the lines from Sprint. Sprint in this area (central VA) is the only game in town and they do not play well with others. I think that Sprint is delaying the hookup for our customers, so that they will cancel our service and get Sprints service (and no this does not surprise me).
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
I was in pretty much the same situation. after a lot of reading up on dslreports and asking ppl. at work and all i did decide on a dsl provider (who was more expensive than the rest) and it seems to have been the way to go.In sunnyvale, going with dslnorthwest. A few things to stay vary off, try to get someone who has good cust. service and is not tooo cheap.... you dont get something for nothing. also contracts suck... i am paying 70 / month and well the new contracts for ppl. starting now is 50 / month... i am of course locked into the 70 dollar price. good thing is that they got the dsl thing setup in 3 weeks flat.. i have one static ip (with the option to get up to 5) and am getting about as good a connection as i think you can with sdsl.
.02$
Also, its kinda wierd but i just do not get the entire thing with dsl ppl. trying to say they have better service than cable.. back in ohio with time warner cable i could download from closeby linuxberg mirrors at 400k/sec. On dsl i have hit 85 k/s with my dsl providers test ftp server.... arrggghhh... 784/368 is just not fast enough when you have 3 computers on it!!!
I hear that in canada the dsl is dirt cheap... freaking crazy considering that there are a ton of ISPs... i guess its the problem with the backend providers... i think there are only two in this and most areas Covad and NorthPoint and so they keep prices nice and high! well just my gripe and
One other thing to make
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Not only did Nevada Bell hook me up with a 1.2Mb connection, they did it four weeks early! Two days after I ordered the service, my wife called me at work saying the installer was there - somehow, we got bumped way up in the schedule. Took him 2 days to get it to talk to the network properly, during which time he removed a number of filters intended to keep our bandwidth at 384Kb. When he was done, he decided to leave the filters off.
I think, as with most other services, this falls into the YMMV category. There are so many variables in getting a good ADSL connection - distance to the CO, type of lines in your area, quality of wiring in your house. You can't really make an apples-apples comparison.
I got Pacbell, signed up for it and got it installed within 21 days, though I presume it might be a longer wait if you decide to sign up now, since they have a huge back log. The connection speed, at its peak is a comfortable 144 kbps and I havent had a problem with that. I dont have a Static IP, so I need to login, though even if I keep my connection open it doesnt hurt as very few times I got disconnected. Overall support has been good, and I am paying 40$ per month for the service and I got the equipment and installation free, which I believe is quite normal nowadays.
I had a friend who signed up for Cable modem with AT&T and was told that he would have it by the end of November. Between Cable and DSL, I would choose DSL since we all must have heard the age old notion of Cable being slower since its used by more than one person at the same time . DSL is no different, I must say and speed varies depending on the load on the server.
My two cents
Rapid Nirvana
I used dslreports.com to decide with my service, and here's my thoughts:
Most reports you see on the site are there because of (understandably) irate people who got screwed by the phone company or other related service provider. Think about it: if you have a good experience, are you one to go right to a site and tell everyone? (If so, thank you!! If not, maybe we need more of that...)
Anyway, I was up an running with Bell Atlantic (they didn't have a minimum commitment when I signed up, which I needed) 10 days before the earliest-ready date. Service since then has been acceptable (pppoe sucks, but RP-PPPOE makes it easy!), but I'll be moving next month and starting up with someone else because they have static IPs and better speed for better price. Actually, when we were looking for a house to buy, we didn't even consider ones that weren't in DSL range!
DSL is a great technology - the implementation of it has a ways to go, though. If you are fairly technically competent, you should be able to talk to the techs who do the installations "in their own language," and get things done correctly.
Oh yeah - never underestimate the success of immediately asking for tier 2 or 3 tech support if you ever need to call the provider!
I use PacBell DSL in San Diego. I have had them for about 6 months, and have had 4 days of downtime total.
This sucks.
I could ping my gateway (the gateway they assigned me) but nothing past that. When I called tech support, and informed them of my problem, thier solution was to re-boot my machine.
When I told them I could ping my gateway but nothing past it, thier response was "what's a gateway?"
then they asked me to right click on network neighborhood. When I said I use Linux, thier response was "What's Linux"
When I said Linux was an operating system, thier response was "What's an operating system?"
When I asked to talk to her supervisor, I was told I couldn't.
It later turned out there was a citywide outage that the tech support people didn't know about.
I guess if they knew things about linux and networking, they could get a better job than DSL phone support.
Anyway, besides that 4 day outage, things have been pretty smooth.
-geekd
I have telocity and it took forever++ to get hooked up (part of it was my fault, I canceled the credit card I used to initally sign up - but you'd think they would have called me rather than put in their database that my line was unable to get DSL...) but from what I hear a long time average these days. I like their modem because it's USB, //, and ethernet. I use the ethernet part, but I tried the USB portion for shits and giggles once and it was nice. Their modem runs a little server on it to see my download for the day and what not. My biggest gripe about them is they are always promising that someday I'll be able to buy more IP addresses - they keep saying that and never do. I signed up with them because everything on my check list was green except multiple IPs and they *promised* that was coming down the pipe.
My recomendation - keep track of your phone calls (who you talked to, when, etc...) and after one or two calls (don't call more than once a day) ask to speak to a manager and tell them your story including who/what/where/when you talked to people. This worked great for me, especially one time when a tech said, "the manager will tell you the same as me, your line can't get DSL" and 10 minutes later when I finally got the tech to put me in touch with a manger via 3-way call I was in the queue for my circut at the CO.... hehe
Wheeeee
Try this link
shop around. I found a couple DSL providers that don't require one year contracts. Currently I'm using linkline, but I think they're only in the southern california area. I had a hell of a time getting my service sorted out with them... I was supposed to have 768k sdsl, but I was getting 256k/64k adsl. It took about 10 calls within a 2 day period to get it all sorted out, but it works great now. If you're having a problem with your DSL, call early and call often!! If you're waiting for action on an open ticket, call every 4 hours or so to check status. That's the ONLY way I actually got anything done dealing with them. If you can, try to find a provider in your area that will allow you to do a self-install. I got my modem shipped to me within a week of my order, and it was turned on two days later. Waiting for an appointment for a DSL guy to show up can take MONTHS.
I live in the bay area (i.e. San Francisco) and my Apartment complex provides "wireless" DSL connectivity via a service named reflexnet.net. I have to say, that I am extremely pleased with the service. It's at least twice as fast as the shared T1 I use at the office.... not to bad for $44/mo. I'm sold!
Grumpfish
Grumpfish
I'd rather be fishing...
It's alarming that most of the people who have any opinion about DSL, have a negative one (see DSL Reports for one), and the positive opinions look suspiciously like stroturfers.
If that isn't a trollish statement, I don't know what is. Is the poster really trying to indicate that a minority of DSL users have a positive opinion about it? That this is an issue worthy of 'advocacy' and astroturfing?
Look, DSL has lots of known problems. Technological (distance limitations), Market structure (competing vendors that are supposed to be cooperating), and Organizational (too much demand, slipping deployment schedules). This leads to lots of pain and "bitch boards" like DSL Reports. Yeah, there are problems, but a vast majority of users can't be having them, could they?
On top of that, in most places in the US, cable and the telcos have an under-the-table non-compete agreement. Most people either get one or the other (or neither). That means that people don't really have choice in the matter and therefore have no interest in trying to promote one tech over the other.
When I got DSL, it almost went wrong when the installers miswired everything (fortunately the 'old vet' caught the f-up), and my ISP screwed up the billing. But, on the other hand, PacBell upgraded the CO equipment right before installation, and I get 1.1-1.5K speeds easy. Did I run out and tell everyone on DSL Reports? Did I feel the need to evangelize DSL over cable or 2400baud modems? No, I pretty much just got on with my life.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I have been looking into this for a while now. Here's the deal. IDSL is ISDN with a few changes to make it "always-on" and to use all the bandwidth in a single channel. Thus you get 144K rather than 128K in 2 64K channels. It has the longer range of ISDN though. This is nice for those like me who are out of range of "normal" DSL service like the stuff USWest offers. It's a pain to get installed though. I've been waiting for quite some time. Apparently there was a line issue USWest had to fix. They were supposed to be here 9/20 but no word yet one week later. This order is a coupple months old now. If you do order it, be prepared to WAIT. It will take a while.
;)
I'm going through SpeakEasy because of the good reviews on DSLReports.com. They also offer a decent price for the service and have static IPs and a reasonable use policy. The total end cost is close to what I was paying for 256k RADSL service and the ISP charge. As I don't actually have a line yet, I can't comment on the quality.
Business DSL in Canada is getting quite good. They install within a couple weeks and guarantee uptime of 99.5% (they'll have someone on site in 4 hours if there is an issue). Plus they give 2.2MBps and 32 static IPs. All for $300 a month (in US$). In some areas the service is better than that (in BC some people have got 4MBps).
However on the residential side some of things many providers (such as Sympatico) are moving to a PPPoE config. This has caused a lot of problems, as the supported clients are lousy. The reliability of the PPPoE clients is sorely lacking. The one provided by Sympatico, called Access Manager isn't supported on linux or NT/2000. There is however another client called EnterNet that will work with the Sympatico system. However, it costs $30 (US I believe). I strongly urge you to stay away from any DSL company using PPPoE. Go for one that uses straight DHCP instead!
Avoid Cable Co-op/ISP Channel as a DSL Alternative. You might as well be on dialup.
I've had a 256k line through USWest (now Qwest)
for about a year and 9 months, and I've been
pretty pleased.
The speed is pretty reliable, but doesn't go over
35kbyte/sec as often as it used to. (When I first
got the line 60-70k was fairly regular...)
There's been some downtime, but it's usually only
an hour or so, and pretty rare...I'd say all in
all about two days downtime total in a year.
My only complaint is that you have to go to 'business service' (50-75% more expensive, same speed) to get a static IP.
All in all, tho, I've found it to be pretty nice. Sure beats the hell out of a modem.
--K
---
The Bad:
* They lost my startup package (modem, filters, etc). Actually, more of a UPS problem, but still a pain in the ass.
* Their tech support is pretty hit or miss. I had a problem with a motherboard on one of my machines (sorta worked under 95 / fubar under 98) that they had no clue about. Some tech folks were pretty damn good about following up and genuinely trying to help, but I got a few that could be classified as clueless. Also delt with one asshole manager.
* PPPoE. I hate it.
The Good:
* DSL Service has been pretty good. Outages have been pretty few and far between. Nothing really long term (more than 2 hours) at all (that I have noticed)
* The price seems to be dropping ($39 in VA, $35 in NJ).
As much as the few hiccups have really pissed me off, overall it has been pretty damn good. I know there are some BA horror stories so YMMV.
Nathan
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
I switched from roadrunner cable service in San Diego to DSL in Nevada. It's ADSL, 128k up, 384-1.5 down. Reliability has been near 100% - only problems have been when their DHCP server will do down (or get bogged) and you won't get an ip. Cable seemed to max out at a higher speed (especially upstream) - download speeds up to around 300k/s, but there seemed to be more lag, so web browsing & such seemed slower w/ cable. The cable service was very unreliable in our neighborhood too. DSL cost is okay too - $40/mo.
My one big complaint: nevada bell/pacbell(apparently) sell their users' e-mail addresses - I got one w/ signup that I never used. After about a month I checked it, and there were 200+ messages of spam. Yikes.
Maybe the long waits is an U.S. thing. Until recently, Bell Canada had a monopoly on ADSL in Ontario (until the CRTC told them to allow competition), mainly because they control all the physical lines and equipment. I did my own install (since it's pathetically simple), so I received the necessary hardware, software, etc. via courier about 3 days after I ordered. And my service was activated a day earlier than they said (4 business days instead of 5).
Since then I've only really had a few problems, The worst being 12 hours of downtime that was fixed with an irate phone call (the tech support people tend to be morons). Of course, the max download speed at the moment is 1.13Mbps, but I'm happy with it.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Some of the smaller DSL providers do in fact work that way, but the telcos generally don't. Without this, the product is unmaintainable.
The problem is that DSL was designed when routers were expensive. Small routers are down around $100 now, and dropping, so that's no longer an issue.
They'll get my DSL connection when they pry it from my cold, dead heads.
I have nothing but positive experiences with my DSL connection. I can't sat it any more simply than that.
The secret to DSL is picking the right ISP. With DSL, at least in most areas, you get to pick your ISP - you aren't just stuck with using the megalopoly that owns the wires. So, I shopped around for an ISP wirh an acceptable use policy that was acceptable to me. I found a local ISP whose AUP was basically "1) Don't hack our systems. 2) Our job is to provide a reliable IP connection. Obey rule #1 and we don't care what you do with it."
If I ever have to move out of the area, I will miss my DSL connection the most.
Lately, my connection's been dropping at the damndest times (usually while searching for or while connected to a Counter-Strike server). It seems that Verizon has done the price yo-yo: originally, the price per month was $39.99, then $29.99. About three weeks later, I saw their ad which said "Connect for the low price of $39.99!" Hello, that's higher! I found out why though: new users don't have to buy a DSL modem; that's worse, since that could be a contract stipulation which could get you in the end. I bought my modem through them, and feel happy that I can just sign up with Covad or Concentric if they start screwing around. Which reminds me, there's been one day of downtime per month; in August, a problem with Qwest's network, then in September, the PPPoE server died.
This is starting to make me think back to that GameSpy spoof article, "Top Ten Reasons for Lag." Number 8: Covad technicians on crack.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
About three weeks ago I got connected to @home. My biggest gripe so far is that they claimed I'd be up about 1 week from when I called but the guy they sent out to do the install was a moron. I essentially hooked myself up but I had to wait for them to config my account on their end and they took three days to do it. I'd give them points for working on Sunday though (the day I they finally called with my DNS info)
I'm in a sparsely populated area so I'm guessing there aren't many people on my loop but I get amazing bandwidth (for home use anyway). Even during what should be peak hours I hit about 2,000kbps. Thus far I'm happier than I was with DSL but I'll find something wrong in the next few weeks.
Icebox
The day I started rent on a new apartment, May 1, 2000, I call up SWBell, get phone service and order the slower version of enhanced DSL. Service call set for 25May. Two weeks later, I get my static IP addresses in the mail... spiffy. Then, the installation day comes, and I still haven't gotten a DSL modem by UPS. No problem, since the installer didn't come anyway. Call up... "Sorry Sir... your order is nowhere to be seen". Great. Install set now for 12June. Modem arrives... I wire it up... nothing to that. No connection, but I expect that. 12 June... no one.... fine... I call at 3:30pm... am on hold till 6pm... at which point the recording says "Our Business hours are from 8am to 6 pm M-F...".
Next day... get through... install set for 15 June. Great. Installer comes. Looks and says... "yep... it's sure plugged in". Notices that there's no connection. Calls in. He's placed on hold for a while. He looks anxious. He says.... let me go to my truck and get something. He drives away. About a hour later, I realize he's not coming back.
The next morning... all the green lights were green. My static IPs work. Great. At this point, I'm thrilled. I call once to complain about the installer. They have no record of me anymore. Fine.
Three billing cycles come and go... no DSL bill. Of course I'm happy. DSL itself is great, speedy enough and reliable.
About a week ago, the bill finally arrived. They charged me for the "ultra-enhanced" service for the last 4 months. Along with the $150 for the runaway installer and the like... I have a $1000 phone bill. Call to complain. The first person I talked to told me he couldn't help and hung up on me. The second, Oscar, was really nice. He said he'd email me the same day. He didn't. Third call... 2:00 pm. At 6:00... I got the "Our business hours..." speech again.
As of yesterday, I think I have resolution to my billing. The phone co. said to pay the full amount, but the Internet wing said they'd send in a reduce order of $800. The Bell people literally said "Pay quickly, or you'll ruin your credit rating".
Hi.... I'm pissy a bit.
I used to work down the row from some of the BA tech support. I can tell you first hand that they are totally clueless. To get hired, you just have to be able to speak english. I'm not kidding. There's no real screening, testing, or verification that you know anything.
funny munging
I've been using business-class ADSL in my office for a year and a half. It's been fantastic. DL speeds of 6Mb. We got it set up before the big rush to DSL started, and the entire process was very quick and painless, taking less than a week. The only problems we've ever had have been traditional, that might happen anywhere (routers down, fiber cut, etc.) So, what's the root cause of this? The only thing obvious to me is customer service. The technology is proven, but getting access to it is the problem. Here in Austin, I've dealt with numerous DSL providers, most of which seem to be re-selling someone else's service. Six weeks seems to be the current bare minimum time to get DSL set up, even for a large company. At one point last year, I spoke with an installer for one of the largest DSL providers in the area. (I hesitate to name them, but their initials are SWB ;) who said he was one of only 3 yes, THREE installers for business DSL in the entire central Texas region. Frankly, I consider it lucky that we have DSL at all. In 1996, I spoke with one of the VP's of that same corporation, DSL was being tested in Houston at that time, and asked how long we'd have to wait to see it in Austin. I was told it might never come, because of the price of changing over the infrastructure. I guess the increase in demand for bandwidth led some higher-up to decide a profit could be made, and the low levels of service quality are to be expected when your marketing department is tricking people into signing contracts they can't escape. The money just continues to flow.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
I am using telocity. The nice thing is that they give you a static IP and explicitly allow you to run a server for private use with their residential offer.
They say it take 6 weeks to get. It took 3 months though. I think because Pac Bell was playing delay taktics (supposedly they had to upgrade their CO before the could hook me up...)
Other than that it just works (TM).
regards,
florian
DSL availability and quality totally depends on where you live. Being in British Columbia Canada we're blessed with some very fast and cheap ADSL. (Telus.net DSL) I've heard my fair share of horror stories about Pac Bell DSL in particular. For now unfortunately there aren't too many options, Cable or DSL, it just depends which is better in your location. I am also of the opinion that you get what you pay for. You want connection powaz the Telco's are going to make you pay through the nose. (Ala $1600/mo for a T1 here). The cable companies and Telco's don't compete, they're in bed together! It's amazing how much bandwidth/backbones they share when it boils down to it. They have similar pricing schemes and put on a show for the consumer. (PacBell DSL Cops Commercial Spoof) What it basically comes down to is, if you're a nerd, and you need a phat connect, chances are you'll pay far more than the average joe. It just depends on how far you're willing to go for that connection. The more you pay the more you'll get in my experience, it's as simple as that. GX-Deltan deltan@gamers.com
As for reliablility... its not THAT bad. Its no worse than any other provider I've had. I was having it go down about once a month like clockwork, but it's been pretty stable lately (at least the last three months). I think the downtime I was seeing was because the rash of new intallations from people in my neighborhood trying ot get away from Cox Cable.
The nice part is that they don't care what's running on the line. I've got web/ftp servers running and haven't heard a peep from them.
The only bad part is the lame $50 Internet setup fee where some guy gets paid $50 to write down the name of the mail servers for you (at least that's all I would let him do!).
Despite their bad reputation, I've had generally good experience with Pac bell since February:
I had to wait about a month before they came to install it. Then after a week or so, it stopped working for a couple of days. Long enough for me to realize the pacbell phone tree is not a place I want to spend time.
Since then not a single problem. High-speed. No downtime. Great price - $40 per month for unlimited access and no installation fee.
Setting it up was also not a major problem. ppp over ethernet is harder to configure than ppp or a static ethernet address - I had to patch the kernel, and play around with the chat script, but all the info is out on the web.
I use megapath.net
:-) Only reason I got IDSL is because I am 23,000 feet way from the CO.
they are hideously expensive ($79 a month for 144K IDSL). But they are just wonderful.
Firstoff, in chicago, they colocate their conenction at exodus.net's facility... so thats my regional gateway/POP... and Slashdot (also on exodus.net) is veery few hops away, adn very fast.
I also get amazing ping times. TO other local chicago Counter strike servers, I ping as low as 20ms. Yeah. 20, on IDSL.
I've had about 4 hours of downtime since april.. and Their customer service is phenoimenal, NO server restirctions, NO bandwidth restrictions.. and they hand out IP's like candy, if you're willing to shell out and extra $5 to $10 a month.
Yes, they are very expensive... all they offer is RADSL, and SDSL products.. and they target the "power" user.. but.. If you can bark up $100+ a month for the higheer speeds, you get what you pay for.. Amazing customer support, rock solid connections.. and latentcy that is sooo low that you'll weep with pleasure in Quake3.
;-)
http://thepoliticalgeek.com/blog/ Politics for Geeks.
...are because of ILEC's. I work in the broadband business for a major ISP. I support ADSL customers. Don't get me started on the hassles that ILEC's give DSL providers like Covad/Genuity/Rhythms/NorthPoint. Even with a federal mandate saying "You have to play fair with competitors" (basically), the Bells like to keep their customers to themselves. Most of what turns into months is the phone company not delivering the data line on time, because they just don't give a damn. Verizon is the worst, closely followed by USWest/Qwest and Ameritech. PacBell and BellSouth are pretty decent, but still don't play nice sometimes. If you can get it, I'd at least check out Bazillion. $198 Install, $198 rebate, and if you don't want a year agreement, it's just $50 more for an install (no rebate on that, so $50 for total install). You can get a static IP from them for $1.95/month. They use Covad as a DSL provider, and Covad's pretty decent about keeping things working and fixing them as soon as possible, granted the telco doesn't have to get involved. I haven't been installed yet, but the guys seem to know their stuff. Slightly OT, but does anyone have any information about the Speedstream 5271 IDSL Router?
Bandwidth is as expected. Throughput the same.
Waited for six weeks while Verizon and Internet America couldn't get their damn act together.... I'm being reliably told by others that the same is the case all over the place.
Cable sucks. xDSL sucks. For different reasons, of course, but it's a hell of a lot better than dialup just the same. Faster and no waiting for the firewall to dial up the ISP.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'm connecting up our satelite this weekend. I'll let you know how it compares to DSL.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I use PSN.net. Their actual lines and speed are excellent. Their tech support level 1 is worse than anything I've seen, and that's when you actually get through to them. Oh, and Detroit is down for two weeks until Oct. 3.
----------------
Have you read my journal today?
I have a friend who went to @Home's website and the webstie said that service was not available in his area. Yet when he gave them a call he found that the site was mistaken and he was able to get service. From what I remember they were even fairly quick about it. So, give them a call and find out if you really can or cannot get it.
Basically, people aren't moved to action until something goes wrong. I had DSL last summer in my apartment (summer apartment). Installation was painless. Service was great. I had no problems, and of course, there were no problems with my location. My father has also had DSL for over a year with very little in the way of problems (SWB accidentally switched him off his current ISP to theirs at one point, but a phone call cleared that up).
However, this summer, I tried to sign up for DSL at my new residence. I was told I was in the self-install area. Then I was told I wasn't. Then I was told I wasn't even eligible. In the span of two months I went from being able to just plug in the equipment to not being able to use it at all. I posted a few reviews, but lost interest. Of course, last summer, when the DSL installation went smoothly, I could care less about posting to message boards; I was too busy exploring the speeds that DSL gave me.
If you're a business. Put up the cash and get a T1. Don't depend on DSL and don't depend on ISDN. If you're a home consumer, go for DSL, but don't get pissed when it doesn't go your way. It works for some and it doesn't work for others. Get ISDN through an alternate provider if you can't get DSL. They're generally a lot (10-20%) cheaper, and the speeds are about the same as IDSL.
I live in Calgary, and I have no problem with my DSL at ALL. 2.5mbps down, and 500kbps up, $39.95CAD a month (that's like $4 USD), no contract at all, and to top it all off, a static IP. Most people that I know get cable because they cannot get DSL.
I use TELUS for my service. The only complaint I had about it was the time to get it installed. 4ish weeks from the time I called. However, should be a little better now. They offer a package that lets you "roll your own". Basically provide you with splitters etc that you add to your jacks, your own modem (you end up buying it), and all they have to do is setup the port at the switch. This is pretty much nothing for a wait, though a little more expensive to get going.
Hi im from Denmark and im supposed to be hooked up with a 384/128 Kb dsl connection from a provider called Cybercity DK. The connection which is rather an 256/64 is constantly plagued by pain in the ass disconnects cancelling my various downloads. more than a month ago I accidentially crashed my modem causing me to send it in for a return. After 14 days without any replyes to my emails I luckily got through there 20 minute wait phone system, which is not a free service number and i was insured that my modem would be sent to me within a day... Im still without my modem which im tied up for in 6 months, and the only word from Cybercity is there billings asking me to pay for my downtime. Guess I can easily say that my only experiences with dsl is no good. Besides the ping-times sucks too.
Well, I'm certainly not an astroturfer, but I have had no problems with RADSL in Portland. I'm on the west side in GTE (now Verizon) territory. Initial setup had a slight hiccup due to the local loop part being owned by a different company, but once we got past that, I've had practically uninterrupted service. :-)
Recently, I had an outage, and phoned up the helpdesk. I was almost immediately connected to a tech who was polite and helpful. He quickly traced that there were frames on the line from my ADSL modem, and I found to my embarrassment that the crossover cable had come loose (probably the cat
So, whilst there do seem to be a large number of horror stories out there, it is possible to get decent service with DSL. I hope you are lucky and get the same.
Regards,
Tim
I get my connections through Intelos, a Central Virginia provider. Though I have no gripes about the quality of service, I've got to say that even this relatively-small, regional provider has absolutely abysmal install times. They like to blame it on Sprint, but it's quite frequently not Sprint's fault.
I've had about half a dozen installs from Intelos, all have been at least a month late. One was five months later than the four weeks that was promised. I really pushed on them hard for my home install about six months ago, and found that my sales representative had never filed any of the paperwork, despite his repeated assurances that Sprint was just slowing things down. Unfortunately, it look four weeks to find that out.
My biggest suggestion is this: take notes Everytime that you talk to a potential provider, record the date and time, number that you talked to, name of who you talked to, and what you talked about, complete with quotes. I've hit dead-ends so many times because I can't tell the Latrinas from the Britannys after a while. And it's assumed that I'm lying if I can't tell them the exact date, time and individual. Don't be a pushover.
If you do this, and behave like a complete asshole, you'll probably get good results.
-Waldo
On top of that, in most places in the US, cable and the telcos have an under-the-table non-compete agreement. Most people either get one or the other (or neither). That means that people don't really have choice in the matter and therefore have no interest in trying to promote one tech over the other.
that is the most blantent load of BS i have read in weeks.
in houston, TimeWarner (RoadRunner) and SWBT (SBC) are at each others throats daily. talks of lawsuits and such are a common event in the local fishwrap.
just sos ya knows - i qualified for both DSL and Cable and went with cable. why? well, after getting my cable installed, SWBT called me 6 weeks later to let me know that they could set my appointment for install. six weeks?? plus a year contract. fuggeddaboutit!
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Everyone I know who has DSL had trouble with the installation phase. Some had trouble with the installers keeping appointments, others had to have multiple visits, and some had reliability problems that started with the install and continue to this day. Opinion writer Holman Jenkins in today's Wall St. Journal, in a piece titled "How a Telecom Meltdown Will Cause the Next Recession" (if you can get yourself a copy, I recommend reading the whole piece. If you subscribe to the WSJ online, here's a link to the story.) had this to say about DSL: "Verizon, formerly New York Tel and now merged with Bell Atlantic and GTE, has been pretending since May to get my high-speed DSL working. Why do I begin to suspect Verizon only wanted to stall me from signing up for Time Warner's competing cable modem access?"
YES!!! I want to help you denounce the evil that is slashdot!
As soon as I finish posting this I will email you to..... oh wait, you posted as AC... STUPID TROLL! get a life!
Dammit Jim! we've been here before! -- Bones.
A few weeks ago, we were having severe (>9000 ms delay) latency problems, and upon our first call to them, they told us things like "clear your cache". Morons. After about 2 days, and them finally sending someone over to the place where the DSL line is installed, we finally determined that the problem was on our LAN. Had Pac Bell bothered to do something so trivial such as to ping the DSL modem from their location, and see that ping times were normal, they could have avoided having to come out in the first place. (Yes, I should have pinged the modem myself, but I missed that step in my troubleshooting..)
The full story about our experience with Pac Bell can be found here.
I have two DSL experiences. Both are via ISP's. In the first (my home connection) I go through a small local phone company who also happens to be the parent company for my ISP. Their connection is stable and fast and has shown very little downtime. (I'm getting 768k SDSL for $39.95 / month.) The second case hasn't turned out as well. I helped an old friend setup a business DSL connection for the company where he's employed. Their connection has experienced at least 3 major (more than a couple of days) outages. Each time there has been plenty of finger pointing with an eventual resolution. Their cost is higher at about $80 / month for 160k SDSL. ...Kevin
Same with me. I read a lot of scary stories about Telocity ... for the last 3 months everything worked just perfect. 3 or 4 times DNS server was down, never for long (10-15 minutes.)
I can tell you straight up as an engineer at MegaPath Networks that provisioning DSL is one of the hardest things on the planet to do. Especially as a nationwide ISP. You have all of the baby bells, each one doing things completely different (and wrong). DSL isn't like cable in the sense that you get repeaters on the line or any one of a million other things that the telcos use to provide phone services to places in the boonies.
DSL is a terribly complicated technology. In theory a telco or an ISP should be able to just hook up a line to your phone box and get you a nice fat 1.5 symetric connection for 20 bucks a month. However combined with all of the technical difficulties you also have anticompetitive behavior from the baby bells trying to under cut the competition "because they can!". Remember that with DSL you also must deal with third and fourth parties, sometimes even 5th parties. You have the telco (ILEC) then you have the CLEC (Northpoint, Covad, Rythmes, New Edge), then you have your ISP (MegaPath, Mindspring), and in some cases, quite a few actually ISP's will have resellers. Going through so many channels leaves a lot of room for error. God couldn't gaurantee an install with this going on. Cable service isn't plagued with this (yet!).
Now as a shameful plug for my company I must say we do the best job and are the highest rated company because we work extremely hard and have positioned ourselves in a way that lets us work with our CLECs rather than against them. This has proven very difficult to do, especially now that we have 3 CLECs. As an ISP you must be flexible and scalable. These two issues are the two main reasons why DSL providers are dropping like flies. You really need a balance between sales and engineering. Most ISP's around today were founded by engineers who really have no business sense let alone customer service skills. Yet as my old business teacher once told me "If you're not growing, you're dying". These companies must expand but in most cases expansion is in the wrong direction.
I'm all for competition, but in this market competition is whats killing the technology. Everyone is fighting over the market, under pricing their services, over selling and then folding leaving other ISP's such as MegaPath to clean up the mess. Go work at an ISP for a month and you will see endless droves of CEO's from other providers coming in to pimp their company off to the highest bidder because it's failing and they need to run for cover. No one wants to build something anymore. It's the IPO bandwagon, make something quick and cheap, sell it for 100 times it's worth and get fat on the beach in tahiti. Investors woke up back in April, they realized what was going on. DSL had become a buzzword used to suck in venture capitol. When the market crashed so did a lot of ISPs and rightfully so. It does make my companies job harder though. We have to fight off the bad reps of these other guys while maintianing a much higher level of customer service because thats whats expected.
I love the internet and I love my job. However I have a strong hatred for the over night millionaires that have done so much to destroy a great technology. How many millions need to be made before it's "enough"? When does it stop? Why can't we just run our business without constantly fighting off the vultures.
My company is more expensive than others, no doubt. We won't deny that, however we are very worth it. It's the difference between buying a pinto and buying a cadillac. One can't hold a candle to the other.
Enough of this rant, hope it helps someone make the right decision though.
I've had IDSL (144k dsl) in the phoenix metro area for about a year now. Installation was a royal pain, because you deal with three companies: USWest, Covad (they actually install and service your account) and the ISP who resells covad's service. On two occasions I had to meet USWest and Covad reps at my house to get them to figure things out. Total installation time was upwards of four months. Costs are about 100 a months (YMMV), luckily my employer foots that bill. The other problem with the service is high latency. Covad has improved their routing, but at one point I tracert'd from home to work (30 miles away), and saw it hop all the way out to Atlanta, Mae east, back through Chicago, etc. I ended up with ping times of 250 or more for a local site.
I've got Bell Sympatico ADSL installed, and I've been extremely pleased with it - low ping times, transfer rates near the theoretical max (I pull 108Kbytes/sec continuous to local servers) and only one evening of unconnectable time in the last six months. Hardware installation was extremely straightforward, and everything runs beautifully under Linux (DLink card, 1Mb Nortel Modem, PPPoE using RoaringPenguin). Given that most of my cable using friends have trouble with availability and ping times to ostensibly local servers due to ridiculous routing, I'm pretty happy.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
The DSL Reports test page shows my throughput to be between 650 and 740 on downloads, and 125 or greater for the outbound traffic.
I think that people need to understand that the figures given for Bronze Plus (my package) are only a theoretical maximum and your actual results depend not only on the number of users on the DSLAM, but also on the traffic on the various backbones around the country.
Once you go out on the net, things are pretty much out of your ISP's hands, and you need to consider that before you assign all the blame to your provider.- --
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Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt
Despite the telco strike, I got my line up and running rather quickly with them. They also kept me informed at every step of the process, which is rare. The other good thing about my service is that I get usenet feeds from www.usenetserver.com and one or two other decent/fast services through speakeasy.
One thing out of their control is the telco and DSL provider. Covad handles my area and were great; it was the telco (big surprise) that caused the only hiccup in the whole process. It just proves more and more that the telcos don't understand the new expectations from customers and about supplying these new technologies.
A huge part of the problem with getting DSL service rolled out is that the phone companies simply do not have the facilities to properly do the job. Several years ago (~10) some genius decided to go from two cables per houshold, to one cable per household. This was shortly before the real explosion in demand for non voice services. (read the internet, fax machines, etc) The long and the short of it is that the phone companies are facing a fairly significant limitation in the availability of facilities to offer new services from. This means that in many cases they often can't offer DSL service even to places that might otherwise be able to get it.
There are other issues too. DSL is a clever technology which permits the phone companies to use a percentage of the current infrastructure for a purpose it wasn't really designed for. (it was designed for voice communication) If you live in a rural area, forget about it. If you don't happen to live near a central office, forget about it. They can't afford the upgrades to "do it right", so you will either get some alternative (cable, wireless, sattelite) or you will be waiting for quite a long time. Given the problems the telco's are having getting their infrastructure problems solved, is it really that surprising that the service itself is not of the highest quality?
1. Once connected at 384K symmetric, life has been sweet (modulo one 4-day outage caused by their double-plus-clueless CLEC, PacBell). It would break my heart to unplug.
2. My employer drove the 2+ month process of getting installed. It was gruesome. Without the IT department of a Fortune 500 employer beating them with clue-sticks every step of the way, I'd be DSL-less. I'd also be 128K... Their initial survey said I could only get 128K in my area, until the above-mentioned IT department with the clue-stick said "look again".
I live in Mankato, MN and so far have been very successful with dsl. I use Gotocrystal.net, a local providor. Got it in february or april or something like that. Free installation (temporary thing) with network card (nice 3com one) and router included (nice ascend one.) 384/128 and so far haven't had any problems whatsoever. so even though everybody says that their are problems, it doesn't always mean that there are will all providors.
I'm guessing that local providors are probably better than nationwide ones (thats a guess i have no proof, experience, etc to back it up)
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I'm on the San Francisco Peninsula, and I currently have 416K SDSL. The ISP is Best/Verio; the DSL provider is Northpoint. I'm currently paying... er, a lot. Once I get my act together, I'm planning on jumping over to Speakeasy.net which offers similar speeds for much lower prices.
I am about 2000 feet from the central office, so I can crank to 1.5Mbit if I want.
Installation was relatively painless. The first scheduled day they didn't show; they were very apologetic. The second scheduled day they showed up, patched in the line, and tested the line quality.
The day after that, the Netopia R7100 DSL tranciever/router arrived, I plugged it in and... Nothing happened. I called Best, who called Northpoint, who called me back. After a quick conversation, they said, "Try it now." I did, and it worked.
And it's worked ever since. Actual speed, sans network stalls, is closer to 470K. Occasionally one of Best/Verio's routers in Palo Alto or Mountain View will spazz out and drop packets all over the place, but otherwise it's been very solid service. Of course, once Verio assimilated Best, they "integrated" the customer support functions and things started to suck. For example, I used to be able to phone the 24-hour NOC number and get a knowledgable technician within two minutes. Now calls to the NOC get routed to the main Verio call tree, where I get to wait at least ten minutes and speak to... Someone else. sigh
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I understand that cable has the potential to be better than dsl, simply because the dta pipeline is much bigger. I have @home right now, and that is only because at the moment dsl is not available in my apartment due to a poor wiring job, cable for me goes out three or for times a week at random times and for different lengths, and while it is up the speeds aren't consistent at all, and there is alot fo packet loss, and the biggest thing that pisses me off is that they limit your upstream to 16k (they do for us here in dallas, i odn't know about elsewere). My roommate rpeviosuly had dsl and he loved it and said that it went down only a few times in a year and he had consistent speeds, and the upstream is better, so we only have @home until dsl is avail, i don't care what other people think, but until at&t and @home get there act together, dsl is the better service.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
I've been with Speakeasy of Seattle for over a year now. I'd guesstimate 99% uptime. Last night it went down for maybe 5 minutes, a few weeks ago maybe 4 hours. But as a whole it's been very reliable. I run 3 shoutcast/mp3 streams, a quake3 server, ftp server, website and a DNS server off a 768k (both ways) ADSL line. It costs my roommate and I about 130 a month. This also comes with 8 static IP's offers unlimeted up and down
I've been very happy with it. I'm moving down to Austin soon and hope to find such good service. Anyone have any tips on DSL in Austin? Id like to have at least one static IP, I don't think I'll *need* 768k, at least not up and down.
-Jon
this is my sig.
And I am aware of the fact that DSL and ADSL are not the same. The UK can blame BT for the "A"(asynchronous{sp?}) as well as the 3-year roll-out time and the coverage. 75% in 18 months time.
Disclaimer: I've just had ADSL installed in the UK, and there is quite a difference between the UK and the US. So, for your comparison:
It took two weeks to install a 512kbps line. That cost 275 pounds from British Telecom. There are different contention ratios depending on whether or not you're a business of home user. I got mine from the company I work for, so mine is 20:1. Home user is usually 50:1, but BT's own ADSL provider use 80:1, which can be as bad as a 14.4 modem at peak times.
After that, it's 100 pounds a month without static IP addresses. That turned out to be a mistake: If you don't have static IPs you get something called NAT: Network Address Translation. And it sucks. It screws up Napster, Gnutella, NetMeeting (yes, I run Win98), and all sorts.
IP addresses come in lots of five with ADSL, and add a small amount to the monthly charge. I await the outcome...
The ISP, Inweb, have been very cool, answering all my obscure questions etc.
My only gripe is with British Telecom. I could rant, but an example of what they do will suffice.
Since you have to have a BT line to get ADSL, and BT are the only people authorised to install the ADSL routers, they abuse this fact by configuring the router to block important ports like those used for voiceIP. This is obviously to protect their revenue, but still, they claim that the router is their property (despite the 275 pounds and the fact that I didn't sign any such contract) and if you change any settings they cut you off, fine you etc.
And I'm not gloating.
I'm in the same boat. Anyone from Littleton, CO have some advice? ADSL with multiple IPs would, of course, be sweet... It's funny really. I live less than a thousand feet from the HEADQUARTERS of TCI (at least it was till a few months ago). Is there cable modem service? ohhh, no...
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I used to work for Bazillion. I would be relunctant to use them. The people running the company are very much morons. They have great people working there, for the most part. But they just don't get it. I have DSL through them, it works most of the time. It took about 2 months to get it going. The delay is almost always the local telco. Covad and Bazillion really can't do anything to speed that up. Bazillion does offer static IP for like $2 per.
LoRider
Between the time I ordered my DSL and when the signal was activated, I didn't see a truck either. I tested out the DSL modem before the signal was supposed to be on, and it looked like it was actually connecting! Trouble was, the server for setting up an account was down. So I called Verizon and set up an account. The surprising part is, I called during the second day of the IBEW strike! Nice to know that there actually are Verizon workers who don't succumb to greed.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I signed up for DSL with Phoenix DSL in the twin Cities during the last week of May... and happily accepted a six-week wait. I spent all of June, July, August and part of September wrangling with them. The way this worked is that US West (now Qwest) owned some of the wiring, Northpoint Communications owned some more of it, and then Phoenix DSL was my "service" (if you can call it that) provider. I was supposed to get iDSL service at 144kbps... Before I gave up in utter frustration, Northpoint had made four appointments to come out and do my wiring, based on being told by Phoenix that that US West had completed the wiring that they had to. Never once was the wiring actually ready for Northpoint to work with. Never once did I get any sympathy from Phoenix DSL, either... and by the time I got fed up around the end of August, Phoenix told me that I had to go into "conflict resolution" that would take at least a MONTH! Yeah, right. I kept repeatedly calling them and badgering them (and copied them on a letter to the Minnesota State's Attorney) and they finally admitted that they weren't going to charge me anything. That very day, I signed up for cable modem service with AT&T Broadband (previously MediaOne). Two weeks later, my cable modem installation was complete and running smoothly at 165 kB/second (you read that right). They even politely changed my MAC address registration at 10:30 at night so I could get my firewall up and running... what a switch. The down side in the Twin Cities is that AT&T broadband is in a fight with the City of Minneapolis over raising rates to cover the cost of the wiring that will be needed to offer cable modem service in Minneapolis itself. But you have no problems in the 'burbs. I would wholeheartedly recommend getting a cable modem over DSL if you live in the Twin Cities, even if as a "technical" solution the DSL is superior to a lot of cable modem installations (i.e. no shared bandwidth, static IP, etc.).
I live in Calgary, Alberta (in Canada), and I have an ADSL line with a local provider called Nucleus. They are reselling what the local telco provides (and at a better deal for what I'm doing). I was told 3 weeks and it was actually installed on the day they said it would be. Also, it has had only about 3 hours downtime in the past 3 months, and then it was Nucleus's upstream (the telco, go figure) provider that had problems.
I have heard, however, that the delay is really long in neighborhoods that are further from the central core of the city. I suppose YMMV depending on your circumstances.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
i have telocity DSL, took 3 months for them to finally ship their modem to me, but it was fast after that. I have a single STATIC ip address which is lovely, which i run into an old P90 running Redhat 6.2, that i manually cleaned up so that all you can see externally is SSH and HTTP. It Masq's my home network of about 7 nodes. The modem stays up pretty well, usually dropping when i vacuum however. Whatever the advertized speed i can get up to 60kb/s downstream, and much less upstream, which limits the throughput of my webserver consierably. $50/month
Well they suck...
I am in brooklyn, new york and I use them:
Points for:
You have to go through verizon even if you use another service. So I chose them since I would rather yell directly at them, than yell at the Support person at another place who has to yell at them.
If you complain about downtime they will give you a pretty hefty rebate.
They used to give a hundred dollar credit for referrals.
Points against:
They go down often, sometimes for minutes sometimes for days.
Their first tier support is for shit, I tricked them into telling me their setup one day, they are
localized in the south east and their support people read off cards, 90% of their solutions are "is your modem plugged in, is the computer on?"
They do NOT have any access to network status, they wait until several people call in to complain about outages in an area and then they ask someone to look at it.
I use Mac OS 9 which they do not support, so I have to lie to them and tell them I am on OS 8.x
to even get them to talk to me.
They Use PPPoE so you have to use their stupid little connection app, that is pure garbage. This makes it a nightmare when I boot into linux (yes I know there are linux PPPoE solutions, but they are very rough right now) I basically cannot use them under linux.
It took them weeks to hook up the service even though I did the install myself, they kept insisting that the service was on, I said it wasn't. Two weeks after that they sheepishly explained that they forgot to "flip the switch".
I had a friend who signed up before the strike, a month and half later they called and said he was too far away to get DSL even though they had already signed him up and told him it was ready. They overcommitted their service and are now straight up lying to people about the service.
This my friends is textbook example of why monoplies suck.
But it still beats a dial up any day of the week.
its odd. in february '99 I got DSL as soon as it was provided by BellSouth in my office. It was ROCK solid. no horror stories. i think i had a total of 6 hours down time in a year and a half. so, as soon as it becae available in the area where my home was, i was like "sign me up!"
oddly enough, the service was TERRIBLE. in 3 months i had 2 weeks of uptime. it was that bad. I ditched it, got the po-dunk cable co's net service and its as good as i could possibly want.
Prior to that, I had Flashcom/Northpoint, and it was 6 months of a never ending bad dream. Service drops several times a day, multi-day outages, outrageous billing errors. I finally packed up the router and shipped it all back with instructions to cancel my 1 year contract and not to challenge my request to AMEX to reverse my charges. They didn't, luckily.
Telco installation both times (Ameritech) was problematic, especially with Covad. Ameritech saw that there was a line already active, so they considered their job done. Problem was, it was the old Northpoint line. They left the new Covad line unpunched at the telco box several blocks from my house. The tech toned the line and found the pair from my house dangling and unlabeled. Simple fix, and after that, no probs.
Just my .02
No problems here. SWBell actually made the install *ahead* of schedule. Back in April I was certainly surprised to get a call one morning from a tech asking if he could come out now rather than the scheduled date 2 weeks later... I am officially beyond the distance limit, but I still get 440K down and 130K up.
SWBell provides transport. August.net provides bandwidth. No problems. Everyone that I talked to knew what "Linux" was. For $23 I got the bronze metered at 3GB each way per month including a static IP. I've never gone over 85% of that even when I half-assed tried. 3GB is a lot of web surfing. No special limits on services I can run or anything else. Overall, no big problems, good service. Had ~3 hours of downtime on a Sunday night. I called and reported. It was up when I woke up Monday morning. Got a call from a tech about an hour later that wanted to know if he could take the line down to do some more tests. It seems the LIU was making errors and he wanted to check it out. Go ahead I said...
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Man o man did I get screwed. I got a brand spankin new adsl line at home and was looking forward to playing some Quake3, but I was severly disappointed when I pinged a server and found out it was 150ms!! After a traceroute I found out that I ping 95ms to my friggin ISP! :( Needless to say I called my ISP to complain and they said they couldn't do anything about it as long as I could "surf the web ok". What makes it even more disappointing is that I'm only 6,000ft away from the CO. My first hop should be under 20ms when in fact it's 95ms.
I've had experience with NuNet both at work (in the past) with an ISDN connection and at home (DSL, now). It works. When there are problems, the people I've dealt with have been able to track the problem down and fix it (or tell me what bone-headed mistake I've made).
What's a sig?
I can understand the delay, but some, if not all DSL providers make you pay up front for service you are not going to get for another 3-4 month. I mean what the hell is this, it is like going to a car mechanic and pay him 1000 dollars for future oil changes. IMHO, the wait for DSL will be alot shorter if they have to give you service before they take your money. I signed up for DSL with PSN, good luck reaching their support, you are looking at 3 to 4 hour on hold. And when I get to some CSR, all I was told that some stupidvisor was working on my line. Damn if I only knew...
- www.phoneproblems.com
- www.ihatethephonecompany.com
- www.theydontcare.com
Cute, eh? This site (same at all three addresses) has some interesting rants about bad treatment at the hands of various DSL providers, and some links to alternative DSL providers.The stories are good for a few laughs... the site maintainer actually got the president of Bell Atlantic Broadband making false promises over the phone!
There are some links to contact lawyers to join class action suits. The site is a bit Bell-Atlantic-centric, but still interesting and entertaining. I can sympathize, I had a 2-month Bell Atlantic DSL outage myself.
I must be one of the lucky ones, but I ordered DSL
on September 6th, and I recieved the modem on the 12th, and the Service got hooked up on the 19th, only 1 day later than Verizon had told me.
This is in the DC area, and I was quite surprised with the service, because I had heard many bad reports about BA.
-Luke Real programmers dont't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
I ordered a DSL line back in March. I live under a mile from the CO. The company looked in their database, and said "12k feet, no problem, but it will take 6-8 weeks". 8 weeks later, I call, for an update. "Bell Atlantic will have an install date for the pair in a week or two" (note: not that it would get installed in a week or two, but that they would set a date for the install in a week or two). Sometime in may a drop appears on the side of the house, and the installer shows up a few days later.
Out comes a cisco 675? and it gets plugged into the freshly wired socket. No joy in mudville. We even try hotwiring it to the outside box.
Now comes the real finger pointing. They put in a request to check the pair, its failing the continutity check. time passes, I head off to england. The DSL provider and the phone company schedule a mutall finger pointing session (ie: they both show up, and test the line together). I provide them power out by the drop (so they can plug the box in) and leve the box where they can get to it. I come home to find a tag from Rythms, saying that bell atlantic (which was in the process of becoming Verizon) blew them off.
Much chasing of guilty party. Eventually, (in august) I wind up on the phone with someone in Denver, that has an open supervisory connection to their DSLAM that is sitting in my local CO. Armed only with the box, and a made on the spot shorting plug, we determine that the new pair has DC continuity, but seems a mite long. The DSLAM says its 15k feet. They rant at Verizon who goes and checks: Your'e wrong, its 18k feet. Somehow they snuck another 2 miles of wire into my "local" loop. We check the other pairs nailed to the side of the house (since you can share phone and DSL on one pair, with suitable filters). Nope, they all take the same convoluted route.
ADSL is out, that leaves SDSL. No need to rewire (in theory anyway), just move the pair from the ADSL box to a SDSL one, and swap boxes. I mail the cisco box back. A work order is cut. Verizon promptly goes on strike.
I get a status email in mid september, Verizon installed a SDSL connected drop. First available install appointment is monday morning. Great. I wait expectantly. No installer. "you weren't there" the installer claims. "I guess on the porch and in the driveway doesn't count as home". Saturday morning next open slot. Again we wait. Nobody shows. I call Rythms. "There is nobody from that department here today. We can't find out contact information for the installer."
On monday morning various layers of management get read the riot act. (yup, same installer as monday and again "not home") I suggest he needs more direct supervision, and they will have someone else on my doorstep the next morning. We compromise on this morning. He called to say he was leaving, and showed up promptly. He has a "coppersomething" box. We plug it in. No joy. We go outside with shorting plugs. We find the Verizon install error (one wire out of the punchdown block). He fixes it for them and after some fiddling, we actually get a green light on the box. We go inside, and again get a green light. I fill in the IP addresses, and give the net a nudge. Much delight, packets fly and domains resolve. This is very short lived, seconds later, the green light goes out. More prodding of DSLAM from Denver. The light comes on, then goes out. Denver promises to prod further, and I leave for the office, amber leds blinking, the line trying to train up again...
Organizer:New England Rubbish Deconstruction Society;The NERDS,first US team in the UK Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars
I have adsl service from uswest (now qwest) and can say that I like it and the service.
I have a 600kbps downlink/256kbps uplink and rarely have problems. When I have had problems, their tech support was rather good, though in each case they weren't much use...on a couple occassions I lost service (over the last year-and-a-half). It turned out to be a server problem in each case that didn't just affect me.
Part of my good fortune is that I am only 5000 feet from their local repeater (CLOSE). I also installed a dedicated cat 5 cable from my exterior phone box to my computer port to help things out a little bit more.
Checking it periodically, it appears that I average about 500kbps downloads, which isn't bad at all.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Given the appalling state of DSL rollout here in the UK(*), does anyone have anything to say about their ADSL experience on the pilot and/or (pleasepleaseplease) the live rollout?
Latest reports are that ADSL will be available through our state monopoly...er....major Telco to 60% of the population by the end of 2001. So obviously this isn't an urgent request; take your time responding 'cos there's naff-all any of us can do with the information anyway.
(*): Summary: ADSL roll-out can only happen if a supplier can "get at" the copper wires running from your house to the exchange. This exchange, it's contents, and indeed the copper is owned lock, stock and two smoking conductors by BT . BT is being forced to "unbundle" these local loops, but is dragging it's heels to say the least, and the degree of watchfullness of the state regulator, OfTel, could most charitably be described as "collusionary". Consequence: no competition for ADSL provision, and no incentive for BT to agressively deploy and cut down on all those nice modem call charges it receives.
Actually, that's probably too harsh on the poor monopoly. Never ascribe to malice what can reasonably be explained by incompetence.
References:
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
I had ADSL installed about a year ago and it took about 2 months to get them to install it, which included several delays. My roommate and I called them a whole bunch of times and that seemed to make them commit to dates and times a little better--they even called me back once!
The installation was quick and painless, and I haven't had any service problems. Their DNS servers have been down once or twice, but other than that inconvenience it's been pretty sweet.
BTW, according to some anti-trust law, PacBell is now forced to use SBC as the provider in this area. I've heard rumors that they lowered bandwidth in some area. My speeds seem fine however.
I signed on the dotted line with PhoenixDSL back around 6/20. After some install hassles between the telco, DSL carrier and PhoenixDSL my service was up and running about mid August. Since then, I've been quite pleased. The bandwidth is strong an seemingly reliable, tech support is interesting in that they have a 1 on 1 chat app which I used to to have them setup my email accounts.
Typically the biggest problem is the coordination of the three providers (telco, DSL, and Internet). The telco here in Cleveland visited my apartment twice before I ever received a scheduling request from Phoenix. Northpoint, the DSL carrier in my area, was excellent. The install tech actually showed up early, and he was much more of an expert than I had expected. When he left all was well. I'm getting the expected 768/385Kbps and I couldn't be happier.
Okay, time for my shameless plug. I'm a network engineer for Bazillion. I handle all the backbone routing and transport facilities. Our DSL side of things is still relatively new, but already we are the fastest growing Covad DSL partner nationwide. If you can tolerate some less than perfect customer service *coughs*, our DSL lines kick ass. Plus, we offer 400 minutes of free domestic long distance. And we're *very* OSS friendly. Honestly, you will get your best service if you are local to Seattle, Chicago, San Diego, Houston, or Phoenix. Any other place and you get stuck on a Covad national circuit, which means you come out in Chicago.. so dont expect the best from that situation, since Covad has some issues with their ATM clouds.
void clue();
If you don't hesitate to yell at pacbell, you won't have too rough of a time. Most of the DSL complaints I hear from people usually involve intermittent service and the high cost. For me, PacBell has been very nice.
I subscribed during a promotion almost a year ago, 1.5/384 with 5 ip addeys for about $70 a month. I hear 384/128 is between $30 and $40 or so. The service is usually down for about an hour a month (usually when I need it most), but rarely is it down for more than an hour.
I have moved several times while having this service, and each time it's taken about a month for them to get my dsl installed. It would have taken longer, had I not called them every two days and yelled at them (VERY annoying). Also, they apparantly bilieve I am getting too good of a deal now (1.5/384 costs signifigantly more, usually) and whenever I move, they try to push me out of my contract, but once again the "get angry" method has worked to set them straight.
PacBell DSL is nice, while the service sucks, but if you don't plan on ever calling techsupport or moving a lot, then it's just fine. Also, DSL companies are ALWAYS throwing promotions to get new subscribers, so look around, there are some really good deals out there.
I am getting IDSL from Northpoint / PhoenixDSL in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area. I am paying $40 per month for a static IP, domain hosting, and all the usual ISP amenities.
They guarantee a minimum of 128 Kbps (typical for IDSL), but I usually run at 130 to 135 Kbps. That translates into 16 to 17 K / sec in the browser. I know it's not the greatest, but it is a distinct improvement over my previous 26.6 Kbps limit. (Damn you, whoever invented the multiplexer.)
From initial order to final installation was twelve weeks. However, I don't blame Northpoint for this; Ameritech (the local telco) is notorious for its poor service.
Installation, router, and first two months service were free, thanks to a mid-summer promotional offer.
All in all, I'm satisfied. I knew installation would take a while, so the trick was to order it and forget about it. That way, when it finally arrived, it was a pleasant surprise.
The USWEST/QWEST DSL service is called MegaBit, and it's also what I use. I live in Arizona and also do some teching for MegaBit suport in my area. It is reliable to an exstent, but for the most part some users will have problems. I can't say I've had a good exspince with it though. The Neo Minder mailto:neo_minder@hotmail.com
By The Power Of GreySkull!
I have seen a few problems with the connection, but generally Speakeasy's pretty responsive and gets things fixed pretty quickly. I get transfer rates that are pretty consistently 75K except to a few providers such as TuCows who seem to lock connections to 15K (FTPing Loki demos from Germany is usually 4 times faster than any of the US mirrors Loki names.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I got PacBell DSL last Feb, after a 4 week delay between ordering and installation. After 3 weeks of arguing over how much I should pay for installation fees (I ordered 2 days before their national campain of free install $40/month) everything got cleared up in my favor. Service was ok, I'd get dropped twice a week but could just power cycle the modem to reconnect (a common problem according to phone tech).
The next difficulty was when I moved 3 miles. I was keeping the same phone number, and asked them if they could just move my DSL connection, without a cancelation and re-installation fee. They claimed it would be no problem, and cost me nothing. I would still have to pay for the time in between the move but it should only be a week or two. This was end of June.
A month later, after calling every other day and a list of excuses 3 miles long, I was told that they could not do any installs in July due to a merger (or something like that) their parent company (SBC I think) was going through. They told me this after a month of lying to me that there were simple problems and they would be out in a day or two to get it hooked up.
This is where it gets really good. They then tell me, Aug. 2nd, that all of the ports in the local station are full, and they need to install more hardware to support more connections. Now I don't know how many connections they made on Aug. 1st, but I don't think it would have been a lot. They were now going to suspend my service, and renew it when they had room for me again. This was utter crap! After informing them of my opinion, I told them to just cancel me. They then sent me a bill that charged me for both July and August (cause I had it for 3 days in August), a $200 early cancelation fee, and a $200 dollar fee for the modem, which I wouldn't have to pay if I brought their hardware to the local office.
Fortunately the managers are competent enough to remove bogus fees, and I ended up getting all of the charges removed. I didn't even have to take the modem back, told them that they could pay a tech $50/hr to drive out and get it from me if it was really that important.
After all that, called RoadRunner and had it installed and running in under a week, and have had no performance issues at all. I'm not sure that PacBell is a company that actively tries to screw people. I think they're just so inept that they can't help it. This all happened in the San Fernando Valley in SoCal, your PacBell might not be so nice.
I recently had my DSL installed which was a lengthy process, and why?
VERIZON
At first i was going to go with Verizon for their good price and speeds. I called, made my order. I received a phone call the next day telling me my order was rejected due to the fact that AT&T was my local phone service provider. (NY now has AT&T providing local service at a very good rates.) Aparently politics between the companies doesn't allow me to have DSL with Verizon if I am not a customer of their local service. The customer service rep asked if i wanted to switch, I declined and told him to cancel the whole order and not to charge my credit card for the DSL modem.
The next day the modem is sitting on my table when i get home from work. I call them, tell them I said to cancel the order, they say they are sending me a return sticker for the modem and that my credit card would be credited once the modem was recieved.
I rang flashcom, set up my order, and happily waited for my service
Two days later i receive a phone call once again from Verizon stating that my date of service was changed to a sooner date due to the end of the strike. I went into a frenzy, i began asking if anyone there knew what the hell went on in any other department. They said for some reason the order was reentered into their system. I told them to cancel it ASAP and to stop bothering me with all this.
Due to the charge on my credit card by verizon i was forced to pay a finance charge untill they refunded me (2 months!@#$)
Flashcom has been great to me. They called and emailed me to inform me of anything relating to my account, their support people are great, and their deals on service are quite good.
Only problems I had in relation to my flashcom account was waiting for Verizon to come to my home to do some wiring, which took about 4 weeks to finally happen.
When 384/128 standard service wasn't available in my area and they could only give me 608/128, they honored the original price.
I've had bellatlantic in MA.
I've been very happy with the service, it just when problems occur things do not get fixed quickly. Ive been without service for 3 weeks for one outage (and about 10 phone calls) and then for 4 days.
I got it last year and it took about 1.5 weeks to get the install done.
Other than that its been sweet. I get about the data rate they said and have a fixed IP (they're moving away from fixed IP but haven't taken mine away.
I host my site on DSL so its a slow up ink.
I would actually still recomend it.
Not much to say. ADSL, very reliable, faster downloads than rated (about 3x); uploads go at the rated speed. Occasional routing problems render some parts of the net inaccessible; these usually clear up within 1 to 2 hours.
... has worked great since installation about 4 months ago. Not a plug, just my experience ...
Installation was done by SW Bell's rep
Rating ISP's by their broadband medium is like rating ISP's by their parking spaces. There really is no coorelation. You can have good and bad ISP's in both camps. You are just going to have to do what you did before and try different services until you find a good one. Maybe talk to your friends.
Sigs are awesome huh?
At that point they charged me $300 for "breaking the good will contract" that came in the email. That, coupled with the $200 installation meant I spent $500 in a little over a month. I still haven't received my rebate for the installation as promised.
Personally, the install for Comcast was so much faster and less painless that I can't see why more people don't do it. The speed is always at a reasonable level, and I think the cable speed worries are a little unwarranted. I've had several of my friends on the same street get Comcast and the speed hasn't gone down whatsoever.
Besides, from a technical standpoint, can't they simply add more routers at the local stations as traffic grows?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I'll start this off by saying that everything works fairly well, now. 768 SDSL, FlowPoint Router, block of IPs.
:)
It took quite a while to get to this point, though. After a lot of reading, I decided to go with Internet Connect. I heard about problems during installations, but mostly with ADSL, and it seemed that once things were up and running, they stayed up and running (so it has been).
A few weeks after signing my contract, I received an e-mail asking me to verify the details. They had everything right except the phone number, which was a work number at a completely different location, that I told them was for daytime contact only. I should have known then this wasn't going to be fun...
After this, I found out that my contact at the company had left when they moved their office location. More confusion, I finally got a new point of contact, but he was not technical. Not at all. I reverted to using the regular tech support/installation status people when I needed to find out what was going on.
When I was finally given an install date, I took the day off work, stayed home, and did not find out until the following week that there was a problem with the line. Or so they said.
Another install date, another day off work, same thing.
I tried to work my way up the tech support ladder, but to no avail. I got a different answer from everyone, and they were all wrong.
Enter Northpoint. They are a sort of go-between, doing the onsite install piece, and setting up the installation with the local telco (Bell Atlantic). I gave them a call, talked to a few people, and found out that Bell Atlantic hadn't done anything yet.
During the next few weeks, I talked to Northpoint a number of times, and everyone there was extremely helpful. The few times I tried calling Internet Connect, I got the same wrong answers to my questions, and no new information.
Since Northpoint doesn't send the router until the line is active, I had been checking line status every day so that I could get the router in and configured ASAP. On the day it went active, they had sent the router out overnight before I even asked. Again, very smooth on their end.
So they schedule their tech to come out, and I call Internet Connect again to inform them of this, since they have no idea what is going on. I ask for my block of IPs, which I had requested when I signed the contract. They had no idea what I was talking about.
So when the tech arrives (from Northpoint), the router gets installed, and it has to be configured for NAT. Simple enough. I've configured routers before, I can change it.
I get the block, configure it, and nothing. Hours on the phone with tech support. Nothing. Then it is discovered that the block of IPs is set to router to California. I'm in Virginia. All the while, the tech support people think I am either nuts or inept. But when that route was fixed... Suprise, suprise, it all worked. Guess it must have been my fault after all, huh guys?
If you are ready to deal with this sort of hassle, by all means get DSL. It is great when it finally works. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
The DSLReports.com site can only tell you an estimated cable feet. They cannot tell you anything about the lines that will say Yes, I can get dsl, or no I can't for sure.
Since they don't know these types of things they cannot say that you can get dsl for sure. Some of the things that keep people from getting DSL are neignborhoods coming in over a pair-gain connection and load coils on the line.
Eat more bacon!
That's right, I waited from January to May. One excuse after another -- but the main thread was Telocity incompetence. Oh, let's see:
- they lost my order, then found it, then lost it again, then found it again
- then they forgot to provision me
- At this point they realized there were load coils on my line
- then they remembered to provision me at the CO, but didn't actually do it
- then they laid the DSL line from the CO
- then they *finally* provisioned me and discovered that Rhythms was out of ports at my CO, but that ports would be added soon
- I quickly ignored them, masqueraded as a Telocity rep and spoke directly to Rhythms, who told me that they weren't going to add ports and that I'd have to wait until someone dropped their service
- I spoke to Telocity, who insisted that they'd be able to get ports for me.
- ...then I went with Speakeasy, who use Covad. Masquerading as a Speakeasy rep, I found out that Covad has lots of ports at my CO. I got connected.
Thank god I used to work for a local telco monopoly, so I knew how to social-engineer the CO guys.Anyway, I just wanted to offer a counterpoint. I *believe* that people are getting good service from Telocity -- I just wish I'd been one of them.
I have no
I live about 18k feet from ma bell so I can't get their adsl. At the time only flashcom was offering a lower speed connection at a home user price. I now have their 144k/144k idsl (isdl?) connection at $59/mo which is about at the top end of my budget for this. Getting connected took about 3 months thanks to bell south's refusal to nail down an appointment time. They want to show up whenever they want without notice and if you are not there, tough shit your order is canceled!
Took Covad acting as a middle man to get them to connect me! Then Covad and Flashcom played musical ip addresses on me (assigning the same ip and email address to several people!). Also there was a bad DSLAM somewhere in the circuit that took a few weeks to get replaced. Then the network logic had to be rebuild several times till they got it right.
Finally they never sent me a bill since May! I called and they gave me a balance due for two months service (which I payed). Flashcom said they are still re-building their billing system and not to worry about it! I'll call again if I don't get another bill in a month or two, at least they won't be charging any late fees! (What a way to run a business!)
I did have to sign a two year contract, but I was given a verbal that I could upgrade to faster service anytime it became available. It's been about 3/4 a year now and nothing better is available with no prospect that true adsl or cable modem service will be available in my neighborhood during my contract period so the contract was not a bad move on my part. (As far as I am concerned the contract period started when I 'signed up' NOT when they finally got me connected.)
I've been connected since May now without a hitch. Email server went down for a few hours on several occasions, but is stable now. Guess this was just a learning experience for all involved. I'm hoping that ma bell will move an 'outhouse' closer to me so I can upgrade in speed.
Pretty much what everybody is dealing with is to many people wanting xDSL, and the ILECs don't have enough people trained to do the job.
I do tech support for a DSL provider and have to deal with all the ILECs on a daily basis. I can tell you that they are the primary reason for most DSL problems. Either they will "steal" the DSL from one line to put it on another because it is not marked properly. Or a normal tech will go out to work on the lines and disconnect the DSL just because it does not look normal; or for convenience of his work. Or even worse the DSLAM cards used in most COs is bought from the lowest bidder. And I am sure we all know that the cheapest hardware is rarely the best.
So all of these things combined together make DSL less than perfect. But one must remember that DSL is a NEW TECHNOLOGY. And as with any new technology there are going to be problems and growing pains.
For instance, how many of us can remember the reliability of network connections when we were using 300 baud modems with our C64s back in the day? It is going to take time and patience for this technology to take off.
I use Sympatico(ISP arm of Bell Canada)'s High Speed Edition service, which is their braindead marketing name for their residential ADSL.
The service has been excellent here in Ottawa, Ontario. I've got 1 megabit/s downstream and 128 kilobit/s upstream, and both speeds have been consistent. It costs $35.95 (that's $CDN) a month and has been very reliable for the 8 months I've had it- There have been 3-4 downtimes lasting a couple hours each... The cause of which I guess would be my only complaint; they went with some turn-key PPPoE solution and it's been that RADIUS server that's the problem each and every time there has been an outage.
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Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
The worst part about BellAtlantic is that they use PPPoE and DHCP instead of a static IP. This makes it harder to share your connection among a home network. The download speeds are fast as far as I am concerned. But, if anyone tries to get an MP3 off of me, I might as well have a cable connection. The Upload part of Adsl is SLOW!!!!!.
Also, the customer support from BellAtlantic, Verizon whatever sucks. I had a problem with my connection, and they bounced me around from dept to dept. No one could fix it. It ended up being a billing problem and now I have to wait another 15 days far service to get turned back on. They SUCK!
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Yeah 220, 221. Whatever it takes! - Mr. Mom
I live in Silver Spring, MD, and I recently got DSL through a company called Darwin networks. From what I know of them, they provide DSL to college dorms, apartment complexes, things like that. There was a two week waiting time, and a few glitches to work out after I got my connection, but now it's up and running. I'm currently the only person in my entire building subsciribed, so there's all this routing equipment in the basement just for me. The price is also unbelievable. I have a 256k connection for $20 a month. If Darwin does business in your area, you should check it out.
While we're trashing DSL providers i thought i'd throw in my two cents. As some of you may or may not know, Colorado (where i live) was one of the only states to allow the Qwest/USWest merger to complete without any stipulations. We're paying for this in every aspect of the game.
If you can get it reliably, DSL is a very nice choice. I'm not sure that the peak bandwidth is as good as cable (from what i've seen) but it's a reliable bandwidth.
The lesson i've learned. Make SURE you can handle the DSL. In the past three weeks, because of the DSL, we have gone ~12 days without any form of phone service because of, first a blown transciever or some such at the CO, next a bad drop line, and then our super smart linemen decided that it would be better to disconnect the particular jack i was running my DSL on (go figure).
Note: this wasn't a situation of "maybe you can get DSL, we'll try it and see" - this was a sure thing, as far as USWest was concerned.
Be careful...your DSL *can* be more trouble than it's worth. Make sure you know what you're getting into (when it's on, it kicks ass).
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Telocity is good. Ordered a line for the office and for home last week of August. They estimated mid-October when we'd be up. By the second week of September, the office was up, but the Ameritech guy screwed up something in the installation, and we're still fighting about who should pay the bill for the damages Ameritech caused. The house line was just finished last week. Ahead of the estimated October, but delayed longer than it should have been because Ameritech no-showed for two of their install appointments. In short, Telocity is great. But I have never ever had a good experience with Ameritech. My old ISP is even taking them to court for several thousand no-call no-show appointments that screwed some of their customers with outages. So your DSL service may be limited in quality by who you have to go through to get it. And if you're in my area, doesn't matter who you get it from, it still goes through Ameritech at some point...
I love DSL. I'm completely sold. It would take insane levels of compensation to convince me to move somewhere without DSL access.
I have had nothing but good experiences with DSL. Granted, I've only used two providers - but experiences with both have been everything I could hope for.
Cable modem? What's a cable modem?
-Mars
I have had swbell dsl for about a month, it took about 3 weeks to get it installed, speeds have been great and no disruption in service. i too saw all the dslreports negative reviews. it's human nature that if you had a bad experience you would be more inclined to tell about it than if you had a good experience.
Sprint being the sleazy telco they are, and their ADSL offerings being way overpriced anyway, I didn't even look hard at them. They also will tell you things like Linux and NAT "won't work -- people have tried, believe me" even though they do (at the moment at least). Basically if you don't have Windows, or at least say you do, they won't talk to you.
CFW's service is MVL. What I can find about MVL leads me to believe it essentially sacrifices top-end bandwidth to get greater distance. I got CFW's 384K MVL service (the other option is 768K) last year, and had it till I moved in June. The service was great, but getting it installed and getting a correct bill from them was a nightmare. They lost my first payment and only recently did they agree to credit anything to my account. This is nothing new for them apparently -- I found at least 3 other horror stories of CFW billing screwups.
Now I've ditched them, and I'm getting service through their subsidiary Cornerstone. This should be a lot better, because I'm actually getting responses to my questions and I know a lot of people there, so billing disputes should be practically nonexistent.
Tips:
Basically be ready to fight tooth and nail for your consumer rights regardless of what you're told. But then as Slashdotters most of us know that already.
-- Old Man Kensey
I had BellAtlantic's Infospeed service for about a year and it was the absolute worst customer service experience I have ever had. They sent me the wrong type of DSL modem and after they sent a replacement to correct their error I was billed six (!) times on my credit card for a modem (with each charge being over $100 by itself). They also made it next to impossible for me to return the original modem which they sent me in error (it was six months and a far too many phone calls later before I was eventually able to return it).
After my service was installed it worked for the first 15 minutes and then dropped dead for the next two months. It took two months of me constantly calling them on the phone for them to actually fix it. And the way they fixed the problem was scary. The problem affected the whole "tree" that I was on at their central office, which means that a couple hundred other customers were probably having the same problem. Did they fix the root of the problem? Of course not. They physically moved my phone line to a different tree that wasn't having problems - I felt sorry for all the other people left on my old tree. Oh, and this physical line swithcing caused a host of other problems, such as my long distance service not being switched properly and my being billed twice for long distance and at higher rates than I was signed up for.
Afer the initial two months, the service went down again approximately every two to three months for about a week at a time. When I called their tech support they always claimed that they would fix it within 72 hours (or at least contact me) and they never did. I had to constantly call them every day before they took any action.
And those are only a few of the problems I had with BellAtlantic.
I moved a month ago and I decided that I spent far too much time on the phone with BellAtlantic to make signing up for their service worth it again. I desperately wish there was cable modem service available in Boston, but their isn't. I signed up for DSL service through SpeakEasy.net a few weeks ago, but they have yet to call me back to set up an installation time. I'm hoping I didn't pick another BellAtlantic.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
However on the residential side some of things many providers (such as Sympatico) are moving to a PPPoE config. This has caused a lot of problems, as the supported clients are lousy. The reliability of the PPPoE clients is sorely lacking. The one provided by Sympatico, called Access Manager isn't supported on linux or NT/2000.
Access Mangler is probably best forgotten, and once you switch to Linux, Roaring Penguins PPPoE user-client is an easy install and setup, requiring no kernel patches. I've had NO problems at all with this setup and fast connection speeds (>100Kbytes/sec). If you are stuck on Windows, any PPPoE client should work - there doesn't appear to be anything particularly special about the Sympatico arrangement. Then of course the PPPoE support is supposed to be much improved in the 2.4.x series of kernels, so life should become even more flexible as these roll out.
CHeers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I'm the SysAdmin for an ISP that serves rural Colorado. We offer DSL is the larger cities in our areas like Alamosa. What drives us crazy is that Qwest never seems to get ANYTHING right. There's the same problems with waiting for them to put lines it for us the everyone complains about and when they finally do get it in, we spend two more weeks trying to get them to fix their mistakes. At this point our NetAdmin can trouble shoot their system better than they can. Once we get DSL up though, it's stable.
We also do wireless because most of our area is out in the boonies. We almost try to sell it over DSL because, although it's more expensive up front, we don't have to deal with Qwest.
PerlStalker
I've had my DSL line from about July of last year (right around when they first started installing it in Denver).
I've been pretty happy so far, but have had some frustrating experiences. I thought I'd share the mix, then tell you after my plans for the future...
The Good:
The install was great. Not that they didn't encounter technical problems - it turned out the eiring in my house for my primary line didn't really cut it for DSL, but the secondary wiring was OK so we just re-wired all the jacks in my house to use the second wiring. The installation guy really knew what he was doing, and spent about three hours on my install!
Another nice thing was that even though I signed up for 256k service, ever since the start it's been 640k down (still 256k up though). Just recently, they sent out mail announcing my downlink was being upgraded to 640k for free! Seems they decided to turn a technical problem into a marketing advantage.
Customer service reps I've actually found to be pretty friendly and helpful. If you are patient and nice to these people, they can do a lot for you... there are some non useful people but I really haven't had as many bad experiences as others have had.
The Bad:
About once a month or so, the DNS server seems to go down. I've had about four instances where my DSL has been down all weekend, a major bummer to say the least.
I have an early Netspeed DSL modem. At one point, it had a flaky power supply - the lights all seemed to indicate things were fine, but the DSL line didn't work! After three days on the phone with helpful (but ineffective) US West (oh wait, I forgot to say "US West is now Qwest") people, they finally sent two techs out. One of them knew phone systems, but had no idea about computers. The other one knew all about computers, but nothing about phone systems. Between them they knew nothing at all about how to solve a problem. After an hour tailing along behind them, it was eventually myself who diagnosed the power supply as the problem.
I also do not think U.S. West the ISP has the best of network connections.
The Ugly:
I think US West DSL is rather expensive - between my phone bill, by DSL line, the US West ISP, and my eight static IP's (you can only buy them in blocks of eight and you have to turn on business service), my phone bill is about $116 a month. I'm trying to sign up for Sprint ION, which should save me a bit of money while increasing my DSL speed by quite a bit and adding another phone line. I can't seem to get them to return my messages though!
Right now I'm still not sure if DSL is better than a cable modem, though I still want to go that route to avoid future congestion. I think at some point I might get both just to have a reliable connection.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>The one provided by Sympatico, called Access Manager isn't supported on linux
Try this;
http://sympaticousers.org/faq/linux_howto.htm
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I have had DSL for most of 2 years now. I started with a small DSL company named Dspeed which offered a deal comparable to what Pac Bell offered for basic service. What a mistake...there are a lot of things these small companies don't tell you, such as the fact that they have 1 network engineer who doubles as tech support. Ack. Anyways, these guys charged me over 1000 clams for a line that didn't work, went out of business, and then tried to charge another $2k to my credit card after closing their doors. Most of my friends have had similar experiences with other small DSL providers.
Pac Bell is my current provider. The downside to them is that they treat a DSL setup like any other line, which means that each order and order change takes two weeks to process (get used to this, and everything else will work out). Otherwise, I pay 99 clams a month for better than T-1 download speeds and 5 usable IPs.
Some things to check out...find out who the DSL company's provider is (usually Covad, unless it is a Bell). Find out how many network engineering types they've got doing the actual work. Find out *important* how far you are from the central office, and *as important* how many folks you will be sharing your DSLAM with. Thirdly, find out what kind of equipment they use, and look it up to check out further limitations that the sales people won't be letting on about.
Pac Bell uses Alcatel equipment, and connections from each DSLAM are aggregated. So, you can have the big pipe, but if you are in a highly concentrated business zone with everybody and their uncle using cheap DSL, your service may be a bit slower. Also, regardless of provider, it will also be about a month AFTER install before all the kinks and bugs get worked out in your service.
Good luck.
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
I went from @home cable modem service to DSL service. I like my DSL. I get 784k both ways and have had little if no problems after the first 2 weeks. Keep this in mind... When getting any service such as DSL or Cable dont expect it to work right for at least a month. This is a new technology and there needs to be time for the company to tweak settings. If you go into it with that mind set then you will be cool. My provider is PSN.NET and NORTHPOINT.NET == Both very good companies.
The reason that Qwest won't qualify you in Phoenix, but other providers will, is that Qwest Megabit does not currently offer a 144K service. 144K, also called, IDSL, is simply using ISDN technology to drive 144k (2B+D) without all of the ISDN junk attached. I am in exactly the same boat in Colorado - Qwest wouldn't qualify me, but Covad did. Covad is allright - only had one outage in the last three months, but it was a big one - 3/4 of a day due to a fiber cut somewhere. Oh yeah, and with 144K service, you can't share the line with voice like you can do with regular DSL.
I've heard that Qwest is coming out with a 144K service, in response to the other providers that are cleaning up at the low end.
I jumped into DSL pretty early on to secure myself a static IP address while PacBell, my provider, was still giving them out.
My opinion on PacBell's DSL Service is this: It's gotten a whole hell of a lot better. When I first got DSL installed it litterally worked about half the time. I placed countless calls to 611 to be told, "we don't know anything about any problems in your area" And of course the "Network Status" webpage they offer can only be accessed through your DSL connection. ie. so if DSL is down you can't even confirm it with the Network Status. Aggrivating to say the least.
BUT... Like I said it's gotten A LOT better. Now, maybe once every month or two I'll lose service for five or six hours, but overall, much, much better than when it was first installed.
I also have flashcom, i regularly get over 380kbs. My deal was $39.95 a month, year committment, no fee for the modem, i provided ethernet card. They were the only company at the time I installed and I was VERY concerned about the reports I had seen. There was some scheduling mishigas but once the line was installed it has been trouble free. Re billing: they have recently sent out letters apologizing for not billing and notifying users that they would be making a rectifying charge on X date. Apparently they were so disorganized in the past that they forgot to bill. *rolls eyes*
I have found Sprint DSL (Earthlink is the actual ISP but) to be pretty good. There is a bit of latency with the earthlink DNS Servers, but that seems to be a case of them being a bit overworked, as it only happens in the evening from about 6:30 -8:30 PM. The two times I had to call Tech support becasue I lost sync, I waited on hold for about 5 minutes. Once I got someone on line it took them about two minutes to fix watever there end of the problem was and I was back up.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
As far as I can tell, anyway. I'm the Operations Manager for a small CSP in Dallas, and probably 9/10ths of our customer base is high-speed traffic.
you may need this...
Acronym Guide:
ILEC - independent local exchange carrier (Bell, GTE, US West, etc.) - they own the local copper
and the switching equipment
CLEC - competitive local exchange carrier (Zyan, Covad, Rhythms, Northpoint) - they lease the copper from the ILECs
DSL - Digital Subscriber Line
Currently our focus is SDSL, but we also include wireless technologies and standard highspeed connections (T's and ISDN). I can honestly say that a vast majority of my day is fighting with CLECs and ILECs about the status of our
customers. We use several redundant monitoring systems to keep an eye and make sure everyone is up, but I garauntee that not 2 days will go by before we have some major trouble with one of our line providers... including weekends. Most of the time it has to do with a squabble between the CLEC and the ILEC, but every now and then it's just a CLEC "oopsie, sorry, we should have your customer back up by... oh... tomorrow, I guess."
Now, with my anecdote out of the way, let me share what *I* see as the problem - from the point of view from someone who has to be in the know - it's my job. DSL is still a young technology. The way it's structured, along with the de-regulation of the telecom industry, has made it a tragic pitfall for customers to get lost in. Our basic order goes like this... either a sales person will put in an order, or a potential will call in. We qualify the line through our various line providers. Because of the way Dallas is, 99% of the time, the customer will qualify for some sort of service, so we put the order into the CLEC.
The CLEC then Calls the ILEC to request a pair (because it's SDSL, can't run over a current line), at the location we requested. The ILEC may then come back and say "We don't have a pair for you at that location right now." Then the CLEC calls us back and says "no-can-do."
If the pair IS available, the ILEC will set an allocation date when the CLEC may have a pair at the location (usually 2-3 weeks from when the request was made, provided that the ILEC reviews and responds to the request asap), then the CLEC will set the install for 2-3 weeks after they have the pair allocated to them, because they want to make sure that they actually have it.
Now, provided all of this goes as smoothly as possible, you're looking at probably a bare minimum of 4 weeks... and as much as 3 months, due to circumstances.
The CLECs usually dispatch the ILEC technicians to do the pair hookup, and then dispatch contractors to to a site install. The install can fail for any number of reasons. The first is incompetency. I shouldn't have to elaborate, but I will just for thoroughness: sometimes the ILECs haven't finished, or just haven't properly trained their techs to identify, mark, and set up the pairs for DSL. Sometimes the contractors doing the site install are stupid. You get the picture. Other reasons for failed installs are the ILEC yanking the pairs from the CLEC, the CLEC randomly failing the install (have seen this one multiple times, with no explanation), or the ILEC allocating the same pair to multiple people.
Now, providing that everything goes to plan, you get your one month turnaround, at the speed you want, with no installation problems, then there's other things that can happen. First is the DSL Router Syncing Down.... what this means is if the DSL line has noise or is improperly configured by the ILEC or CLEC (whoever), or the router itself isn't properly configured, it will downgrade the signal (which means a loss of bandwidth for you guys). There is no way for the routers to Sync Up aside from a re-sync - which means rebooting the router. Also, the ILEC may still yank the pair - I've had this happen to 5 different customers. When we finally get a response back it's always been "the circuit was incomplete" or "that order was marked as terminated". Usually the problem is the ILEC has mistakenly given out the last pair at that location.
I'll wrap it up now - if you get a good, customer service oriented DSL provider, you're still going to have problems, but they'll fight for you. Alot. They do it every day, and it's trench warfare, but they'll do it because you are the customer. You just can't steer clear of problems with DSL yet - there's too many middlemen, there's too many crossover points, too many routing issues (both telco and net), too many variables in general. Find a provider that cares about you, what you want, what your needs are... go with them. They may not have the best price, or offer the highest speeds, but you won't regret it. In other words, if you make the right choice, getting the install done is like giving birth, but once you're up and working with your ISP, it should be a lot of fun!
Stephen Sadowski
Operations Manager
Inturnet, inc.
I toggled a toggle and buttoned a button, but when I got done, I was done doin' nothin'.
I signed up in October 1999 with Bell Atlantic. They were wiring my house within 10 days. I have had ~2 days of downtime total. When they tested my line, the tech said I had the highest test he had seen. I think it was 77, what ever that means.
The speed is excellent. I have a 640kbs line and downloads rarely go over 30KBs from web servers, but I can get 2 downloads at that speed. FTP saturates my line, always around 60KBs, depending on the source - of course.
I live across the street from the CO., guess I'm a lucky one.
Needless to say, my opinion of the forementioned company has been forever tarnished. Their ISP service was well below par as well. I had a Cisco 675 they sent me, but did not offer any static IP's, saying those were $15/month extra.
I will plug one company in the Puget Sound Region that has excellent ISP for DSL service, Olywa.net. Their fee is a flat $25/month up to 512kpbs and that includes 5 static IP's. And their tech support knows their stuff too.
I use @Link Networks for my 384k SDSL connection. I get great bandwidth, averaging ~700k (of course, I'm right across the street from the CO), good response to help calls, they are even doing reverse-arpa and secondary dns for me. I got hooked up within 30 days of signing the contract. The phone line is provisioned from Ameritech (for once, they got something right). All that for $159 per month. No, I don't work for these guys, just a satisfied customer. I guess I must lucky...
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Until I moved last year I had @home cable and was pretty satisfied by the service. The tech support was questionable but service was fast and reliable. I think I had 2 outages in 18mos, although both lasted about 24 hours. I intended to get the same at my new house but the cable company didn't offer it. I looked at several DSL companies and settled on CTS, a local (San Diego) ISP that just started reselling Covad service. Coming up on one year I have had only 2 outages (that I was aware of) and both were fixed with one phone call in about 10 minutes. Installation was easy, MOSTLY I believe because I already had a conditioned phone line (ISDN) so the idiots at PacBell didn't have to come out and try to make it work. It took 2 weeks from order to installation. The major disadvantage is the cost: the DSL modem was $600 and monthly charges run about $75 (ADSL 768/384) with a one year contract and 2 static IP's. They had no rental option (like the cable modem) and the DSL modem does not have a built in firewall. Overall, my DSL experience has been very good. In fact, my cable company is now offering @home for about $40 but I am going to stick with the DSL.
I have Bell Atlantic DSL. And I love it.
:P). The rest of the time, the service has been fast and reliable. They now use pppoe, but it's standard, so rp-pppoe works fine with it. I leave my computer on all day whilest at work, no problems at all.
They have had one major outage in the last year and a half. It was down for about 12 hours, and they gave me a month off (when I bitched enough
--
Matt Singerman
Matt Singerman
http://matt.vegan.net/
Watch out for who owns your DSL line. Really.
:-)
In January of '99, we got a DSL line here in the Bay Area. We ordered from a SoCal ISP named Orconet (orconet.com), based on a review of their service in a DSL roundup article in some gaming magazine. It was cheap, we got multiple IPs (not many, but enough to skip NAT for now) and they dealt with ordering the line from Pac Bell, arranging installation, etc.
All in all, we were up in 5 days. I was impressed. The price was great, and the service was good. We had daily 5 minute outages for a while, but they eventually went away, and our site doesn't get that much traffic, so I wasn't too worried (it's strictly noncommerical anyway).
So the deal was that Pac Bell added DSL service to my (4 year old) second line and billed my $40/month for it. Orconet billed me $20/month for the ISP service and additional IPs. Great.
About a month ago, we got an email around 8 PM on a Thursday informing us that orconet was out of business and our service was going off the next day. There was a number to call for more information, which was the same as the orconet main line. We called it the next morning.
A recording told us that no calls were being returned, that colo customers were being sold to someone else, dial-up customers should find a local ISP, and DSL customers should call Pac Bell.
So, I called Pac Bell. It seemed like a good idea to switch my ISP to them, since they already had the line and I didn't have to wait for a covad installation (months). They took the order for ISP service on my line and said they couldn't process it until my current ISP service was cancelled, and that would take 5 business days, then 10 business days to turn on the Pac Bell service. I grumbled, but it was faster than Covad and I told them to do it.
The next friday, I waited for my line to go off.
When it didn't, I called on Monday to see what the dealy was (I was worried that if I held out too long the DSLAM would fill again and I'd be waitlisted). They told me there was no order to cancel my ISP service. I placed another.
Then someone with a slight clue got on the line and told me they couldn't cancel my ISP with the now defunct orconet! That I didn't own the line, because the DSL service had been ordered on my line by orconet and therefore they had to cancel it. Of course, orconet wasn't returning any calls, so I couldn't get that done. The fact that I paid directly to Pac Bell didn't matter, and the fact that I had the line for 4 years before adding DSL didn't matter. I was screwed.
I could get waitlisted for DSL on my main line and get Pac Bell as an ISP, but that didn't appeal to me. I didn't want a one year contract, and I didn't want more hardware floating around. And even then, I might have had to cancel the whole phone service on the second line to get rid of the $40/month DSL charge.
So I waited. For some reason, our DSL was still active. The orconet nameservers (which held SOA on my domain) died, so I switched to a friends. (They've since been coming up sometimes, which can cause me problems.) But my connection only went down once, for 5 minutes.
My girlfriend suggested we wait until a month went by, figuring that by that point someone would have discovered us in a billing cycle and either disconnected us or billed us.
Last week, we got a bill from the phone company listing SBC Advanced Solutions for DSL service. I don't know if SBC knows they're our connection yet, and I'm a little afraid to call them and discuss bandwidth, DNS, and IP options.
So, the short is:
* I love the always-on connection (the speed is not that material, actually)
* I love hosting everything at home (except when something goes wrong
* I've had good service I recommend for 20 months
* I recommend new people out here use a major ISP or (preferably) the hated Pac Bell, becuase Pac Bell doesn't throttle bandwidth to what you pay for. I have friends getting three times the bandwidth I am
* Watch out for who owns what and consider what you do if the line goes dark for some reason
* KEEP A DIAL-UP ACCOUNT ALWAYS
* Have a second phone line if you can
* Don't let the ISP end up owning anything you can avoid
* Make sure you are Guardian and a technical or administrative contact on all domains and address ranges you own
And I have a question for you all:
* Should I call SBC? I haven't gotten a bill from them and my fear is them having to cut me off to make an order for me, or them charging me hundreds a month because I have multiple IPs. Anyone have any advice about them?
* I was being billed for DSL service I couldn't use and couldn't cancel. Is there a regulatory body that I can complain to about this? This seems like a great scam for Pac Bell if they figure it out -- create bogus ISPs, run them for a few months, go chapter 11, cancel the line but keep people paying for it. If they get too unhappy, convert them to Pac Bell ISP and charge them a couple of hundred installation.
Xowl.
Another thing, unrelated to service...
DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT get a USB modem. If you can avoid it, don't get an Alcatel modem. They are known to have problems with sync.
If your provider insists that you use PPPoE, try to get a router. Netgear RT-314 and RT-311 as well as the Linksys BEFSR41 or BEFSR11 seem to be pretty popular.
If you use PPPoE, and you don't want a hardware solution, try RASPPPoE instead of Enternet.
The advantage to the Linksys BEFSR41 and the NetGear RT-314 is that they are 4-port switches plus the DSL/CableModem router.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Dsl as a technology in a whole really stinks. The support from the telco's is no good at all. If your a residential customer then fine, but if your a business and you rely on your Internet connection, DOn't get DSL. Or have some kind of backup. DSL is residentialy zoned with the ILEC, so that means if it goes done they look at it as a resident phone line, their priority to fix it is extremely low. Compared to a T1, or Frame the support does not even come close. All of the DSL providers out there do not give an SLA, because they can not get one from the telco's/. Just wanted to let you all know.
That's interesting; I've only received nothing but the kindest of service from SpeakEasy.
SpeakEasy is the most politically aware and open network, having made an explicit commitment to freedoms in their mission statement and terms of service. I had to turn down several ISP's (such as InternetConnect) because of their draconian TOS (which included that they can charge me $1,000 if I potentially infringe on IP). SpeakEasy is the only ISP I trust.
Just recently, Nader spoke at the SpeakEasy cafe off 2nd and Bell, downtown Seattle. SpeakEasy has lent the back room to Free Radio Seattle as well. If SpeakEasy isn't a safe ISP, I don't know who is.
We have been using GTE South (now Verizon) for about a year now for our DSL service. The hook-up took about 3 weeks. They, for one, didn't know how to hook up DSL (I ended up doing all the inhouse wiring and setting up the modem), and they didn't have a substation capable of supporting DSL in our vicinity.
We live out in the country, and had no other option but to wait until they solved the problem. Which I am pleased to say went rather quickly. We are just lucky that the 3 weeks the quoted us didn't spawn out into months.. or even years.
Currently they are providing us with 384/384 service, and we love it! To date we have been down twice.. typically for about 8 hrs each time. I must say its a lot better track record than the Analog and ISDN modems we had in the past.
I live in Tucson... I have DSL through USWest. I haven't had a single problem with it. My new house will not be able to get it, so I started looking at alternatives. Phoenix has some good alternatives too... such as speedchoice, sprint broadband (both wireless)... might be worth looking into them.
Actually the telephone companies would rather have more people on DSL. It's less expensive. With dialup or ISDN your actually tieing up phone trunks which are used for phone calls (including your internet connection) With DSL the network connection is routed thru a different "network" then thru the DSLAM etc... to put up DSLAMS is like candy to telephone companies.. something in the range of 100 grand whereas buying new trunks is alot higher than that. A bit of history here. 10 years ago the average call length was around 2 minutes, now in the present the average call length is around 30 minutes due to the internet. Which means now more people are tying up phone lines and phone trunks to surf the web (at an ungodly slow speed) so inorder for the telephone companies to not run out of lines they have to purchase more trunks, more CO's (central offices) etc. to make up for that. Now if the telco starts introducing DSL they can get those "modem surfers" off of the phone trunk and onto the DSL network at a fraction of the price. Everyone wins.. The downside is that DSL is in it's infancy and yes there are currently distance limitations. In the ALLTEL market this distance is roughly 18000 feet from the CO, this distance is not as the crow flies (from your house to the CO) but the length of line you have connecting your house to the CO. So basically to wrap this up. The telephone companies would rather have you connecting up with DSL over ISDN or a modem because it costs the telephone company a fraction of the price than your internet connection would cost them with a modem or ISDN connection.
"user by force, root by attrition" to email remove the NO~SPAM
I have had DSL for a year now, and it has been a great, if occasionally bumpy, ride. I live in downtown Chicago, in the S.E. Lakeview/North Lincoln Park area, where DSL became available last summer/fall. My initial ISP was EarthCafe, who is/was a reseller for Telocity, who resells for Rhythyms. My connnection is 768/768, and it usually tests out to that. I pay $50/month for this, with a static IP and a couple of mail addresses.
When I got connected (with EarthCafe) it was awesome!!! The guy came on the day scheduled (about 2 weeks), and was 1/2 hour early!!! Hookup was no problem, even though I was going against a Linux box. I told the guy to give me the IP info, and I configured it. Viola! Happy days!!!
I wish I could say it was happily ever after from there, but it wasn't. In December of last year, Telocity told me the "Good News". They were taking over my account. This meant I had to change my e-mail, which is always a pain in the ass, but not much else. Ok, no big deal. Fast forward to May.
On May 13, my service failed. It just stopped, for no reason. I tryed to call Telocity's help desk (it was a Saturday) and I was on hold for 2 hours, but never got through to a technician.
On Monday, I tried calling again in the evening, but after holding for over an hour, I still didn't get through.
Every day, same story. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Finally, on May 24, I got through, and the technicial support person walked through the router setup with me. He covered all the basic crap a newbie might fsck up. I used to admin UNIX networks, so I recognized all the steps. Finally he realized that I wasn't clueless, and he agreed to check with their networking guys.
Over the course of the next 30 days, I followed up with the tech guys every 5 days. I got nowhere. My service was still down. After a while the problem was traced back to Ameritech, but they weren't doing jack to fix it. Finally, about 45 days after my service had failed, I talked to the guy who interfaced Telocity with Ameritech.
I told him to tell Ameritech that I would dump Telocity, but also cancel my local and long distance phone service and go cellular only, unless the matter was resolved.
Viola. Service restored.
Still, not the end of story. I was only getting about 1/3 of the bandwidth I had before. At this point I was really pissed. I threatened to bring a class action lawsuit, along with other digruntled DSL users, against Telocity for breach of contract and "slamming". I was reaching, but I figured that their change of service provider and service level could be creativly used by a good lawyer (of whom I know several) in the same context as long distance slammming by telcos, which is also illegal.
Guess what? Today I am back a 768 synchronous and loving it. But the moral of the story is that you have to do the thinking for both parties, and be prepared for some brinkmanship with the local telco.
On a related note, my client right now is SBC/Ameritech, and DSL (project Pronto) is their biggest initiative. Take it from me, do yourself a favor and steer clear of them if you can.
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
I've had Telocity DSL since last June. For the most part, it's pretty solid. Note that I said,"for the most part." Woe unto thee that has a service issue that needs to get resolved. Early on, we lost connectivity, and we naturally tried to call Telocity to get it resolved. In a week, a tech came out and told us we didn't have connectivity to the phone company; it was the phone company's problem. Well, after another *3 weeks* and the phone company saying it's not their problem, we finally got a tech who knew what he was doing. It turns out that someone had *moved our line to a different jack in the apartment building*. Needless to say, we were dumbfounded. How's that for a wasted month? One other caveat: DSL is great if you can get it installed. A friend of mine spent *two months* wrangling with Telocity to get service installed. Finally, after he basically ripped their Level 2 tech support a new one and told them to cancel his service request (which they had been billing him for, despite him not having service!), a magical thing happened. Two days after that verbal reaming, a tech was out and had him up and running. So what have we learned? The only way to get DSL companies to do what they're supposed to do is to chew out their high-level support people and threaten to take money away. (Chewing out low-level support people is like yelling at a wall.) Second, it takes a LOT of personal energy and time to do this. DSL service seems to be an all-or-nothing type of thing. Either it gets installed and works, or it doesn't. You'll have to decide for yourself whether it's worth the (almost assured) headaches.
I just wanted to note that I ordered Speakeasy (www.speakeasy.net) xDSL for my home, and these guys had things going in 10 days. Lucky? Maybe. As far as the service goes I have had a couple of Sundays with no internet access in the last 6 months. But, speaking as someone who works for a company that resells for various DSL providers.. they ALL suck :) It isn't so bad. No internet connection just tells me, "Hey, time to sit down and read.. or go out for change." :)
(No, we don't resell Speakeasy. We only resell buisness service.)
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Hey I am a Junior Admin In the Phoenix Metro Area, I have had to tell many customers that they can't have DSL. But here is some interesting news. The company I work For Dancris Telcom Is currently beta testing Wireless internet service. We will be using cisco wireless ethernet over the entire valley we will be setting up repeators everywhere. The only thing that Is holding it up right now is that the current verision we have is based on cell channels that other people are currently broadcasting on the new version is supposed to scan several channels and find a open one and broad cast on it. We are planning on hitting the entire valley in one shot. We will be selling this wireless service or about the same cost as DSL. We will also be providing speeds of about 1 meg. Ok now that I have glorified the wireless infasturucture here are the down falls. While we will be most likly wiring the whole valley because of the way that radio waves work their may be holes in the brodcast signal. these should be minimal but without the entire system up we don't know the full extent yet. Secound and worst we are still it beta state the launch of this wireless infastructure is about 3-6 months away. Or so I am being told I have only gotten to play with it once here in the office and I was very happy with the speed. As far as other serives go currently you are limited to a few choices One Qwest DSl not avaliable everywhere (actually not in most places) Cox Avaiable in more places but if other people around you also have it the speed goes down. (shared network) Speed choice/ Sprint broad band, very good availablity but horrible spped and service. Their rule is as long as you are in line of sight of south mountain you can get it but they have their bandwith completely saturated. Also Their is another company called Covad They offer DSL lines as well for a good price I know that as of now Mind Spring Is going through them I haven't heard to much about this so I can't make a judgement yet! Qwest or USwest also in conjunction with ISP offer ISDN isdn is available in more places than DSL, but they are pricey and only 128-144k, but they are reliable.
Hate to go against the grain here, folks, but I've had Verizon DSL coming up on 2 years now and I've been largely pleased. I started with 384k and just recently bumped to 768k (had to wait for some cable plant upgrades). I've had a total of 3 outages: one cable cut by the landscaper (GTE never came to mark the line locations), one dead router at the ISP and one DSLAM failure at the CO. Speed issues are usually problems outside of my ISPs network. One thing to keep in mind is that the regulatory environment is quite different for phone companies than cable companies. Cable seems nearly impervious to complaints to the state utilities commission where the phone companies tend to hop a bit faster when you mention bringing up service issues with regulators. Also, while I'm stuck with Verizon as the line provider, due to good old fashioned government regulation, I have a choice of ISPs so I can find one with policies with which I agree (a local, linux-friendly mom 'n pop outfit that happily provides static IPs & doesn't mind if you run servers) instead of being stuck with the unbending & restrictive service policies of my local cable monopoly. Also, I've haven't yet heard of a DSL provider that applies QOS rules to their network in order to increase the bandwidth to favoured vendors. Screw cable. -xski
Generally, atleast with MY OWN experiences anytime you have to go through so and so, who goes through so and so who goes through so and so again, you get shitty service. One bottleneck in any of those 3+ bridges, fucks it all up. I had two way wireless from my old ISP who partnered with WantTV. What happened when Sprint bought WantTV? They killed WantTV, which killed all their cable customers and they killed the wireless web from Medford Internet. In general, I think when you go through one person who goes through another and another, you shouldn't expect quick response time or quality work.
My experiences trying to get DSL have been pretty trying.
I tried to get DSL through my local telco. (US West.) I am the proper distance, but US West claims that there is "something wrong with the line". When asked what the problem is, they cannot give me an answer.
I try going through Covad and Northpoint. I get the answer that there is "electronics on the line". My only option given is to order IDSL which is basically an always on ISDN connection. (At ISDN speeds, which is much less than DSL.)
It turns out that in order to save money in my neighborhood, US West has used hardware compression to make more voice lines fit on the trunk. Everyone in my neighborhood is screwed when it comes to DSL.
Furthermore, the regulations for phone lines are so ancient in Oregon that you are pretty much SOL getting anything beyond a dial tone. And data? Don't make me laugh! They don't guarantee ANY sort of quality for data. And to make matters worse, they have gotten DSL exempted from the rules covering phone lines all together.
Basically you are at their mercy if you want DSL.
I am exploring other options to get high speed data into my house. So far, I have had few options and those become more vapornet as time goes on.
"The more I deal with the phone company, the more I understand terrorism."
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
I've had DSL for almost 2 years and i've only had one problem so far. My line got noisy and became mostly useless but PacBell came out only few days after i reported the problem and fixed it. 3 days of downtime in 2 years for a home office connection isn't bad when you consider the incredibly high demand for DSL service.
Only thing that makes me worry a little is that PacBell DSL is now handled by SBC. That can sometimes be aggravating when you wait on hold to talk to PacBell and then they transfer you to SBC and you have to wait on hold again but so far its been ok.
We've had ADSL through SNET (part of SBC) here in southern Connecticut since April, maybe a few weeks after they started offering the service. The installation was smooth -- took a couple weeks between contact and install. We were getting well over the minimum downstream rate (800k vs. 384k) initially and were happy.
After a couple months, though, we lost sync for what turned out to be almost an entire month. You see, SNET is only the billing entity. The technical folks are an outfit called ASI which spun off from SNET for regulatory reasons earlier in the year. We played the ping-pong ball between SNET and ASI for a few weeks before finally resolving the issue -- turned out that SNET was switching our circuit to a different cable. As expected, they had no problems switching dial-tone to the new cable. Amazingly, they even remembered to plug the DSL into the new cable as well. They just forgot to unplug the DSL from the old cable. Hence, sudden doubling in our distance from the CO which pushed us over the limit for adequate signal strength. An ASI guy finally figured it out and, though it took 3 days from solution to resolution, we've been back in business ever since. We got a credit for the lost time, but it's been painful actually getting that resolved. You know the story: SNET says they just bill per ASI and can't issue the credit themselves while ASI says it's a billing problem and that SNET needs to resolve it. Still, it's not too bad since the service is working -- although since the cable switch, we're now getting only 400k downstream instead of the original 800. Still, it's above the minimum so I won't complain.
Despite that, we've been otherwise happy with the service. I can only remember one outage (that I noticed) since April and it only lasted overnight one weekend. The contract requires you to use SNET as your ISP and they use PPPoE, but that's dealable. We've been using a Linksys router to connect our home network and it's worked really well.
A friend of mine who works in the ADSL group at Texas Instruments told me that the falloff in bandwidth with distance from the phone office is actually pretty negligible until you get to about 2 km. After that you start losing bandwidth due to signal attenuation (AC conductivity of copper goes as 1/f^2 where f is the frequency of the alternating current, and ADSL uses frequencies up to at least 1 MHz IIRC). The point is, if you live within a mile of the phone office, life is great. If you live within 3 miles, life is tolerable. If you live farther away than that, then you should move or figure out some other broadband solution.
Dave Bailey
I've tried DSL service twice, in two different cities. I've had the same experience both times, BAD. I give up. Months after I was supposed to be up and surfing this last time the Covad guy finally came around to make a connection. Of course they never contacted me to tell me they were coming so I wasn't home, then they "informed" me they'd reschedule for such and such a date. Well of course it was another time when I wouldn't be home. I called and emailed them to tell them this but I made no difference, the guy still showed up and wondered why nobody was here to let him in. Jeez, you slackers, you wonder why you have a bad rep! That's it, no more, keep coming by if you want to Mr. DSL, I won't let you in now even if I am home. In summary, DSL Sucks!!!
I live in New Brunswick, Canada.
Cable service in my area is a joke (it MAY have changed recently with Rogers and Shaw trading off cable rights). Cable modems are DOWNSTREAM ONLY. You need to use regular dialup for upstream (requesting pages, uploading files, etc). They charge you by the hour, and there is no always-on service. Like I said, it's a joke.
DSL service isn't TOO bad, but I have the choice of a whopping ONE provider (my telco) to get DSL service from. I've had it for over a year now (DSL) and it goes down regularly, for 10 minutes at a time. It IS always on, and I can pull in 1/4 meg a second from a machine within the province if it can put out that much. (menace.csd.unb.ca is my friend mmmm local linux mirror with VERY few users #1 of 1000 usually.)
Anyway, I hope I never piss off my telco, because I don't even OWN a modem anymore, and Cable service isn't much better than dialup here.
Check out your subscriber's agreements while reading this post. I think you'll find the following:
* No tech support for any sofwtare except what they provide you
* Requirement to use their HTTP proxy servers (which are probably sitting on OC3s or better) and their blocking or redirecting outbound port 80
* No servers allowed (but you should expect that from end user service)
* Telco owned or cable company owned hardware (You can't buy a DSL adapter you can keep)
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Maybe a comment from an actual DSL provider might be a little twist. We (the company I work for) are an independant phone company (a small independant in southern ontario). We offer DSL service in a surrounding town that isn't our territorty it's in Bells. We are still allowed to provide the service in Bells territory, but the service is frustrating to say the least. In our territory, if somebody orders a DSL, we have it hooked up and online in 2-4 days. That's right, I said days, not weeks. In *Bells* territory, we have to order the LDDS / Class A's from them. It takes roughly 5 days for them to give us an installation date which is usually another week away. As you can see, this is roughly twelve days. Now, this is still better than what Im hearing from some of you people, but there are repeated problems with Bell losing our orders, not showing up, not giving us proper documentation (ie. what pair to bring the DSL in on) etc etc etc. We have had installations take a month and a half to complete. We have even had a situation where Bell refused to take any of our orders for roughly 2.5 weeks for the reason of "we were told not to, you must speak to so-and-so (who is on vacation for a week ofcourse). Compare this to our 2-4 day installation and you can see how it can really cramp are business. The customers generally think their getting ripped off, because the people in the next town over get it in 4 days max. As a business we must listen to the customers complain about wanting free installation because it takes so long, and losing customers to the local cable service that can offer better installation dates. All in all, its much too common for companies of this magnitude to provide this level of service. I don't have a solution for the problem, I just felt like bitching on Slashdot for a few minutes.
-phraud (I forgot my userid and passwd and didn't want to look for it)
I've been using GTE as both an ISP and DSL provider for two years now, in two separate locations without any major problem. Installation took 1-2 each.
I also used them get my SDSL (Telocity) here in Skokie, Il (just NW of Chicago) In the six months I've had them, there has only been one outage, but it lasted a full day. The setup was pretty quick, only 3-4 weeks and the performance has been good although I've questioned them about my download speed which does not seem to be what I pay for( 128 instead of 512). They also provide a static IP and don't bitch about my web server. All in all, they're good enough for me to stay, especially with all the horror stories out there.
"My break dancing days are over, but there's always the Funky Chicken" --The Full Monty
I have Verizon because our apartment couldn't get anything else. Yeah, uploads speed blows, but it's all we could get. Earthlink/Covad held us up for 2 months. Luckily, our router supports PPPoE so we can all use it. It uses G.Lite, and they had it to us 10 days ahead of schedule. There are periodic outages, but it's nothing great. Overall, we are pretty happy.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
I guess i'm lucky - i have had exactly one outage in the year ive had dsl - and that involved some major net issues at a higher backbone level, including at&t trying to find someone senior enough to have the authority to reset a router
otherwise, it has been flawless for usage (not counting email - pac bell has the worst email system bar none) I see dl speeds usually 500-600k
redhat 6.1 iso took about 2 hours for the full image, so not too bad.
the only problem i had was getting them to come out and install it in the first place. They lost my scheduled appointment, and then told me it would be another 3 weeks. They came within a week, as i made a complaint where it would be heard - the local head of pac bell - when executives squawk it gets done.
as for several of my co-workers, they have had nothing but grief, and are jealous of the fact i haven't suffered with my connection.
Best bet is to make sure you know who to complain to ahead of time - find out who the local telco executives are and be ready to go to them, instead of the ususal tech support hell.
good luck
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
I was a Flashcom subscriber because cable was not available at our old apartment. I can say I was pretty satisfied with them. The price was reasonable and the speed was close to what they promised. Installation took about the time they promised (6-8 weeks, don't remember now), while not fast it was at least fair. anyway Covad was the carrier so Flashcom did not have much to do with it. They did not have a cable long enough to reach my PC so I could not test the connection when it was installed and when I bought the cable I found that the modem was defective. It took them about a week to bring me a new modem after which I was pretty happy. There were few outages (maybe 3-4 during 8 months), I can't tell if that was above or below average. Customer support is OK if you can reach it because hold time is enormous - can be up to an hour. They also had some billing problems, but those are mostly in my favor. They finally did not charge me a cancelation fee either by mistake or because I had a good reason to cancel (we've moved), anyway I would not complain about it ;-) So it was pretty much OK but I can tell I was quite happy when we moved to a place where @home was available since it's cheaper and faster, outages happen not more (but probably not less) often and we had it installed the day we moved in (ordered two weeks in advance).
...remember good 'ol times when IP used to mean Internet Protocol....
I ordered DSL from Onvoy (formerly MRNet) (major ISP in MN) in January of this year, and it was a major headache to get working properly.
Due to "problems" in the CO I'm served from there was a six week delay in getting DSLAMs up and running. I could have lived with this if I didn't have to find this information out from another ISP in town. Instead I got all kinds of runaround from my ISP asking when I might see installation.
The telco portion of my install (my DSL service runs off of a seperate, "clean" pair @ 768Kbps) was actually the only thing that went correctly, and maybe because my house once had a second line and all they needed to do was patch me into this pair at the J-box at the end of the block.
The actual "install" (April 1! I ordered Jan 15!) was supposed to involve techs actually running a pair from my outside demarc point to wherever my computer room was. I got two retards in khakis and golf shirts who had no tools other than a screwdriver. Fortunately I had run CAT5 from my demarc to my office already (I knew they'd do it wrong or crudely if I let them). They didn't even have a ladder and had to borrow mine to do the final cross-connect in the demarc box. How they would have run their wire through the poured concrete wall is beyond me.
Needless to say, the service didn't work at first. They had a dead card at the DSLAM which took 48 hours to replace. The onsite techs response was "Uhh, leave the modem [sic] on call support if it doesn't work in a day or two." It did come on 48 hours later, but jeeze, what a terrible thing to tell a customer.
..And then performace sucked. After another month and a half of battling with the ISP about lame performance (~150Kbps at peak hours, I had a perl script graphing data to a web page every 10 minutes which I advertised to the corporate support list which I belong to because of my job) and talking to nearly everyone at the ISP it finally started working right.
I haven't checked performance because I don't have the heart to fight them anymore, but it appears to be working well and has been very reliable (only a few, very short outages). But it did take nearly six months from the order date to get reliable service functioning.
I am in the same boat that you are. No Cox@Home at my complex and 19000+ from the central office. I have been fighting with Bazillion to provide IDSL (AKA: ISDN DSL) for 144K (it has been 2.5 moths since I signed up)... but they have been unable to get the phone company to set up the ISDN line at my complex. I know many people in the area that have DSL and Cox@Home... many people prefer @Home (unless you live in an area with heavy @Home usage-- then the service crawls!
... and the phone line in my apt. SUX... so 26400 is all i get... Errrr. I cannot wait until my lease ends in November!
Because Phoenix is in a valley, there is a technology that is available here. Through the old SpeedChoice now SprintBroadband that connects you through a 10 megabit shared channel WIRELESS technology. It uses a dish and you must have clear view of South Mountain. You can get up to 5 Mbps download, with on 256 K up... (it used to be dial-up upload)... now, I know no one that has this service, but it sounds sweet for mega downloaders... however, my complex will not allow me to put a dish on the complex (even though they have one for SpeedChoice cable)... so I am held in check with dial-up
Good luck finding a provider... but rest easy in the fact that all of the people in the Valley I know of have no complaints about DSL or @Home... so get whichever you can. When I lived in Atlanta... ADSL was the worst thing in the world... I knew no one who had useable service and many of the cable users had problems too... but Phoenix is nothing like Atlanta... no one I talk to seems to have any of the problems that Atlanta had... so don't take the opinions of people outside of the Phoenix area too seriously.
The one point that I would like to make is that you @Home is less friendly about running a server and services on your connection, so be careful less you find you IP changed every 4 days.
Just my $.02,
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
I use my DSL line continuously for telecommuting (the only problem with being able to work from home is working when I'm home....) and an outage means I travel the Southern Californian highways for 26 miles to the office--something I hate. Only once since March have I gone into the office because of connection problems from home.
The other time I had a service burp I used my Earthlink dial-in option (20 hours/month at no extra charge for DSL customers; that's not fantastic, but I hardly use one tenth of that it turns out).
Yes, Earthlink via GTE/Verizon is PPPoE, but Roaring Penguin's PPPoE client for Linux works fantastic (and better than WinPoET on Windows, for sure) for my desktop use. No complaints, although I would prefer a true DSL IP connection.
Look, my DSL service is so good I don't even think about it. Sorry that I can't add to the list of whiners, but I'm a genuinely satisfied customer of Earthlink/GTE DSL service. Go figure.
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Sounds like my story...Cable isn't avaiable where I live, so when bazillion sent me an ad in the mail saying DSL was available at the whopping speed of 640 kbps or so, I decided to go for them. Well , first, I found that the speed in MY area was only 144...now, they've taken more than th promised 30 to 45 days...at least installation is free, and I've been getting there free long distance and dialup service without paying anything, but it takes forever still...
All of this isn't really covad and bazillion's fault, but it's mainly because USWest had to do somework on my phoneline to "optimize" it for data. ANd they haven't putin a new dataline after that, so covad cant do anything
I would get cable if it were available.
I live in Chicago and I got DSL from a small ISP called Phenoix. They use Northpoint as the DSL provider. I ordered the service in July and in less then a month I was up and running with no problems. Cheap too, 768/396 with static a IP address at $40 a month. Also, the equipment is all SDSL so I actuall think I'm getting 768/768. The other person at work who uses the same setup had the exact same experience.
"Attention Citizens, 2+2 now equals 3.947547175. Please recalibrate your equipment now" --The Computer
Okay, they're far from perfect.
But it wasn't the same hassle as I've heard about from people using Bell Sympatico HSE - mail server brownouts, dropped connections and stuff.
It's cheaper than @Home - especially if you don't watch TV.
Installation happened when promised, and worked first shot.
And if you spend an extra $5/mo, they'll happily give you a static IP.
Only problem is that they seem to have a lot of downtime when one of their wholesale providers (www.reptiles.org) goes down. (Claimed to be smurf attacks.) Oh, and access to their mailserver is an option or a do-it-yourself thing. (Good thing static IPs are available.)
$34.95 CDN/mo, +$5/mo modem rental, +$5/mo static IP. 1.2 megabits down less PPPoE overhead, 120 kbits up less PPPoE overhead.
www.dsl.ca
They're not perfect, but I'm still very happy with them.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I'd have to say that if you're in the LA area, MM Internet (www.mminternet.com) is the best choice you can make. It took about 4 weeks to get it after I signed up (completed online in about 5 minutes), but when they said 4 weeks, it was in and completely working on the day they said it would be. I've only noticed 3-4 service outages in the year that I've been using the service, too...and at least 2 were the phone company's fault (GTE, of course). Also, when I requested an extra IP, I had it assigned and working within 10 minutes of submitting the online request form.
I've had DSL through USWest with a small (one man) ISP since Jan 2k. After a little initial debugging on their part, my up-time has been 100% (except for a three day period when my Cisco 675 DSL router was tits up due to corruption of the nvram). We get a lot of lightning in South Metro-Denver and it's never even blinked as far as I can tell. I get 45db line quality which I've been told is execellent. I have to spend an extra $10US ($39.95 for DSL and $19.95 for the ISP) each month because I didn't want their "DSL-lite" which closes the connection after periods of inactivity. The tech support people have been usless! (my 5year-old knows more then the person I talked about the router! :).
Here's a quick summary of my thoughts on GTE/Verizon Internet (NOT the phone company):
Their customer service is rather clueless. They overbilled me for a year and when I finally proved it they only refunded the difference for 7 months. When I moved they DOUBLE billed me for two months. No problems with GTE the telco - THEY managed to get my service changed no problem, with very quick response.
Outages are fairly common and are rarely acknowleged by Verizon. They're apparently using Redback Networks SMS series customer aggregation routers (check your ARP cache and see), using DHCP-based port security. The problem here is that when they reboot the SMS's they loose what they learned from DHCP, so the only way you can re-establish your connection is to do a DHCP discover via an unbound interface. This generally means completely downing the interface, which is a real pain in the ass with Win2000, Solaris, Tru64, IRIX, OpenVMS, and OpenBSD all running on my home network. Did I mention this is something they do pretty frequently?
On the other hand, at least around here, they don't seem to restrict DHCP at all. Under Solaris, 'ifconfig le0:1 dhcp' is enough to get me an additional address on a virtual interface. I've had at least a dozen machines on my DSL line, all plugged in through a simple hub.
If you ever manage to get ahold of an engineer or anyone with a clue, get their direct number! Convincing first-level support that you've got a clue and actually DO know how to plug your computer in can take quite a while.
And at the very least, make sure you get the support number BEFORE your connection goes down and you can't look it up. And be very aware of the fact that despite having the same company name, Verizon and Verizon Internet DO NOT talk to each other in any meaningful way! Be prepared to act as an intermediary and make note of everyone you talk to on both sides. Don't trust them to get any order right, and follow up every order with that in mind.
Beyond that, the service isn't bad. Good bandwidth, no stupid restrictions on traffic types. Yet. And it's hard to beat their prices.
I live in NYC, so maybe it's not a good gauge of availability, but I'll tell you my experience.
I started with Bell Atlantic. It was cheap, setup was quick, and it wasn't that expensive. Problem was, only was given 1 IP address and getting someone on the phone took forever.
So I switched to Concentric.
Yes, it took me about a month and a half to two months to get the connection. But when I got it, it was worth it.
The downtime for the line has been minimal. Every once in a while they'll notify you about maintenance, but it's usually 15 min or less in the middle of the night, they give you a week's notice, and it's right back up. Haven't had a problem yet.
The speeds are consistent and quite good.
Also the tech support is quick, efficient, friendly, and is willing to help you beyond the normal "well, is your ethernet cord plugged in?"
All in all, i'm sticking with them as long as I'm in my apartment.
And no, I don't work for Concentric, nor do I own stock in the company.
I signed up about 5 months ago, the service was installed on schedule, but I called to make sure ONCE A WEEK between my order and the install date. The service has been down about once every 3 weeks, usually on Sundays and, usually for about 3-4 hours at a time. They use PPPoE so for ~$40/mnth and a one year service agreement, I don't get a static IP, but that's not suprising. The install and the dsl modem were free, and the phone line changes were minimal. Staying connected for long periods of time doesn't always work, I've had a lot of trouble downloading the new RH7.0 ISO's, even when I find an open ftp server, I only get about 400MB before something goes wrong, I don't know if that's Ameritech or crowded ftp servers ;)
I guess that I'd rather use the cable company, but that option wasn't available to me. The service is alright, but don't think that you can connect your modem to a router and circumvent the PPPoE just because you never disconnect. It doesn't work, you can't make the PPPoE look like a static IP, believe me I've tried...
What some (not all) 3rd party DSL providers do is run a dry line (no pots signal) from the DSLAM to your home. Since this isn't a POTS line, it doesn't need a load coil, and the dsl signal can go farther.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
I know this will sound like a plug from a company official but hopefully the spelling and gramatical errors will diminsh that impression.
PRO
I have had Flashcom since Febuary with really no problems. The install was fast and clean (sprint and some third dude with a van had to come around, sprint took the longest). I think the total install from the day I said yes to when I started using it was 2 weeks.
CON
You don't get a static IP (63.248.54.107) and you aren't allowed to run servers (ian.hodur.org and ian@hodur.org as well as a bunch of crap that my loony roomamate plays with). Also you have to sign a 2 year contract but the set up fee is waived (or was) and can be transfer to another address if you move provide that dsl can be set up there. There billing department sucks, but big time. I had to pay $100 upfront and since then you haven't billed me once!
Do you ever feel like there are people watching you? You're not alone.
Assuming you have usenet access, check comp.dcom.xdsl. Very active newsgroup. If you want to see the sorry state of xDSL, this is a good place to start.
I've had both cable and adsl. @home, before they started implementing their speed caps. 300-350 kB/sec (yes, that's bytes) was not uncommon. Relocated. No more cable access. Managed to get adsl through Concentric. 7??/3?? service (don't remember the numbers). It was expensive to install and is twice the price for 20% of the speed of the @home service I gave up. That said, they haven't been down for any significant amount of time in 12 months. Considering the horror stories surrounding Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic), I feel blessed to have found them.
-- we'll eat the fat ones first
I don't have DSL personally, but the people I know that do claim it's "acceptable"... since they've been using 56k dialup, "acceptable" is 100K/sec downloads on their 128K up/768K down ADSL line from Alltel (Jamestown NY.)
When I visited my brother in Atlanta, I was rather impressed with cable modem... it beats the college network's low-load times (70-90K over 10Mbps Ethernet w/ Cat5 cabling) hands down at 200K/sec under load, but I have no idea about reliability.
___ CmdrTHAC0 ___
__CmdrTHAC0__
In Soviet Russia, Spanish Inquisition doesn't expect YOU!!
I'm not sure how, many people are marketing their DSL. I know that we market ours as 30 - 45 Business Days because as a CLEC/ISP we have to rely on OUR provider(basically) and sometimes THEIR delays, like the classic, Going out to install sDSL only to realize that everything works fine on the customer end but the Telco who provided the line and so forth hasn't programmed the DSLAM. There are many things involved with the DSL ordering process and unfortantly many ISP's and/or CLEC's do not have all the facilities and have to either go through another company or partner up with another company. As opposed to the MegaHuge Monopoly known as "@home"(of course AT&T) which owns pracitcally everything. It's kinda like when you have the money and power to push out all potential opposition go for it?? Its actually a real shame to see many people choosing Cable over DSL. One thing to always rember DSL may have its slow times but YOU PERSONALLY have your own limits, where as with your Cable, everyone in the neighborhood is out there sucking down the node limit.
My question to Concentric: "How is it that you can provide me service when US West cannot?" Concentric's reply: "Cannot or *will* not, Grasshopper?" You need to be really close to the CO to qualify for the "good" stuff (aDSL). US West has decided to go for the low hanging fruit and leave the less desirable stuff (iDSL) for the other providers in town. iDSL is an ISDN/xDSL hybrid -- 144k speed vs. 640k+ aDSL speeds. Hey -- you get a fraction of the bandwidth for twice to three times the price!
To make matters more interesting, I find out later that Concentric is not a full-fledged provider -- they resell Covad's services. A visit to Covad's website shows about 6-8 other providers in my area (Denver) that will provide me essentially the same service for a wide variety of different prices, perks, etc.
The iDSL service Concentric provides is a business account, not a home account. I get 5 static IPs, a true router that I can plug into my hub, and official approval to run a website, mailserver, etc. from my basement. They provided the hardware and installation for free. That's the good news.
The bad news is, when I'm dark, I'm DARK. My last outage lasted 10+ days. I could not call Covad directly, so I had to start w/ Concentric. Then they talk to Covad. Then Covad talks to US West. Finger-pointing abounds. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I started install discussions with Concentric in March. Service went live in July. Don't even get me started with the 8-hour delivery windows, the no-shows, the rookie installers, etc.
I wouldn't recommend this service to anyone who absolutely needs rock-solid, fully redundant, true business-quality service. I'm paying "business" prices, but getting "residential"-quality service and support. But at this point it's the only game in town (in terms of what I can do from my location). US West won't touch me, and I'm guessing that any one of the Covad resellers are going to run into similar service issues.
I had a residential cable-modem in Omaha (provided by US West). It's tough to compare the two services (the cable modem was a single-PC solution vs. the more robust iDSL package's offerings), but I never had an outage w/ the cable-modem. Never.
Good luck to you...
~Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
Now that we have DSL up and running, life is grand...but getting to that point was a small nightmare.
We ordered DSL service from Sonic.net at the beginning of July. We were told that the process would take 3 weeks, since we were doing a self-install. To make a long story short, we finally got up and running in mid-September. And if we hadn't been on the phone with Sonic.net/PacBell (the local telco and thus controller of the wires) every day, we'd probably still be waiting.
The problem seems to be that no one knows what the hell is going on, either in their own company or at the other end. Sonic.net would say that they had submitted our order, then we would call PacBell a week later to check on the status and they would say that they never received the order. This went on for a few iterations. And neither company could seem to get our name/address/telephone number correct at any point during this process. The ability to get DSL service was never a question, since we practically live on top of the switch, so it irked me that we had to waste our time calling about stupid little stuff like this.
At one point, we were given a date on which our service would be switched on; the date came and went, and when we called to ask "where's our DSL?" we were told that the switch was now full and that we might get service in the November time frame. (!!!) And on and on this went.
We were so fed up that we checked out other options; unfortunately, we got the same sort of run-around from the cable company (AT&T) here. At one point we were signed up for cable and DSL; whichever one was installed first was the one we were going to go with.
My advice is to be persistent to the point of annoyance. No one has a clue, so be a squeaky wheel and keep trying until you find someone who can be halfway helpful. Ask questions about everything; keep asking why you don't have service (and demand a good explanation!), and make sure they have your correct information on file. Also, if you're going through a third-party provider (like we did), don't believe everything they tell you--verify the information with the telco as well, as they are usually the ones who will control when you are switched on (and they sometimes knew more about the system status than the third party provider).
By the way, we're in the SF Bay area; and we did check out dslreports.com to select our provider.
After a LONG wait Qwest finally started providing ADSL in my area. The state had a long-running battle with US Worst about providing DSL, but it seems that when Qwest took over this all went away. One good thing in favor of Qwest.
As to the DSL service, it's been great! I ordered the "self-install" option so they sent me all the hardware (in about 3 business days) and I was up and running the weekend after I got the hardware.
The only bad thing was my ISP has yet to send me any info on how to connect. Fortunately I took a lucky guess and everything's been working fine for about a month now.
I wish I even had the chance to have an unreliable DSL connection.. you don't know the meaning of the word 'unreliable' until you try browsing the internet with a mobile phone....
Anyway, this guy seems to have a fairly complex horror story about his DSL problems.
-
Meep meep
I've had good luck with PacBell DSL in SF Bay Area. I picked it up about a year ago when they were still offering static IPs, and have had about 10 hours of downtime since then (about eight hours of it was in a single afternoon, most of the rest were short 10-minute outages). For the past three months or so, I haven't detected an outage. They have had a lot of problems keeping their email servers up and running, but I don't use their account so it hasn't been a problem. Speed-wise, I signed up for 384/128 kb/s service, and normally get about 1.2 Mb/s downstream and 130 kb/s upstream. For comparison: I have had ISDN and cable modem (AT&T @Home) in the past. ISDN was great, but expensive compared to modern DSL and had just as much downtime. I enjoyed cable when it was working, but I had to cancel the service after it went down for three weeks with no ETA for fixing it. AT&T was nice enough not to _charge_ me for the non-service, but that isn't really good enough when you want to get online and there's not even a _schedule_ for fixing the problem. (They finally came by to fix it about six weeks after the initial problem -- DSL was already installed, so I just told them to take their router...) Garin
I went from a 14.4 modem to mediaone's RoadRunner. I had an average of 4 days per week up with the cable modem, so I started looking at DSL. (Besides which, I wanted a static IP) Telocity offered me free install, free usage of the modem, and a static IP address. Service runs me about $40/month, but they havn't billed me yet. It's been near 4 months, now.... 8-)
Also, it's a relief to have tech support who know what they're doing and understand linux, in some cases more than I do. With MediaOne, I always dreaded the question 'What version of Windows do you use?', because they didn't understand that I didn't use it. A conversation would run, starting with the "tech support" guy: "What version of Windows are you running?" "I don't use Windows. I use linux." "What's linux?" "It's an operating system. Kind of like windows, only better." "Oh...so that runs in windows, then, right?" "No...it's an operating system. So is windows. Linux runs on the machine, which does not have windows on it." "Oh. Well, if you just switch over to Windows 98, everything will work again." "But I don't WANT Windo.... never mind. I'll go find a new ISP."
Anyway, Telocity has gotten me good service, a good price, and an easy install. (They mailed me the modem, I plugged it in, and it worked.) The one major problem I had was that a power surge blew out the power adapter (along with my surge suppressor and ethernet hub...the computer was ok, tho). But then, they overnighted me a new one, and gave me a week's free service to make sure I didn't have to pay for not having service....
My provider is a NYC area provider called panix.
For US65 i got ~760 kbps (they use northpoint sdsl) and a unix shell account.
From the time I called them to the time I was
installed was less than four weeks. Everyone
came when they said, and the staff at panix
where helpful with any questions.
I had DSL installed by PacBell a little over a year ago. There is simply no going back once you've had broadband.
The install was simple. I already had the computers on a network. I paid for the enhanced service, meaning 5 fixed IP address, so I don't even run their software, I just boot up and am online.
From what I know of the simple plan, they are handing out PPPoE setups that mean you get a different IP everytime you log on. It is meant for hooking up one computer only. Supposedly, you can setup a firewall/DHCP server and host more computers off of it, but I haven't tried it.
The net connection is good. I regularly get T1 speeds on downloading. There have been 3 major (>4 hours) service interruption in a year. Not bad.
The usenet server is pathetic. If you are a usenet junkie, you probably need to find another server than news.pacbell.net.
The email service is also pathetic. The POP server is often down for extended periods. The SMTP is relatively stable. Since I have a vanity domain and get my mail from another POP server, it doesn't affect me much.
I'd take whatever broadband service you can afford. As long as the 1 year commitment has a clause about being off the hook if you move, you'll be good to go.
Good luck.
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nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
I have Rhythms service at work and at home.
It's simply fantastic.
I signed the contracts for both places before RTHM was reselling, so I purchased direct. I think this helps alot cause I can call the NOC direct too, if I have problems/hassles.
Home install went great- BellAtlantic and Rhythms got it together fine and all was up and running within 3 weeks of the order (a week earlier than they had quoted). One major outage for a week in December when a phoneline crapped out (apparently). RTHM credited me a month free for that outage.
Work install was more hairy. Bell Atlantic kept getting the address wrong, so after a month, finally got the line dropped to the right closet (in retro, we should just run the CAT5 ourselves from the closet down the way...).
But after that fiasco, the service hasn't been down ONCE since installed in February. Not ONCE.
home speed contract- 256k sdsl, consistently get 300.
work speed contract- 384k sdsl, consistently get 400.
From all I've read and experienced, RTHM has the cap on quality. BUT you WILL pay for it- they're not cheap.
Oh, finally, had to get a branch office in MI setup with DSL. Talked to the RTHM resellers, got it all setup, all was fine...til Ameritech screwed up the line drops, twice. Finally got it right on the third try, and now RTHM is pumping our SDSL VPN connections between offices.
Really a great service, in all three of my experiences with them. The poster may have similar, since he's not far (overall) from Denver- their homebase (well, Englewood).
I love DSL.
Kinda like Moe, but just a little more Kool
I've had DSL through Southwestern Bell and jump.net since January of this year, and it has been pretty painless. There are loads of different providers in the area (Austin, TX, USA), but jump.net was the only one to offer a static IP and no restrictions on servers. I do pay a bit of a premium, and my service is not as fast (384K down / 128K up) as other ISPs seem to provide in my area.
Installation was done by southwestern bell, and was in place 3 or 4 weeks after I ordered it, and it was operational on the day of installation. I have had only a few problems (once their DNS went down, when I called they told me they were rebooting it and to try again in a few minutes, and it worked shortly thereafter, and I lost connectivity another time for a few hours). Jump.net appears to be a comfortable size that they can personally and rapidly fix the problems that come up. They have techs who actually answer the phone- when I have had to call, I did not get stuck in voice mail hell. The huge providers may be able to undercut the others on price, but they are going to have a harder time beating them on service.
Since I had DSL installed early, I've avoided many of the painful waits that people are experiencing around here.
I have been a DSL subscriber since around May of 1999. I orignally signed up with @link (through a third party provider). I had a 768K connection for the whole year and was down for all of 2 hours within that year. When I began looking for a home I had to seek out a new DSL provider for the area I was looking in. After purchasing my home, I signed up with Telocity (using Rythems as the backbone). Knowing that wait times were extremely long I signed up around one and a half months prior to my move.
:^)
Three days after I moved in, a gentlemen from Rythems came and installed the jack in my room. Immediately we get a solid sync and I am cruising at 784k connection speeds. This was surprising to me as I am at around 15,000' from the CO. One and a half months go by and I am having the time of my life, as I can now host off of my connection without fear of being forced to a business class account.
Then...it happened...
I woke up one morning, and the sync was gone. After calling tech support (short wait), I was told it should be back up within the next few days (ARGH). Well...3 weeks later I was still without access. Every day during this downtime I was calling Telocity with a request for an update, and everday I was told that I would be contacted. Well, I was never contacted. Mysteriously, I wake up a few days later, and my connection is back up again! However, I was up at half the speed (406k).
I was told that the reason I was down was because I was at 15,000', and that at that distance they had to turn my access rate down to get a solid connection. Nevermind the fact that for one and a half months prior I was up at 784k, getting consitant 81K transfers. But, I was up...so I was happy.
Then...it happened...AGAIN!
My connection goes down again. This time for another two weeks. Following the same routing, I am calling every day to be sure something was happening, and that someone knew that I was still down. Eventually my connection comes back up, somehwere around a week later, but this time at 200k. Now this was unacceptable. After calling and complaining, I was actually able to get the local manager for Rythems to come to my house and take a look at the line. He makes a couple of phone calls, and I am back up to 784k connections.
So here I sit, with my DSL at 784k, just hoping that it does not happen again. What really makes me angry, is that I have still not been told what the problem even was!
So...my suggestion would be to sign up...wait...wait some more...and then just pray (assuming of course you are a religeous person
-= Xafloc =-
alinuxbox.com
N
I have to admit that I was concerned about my decision to go with DSL, but my experiences have been extremely positive. Perhaps it is how it is being implemented in the US and that in most of the US it is a relatively new service. (Hmm... I should be careful here--I don't mean to dump on the US. Fellow Canadians who dump on the US is a pet peeve of mine. Truthfully, DSL is a fairly new and untested service in many smaller Canadian cities as well. It's just that Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver are very wired cities even on a global scale, just as most of California is in the US)
I live in Calgary, where DSL service has been available publicly since 1997 (and for a short time before that in limited downtown locations). I myself have had the service for 9 months so far and have only suffered about 12 hours downtime in 2 outages during the entire time.
At the time I was looking at broadband access, Shaw cable was severely over-subscribing their service in some areas of the city and had recent nameserver outages. Add to the fact that if you mentioned Linux they would go into yellow alert--warning you that they could offer no support and that if you were caught running servers you could be cut off. They would still be glad to hook you up, but don't expect them to help you if something's not working. When it runs at it's best it would download at about 2Mb/s but when the pipes clogged it would go down to 50-100Kb/s--then you would lose service entirely for a day when they upgraded and you got full speed again. This was happening about every 4 weeks to a co-worker. Perhaps those "net hog" commercials aren't entirely true but they aren't complete lies either. Basically if you wanted real support, fixed IP's for "officially approved" servers and consistent service from Shaw (good enough for business or serious hobby activity, you had to opt for Shaw FibreLink which is quite a bit more expensive.
Contrast this with my DSL experience. For about the equivalent of US$20-25 per month you get "4000K/500K" service, or for about $65-70 per month "7000K/1000K basic business" service with a fixed 8 IP subnet (1 network, 1 broadcast, 1 modem and 5 free IPs) through PSI/CADvision. Although PSI/CADVision seems to advertise the highest maximum speeds, I've heard that pretty much all the DSL services (Telus, OANet, etc) in reality are about the same speed and reliability--about 1-2 Mb/s for downloads and 300-500 Kb/s for uploads.
As for service I can't complain. They promised connection in 4 to 6 weeks and were done in 5. PSI/CADvision doesn't officially support Linux, and when the installer came to set up my modem he was clueless about Linux. However, he easily got the connection going on a Windows box, and supplied me with all the right information in hard copy to set up my Linux box. He was curious about Linux though and stuck around to watch me set it up (I got the basic business plan, so it was trivial since I had a static IP). Their tech support people are quite knowledgeable about networking in general, and their web-based "toolkits" are great (will test to see if you've correctly restricted mail relay, has a web interface to NMap to scan your hosts for open ports, do all your forward and reverse DNS on their nameservers, e-mail account config and everything...)
I know this comes off as a salesman pitching a product, but I stress that I stand to gain nothing by promoting PSI/CADVision. From what I've heard ALL the main DSL service providers in Calgary offer about the same in performance and reliability, and I assume the same would be true in other cities--speed/reliability is nearly the same within a specific region (bad or good) regardless of who offers it.
Through work I've also been able to see what Telus offers. Performance/reliability wise they were comparable, and their on-site installation and service people were great--they were competent and worked hard at resolving our problems, even if they weren't the fastest for service (The install waiting time was actully slightly quicker than CADVision's though). Their on-line, e-mail and phone support was another matter--very slow response times and you were passed around to many people. They were friendly enough but didn't seem to know which of their many departments was supposed to handle my requests. Also, their on-line tools were not nearly as complete or as well implements as PSI/CADVisions, which placed a heavier demand on support staff. Fortunately once the service was set up and running you didn't need to deal with them much. Overall they were quite acceptable as well
Basically, I would look at two factors in choosing a DSL provider. First, consider the ones who have offered the service the longest. They are likely to have the most reliable service as they have worked out all the kinks. Second, look for the bigger players--the small ones often stretch their resources too thin. Telco's (which is what Telus is) would brobably have the most reliable service and reasonable speed (and in Telus' case at least had a relatively short instalation waiting period), but expect typical telco customer service.
I hope this provides some insight to those looking for DSL service, even if it is very western-Canadian oriented. At least it set's the record straight in that there is such a thing as fast, dependable DSL service...
On top of taking notes, it also helps to find a person to deal with repeatedly - best if a manager of some sort. Once you keep calling the same person with your notes and information, use words like "unacceptable" a lot, and they will tire of hearing from you and eventually have a personal reason to help you out. Good luck !
Verizon says they are up in my area but can not give me confirmation for my phone. They want an order before they can even confirm that I can get it. This really bothers me. Are they collecting orders to see if there are enough to warrant service? I told them I wanted to know if it was available for me before I placed an order. The rep basically told me to stuff it. I am now waiting for IP Phones from my cable company.
In my previous place I had @home cable serverice, and it was great. It would go down for a few hours about once a month, but tech support generally knew about and fixed it very quickly. The one billing problem, name was on it even though my roommate made the order, was fixed very promptly. We also had an isdn line with some static IP's.
Life was good.
Then I moved.
@home is not available at the new place. DSL is. I made the order at the end of May with SWBell, specifying that I wanted the enhanced service, same speed with 5 static ip's. Several weeks later I was told the paperwork had not gone through. Many phone calls over the next several weeks finally got the service installed. Basic service. They had not given me the enhanced I asked for. Not only that, but it died the next day and did not get fixed for two weeks. Finally, nearly two and a half months after I put in the order everything was up and running properly. The service has worked well since then. They're even running secondary DNS for me for free (included in enhanced service).
Moral: I know the original poster can't do this, but if it's available and you don't need static ip's go for cable. SWbell, and I mean wireside and internet side, hasn't a clue about customer service. You have to yell and screem to get service and then pray it doesn't break. Luckily it has not.
For all that I like Bluestar, and their technical competence, I'd be wary of them, right now. They were doing some kind of deal with COVAD - the number 1 nutcase corporation of the net. Whatever the deal involves, it can't involve anything good for users.
In short, if you want DSL, and you want it now, hire space in the nearest exchange and hook your own DSL router in. It'll probably work out much more reliable & far cheaper for groups to hook their own DSL services together, and buy a port on an existing high-speed connection, than to try to go via a 3rd-party.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
www.2wire.com is a good resource for DSL. If you're in the Chicago area RCN/Enteract is a good provider.
Check out DSL report at http://www.dslreports.com. A very, very useful site that covers a lot of the issues raised by this story from lots of different angles.
I have written a truly remarkable operating system which this sig is too small to contain.
Load coils are installed every 6000 feet of copper, not 18000. Depending on the area and the switch, the first one is occasionally 3000 feet from the CO to take care of the calls from one customer with load coils to another with load coils. This is more important with analog switches, not newer digital switches.
OK, I live in the SF Bay area, and I work for one of the national DSL providers (NOT the ISP, but the people who actually deliver the line for you, and NOT one of the ILECs). I can't name them specifically, but let's just say they aren't Rhythms.
DSL delivery generally has a couple of major problems (I'm the primary troubleshooter on long-overdue orders, so I see alot of this). If one of these happens, it can take weeks to fix, much of which is due to the back-and-forth nature of fixing problems that require interaction between 3 or 4 HUGE companies. Think: we talk to ISP, determine there is a problem, talk to ILEC, twiddle a bit, talk to ILEC, talk to ILEC, ILEC does something, we look at it, talk to ILEC, talk to end-user, talk to ILEC, etc....
In general, we're closing about 50-60% of our orders within 1 month. The goal is 75% by calendar year end, and 90% for next year. However, if an order doesn't get closed within 1 month, it averages 8-12 weeks to get closed.
Unless you work at an I/CLEC, you have no idea how screwed up the physical plant for the phone system is. Line conditioners, repeaters, bad wiring installs, mismatched/mislabeled wiring - it's a wonder people get anything installed. Alot of this can be blamed on the "get it done, and don't worry about it" attitude of the ILEC. However, a large amount is also due to the fact that the phone system was (and is) designed to deliver VOICE PHONE service, and things that are done to improve voice are often harmful for data carriers.
Another problem is that we're one of the few (if not ONLY) DSL people who actually have an automated ordering system. That is, when you give your info to an ISP, they can automatically enter it into our system, which automatically makes the ILEC loop order, starts the network provisioning, puts in the ATM parameters, etc. Virtually everyone else does this by hand. Our system works about 90% of the time, and getting better. And we're still averaging 4 weeks. Think about the other guys....
A couple of things that will speed your DSL order, no matter who you place it with:
DSL is certainly not a smooth install for everyone yet. With the coming of line-sharing by all DSL providers, install times should go down considerably, since they can piggyback on your existing phone line, and don't have to run a new one. Honestly, though, I doubt you'll ever see times drop below an average of 2 weeks. The physical phone plant is just too messy.
Also, here are some 'rule-of-thumb' distances for various services (note that the distance from the CO is measured in feet of actual wire - it can be hard to figure that out, since wire often runs in a decidedly indirect path between you and your CO):
Hope this helps.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
First off if you're in Verizon's (formerly GTE and Bell Atlantic) territory you can expect a delay. They are still recovering from a nasty worker strike that popped up after the merger. As I recall they were shuffling techs from all around the country to the points most hit by the strike and they are now trying to get that whole mess cleaned up. Also as for one provider saying 'yes' to DSL while another says 'no' the only difference is how optimistic the provider is. The sad fact is that the ILECs' (Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier) records on the copper plant are on average 50% accurate. Most providers are using these records to estimate based on the recorded line length the possibilities of DSL service. The problem with this is that the line may have deterioriated, have a minor metalic fault on it or they may have placed a load coil on the line and not recorded it in thier database. Any of these things will impair, or block in the case of a load coil, DSL service. The only way to be sure is to ask the provider where they are getting the information they are using to qualify your line for DSL. If they say they are using the ILEC's records, be wary. If they are using a loop qualifier, ie a product from TollGrade or Teradyne, to properly qualify and provision a line you can be a little more sure of their estimate. Best bet: have them run a new line. It'll take longer, probably be more expensive but in the long run its the best option.
FWIW, here is my experience.
I've had Pac Bell DSL in San Francisco since february or so. If I did it today, I would go with some other company.
Basically what you get is a very fast connection to a very bad ISP. I do get well over 1 Meg speed, which is very habit forming. Their usenet service is amazingly bad. The email service not much better, and not something you'd want to rely on as your primary email. The web does flow reasonably well, and that seems to be the only thing they focus on. Sometimes I can't connect, but it usually works out within 15 minutes.
Most people need 3-6 visits, waiting at home all day, by the installation people before things really work, but I was lucky and got it all set up in 45 minutes.
When I ordered the price was $200 setup and $49/month. A short time later it was lowered to $0/$39, and we who ordered recently were supposed to get the new price by asking. I've asked repeatedly, but nothing ever happens.
I went initially to BellAtlantic and they had a bad download rate and a bonus of a bad upload rate as well. On the upside they were at least very expensive. To top it off, they were too slow getting back to me (they were switching to being Verizon) - so I looked around and found Earthlink was faster and cheaper.- -----
So I went with Earthlink and the only thing that kept my installation (free) from being done right away was a Verizon strike.
I had problems with the Verizon strike because even my credit card was charged by Earthlink when I went to their site, I really got my service from Earthlink, who then got it from Mindspring, who then got it from Covad, who in turn then went through Verizon.
But I go 1500 down and I think 300 up - in real world terms, I actually get 1300 down and 250 up, but that is still fast as hell.
I used to have cable modem (my dad had @home in Princeton and it was fast) - here in Boston I had RoadRunner and it sucked the biggest fatest hairest dick every - it was literally (I'm no joking!) slower than a 9000 baud modem I used to use. I could telnet into a server that wasn't too far away and type out an entire mail message - and then go get a drink and come back and find the chars still slowly poouring onto the screen one by one - waay slow.
Go with Earthlink - they kick ass - at least in Boston/Cambridge they do.
--------------------------------------------
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
The line was installed in a couple weeks and worked great for a few months. Then one day, the line just stopped working. I called Mindspring/Covad and they began to check on the line and were very bad and getting back to me with information. I kept calling and it would always take them a day or two to perform any new tests. Eventually, they just said that they didn't know what the problem was and left me hanging.
Needless to say, I cancelled my line. I was refunded for the month that my service was out and did not have to pay any "cancellation fee" for breaking my contract.
Then I signed on with 21stcentury which was a small cable company (bought out by RCN) that actually offered competition to Ma Bell. For $40 a month, I get a more stable faster dhcp'd connection. The DSL line worked over pppoe and was hell for my LAN. With my current setup, every machine can have its own IP and everything just works without installing any additional software.
I've had the service for a few months now, and it works great. If you are in Chicago and can get service, I would recommend them for internet and cable access. They do also offer local phone service, but a friend of mine that has it has had to wait for a couple months before his line is switched from Ameritech.
It's amazing what happens when there is competition in an industry!
A choice of masters is not freedom
What?
1) Live in Tacoma, WA. City motto: #1 Wired City. And it's pretty much true. We have cable/DSL providers crawling out of the woodwork, begging you to sign up for broadband. Since there's a lot of competition, some companies make their business just by being incredibly fast/competent at service.
2) Get a business DSL line. This is a more serious solution than #1. I lived in a large house with several other people. Because we had so many people, we had the cash to upgrade to a business line for the house. This not only increased our bandwidth, but TOTALLY changed USWest's attitude towards us as customers. No longer did we show up as a house occupied by average joes. Instead, we showed up as a business requiring a high-speed digital line, possibly with quite a bit of clout. Hookup occurred within 4 days of sign up. Online service was always very prompt (calling the tech support phone number was, of course, an exercise in being put on hold). We also usually got knowledgable tech support assistance that wasn't afraid to suggest solutions that might actually work (but were technically complicated), possibly because they assumed that they were talking to a network engineer within a company, rather than a random clueless guy with DSL.
So, my end recommendation, if you can afford it, is to upgrade to a business line.
4-star general in a one-man army.
I think on average I maxxed out at 25K, sec.
>How fast were you really getting before they did > that bump?
As for the 3-figure charges on everything DSL service, it was Covad. I went to Strictly Business and they had a booth there, so I talked with the real pretty lady to see if I was eligible. I wonder if I could charge THEM 100 bucks if the tech doesn't show up at the scheduled date. Hmmmmm. Well, I don't have to worry about them anymore.
I also ordered DSL from a company that needs Verizon to complete part of the connection. In June, I was advised that everything would be completed with in 30 to 45 days. At the end of August I was advised that the line was supposed to be installed on September 11th, but that Verizon typically took 10 business days to notify my DSL company when an actual DSL line was completed.
Needless to say, it does not look like Verizon has done anything since the junction boxes do not appear to have been opened in months.
I placed my order for 256 connection on 2/14/2000. At that time, they said that my 'due date' (the date I'd be connected) was 2/28/2000. I had mentioned that I'd prefer the 512 service. The next day, the cust serv rep called and said they could do 512. On 2/28/2000 I was connected @ 512.
Since then this is my down time log:
3/21/2000 - 6 hours
3/28/2000 - 12 hours
4/7/2000 - 10 minutes
7/23/2000 - ~60 minutes
7/24/2000 - 7 hours
9/12/2000 - 90 minutes
Good things:
My complaints all have to do with technical support/customer service. Luckily I'm technically able and can figure out some issues on my own. I really pitty those who have to rely hevily on the tech support.
Well, I've gone on long enough. I hope this has been helpful.
Another option I've been considering is Sprint Broadband
I live about 3 blocks from a Verizon building, and got in early enough to get a static IP. I have noticed that any individual download is maxed out at 50Kbps, but that may be what a server is willing to send at. I am able to get multiple 50Kbps downloads at once. As another poster mentioned, upload speed is abysmal, but I guess that's what ADSL is, and if I have to trade upload speed for download speed, that's the trade I'm willing to make. It does go out occasionally, but seldom for more than an hour or two.
My friend lives a mile or two from the same building, and his experience is essentially the same as mine, except it takes about 10 minutes for the connection to 'warm up' when he turns his computer on, for some reason. He also has a static IP, but occasionally he has had to have them change it, when it randomly stops working.
My parents had the worst experience. They live slightly closer to the Verizon building than does my friend, and have a shorter 'warm up' time. They have a dynamic IP, and thus have to log on to the internet. Their worst experience was the install. They were mailed a new internal DSL modem (My friend and I have external modems hooked up to an ethernet card). One Bell Atlantic (at the time) installer came, and installed the extra phone jack, and left. Another installer came, and put the card into the computer. He stayed at the house for most of the day, but was unable to get it to even connect. In fact, their driver software interfered with the video driver, and forced the display to run at 640x480x16. Over the next couple weeks, many phone calls, and a couple more visits, no progress was made. Finally, they were forced to send a tech who actually was a tech, rather than an installer who only knew how to follow the step by step process. This teck admitted to us that the internal DSL modem HAS A 40% FAILURE RATE!!!!! Sorry for the yelling, but that really annoyed me. Apparently Bell Atlantic had a contract with this company, and was unwilling to drop a crappy product. The tech installed an external modem, and everything worked fine.
Well, that's my experience with Bell Atlantic/Verizon.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
No DSL (Verizon/GTE phone company) and cable modem (Adelphia) services. I don't want to pay a lot for ISDN, IDSL, and DirectPC. They are too slow anyways. My analog modem connection only goes up to 28000.
:(
I wonder how soon I will be getting any broadband services.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
That 144k DSL connection is IDSL, which is basically ISDN using the D channel for bandwidth as well (two 64k B channels + 16k D channel = 144k) It can go much farther than ADSL/SDSL, but is only a tad bit faster than ISDN. However, if you plan on having your connection nailed up all the time, it's probably going to be much cheaper than ISDN.
I signed up in Feb 2000, and in July it worked...
.sig?
99% of the issues were down to the ridiculous three-way relationship forced on the DSL providers, with an ISP (Phoenix), a CLEC (Rhythms) and a local Telco (Bell Atlunatic, now Veriscum). The main issues were getting Bell to do something. They were either incompetent or deliberately obstructive (after all, they sell DSL too, although not to me, not now, not ever if I have anything to do with it!) Phoenix were very helpful once I got a relationship going with a techie who is now a very senior manager there, and eventually it worked.
They have static IPs, and will allow residential use servers, etc. They don't block ports, they don't care if you use Linux/IPmasq, they just supply connectivity.
I think Phoenix serve Phoenix AZ, but you can find out for yourself at http://www.phoenixdsl.com/
What's a
If you can avoid it, then by all means get an ISP other than Bellsouth.net, the tales below should be enough to scare anyone off:First, some perspective, I have been a broadband customer for years having dealt with ISDN, cable and eventually DSL. I work out of my house doing presentation work for architectural firms and frequently find myself transferring huge amounts (animations, drawings, presentations, renders and large format finals from 50-400 megs in a shot) of data back and forth between myself and my clients. I had the 'fortunate' opportunity to participate in Bellsouth's preliminary install of DSL in my area. Bellsouth used to offer bridged service with DHCP assigned addresses and a fairly decent price for 256k/1.5m service. It was nice if you had a machine on 24/7 (which is usually the case here) because I would find that my ip address would be the same for several months at a time and I didn't have any connect problems at all until very recently (was 18 months of pristine service) when I moved to a new apartment and bellsouth switched to PPPoE. Moving, is where the real troubles began. They were unwilling to even discuss ADSL availability until I was physically at the new address. I had the prior phone number in advance, the tenant was willing to give it a shot as far as ordering and so was the landlord. I get to the new place, place my order and am informed that it will be in the neighborhood of 6-10 weeks for service to be installed. UnF*'n believeable. This mind you is for a self-install where I already had the telco add extra phone lines to my apt. and had wired up the splitter at the NID on the side of the building. Being mildly dependent on my connection for income I would contact Bellsouth almost everyday. Thier support staff wouldn't record information about the calls and hold times average 50 minutes. About 15 days into the fiasco I find out that the have not even cancelled the DSL service to my previous residence. Three hours of calls/holds later they finally cancell my service and I have to start totally over, which I did and was again informed 6-10 weeks from 3 days from today (afterall it would take 72 hours to cancell out the other account in the system). At this point my neighbor orders DSL from them (I tried to talk him out of it) A fairly knowledgable level 2 tech finally comprehends the idea that I am a self install and informs me that they will mail out additional 'filters' and as soon as I have them I will be able to connect. 10 days go by and nothing in my mailbox. I call and find out it is not thier policy to mail anything and I would have to schedule an appointment for a tech to comeout and deliver them, which I do. The appointment comes and goes on 3 different occaisions and now a whole month is lost. It has been 10 days since my neighbor called and a tech is outside his door who is nice enough to give me the 'filters' while installing the neigbors DSL. Great, I have the filters... I hook up, get sync but spend many hours trying to pull an IP address. No dice. I call and wait again for many hours with tech support to findout that I will not have a bridged connection and they will mail me the software... I go nuts. I call raise hell again and now finally have a tech drop off the cd with thier PPPoE client which comes in four flavors W98, NT4, W2K and Linux. The later two of the four not being supported but provided for advanced users. The tarball is corrupt and the W2K version blows up my W2K install several times. I finally get W2K and the client running and get a connect now 6 weeks later. The saga ain't over yet... I have to fight with the billing dept: They had the audacity to charge me for service for the month and a half of no service, and bill me for the 3 different occaisions that thier installer came out (even though nobody ever did) for my self-install and it is a rather nasty two day period of long calls to get the $400 worth of bs off the bill but the actual credit to the account won't show up for 60 days so I have to pay it out to keep my phone service from being interrupted. I still have them for service (though orders are in for another company) but I am now in a position where I will have to keep the service till my credits with them are posted to the account.If they offer you service in your area...run like hell. Bellsouth is the phone company, they don't have to care.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Spend the extra $$$ and get the external Cisco router.
Agreed. The Cisco 675 is really slick little piece of hardware...
I was pleasantly surprised when I got mine and found that it had NAT built in.
Ya just plug it into your hub, and all the boxes have access.
It even takes care of DHCP for all the machines on the LAN.
It's virtually transparent, too, no real problems with any net protocols, even games work great without tweaking.
--K
---
I've since ordered and had Warner Cable roadrunner installed. They installed it a week after I ordered it and I've had no problems with it. My next door neighbor has it too and I've noticed no bandwidth problems - I average at least 1.4M both ways.
I contacted the Texas PUC (Public Utilities Commision) to complain, but they don't seem to care. We really have no outlet to vent accept in urging others to use a competitor.
DONT use SWBell.net if you have a choice.
Chill out. Didn't see the link. No need to jump down my throat, AC's.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Disclaimers out of the way, I have to say I'm most impressed with Speakeasy. Of all the ISPs I've had, they seem to have great customer service, and a great attitude.
Specifically:
- The tech support people seem to know what they're talking about a great majority of the time
- The terms and conditions and policies are down-to-earth and reasonable, not couched in excessively defensive legalese. For example the IP address allocation policy is essentially "Have as many as you need provided you actually use them"
- They're explicity Linux friendly. They have a page on how to set up Linux, and how to secure it afterwards.
- They have an awesome online tool to manage your account with. You can use it to make payments, read your email, even get an up to the minute work log of your DSL order
All that said, the ISP is just one organisation. Getting your DSL line up and running involves coordination between the ILEC, the CLEC (Covad) and the ISP, and installation can be a very frustrating process.Hang in there, and happy surfing!
The only benefit to getting DSL is [a] higher caps, which don't matter if you can find a capless cable provider, and [b] faster uplink (and only if you get SDSL). The cheapest ADSL connection you can find is about US$50 (same for cable) and is many times slower. Cable (at least mine) goes at 1.5M, sometimes faster, and any ADSL that goes that fast is starting to cost hundreds of dollars a month. And with cable there's no PPPoE problems, so it'll work on any OS even without a router.
I've been using SWBELL for several months now. IMHO, they have quite a few problems. We have been down for days at a time.
The main problem is the DHCP service. They take all the lease times down to two hours, so their DHCP systems get hammered. They extend the lease time, everything is fine. Drop it down again, the connection dies. I stopped calling the Net Help, as you sit on hold for hours. Yes, hours. I sat on hold (with a speakerphone) for three hours once, then it started working again...If I could cand my service I would.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
I called BellSouth.net in the Raleigh, NC area and ordered DSL. To make a very very log story short:
I called Time Warner Cable and ordered Road Runner on a Thursday. That Saturday they had the Cable Modem installed and working great! Just 2 days turn around.
From talking with the BellSouth rep I found out that part of their provisioning phase includes a paper trail from the person taking the order to the person that performs the provisioning. Once the order is take the paper that the order is on can take a week to be processed.
With the exception of 1 week of network trouble (loss of packets) from Time Warner I have had excellent network response and throughput.
"A sample size of one is really just statistical masturbation."
My roommate and I were among the first to get DSL installed in our area (Tulsa, OK), and all worked well. This was in October '99. Everything worked fine, up until the time that we changed apartments. This was July 15, 2000. here it is Mid-September, and there is still no DSL. When we originally moved, there was a 4-week waiting period for the ADSL line to be disconnected in one location and reconnected in another. I work in the telecom industry, so I'm pretty sure that this is a 5 minute process of telneting into a device somewhere and issuing 3 or 4 commands. After 1 month, we still had no DSL (they were waiting for the Disconnect status to clear). I called back twice a week. Eventually, I was connected to a knowledgeable, helpful representative. She told me that she has learned that their system has a glitch on it that will not clear a disconect status on a number that previously had DSL and is moving it to a location but keeping the same number. She offered to change my number free of charge, so I did that. That added another two weeks. I called back in two weeks, and learned that my due date was not for another two weeks. I called back two weeks later, and was told that there is a wiring problem in the CO, and that my due date will now be three days later. Three days passed, I called back. I was told that they are trying to clear connections out of the DSLAM, but they are backed up. My turn-on date will be two weeks later. Now, the date is set to Oct 11.
I don't tell you this to slam DSL, just to say that if you want it, order now. If you would have asked 2.5 months ago, I wouldn't have had any complaints. It is a really good service once it is up and running. I think it would be better than Cable, because you're not affected by your neighbor's downloading. We were garunteed 384K/s, but usually got arond 720K-1Mb/s. It was great when it worked. That seems to be the problem with broadband right now. You have to go through either your Cable company or Phone company. You have no choice. Even if you do go through a 3rd party DSL provider, then you still have to wait for the local phone company to do the actual connection.<BR><BR>
Hope this helps.
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
I have ordered DSL from US West in Denver. I live near downtown, and therefore have easy availablity of DSL service. I chose their cheapest service (256K/256K) and chose NOT to use uswest.net as my ISP. The install was delayed for about 3 weeks (due to lack of devices available in the rack at the CO).
Every since the install, everything has been running perfectly. I get outages, usually about 5 min in duration, 2-3 times/month that I notice. But overall, I am very pleased with the service. And, as an added bonus, since Qwest purchased US West, they have upgraded my connection to 640K/256K for free!
But (MAJOR BUT HERE), I do not use US West as my ISP. I have heard nothing but nightmares from people who use them, so I am steering clear of them. I use Dimensional Communications (free plug here), a local ISP here in Denver. I visited their offices and toured their server room and configuration before making a choice. They offer hosting, unfiltered USENET, and didn't drop into a panic mode when I said I would be running Linux. I believe that has made all the difference in smoothing out my dealings with DSL.
As an added bonus, I am a Q3-head. Dimensional configures the DSL to have very little "stuff" between my DSL connection and the net. I get ping times that most other players I chat with on-line cannot believe. Usually 20-30% below DSL users in other regions. A well configured ISP can make or break the quality of your service, since you have no idea where network problems live. I can trust that my link from my home thru the ISP to the "internet" is clean, and if something is slow, it's out on the net, not due to a piss-poor ISP config.
So my biggest advice would be to drill the ISP as hard or harder than the DSL pipe provider. I think that DSL is just a dumb digital connection that either works or doesn't (once you can get it installed). It's really the ISP you choose for your termination point that makes all the difference. If you are allready shelling out $30+/month for DSL, it's worth it to kick in a few extra bucks and make sure the ISP is just as good.
I have just gone through the DSL connection process. I started in June of this year and got connected last week. Initially Bell Atantic said that I was a few hundred feet too far away from the central office. I reapplied and finally (after the Bell Atlantic strike was settled) got them to try to find an "unloaded", unspliced, line to my house. After they spent the time to do so, it setup just fine. I am using EarthLink/Mindspring/Covad as the ISP/dsl provider and am very happy. I see 400-1000 kbs down and 300+ up. Connection is very stable. The RoaringPenguin ppoe client for linux works beautifully.
My advice is to persist (politely) with the local telco and see what they can do.
DSLreports.com is reliable in my experience. Extremely so.
Plenty of people will have perfectly smooth service from a "bad" provider and there will be people with bad service from a "good" one, but trust the overall vibe you get on a given provider on DSLreports. If it seems negative and gloomy, that's because it is. Welcome to DSL.
I'm not sure what your problem is. OK, USWest won't serve you, but DSLreports found providers that will. So find a decently-rated one and go with them. Or don't. Can't get the speed you want? You're probably too far away from the nearest central office equipped for DSL. Suck it up.
The thing with DSL is that fast DSL business service costs roughly 1/4 the price of a T1, and you'll likely find you have 4 times the number and duration of outages. You get what you pay for. If reliability isn't critical and you can deal with the occasional 4-10 hours of downtime every other month, you'll be okay.
As for residential DSL, you may be wondering why fast residential DSL costs 1/4 what the slowest business DSL costs. The answer, as I've learned from experience, is again reliability. Once again, do the math. Assume 4 times the number and severity of outages that you'd get with comparable business DSL. I assume this is because a customer paying 6 times as much gets 6 times the engineering resources devoted to it.
My Verizon (née BellAtlantic) residential service is down an average of 2 days a month. In the last month, I've had a 4-day outage and a 2-day outage as well as countless disconnects (actually, I could look at my logs and count them, but I don't feel like it).
Sounds bad, right? But here's the kicker. Though I'm switching my (small but growing) company from DSL to a T1, I have no desire to switch to a cable modem at home, which brings a whole different set of issues. I'm sticking with DSL until something genuinely better comes along. Now I just need to switch out of Verizon.
All DSL providers are liars. It's all due to simple math. ISPs advertise speeds in terms of ATM data rates. However, ATM headers compromise 10% of the total rate. Furthermore, TCP/IP is another 3%. So in total, for a TCP/IP over ATM connection (i.e., DSL), you can expect to take off a minimum of 13% of the advertised rate. Then there's always latency, packet loss, etc...
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
-Legion
I've been using Telocity for a little of a year, now. The install was done as scheduled, and, except for a service outage of about two weeks in July (of which they were unaware - so, I had to call them about it), I have nothing but positive feelings toward them.
One thing that probably caused my installation to be so quick, though, was that I had a second phone line that had been installed by Ameritech a few months earlier, so I really didn't have to deal too much with my telco for my DSL install. Another friend who had to deal with Ameritech and Telocity at the same time had quite a few headaches coordinating everything, as Ameritech seemed very slow.
One train of thought was that since he wasn't going to be an Ameritech customer (for DSL), they had no real motivation to take care of him in a timely matter.
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
I am the admin at Speakeasy (no I'm not going to blow my own horn here so easy on the flame till you've read it all) We are rated very high on DSL reports, but we still experience more outages than I'd like to see. The problem is the DSL concentrators are first generation products, and still need a lot of work in the code and hardware. We are using the best ones available, made by Redback, and they still crash every couple of weeks, causing 10-20 minute outages.
Most people realize this and don't wet themselves when service temporarily craps out. Some customers bet their business on DSL, put up commercial servers and expect enterprise service, then get all freaked out when service cuts out for any amount of time. Bottom line is if you need 99.9999% uptime, DSL won't cut it, from any ISP, yet. If 99% uptime is just fine, then DSL rocks, at a fraction of the cost of T-1's etc.
I do expect this to change. We just got some second generation hardware which has all the cool guy redundancy so it will keep running when part of it breaks, and the Redback folks are bustin' their asses getting the code stable. I don't think there's an ISP out there not having the same problems, if they say they aren't, they're lying.
resisting urge to stump Speakeasy....
What problems did you have with Speakeasy? I've used them for two locations in MA over the past 1.5 years and not had any problems outside of the wait for Bell Atlantic to stop screwing around. The connection is always up.. and always fast. Same with everyone else I know who has it. Of course their web page is rather ugly.. but we move on with out lives.
-prak
I've got Speakeasy sDSL service (768Kb/s, 4 static IPs, $150/month). Work pays for it so the cost is not a big issue.
... it took 2 months of me forcing the issue every day to get the line pulled. Dumb crap like my town's name (Mufreesboro) being spelled wrong on the application. It wasn't really spelled wrong, but BellSouth stores it internally as "MURFRSBRO" so it registered as a typo. That in and of itself added 2 weeks to the install.
... a bit too quickly since they emailed me and switched me the same day while I was travelling for work, essentially knocking my server offline for the week I was gone. I emailed explaining that any voluntary address reassignments should at the least be confirmed (especially since I had just asked "do you have one" not "would you please switch me"). I didn't get any response back.
... the service has been very solid. I do miss the 1.5Mb/s I got from Bellsouth aDSL, but it was pretty spotty service and my inbound speed was crap (usually 8-12Kb/s) ... since I'm running services on my sDSL line that require incoming bandwidth, sDSL was the way to go.
Speakeasy itself was not a problem for the install, but BellSouth was
Within 1 day of BellSouth drawing the line, a very helpful Covad installer came out, tested the line, refused to leave while my line was slow due to a bad route until Speakeasy corrected it 2 hours later.
Once that was done, I was online.
I had some pretty bad latency (I'm near middle Tennessee and was being backhauled to Seattle). I inquired about whether there were closer POPs. Turns out there was one in NYC and I was relocated
Other than that one issue I have had no problems with Speakeasy
Overall I would recommend Speakeasy. All the accounts I've heard of other DSL providers have been about the same or worse, especially for the cost ($150/month for 768K dedicated bandwidth and multiple IPs is quite good).
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
i signed up for dsl with pacbell back in april 1999. it took maybe 3-4 weeks. sure there were some problems partly because i was converting an existing pacbell internet account and i had a 2nd phone line and someone made the wrong request so it was delayed a week - you gotta keep calling and checking! i made the appointment for the afternoon.
The day of the scheduled installation the guy called in the morning asking if he could come earlier since his morning appointment had cancelled. i wasn't about to complain so we moved the appointment to noon - he beat me home.
the basic wiring went off fairly quickly but he couldn't ping the gateway. he couldn't use his cell phone because of bad coverage so he had to use my 2nd line to call the office. they tracked the problem down to the ip not being avail so they gave me another one. took a while to get that resolved. Since I had 2 lines and i wanted my analog modem as a backup until i was sure, i had him wire the jack to support my 2-line phone and dialup modem. i already had a NIC installed so i asked him to just leave me the provided one as a backup. He installed NetMedic so we could check out the speed and i was ecstatic! i made him wait so i could reboot a couple of times and cycle power on the modem to make sure everything was fine. he was there for 4 hours.
i'm just about a mile from the CO so i'm getting typically 800/300 kb/s. on good nights i see it peaking at 1.2 mb/s down! It's a blast to play online shooters when your ping time is under 100ms. I used to download stuff at work and bring home on a ZIP but i haven't used the thing in a year.
sure there's been a couple of outages, usually over the weekend but for the most part, the service has been excellent. don't think i could say the same for cable. I did have a problem and they sent someone out but i think they rebooted a router at their end while he was over. i was never charged for the service call.
I'm currently paying $49, i could probably switch to $39 now but i'd probably have to give up my static ip unless i want to pay more. i'm very happy with my dsl.
btw, i know a couple of people with cable. one guys gets excellant speeds blowing me a way but another guy seems to be capped at 500/300 kb/s.
I have DSL service through Telocity...I picked them because of their slick external modem/router setup that works with all OSs that support DHCP. However the connection goes down once a month for 1-2 days...i've currently been without service for 5 days because of a router or DNS problem on their end...and the support is totally unacceptable...
.n.
I agree. I signed up with Megapath about a month ago. I was switching from another ISP who still (after many moons) had not managed to get me even close to inside wiring. Well, my inside wiring for Megapath is on friday. The only reason it's taken this long is because I'm in Verizon territory, and Verizon is a completely worthless company. The folks at Megapath have been nothing but helpful. Yes, their prices are a little higher than the competition, but if you go with the lower prices, you might get screwed the way I did with my previous ISP. They charged over $500 to my check card, and then sat and wanked when they were supposed to be making sure my install went through. I haven't seen a penny of refund, and I don't expect to (though I do intend to contact a lawyer). It's well worth the higher price at Megapath. They are #1 on dslreports.com for a very good reason.
Cheers,
Perrin.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
www.grateful.net/ping.html
I have an alcatel 1000 'modem' which hangs quite a lot. I have to enable a ping/keepalive loop using an x10 wireless remote power controller just to keep my dsl line up and running ;-(
see the top graph where all the redmarks are (and some blue). note that I changed my polling frequency and I broke the top graph a few days ago so there will be no red there (even though my modem does reboot several times a day). but look in the past, about 2 weeks back, and you'll see how unstable pachell's dsl is.
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
France Telecom delayed launch, played every dirty trick in the book to keep its grip on the POTS and ISDN time billed traffic from Internet access, only now accepted to open the local exchanges to competitors installing DSLAMS, the beginning of ADSL were horrendous with a critically underengineered access network and voluntarily artificially created bottlenecks to the access providers on the other side of the core network... It was truly hopeless and they were getting flamed to smoldering ashes on every forums known to man.
But now, it seems that everyone is slowly getting over that. The residential access rocks : it is beyond my wildest dreams of a few months ago. I download hundreds of megabytes daily and even tried successfully to stream MP3 from the net. I love it ! And the professional access is not bad either : on top of the public subnet you really get superior performance and responsive and goodwilling if not competent support.
On the downside, the early Alcatel 1000 pptp servers/ADSL modems are broken, pptp itself sucks, the authentification server is touchy and France Telecom's engineers are still as disorganized as usual, except that the newbies there are now barely competent : if you have a problem, you better have all your logs and a good scenario handy to support your case and make them understand the nature of the problem !
But still, I now have an awesome access, and so does my company. I am now only 100ms away from my company's net and 50 ms away from my provider, and hundreds of kilobytes a second flow to me for about USD 70 a month all included (line rental, modem rental, DSL access, Internet access). More than in the US, but fuck it feels great to be permanently connected after ten years of dreaming of it !
Well, in October 1999, I succumbed to the siren songs of ADSL service. Not having cable, I pretty much had no choice and had to use Bell Sympatico's service.
When the modem arrived a few days after my signup, I hooked it up and it worked flawlessly. Then, I found out many horror stories about Bell's ADSL service. I had even the surprise to discover that they were even phasing out DHCP and taking up PPPoE, which was strange, as I hooked the modem straight to my NT workstation, configured with DHCP.
Turns out that I was in the last pockets of "resistance"... About two months later, DHCP was dropped, and I switched to PPPoE, which worked fine except for maybe three or four times in the further 6 months where I could not connect for about 30-40 minutes.
Then I moved to another part of the country, where ADSL wasn't available. This is surprising, because I live downtown, 3 blocks from the CO which also serves a very high concentration of government offices...
I wasn't very hot with the idea of using a cable modem, because I don't relish TV at all, and because of the abysmal level of service that is so typical of cable companies (they hire people not smart enough to work for phone companies)...
I managed to last 3 months on a 56 kbps hookup, and when the ADSL became available, I jumped on it. So I went to register, was told that there would be a 3 week backlog. I decided to endure the 56kpbs for a while more.
But I had the immense surprise to see a package arrive by courier two days ago, and the documentation bore a notice that the service would be activated today. So, I just hooked-up the modem, and the service logged-on flawlessly first shot. This is my first post with the new service... :) :) :)
Interestingly, the box had a sleek-looking Alcatel Sp eed -Touch Home modem rather than the bland Nortel modem I used to have...
After fighting with Mindspring for 6 weeks now, my dsl install is finally complete. There were many, many screw-ups and miscommunications during this time, but it is up and stable. Here in Albuquerque, broadband is expensive from most providers- 384k runs about 70.00 a month if you can get it. The Mindpring deal was 49.95 a month for Radsl 1500/384, but no guarantee on speed. I am consistently getting 300 up and about 1.3M down, so the install hassles were well worth it. Also, there is anly a 6 month contract, free equipment, and a free install. I am approximately 10,000 feet from the co. Well worth 50.00 a month .
What else to say? They offer packages of 2-4 static IP addresses, you can buy more, and servers are encouraged as long as they're not pr0n, w@r3z, or IRC. Game servers, web servers, mail servers, etc., are all OK with them though.
--
Delays in DSL installation are nearly inevitable, and these are the causes I see most often:
- ILEC claims lack of facilities.
- Bridge taps in the line.
- Load coils in the line.
- Pre-qualification distance is far less than actual distance.
These all stem from the fact that, until a circuit is built, no one knows it's length, or any other potential problem. It's an inherent problem in retrofitting new technology, DSL, to operate on top of a legacy phone system which is *extremely* varied (this also causes 56K woes). In reality, every DSL provider will have to deal with these issues unless they trench their own cable from their network to yours. (ha!)DSL is great: cheap, reliable, secure...if you live pretty near a phone CO. Otherwise, expect to see wireless become a popular solution in you neck of the woods.
I got Bellsouth DSL in April, a self-install with the PCI modem. The self-install went basically flawlessly, and on day 1, I was getting 1400/256.
Day two, the network crashed during some kind of maintenance or upgrade. Many of us in Atlanta and elsewhere were out for 5+ days.
Since that time, I've had numerous outages and problems. Tech support is at times very good, but for the most part it sucks. The techs are surly and often know less than I do. Bellsouth contracts out for all of its tech support, and only supports Win95/98 and Macs... no linux, no WinME or Win2000. I've documented 31 calls to tech support since April. Most of the time they tell me there is no problem with their network and that the problem is on my end. Then after the problem clears up, someone posts to the bellsouth adsl support newsgroup about a network problem.
When there is a problem that the tier 1 tech support/help desk people can't solve by making you reboot your computer, the open a ticket and tell you someone will call you back within 24 hours. In the 18 times I've been told that, I've never EVER gotten a call back within 24 hours... most of the time I never get a call back.
Since April, I've had 5 field visits from the Tier III techs... also contracted and making a bundle per hour. Most of these visits were an attempt to do a "home run", wire from the NID outside to the modem inside. The end result of five visits totalling about ten hours was that I would up with a NIC and a much better Speedtouch Home modem running PPPOE. I'm still lucky to get a third the speed I had when I first got the service, but unless you fall below a 256k threshold, they don't care.
Billing is also problematic, and generally wrong. You have to call and tell them that, yes, you did have the special rate when you signed up and you'd like not to have to pay for the wrong rate. I supposedly had a deal where I got the modem for free, but they billed me for it anyway.
I realize that some people have had great service. My downstairs neighbor got hooked up six weeks before I did. They had to rewire for him, and ran a wire from his phone to the street, something they won't do for me. He gets 1400/256 all the time and has had only limited connection/synch problems.
Obviously, some of these problems are with bellsouth the phone company, and some of them are with bellsouth the internet service provider. The phone company problems are going to happen no matter what company provides your DSL service. But I would suggest people explore alternatives to the Bellsouth FastAccess service.
Michael W. Bay
Chiba City MUSH (saturn.planetmud.com/~ccmush)
M.
I was told by GTE (now Verizon) that my home was too far for DSL. Three times. So I called Covad instead, and through my great local ISP (oz.net), I got signed up. Then GTE put in a line with a half-ringer on the circuit, so it tested bad from the CO. Fixing that was supposed to be quick, but GTE took about 6 weeks and nothing happened. So I got in touch with the state regulatory agency that determines the rates GTE can charge, and lodged a complaint. The next day, three GTE droids with a supervisor showed up and fixed the line. The day after that, Covad came in, and in 30 minutes I was up and flying. Covad and oz.net have been 100% reliable so far (six months or so). So the bottom line advice is: the states grant monopoly positions to the Verizons and other local providers, in return for setting their rates. So go lodge formal complaints with the people who set their rates. Here in Washington State, USWorst was told to REDUCE their rates on ISDN a while ago due to the complaints and rotten service they'd provided.
John 17:20
I have seen several comments from folks about the "issues" with Cable Modems. What is funny is many of them sound like word of mouth and FUD.
I tried to get DSL and after 6-7 weeks of hell gave up on getting it installed. Changing DSL providers is not an option because they all have to go through the same channels to give you service.
I had a cable modem installed in two days from the time I placed my order. With the exception of a week of lost packets (hell on my games) I have had great service.
I download CD mirrors of linux distros, play QuakeIII and CounterStrike with very low ping and little latency. I have seen broadband and I am impressed.
I currently work for a company that produces the Cable Modem Termination Systems used in many networks. Here are some fiction and facts. For those technologically inclined look up DOCSIS 1.0 and 1.1 specs and find out for yourself.
Fiction - Since Cable is broadcast one person getting on your cable network can limit the bandwidth accessable to you. Fact - DOCSIS has built in network engineering facilities. Bandwidth can be limited. It is dependant on the service provider to get it right. This is true for any ISP regardless of the network infrastructure.
Fiction - Look at the quality of your cable TV. That is the quality of your Internet Connection. FACT - The radio frequency bandwidths used for television channels and your data are separate. Even if you have noice affecting the TV signal (which is analog) the digital encoding on the data path will insure the data you receive is what you sent.
Please, if you do not have cable data service do not go on word of mouth or let the Telco FUD run you off. Use services like DSLReports and other agencies to find out for yourself.
"A sample size of one is really just statistical masturbation."
We have a 1.4mbs sdsl connection at the office in atlanta. Since its installation in January, we have experienced at least one outage every 2 weeks. Normally outage happens on Friday, and isnt repaired until Monday. PSI offers no level of service agreement, so if its down, "bugger off and have a beer". Covad, who handles the local loop connection, seems to be the biggest problem. The installer was a nice guy, but none of the tech seem to have a clue when things break. Since dsl quite often incorporates 3 levels of contacts, its very difficult to get things fixed in a timely fashion. You have the owner of the copper, the local telco, the handler of the local loop, and then the isp. If you are lucky enough to get your dsl from the telco, you might not have these issues. As far as throughput is concerned, ask specifically where your loop terminates. In our case, our loop terminated in Philly. ATL to Philly, no wonder we had max throughput of 25kbs on a 1.4mbs line! Took 3 months for that to be fixed. Once the loop was fixed, our throughput has been great. When its up, its up. When its down, well...Vacation anyone?
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Unlike most of the tails of woe and intrigue, my DSL experience was great,ironically US West. I also elected to use US West as my ISP. I did the do-it-yourself package and received an implementation date of approximately 2 week. Within 3 days, I had received the DSL modem and phone filters by express mail. On the scheduled implementation date I tested the modem and it worked but was having trouble connecting to the host. After about 2 hours on-line with very helpful tech support, we determined that it was a conflict caused by an old piece software. Access speed has always been at the contracted rate. Some factors that may make me the exception are the distance from a central office 1 mi. I am not a US West or Quest lackey and am actually stunned with the whole experience given past experience with US West POTS; over 10 w/o phone service in the past 5 years, but that's another story.
I have had DSL at home since February and have had a total of 1 hour downtime. My dad has not been so lucky - it took a while for SW Bell to get things right. Then there was the little matter of them putting my dad's DSL line on my bill - we live 10 miles apart. Then they screwed up my bill a few times and it took forever to get that straightened out.
At work I have DSL.NET as a provider with a 1.2 Mbit SDSL line. It works slick, though that too was a nightmare. Took over a week for them to finally get our IPs into their DNS servers.
My only real gripe with the actual DSL service is that SW Bell is using PPPoE in some cases, and DHCP in others. PPPoE seems to really suck big time, and it is the main cause of my dad not being online for hours at a time because the PPPoE stuff on SWB's end goes down or his PPPoE client (NT) blows up. It's kindof a nightmare at times.
Vote Nader
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
I am, to put it lighty, fucking unhappy with Verizon's DSL service. They epitomize the "Money Grubbing Corporation" Archetype you always hear about. The line speed sucks. The tech support is awful. I'd love to cancel my DSL & get my old cable modem back, but I have a 1 year contract until February! When that contract is up, I plan on cancelling my DSL *and* my phone line & buying a Voicestream cell phone. If anyone has the option between GTE DSL & *anything* else, take the other option! I beg of you!
-- "Are you smoking mapple leaves?"
Comment from the founder of the Surrogate Father's Association, in regards to another kind of equal work for equal pay issue:
"There is no way we are going to provide our service for 8 cents."
(Dave Broadfoot, Royal Canadian Air Farce.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
RASPPPOE is great. I used it while setting up a DSL connected Dell laptop (with a wacky Xircom 56k Modem/Ethernet combo card).
The software that Sympatico gave me was not, of course, playing nice with the Win2k/wierd card setup. RASPPPOE was pretty simple. I just set it to load the connection upon boot, and the rather computer illiterate owner doesn't have to 'maintain the traditional dialup experience' as the PR blurb on PPPOE states.
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
It's one of those intermittent things that is hard to pin down because it's impossible to tell if it went away because I do something or because of the phase of the moon. Fortunately, it hasn't happened too often.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
has an interesting article on DSL here.
On the bad side, the PPPoE client they use, Enternet, doesn't play well with others. When I start up my net connection, my system's responsiveness goes to hell. When I pull down a menu and drag over the items, there is a noticeable lag when switching the highlight from one to another; that lag isn't present when the Enternet client is not running. Also, when I select Start:Settings:Control Panel, the Control Panel can take up to 3 minutes (!) to appear, and the task bar is frozen until it does appear (running Win98SE). Their tech support didn't know what to tell me (of course), but like all of life's annoyances, you find ways to work around the limitations. Like doing my surfing from my Linux box!
All in all, MindSpring has been great. The people I've talked to have all been friendly and (except for the tech support guy I talked to) very knowledgeable. The major delay around here in getting your service installed is waiting for Ameritech to give you your line; Covad (the DSL installer) is real quick once that happens.
Just my ¥2.15 (at the current exchange rate :-) )
Mark
While Rogers may be better then Sympatico/DSL there is much room for improvement. There are constant short service interuptions happening hourly or worst, lasting a few seconds to a minute . Usually once a day there is a 5 minute or longer break in service. I measured these outages with a tcp ping to my first hop gateway, and the mail and name servers. This gets very annoying when trying to play games and dling larger files.
The worst though are the Rogers mail servers. I run my own mail server now, policy be damned. Mail is randomly delayed for minutes to days. Today I recieved an email 48hours late. I had already read and replied to it as it was included in another email sent by a third person. It can make for some very interesting email threads between 3 or more parties.
If you read the comments on www.dslreports.com you will find that most complaints are about the long waits and other install related issues. Once everything is working DSL is great and nobody goes back to report that.
I got PacBell DSL in Sunnyvale over a year ago. There was a small delay, but it wasn't more than two weeks. The installer did a good job (decided the inhouse wiring wasn't up to par and installed a new line), but service didn't get activated until the next day (some misconfiguration at the central office). It was $49/month with 1 year term for 384Kbps download (burstable to 1.5Mbps). Everytime I check the actual speed it is near the 1.5Mbps maximum. I understand that PacBell has changed to PPPoE for new subscribers but at the time I signed up everybody got a static IP address. Soon afterwards PacBell reduced the monthly fee to $39 not only for new subscribers but also for their existing customer base.
There have been a few outages last year (one exceeded 8 hours if I remember correctly) and their tech support was rather clueless about them. Service has been fine since then.
The only complaint I have is that they try to make the billing very confusing (they wouldn't be a telco if they didn't!). One portion is added to the monthly fee for the phone line. Another charge is for their ISP services (email, website, etc) and a third charge is for the Global Network provider that handles your Internet traffic once it leaves the local PacBell network.
I'm very happy with PacBell DSL and recommend it to everyone.
Thomas
I work at a small Northern Virginia Linux based ISP that is aiming at Business DSL, and we've found that the only problems we generally have are Verizon problems. It takes them forever to go install the circuit at the end user's address. From there, it's painless, and every customer I deal with has been satisfied. Be aware that problems with your DSL provider may be Verizon problems, rather than ISP problems.
I run a shoutcast server and webserver on it as well, even with both of those boxes going, My wife 's and my computer both get good speed (through a hub). The roadrunner service blew down here. I spent 3 months running at less than 33.6 on it, so i guess anything was better than that.
Kris Felscher
Kris Felscher
We've got enough youth, how about a fountain of "smart"?
I have DLS with USWest (quest, whatever). I received my 'modem' (actually a cisco 675) only a week after I ordered it. Service has been mostly good for me.
I live in an area that only opened up late last year.
I talked with a USWest guy once about service and such, and he told me that the problem with at least this area, is that the population is growing so quickly, that they cannot go into older areas and upgrade/update the infrastructure.
I know this issue is widespread, but really, if you use any provider, they will be at the mercy of the major phone provider as that is the company that owns and lays down the cabling.
Separately, I've had good results with Speakeasy.net as a provider. Their website for subscribers lets you track the progress through the red tape and lets you see the actual logs that Covad maintains on the progress of the install.
XDG
I've had great experiences with DSL here in Nebraska. I get it through a local provider binary.net. They're a little more expensive than most of the other places in town (by 5 to 10 dollars a month or so) but on the upside there are NO monthly useage quotas (the other ISP's range from 1 to 2 gigs/month), have very few useage restrictions (no porn sites is about it), have competent admins who are all either Linux or BSD enthusiasts, good customer support and very reliable.
I think in the two or so years I've had DSL I've had maybe one outage that was the ISP's fault (router blew up), most of the rest are due to upstream issues with their NSP's or the local teleco, but those are also few and far between. To top it all off, since they're an under-advertised ISP in town and a little more expensive, most of the other DSL customers either sign up for the local teleco's plan or go with the town's major ISP. Which of course means less people hogging my bandwidth, which is always good.
As a disclaimer, I should add that I've never used cable (Time Warner, formerly CableVision has been unusually slow in rolling out digital cable/cable internet here in Lincoln) But from what I've heard cable internet quality of service provided can vary drastically from location to location. It also looks like the cable service they're going to roll out here is going to be even slower than the 384/128 that my "bargain-bin" DSL service offers. Hope this helps...
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
There's a logical reason for this - not a good one, mind, but a logical one.
Following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the big telephone companies - called ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers like what was then Bell Atlantic) - were required to essentially open up their facilities to their competitors. The competitors, or CLECs (Replace "Incumbent" with "Competitive"), were thus enabled to offer services like DSL over pre-existing telco infrastructure. In other words, Covad and Rhythms owe their existence to the passage of that law.
Here's where it gets hairy. Without going into too much detail, ILECs (like Verizon) are required to provide CLECs (like Covad) with wholesale discounts to colocation services. And since they own all the phone lines anyway, a good portion of the actual premise work (like loop testing) has to be done by the ILEC anyway. If there's a problem, the ILEC needs to deal with it. Translation: the big entrenched telcos have to provide technical support to their competitors.
Of course, it's a little more complicated than that. The CLECs do have to pay a (nominal) fee to the ILECs to do business in the first place. But ask anyone who does tech support or line work for Verizon which work requests get done first - the ones that pertain to Covad DSL customers, or ones that pertain to Verizon DSL customers. I have friends of friends in that line of business, and they all agree that the ILEC customers get the love first. CLEC clients get sloppy seconds.
One more note: I'm currently waiting for Verizon to fix a loop test problem so that I can have my Covad DSL line installed, so this issue is something of a sore point with me.
I just got out of the DSL business this month, after 3 years of being a Network Engineer for a smallish provider out of Colorado.
The reason DSL companies are slow to do anything and hardly ever do anything right, is because of a couple of reasons:
1. The Telcos suck. This really only applies to DSL providers that aren't telcos (Rhythms, Covad, Northpoint, etc), but sometimes applies within the different departments of a Telco. There are more rules in dealing with and making the telcos do anything for you than most people could ever imagine. This is the source of all of the blame on the telco. The telcos have to install the lines for you, and frankly have no idea what the hell is going on. I can't count how many times I had to convince a lineman that there is not supposed to be any dial tone on the circuit. And if you get a marginal line, forget it. The telcos will test it for voice and come back and tell you it's fine. You ask them to put a TDR on it and they want to charge you out the ass. On top of that, you can't just go there and do it yourself because of all the rules and tarrifs and legality involved. And I could go into all of the shit they pull because you are their compitition, but you can read about all of the lawsuits and stuff elsewhere if you feel the need.
2. Nobody has any DSL experience. This is a problem that is going away pretty fast on the technical side, but is still strong when you talk about customer service, marketing, and sales people. The only real solution is to hire a mix of telco people and a mix of data people. This isn't bad from a technical perspective, unless you expect your telco guys to learn data, because they won't, which isn't the case for the data guys, most of them are younger and aren't used to cushy Bell union jobs. The real problem here again is with the other people (non-technical). These folks will fight like pitbulls about every little aspect of how to do things because of their different backrounds.
So how does this affect install times and service? Simple. Put all this crap into a bowl and stir it around, and watch what you get. You will get a giant ass bowl of crap that can get out of the way of it's own ego, let alone help the customer.
Thats my 2 cents. From a guy who watched a DSL company go from 5 people (I was #5) to over 700 in 3 years.
I'm lucky because my "ISP" is my workplace, so I got to see information that most customers wouldn't. Here's the quick version: DSL was ordered for me and a few weeks later BA techs showed up and said, "Oops! You don't have a free pair of wires! Bye!" A Covad tech came by about a week later and dropped off the router. The service log accurately reflected all this, but now I was "off the install track" and in limbo.
I discussed with Covad the possibility of having BA disconnect my second phone line so that pair could be used, and the Covad guy was dismissive of the whole idea (Crom only knows why...) Then an entry showed up in the service log saying, "For technical reasons, you can't get the speed you ordered. Maybe you'd like to switch to a lower speed." Then a couple days later, the order got cancelled by Covad, with no explanation or notification.
So I got BA to disconnect my second phone line and we opened another request for service with Covad. The BA techs showed up and did their thing. On the day that Covad was scheduled to come, the guy called twice and said he was running late, then called again and said, "I had the techs check your line, and the reflectivity test shows a break in your line - our records show you at 4500 feet from the CO and our reflectivity test shows the end of the line at 4000."
So, out of curiosity, I tested the line with the router the first tech had left (and never picked back up) - and it worked! The next eight weeks were odd...I had service and Covad thought I had nothing, and the tech kept dropping by without scheduling an appointment. Nothing like coming home to find an increasingly annoyed-sounding series of notes taped to your door...
Finally we set up a date, I stayed home (and took down my working setup), and the Covad guy showed up. He was sloppy and unprofessional (for example, he stapled CAT5 to the wall without asking if it were OK), and then he had the nerve to say, "Yes, we're known for our punctuality."
Living northside Minneapolis, I am forced to either wait for USWest to get off their collective rears, or pay 100-200/month for IDSL/SDSL. Last year, USWest (now Quest! bleh.) said "around february 2000", then july 2000. then november 2000. now, first quarter 2001. Thank God that I am graduating in 2 months.
Also, a good friend of mine had NO PHONE SERVICE for 2 weeks after his DSL was installed by USWest. sure, they gave him a small check, but TWO weeks of no internet, no phone, no communication is not acceptable.
I have had DSL for over a year now. My ISP is Brand X Internet (www.brandx.net) and my telco is GTE.
GTE is always the problem when things go wrong, but things go wrong rarely. Brand X doesn't have very high ISP fees, they offer static addresses and even EXTRA static addresses for a low additional fee. It is great!
The catch is that they provive NO TECH SUPPORT. If something is wrong, you can call them and they will work with you. But if the problem is that you can't figure your system out, you are SOL and need a different ISP. That is how they keep their costs down so they charge less than other ISPs.
Of course, for me, not having to fight through call center tech support when I want to tell someone I've got a real problem is a blessing.
According to Earthlink's contract, the 'cancellation fee' starts *after* installation has taken place. According to their website, installation means actual DSL connectivity (modem/software installed and configured). I had absolutely nothing installed, yet Earthlink *refused* to retract their $56 cancellation fee. They were even offering a free DSL modem with connectivity. If I had known they were going to screw me like that I probably should have cancelled after I got the modem. It sucks, because I was just trying to be fair.
I would never recommend this company again to anyone with the kind of horrible customer service I received from them regarding DSL!!!
Time Warner's Road Runner is $40/month, you get the modem for free, and there is NO service contract. After the first week, when we realized we had a faulty modem (and the nice TWC guys came and swapped it for a new one for free the next day) it has gone down maybe 4 times, and this is since like May or June. I usually top out around 300 kbps but I once downloaded an ISO at 600. For my money, Cable is just way better.
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
Northpoint is supposed to be providing the backbone work for my connection with the local company. This will only be an iDSL link, as I am so far from the central office.
Seems like everyone is reporting similar problems of delays and what-not...I ordered my line the beginning of August, before the Verizon strike, and was told 3-6 weeks lead time...it is now 8 weeks, and I am expecting the Northpoint tech to do the ground work next week.
...of course, I'm not holding my breath, either.
I figure the installation of DSL or cable modem requires patience and tenacity. Keep on top of what is going on, and you will get what you ordered. As long as they infrastructure is there, at least (Comcast has gone from telling me six months, to two weeks, to six months, all within a two-week period...figure the odds of me getting cable any time soon).
G`//
there are doorways I haven't opened, and windows I've yet to look through. Going forward may not be the answer..
When I lived in Rochester, NY I had a RoadRunner cable modem. I later tried out the Optimum Online
services on eastern Long Island. They were both good, but when i moved to Bergen County, NJ, there were no cable modems available. A friend of mine who lives in Manhattan had Bell Atlantic
DSL and he would say that when it did work (which was rare) it was slower than his 56k modem.
Well, i decided to order DSL anyway, but not from Bell Atlantic. I ordered it from Mindspring (now EarthLink) who uses Covad as a backbone provider.
I am now convinced that my DSL is much better than my cable modems ever were.
Though the windows software (pppoe) that mindspring gave me with the installation had some serious problems, once I switched to the linux PPPoE client, I haven't had ONE Single service interuption. With my previous cable modems interuptions did happen from time to time.
The DSL is also a bit more secure. My IP is more dinamic, and the PPPoE configuration allows me to easily set up a virtual firewall that prevents incomming connections (i have to change it when i want to run nap).
That said, i will also say that the customer service really sucks.
They told me that it would take 2 weeks to install my DSL and it took 3 1/2 months.
To MindSpring's credit, they did give me a free month for that.
Another thing that sucks is that when your dealing with 3 separate companies working together to install your DSL, you will never speak to anyone who is responsible for a problem. Its always the other complany's fault, and they alway put in a "request" to get the problem fixed which never gets seen by anyone.
But now that its installed, its great. 1.5M/384K is a really good deal for $49 a month.
in the last year, i think we only had a half day of actual down time. when our DSL modem got fried (probably from lightning), TDS replaced it for free. we've got 256Kb/s guaranteed with burst rates up to 768, and that's about what we're actually seeing. dynamic IP's, a limit of something like 30 concurrent leases, and no restrictive policies.
the main problem with getting DSL is that the local telco's are extremely slow in giving control of the phone line to another company. Ameritech has almost all of the market in Madison & it took them almost 2 months to give control of our phone line to TDS.
"a little song, a little dance, a little selzer down your pants." -- space ghost
Nothing could be further from the truth. Act like an asshole and your rep will not be at the office when you call. Your paperwork will get "lost" and you will sit. The sales rep can keep notes, cover his ass, service others and leave you fuming. Harrasing people without power to get things done gets you nowhere.
You don't have to be a jerk to avoid being walked on. Keep those notes, but do it quietly. Find out who's realy at fault and go over their head. Talk politely and find out what can be done. In the end, if the service is unaceptable, don't use it.
Large organizations are set up to get their way. If you want to do something different, be prepared to talk to a bunch of people who lack the authority to get anything done before you reach someone who can help. Many of those people will be rude, stupid and arrogant. All of them will take hours of time. It's all part of the organization doing what it wants. A good office will have someone to talk to and torture people like waldoj. Sometimes you will never get there. Waldoj will forever languish. Figure out what you are trying to do is worth to you.
If everything goes wrong and contracts are breached, visit a polite lawyer.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I had Ameritech DSL for about a year. 1.0M/128k for $40/month. It didn't take long to get setup, the service was fairly reliable, but there was one major problem: They used a hoaky ATM card and required Windows. Dialup Networking was used to connect (!) Since the ATM card didn't have Linux drivers, and I didn't have the time to mess with the dialup script, I was forced to run Windows with NAT enabled so that my Linux server could get online. Everytime I had to reboot windows, the server would be dropped offline..grrr
:P
I came across an offer from Concentric (now XO?) that offered 1.5M/384k with 4 static IPs for $89/month. A little steep, but the chance to have T1 downloads with 4 IPs was too good to pass up. I though switching DSLs would be easy, but Concentric (Covad providing) told me I would need a whole new line dropped. This is where the problem came: Ameritech is the worst company I have ever dealt with They were supposed to show up, and drop the line on such-and-such a date. That day came and went and Ameritech said they did the job. Covad shows up a week later to complete the installation and tells me Ameritech didnt do jack. 3 more weeks of waiting!! Once I finally got the mess all squared away, the service has been excellent. 5 months with Concentric and no downtime, they let me run any and all servers I want, any and all operating systems, and I have zero hassles. Moving is not going to be easy
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Multiple reasons:
a) DSLreports information can be wrong. Many providers advertise 'we can get DSL to anything' while they can't do it really.
b) It could be that actually BA doesn't have their DSLAMs in the CO, but other CLECs do. Then you are in luck.
But at any case, if you are too far from CO, you will not be able to get DSL through anyone.
Heads up: our name has changed to NTELOS.{com,net}. Yes, all caps (when used in print, at least).
I've stopped trying to keep up. It was CFW, as it was for the past 100 years. (Literally.) Then it was CFW/Intelos, and I got used to that. Then it was Intelos, and I've finally gotten used to that. But NTELOS? I've started writing my checks to "[I|In]telos."
It's not as bad as ":Cue:Cat:" (or whatever it is), I guess. But it is a little disppointing to see a long-successful company use a name that will be tired within 5 years, tops.
-Waldo
I posted a longish message before about US West DSL, and that I was going to try switching to Sprint ION - I just called them up for the installation today and thought I'd pass on more details abut thier service.
The Sprint ION service is more than just a DSL line - they provide you with a central box that has ports for ethernet as well as two or four voice/fax lines.
Here in Denver, it's going to cost about $119 a month. That seems expensive, but what do you get?
* Two static IP's
* Can run as many servers as you like
* Two voice lines
* Local phone service with callerID/call forwarding/call waiting (posibly confernencing?)
* If I heard them right, 400 free minutes of long distance per month
* 1Mb up/3Mb down ADSL (obviously that can alter, it's what's quoted on the web site).
For 256k service from U.S. West with everything else about the same (eight IP's instead of two though), I was paying about $116 a month.
They still are serving limited areas, but if you can get them they seem like a great deal. Finally a DSL provider that doesn't rip you apart for wanting to run simple servers from your house. It's also a major bonus that I no longer will be ties to U.S. West (whoops, Qwest) for service of any kind!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
DSLReports actually is a good resource. Most of the big companies do suck. Your best bet is to find a small local ISP that will serve DSL. Get the line from your local phone company, or covad, or whoever, and have your small local ISP serve it. This is the way I am setup and couldn't be more pleased. The other thing in your case is that you are far from you Central Office. This means that you can only get IDSL which is ISDN with the header channel used for actual data. So for our purposes, it is ISDN (just so you know). The IDSL cards are prone to problems too. Don't think you are getting something you aren't. If you are far away from the CO (greater than 12000 to 15000 feet), then don't expect DSL to be your saviour of bandwidth. It will be slow, expensive, prone to problems, and hard to get. On the other hand, if you are close to your CO and can find a good local provider, or one of the better ones on DSLReports.com like Speakeasy.net or someone, you can get very good, reliable bandwidth, with good equipment and service. And for the record, I am not in the DSL/ISP industry. Just have had a lot of experience with it.
For consumers, by consumers who tell the good, the bad and the ugly about their experiences with broadband. http://www.dslreports.com/
I've had their basic private household service since summer 1999, and overall the service has been good. We were getting charged $50/month for service + $10/month ISP for a static IP connection, but now that Verizon has consumed the company, they have joyfully announced that price will go down $20! One caveat: Customer Service absolutely SUCKS! Occastionally they would have a problem at the switching station, or they would tell us "yeah, there is a problem in the 703 area code right now," much to my frustration. Connection was lost for a couple of days straight in the worst of cases. Otherwise maybe once every two months, connection will be lost for a few hours, or at worst, most of the day. Since we jumped on the DSL bandwagon before many people, installation was prompt, but I'm dreading moving to another location, for fear of being put on an enormous waiting list. It seems many of my friends in the DC area are waiting and waiting for the telco people to show up.
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Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
Until about 6 months ago, I was using RoadRunner at my old house. I had it for about 10 months. The bandwidth was all over the map, and the latency was terrible, but it was cheap ($40/mo. including ISP, paid for by my employer) and easy. When I moved, RoadRunner wasn't available in my new neighborhood, so I looked into DSL.
By some miracle, it turns out my house is close enough to the local Alltel office that I could go as high as 1.5 Mb, if I were willing to pay. I ended up going with the 768/256 service, and they set me up in less than a week. The performance is at least as good and consistent as the T1 at work.
The down side is, the base service at that speed is around $60, and I have to pay $50 for my ISP (it's around $30 at the basic speed). Also, they required that I buy a Cisco DSL router with built-in NAT. They even specified the model number I had to use. The standard hardware configuration simplifies things from the support standpoint, and it does avoid the problem of having lots of completely unprotected computers on their network, though NAT is not quite as good as a real firewall.
I didn't have to sign a long-term contract on the ISP, though, so I'm shopping around. I suspect the easy time I had has to do with the fact that I now live in the only "city" in Texas where Alltel is offering DSL, and also the fact that they charge a fortune and make you buy a $400 router. Of course, my company is subsidizing everything, so that makes it a lot less painful.
Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich hungrig.
The reason that ISDN speeds "are about the same as IDSL" is because they're the same thing. (The 'I' in IDSL stands for ISDN if I'm not mistaken.)
Here's a spoiler... You will die a lonely man.
He does this if he doesn't eat his Wheaties.
rereplace(slashdot.org,Microsoft,rant,"ALL")
Kris Felscher
Kris Felscher
We've got enough youth, how about a fountain of "smart"?
Focal claims that they do not oversell the DSLAM, a major complaint with other local providers. Any comments on Focal's service?
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
As with any service, opinions from these tpyes of questions vary from person to person, from location to location. I have ADSL at my house, and while the service is VERY good (Kudos to Todd at ATLNet), I have a 2GB transfer limit (which I could max out in a week if I tried).
Where I work (comstar.net, inc., which was recently acquired by Globix), we provide SDSL and IDSL services through NorthPoint. Quite honestly, from the year and a half of service from NorthPoint, I wouldn't trust them with anything. Overall, I'd rate their service as mediocre to poor, and overall lack of responsibility, and horrendous callback times when DSL circuits go down.
Frequently, they randomly decide to change DLCI's with no forewarning, misconfigure DSLAMs, etc. If a DSL customer goes down, usually they wont be back up for 4 or 5 days - some cases have been a few weeks with a completel loss of connectivity. I've had NorthPoint techs say, "well, I don't know why the customer was so mad, they've only been down for 4 days." We've had to call NorthPoint several times to report to them that their DS-1's and DS-3's were down. They had no clue until we told them. We've come very close to nixing DSL service from the services we offer several times.
To be fair, I don't want to rag completely on NorthPoint, and sometimes the installs go very smoothly, and we have had some (albeit, few) customers who have been up and happy since day 1. Likewise, I've heard other horror stories that are just as bad from people I know who deal closely with companies like Covad. DSL is really like communism -- it's a wonderful idea in theory, unfortunately it doesnt always work out like it should. Since DSL technology isn't standardized or moderated by the FCC (FTC?), Telco's dont hold it to a very high standard. In fact, if your DSL line goes down, the Telco will most likely put normal residential phone line repairs to higher priority.
DSL has its place. DSL is a wonderful technology. but the bottom line is, if I were running a business, I would NOT trust a DSL line to be our sole source of connectivity. For a little more I could spring for a DS-1 and have (relatively) timely response from Ma and Pa Bell in case things went awry. If you're considering it for your home, wonderful. It's an awesome solution (but can be a bit troublesome at times if you aren't knowing what to expect).
Just my $0.02
--
Dave Brooks (db@amorphous.org)
http://www.amorphous.org
I don't know about anyone else, but I've had nothing but smooth sailing with PatriotNet's DSL, after installation.....I've had a 768K connection for around 9/10 months now. Their residential DSL gets you to AboveNet's backbone within 1-2 jumps, and they provide you with a static IP from the beginning. They are also a somewhat-knowledgeable- about-linux/*NIX shop, so that helps, too. There have been some 3 downtimes that I've seen, all only about 10-15 minutes long in the time I've had them. So their uptime is great, too....I also get near projected speed (the afore mentioned 768 K), and was ACTUALLY downloading Debian disk images once at 768 EXACTLY!!:)
My only concerns/problems/complaints have been: 1) expense...It's 80 bucks a month (plus expenses of install and purchase of dsl modem...Which I elected to pay for in monthly installments, so it brings me to over $120/month), which is over double BS er BA er Verizon....But I think it's worth the expense (unlike my mobile phone), 2) Stinginess with extra IPs....They would be expensive, and 3) install time....But that's more BA's (they were still called BA then) and Covad's fault than there's....But when I'd call Patriot to complain, I'd get a call from BA and/or Covad fairly quickly:).
So, all in all...Better than expected....And the best part: it's A LOT better here, in Northern VA than the speed I was getting in Northeast PA (try 5.9 bps...Yuck -- don't ask, long story;>)....
LITHUANIAN BIRDS GO PPPPLLLLAAAH!!
Hey...how do you fix a sig f....
Seeing as how you're stuck with US West like I am, they probably screwed you over with an "extender line", aka a DLC (Digital Loop Carrier) line. It limits modem connections to 28.8 (on good days; I usually get 24000 or 26400), and destroys any chance of using real DSL. All of that just so US West can save a dime by putting multiple numbers on one real line. However, you can get 144kbps "IDSL", but calling it DSL is blatently false advertising. It's much more expensive than real DSL, it's only speed is 144kbps (real DSL is available from 256kbps to 7mbps), and it doesn't allow you to talk on the phone at the same time (in fact, it requires that your line be dedicated to it; no more phone calls on that line, ever). It's really more ISDN than anything. According to US West's site, it's only about $60/mo (twice as much as real DSL), but when I went to check the availability for my area, it only said the $189/mo and $199/mo options were available!!! Residential fiber connections will be available here (Longmont, CO) in 1-2 years, and it looks like I'll be waiting for that. I really don't see US West giving us real lines (like we payed for) anytime soon. So, it's either wait for fiber or wait for AOL or MSN satellite...
I live in San Francisco, serviced by PacificBell.
I went with Mindspring, because they were already providing my netcom dialup service. They give a 6 month rather than 1-year contract, which is nice, and it was not too expensive. All my contact with them, including two calls to their tech support, have been excellent.
Pacbell had to 'bring the line to my house' and then Covad were contracted to do the internal install.
Pacbell were obnoxious because their database indicated that my box was in the garage, even though it was outside, the result being that they insisted that I had to be at home to let them in to do the install. They came twice while I wasn't at home, and both times, didn't bother to look at the side of the house, even though I left a note. Finally, my girlfriend was able to be there; she pointed at the box, and an hour later the line was in.
Then, get this, Covad calls within 20 minutes of the PacBell guy leaving, and offers to be there in 2 hours to do the install! I found this quite impressive. I wasn't home, so the covad guy screwed up the install on my win95OSR2 machine, attempting to use a USB NIC even though the OS lacks good enough support for it. But, I was able to make it work myself with a PCI NIC and a call to Mindspring's excellent installation support.
Since then, no problems, no outages, and consistently very fast (usually at least 1 MBPS) service.
The final kicker was three days after install; mindspring now offers free licenses for Norton PersonalFirewall. I downloaded that baby, free, and now I have a reasonably good software firewall on my DSL. I haven't heard that anyone else has offered this kind of thing yet.
-Leperflesh
I am allowed to criticize you: you are not allowed to criticize me. Sorry, that's just how things are.
It has been a disaster. BA won't talk directly to the user, so we have to act as intermediaries. It took a long time for them to accept electronic problem reports, which turned out to be an email address where someone retypes the problems into their system (and usually omits most of our troubleshooting information). The rest of the time, we have to call their Broadband "Solutions" Center, where we wait on hold for a long time before talking to an operator who knows far less than we do. Problems can take months to be resolved. We complained enough that we have a person within BA to cut through red tape for us. I've had occasions where I had to put one of our networking people on the phone with them to explain to them how their network works (or doesn't).
Meanwhile, they've raised the monthly price that they charge us per-customer above the price that they offer their own end-users because after the service we've received, we're unwilling to sign a multi-year contract.
We're currently looking at ways of getting out of the DSL business as quickly as possible.
--
I get my DSL through Darwin, (which I also happen to work for), and I tend to not have any problems. (Of course, I also tend to fix it myself when it breaks, so feel free to take that statement with the usual grain of salt,...) Of course, we do our DSL a bit differently. We pipe a T-1 in to the MPOE of an apartment complex, and mount our DSL equipment there. That gives us a much faster install turnaround. In general, it isn't the DSL providers that are having problems, it's the damn ILEC's screwing them over (This happens ALL the time, ask anyone that works for one of the small-fry telco providers).
BTW, 144K isn't DSL. It's a weird type of hybrid that uses an ISDN-type signalling. Since it uses ISDN signalling, it's repeatable, which is why it can go longer distances than conventional DSL. It's also more expensive than the first stage of REAL DSL, which is 192K last I checked. With the advent of stable and cheap wireless technology, and the new ability to upload as well as download on Satellite transmissions, you'll have a lot more broadband solutions, (and providers) popping up like jackrabbits in your area. Either of those two would be a better solution than 144.
I've been called a "Fucking Dick" by better people than you.
I recently ordered SDSL from dsl.net...since I'm 21,000+ feet from the CO, they said I would only be able to get 208K tops, but once the line was installed, I was able to negotiate a 416K connection successfully (they tried 784K first and it wouldn't fully handshake).
:)
As fellow nerds, I'm sure we all know 416K is ~50k/s, and during most of my transfers that are capable of that speed, I get VERY close to it. DSL is a godsend
Has anyone ever actually gotten a Verizon DSL circuit? I ordered mine way before the strike, got delayed, delayed, delayed.. strike happens... order gets lost, order gets re-entered, I finally end up screaming at them on the phone at which point they tell me, "we can't provide service in your area at the present time".
Well damn, I worked just a few blocks down and we had several DSL's.. Grrrrr.
They still have a de facto monopoly on service in Chicago. It's gotten to the point that I've dumped my analog service, I now only have ISDN for data and a Cell phone from Verizon.
Over the last decade I have been involved with installation of many analog lines-
Not a single one of these circuits was fully functional on the due date. I've had T1 and ISDN circuits 'disappear' months after they went live, because a line technician thought they were idle pairs and reused them for some other customer down the block.
On my personal ISDN line, Ameritech took three months to get the line live, and eight months after that before I got my first bill, totaling nearly a thousand dollars.
Disclaimer: I've worked for Ameritech (AADS), they did manage to pay my consulting fees on time, but all other facets of the company suck.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
It did take about 3 weeks for the order to be processed (they it would take 3-4 weeks), but it was complete a few days before they said it would be. I had my own DSL modem and I noticed it would connect to something then time out, I assume the line was up but since we didn't have our login/password it could not establish a connection.
When the letter with the login/password arrived (a few days before it was supposed to be activated) we were able to configure the modem and it worked flawlessly. So the point is they got the job done BEFORE they said they would.
Shortly after I installed the modem I noticed that it I had a 640k down-link. USWest later announced that all their 256k customers that are close enough to the Central Office would receive a free 640k upgrade (down-link only). I am not complaining a bit.
On the reliability side we had a single incident of a 4 hour network outage on a Sunday. We have had no other problems. Note that we used USWest as our ISP, not someone else.
I have to say I am impressed with USWest's DSL service. If only their linemen were half as good. Once phone line sounded as if a 120v-power line was crossed with our line. It had a buzz louder than our dial tone on it. After the lineman came out the first time he said he 'fixed' it. When I picked up the phone guess what, sill buzzing. It was real fun trying to explain to the girl at customer service over the buzz that our line was sill messed up. I decided to take the problem into my own hands. I popped open the box at the point of demarcation, found my wire pair, disconnected my apartment from the network and tested the line where it came into the building. The problem was definitely on their side. I then left a not so nice note attached to my wire-pair explaining I tested it myself and the problem is on their side. A few weeks later I check and my note removed ;) I bet the lineman got a kick out of that one.
I'd go with Speedchoice(now Sprint Broadband) wireless microwave service if you can. It's about the same price but offers up to 1Mbps connections. I believe installation is free right now. I've heard of a few glitches getting going, but most everyone I talk to likes it once they've got it. If you can't do @home, Speedchoice is probably your best bet in Phoenix.
Hrm.. that was the reason I was given. Guess when you're wrong you're wrong......
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
I don't claim to know what the market differences are between our two nations but at least from my point of view Canadian broadband suppliers are much better than their American counterparts in both service, and speed to their respective markets. I've had some form of high speed connection, be it cable or DSL, to the internet since 1993. In fact I've had it so long that I never purchased a 33.6 modem let alone a 56k modem.
When I hear stories of 2 months before installation, a required one year commitment, or even that the service is just being introduced into some cities I quite frankly am amazed. Broadband suppliers I've seen up here couldn't ever try that with their customers or they'd never have any. A few have tried the one year subscription but their policies have since changed.
I honestly hope my American neighbours are able to at least show their respective companies that they are indeed customers and deserve to be treated as such. Any company that has you over a barrel will treat you poorly. Either you take it the way they dish it or demand better treatment. (That's not as easy as it sounds but it still has to be done.)
In Canada there are regulations that prevent broadband service providers from charging more than C$50 per month. While that used to be the standard price competition has driven that down to C$40 per month with many services added (extra IPs, more email boxes, etc) and I hope it keep dropping.
I certainly hope the boys to the south can enjoy the same competition we have here. (Don't get me wrong though, the competition here is still in the infancy stages but it should grow.)
I live in one of the 'burbs of KC. While DSL and Time Warner's Road Runner have been available in many parts for some time, it is only recently come to my part of town. I was too far from the switch for DSL for the last six months and in a town not serviced by Road Runner or Time Warner cable. I just moved to a different house and was told I was close enough for DSL and it would be available at the end of October. Called the cable company (Comcast) and they were installing in my area now. I got it installed within a few days of the call.
I'd rather not have to pay the $10-30 extra to be a cable subscriber, but the service was FAST and the cable modem is FASTER. If the telco can't get its act together quicker than it has, it will miss out on even more customers. It really sucks to be in one of the LAST areas to get broadband, but you would have to pay me to live on the left or right coast.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
I also have DSL through Telocity and I haven't had these connection problems. I had it for about three months, and I had one outage for a couple of hours. Maybe I haven't had it long enough to properly rate them, but they were nice enough to call me as soon as service was back up.
I would say their tech support is pretty stupid. My roomate was trying to switch the modem from Ethernet Routable to USB Routable and it took their service techs over two hours to give up and tell him to switch it back to Ethernet. After he told them that his NIC card was broken, they told him to buy a new one.
Seeing how the modem is totally capable of connecting through USB, I was kind of appalled that their solution was to buy new network card. My roomate was appalled by the fact that I got the thing working through USB within a couple of minutes and a "Network Genius" I am not.
--
InstantCool
Alway get the ethernet modem. A linux box with two net cards makes a great router. I got dsl from a small provider cape.com. They bought a T3 into verison's dsl cloud to there rack space. So the small company with humans you can actually talk to handles all issues except physical connect. They have access to bell's trouble tickets, and do all hosting, mail, routing on ther own box's. Ma bell gives them point ot point access to each node so they can do all kinds of kooky routing and vpn stuff. It is a good arangement, They offer a pricey business package with a cir and stuff. I've got the 'home service' It has been very reliable. I was hoping for more speed but I do have the cheapest level of service.
I am in Canada, Alberta, Edmonton to be exact so you US boys may have some different results. Basically I had DSL and loved it, a deti 128 kbs and a peak DL speed of 178 KiloBytes/sec, what's not to love? But when i moved Telus told me I had to wait 1 month to relocate my modem and that i was on a waiting list : (
Needless to say, what geek can go a month without highspeed net? Not me, so I called up Videon and got asked them if they could hook me up, the chick on the phone was like " Sure we can, we'll just throw you on the node." Ummm, excuse me? THROW ME ON THE NODE? Prolly with the rest of the block sharing 1 connection...bad omen i though, but got it anyway cause it's got to be better than dialup.
So my cable was hooked up to my 900 Thunderbird Athlon running Win2K and I was happly DLing at 40 KBs, not too shabby, but then i thought of my DSL and my 128 KBs deti and thought this had to do something comparable. So i tested the speeds and during the night i downloaded a file off Videons server at 400 KBs, wow! almost half a meg a sec! Too bad most the time on the net i got 40 KBs most the time. Also cable has a proxy and i was unable to get my Hotmail cause the stupid thing. Also i had a 1 GIG upload a month and 10 Download, what a ripoff! That may be fine for blow joe occasionally surfing www.smalltities.com, but not for a hardcore geek with a webserver, FTP, intense gaming sessions that go over 6 hours a day in CounterStrike, after a week i had almost reached 1 GIG upload. I hated the idea of cooling my jets and watching excatly how much bandwidth i had left, hoping i dont have to pay a bunch extra that i got for FREE from Telus.
Well then my DSL came in, I had one P-III 500 hooked to Cable and my Athlon 900 to the DSL. Time for some testing! I went to Microsoft and did the connection test, the cable scored really well, scoring off the charts, the DSL simply got just under a T1, about half as fast...but that was just a synthetic test, how about DLing version 7 beta FULL of CounterStrike?
Let the games begin! So I started the download at about 6 p.m., the started slow at 30 KBs and maxed out at 80 KBs with an average of 50 KBs, not too bad. The DSL started at 170 KBs and then dropped to it's deticated bandwith of 156 KBs STEADY AS A ROCK, never dropping below 150 KBs the whole time. Needless to say the cable company can shove there proxy, DL/UL limits, extra charges, and lag-ass connection. I took it back a week later and kept the DSL. Not only that but the cable modem would sometimes just "Die" for like 5 min, then suddenly come back on. Sux 2 B U if U are in the middle of a 150 MEG DL like I waz...
CONCLUSION: DSL has no DL/UL limits, deti 128 KBs and usually more than that, no proxy, no monitoring and one fixed price of 40 a month. Cable has all the monitoring, proxy, monitoring, UL/DL limits and extra charges for 40 a month.
DSL is simply superior. Ashley Fulks Network Admin Simply Boss inc.
I also got Pac Bell DSL in Oakland, but more recently (in March), and I also have nothing but good to say about it. It did take most of the day and many phone calls (by the installation guy, not me) to get it activated at the other end (which, as far as I know, was just a matter of the right person flipping a switch), but it was done that day, and it has only been out once, for a day or so, since then.
I was getting a pretty steady 1.2 Mbps, which is about twice what my friend has been getting on his cable modem. He only chose cable because he was just a bit out of range for DSL (literally, his next-door neighbor could get it, but he couldn't -- I suggested they throw an Ethernet cable over the fence and split the bill, but...). He just found out that they installed a new repeater (or whatever it is), so now he can "upgrade", so to speak.
Now I've moved, and I'm back to modems -- I've found out that my new house is in range, but haven't ordered it yet. I like the DSL service, but I don't know enough about prices to say how good theirs is. Specifically, how much extra is it worth paying to get the "enhanced" package, which gives you five static IPs (on your own 3-bit subnet, with your own router, I think) vs. the "basic" package's dynamic IPs? They charge about $40/month for basic and $80/month for enhanced. Does anyone know if that's particularly good or bad compared to other providers?
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
From what I know, Verizon has one giant queue right now. The school I attend is waiting at spot 80,000 or so to get crappy T1's removed, and many ISPs (especially Adelphia cable) are stuck getting customer complaints while everyone waits for Verizon to fix fiber channels. It looks as though things might not be completely figured out until December or so.
For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!
Run, don't walk from Flashcom.
It took them 6 days after the (GTE) truck roll to get my connection straightened out. They promised 768K downstream but delivered only 380K. They would be down for days on end...ok for home users, bad if you are telecommuting from Southern CA to the Silicon Valley and your job depends on your connectivity, you are SOL. One time the outage lasted one whole week.
When I lost the job (damn April stock crash!) I had to discontinue my service. Now that I am back working again I'm getting my DSL back. Hopefully DSLExtreme, a local company in Van Nuys, will be a lot better than my hideous experience with Flashcom.
I wouldn't wish Flashcom on my worst enemy.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I had USWest cable modem service for 2 years and loved it. They even gave me a dedicated IP address! Then I built a new house complete with a closet for my server with a cable jack, phone jack, power outlets, and 8 rj-45 jacks which ran to 7 rooms in my house. Now USWest (Qwest) won't give me anything. They claim both cable and DSL aren't available in my area even though I moved
only 20 blocks away from my previous residence. We had no phone service the first 3 weeks we were in the house. I went from cable ISP service to using my old 14.4 modem until cable modem service becomes available next month through another provider. Sucks.
Never had a problem with them. They've been nothing but helpful on the phone and they even got me hooked up when they told me they were out of capacity. I've only seen two outages and that was over a year ago when they were first rolling it out. Of course, you gotta move out West to get it tho' :-)
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
I got my ADSL hookup from GTE last fall, about a year before they spawned the corporate love child known as "Verizon." As much as I hate to say anything nice about the greedy capitalist swine, these folks got me hooked up within the 1 mo. promised. I have experienced exactly 4 service outages in the year since I got hooked up (disclaimer - 4 outages that affected me - others may have happened whilst I was sleeping or masturbating). It's not as fast as it could be - they want me to pay roughly twice as much as I currently pay to receive reasonable download speed. They even have good phone support (by phone company standards - max. 5 minute hold time in my experience). My fingers may rot off as I type this, but I've got nothing mean and nasty to say about GTE/Verizon. Yet.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
If you're signing up for DSL with PacBell (or SWBell or any member of the SBC Global Network probably), don't call them on the weekend or a holiday and probably not on off-hours. Call them between 8-4 Pacific.
A different office handles calls on weekends and holidays and I've had nothing but trouble when dealing with them. They don't seem to communicate with the other office.
Got DSL through RBC, who is going through new edge and relay point. USWest(qwest), cannot offer me dsl, the reason being they do not have a DSLAM in the area. This other company however, got me hooked up in a little under a month, 768k. The only problem being that Qwest didnt check for bridge taps, and so I have 80ms pings to my gateway and only get about 60% of my bandwidth. It took some real moaning to get them in gear, but rbc is looking after me and trying to get it all corrected.. until then I still enjoy 64k a sec downloads.. and 80ms (to my gwy) pings, while not perfect, its better then a modem.. add onto that free installation and equipment.. ($500 value) and i really cant complain.. too much.. Check em out http://www.renpdx.com Read about all my problems ;)
http://www.dunkan.net
I've had my DSL from mother PacBell since it first became available in my area. In fact, mine was the test CO, and I was like the fifth non-SBC employee to get it. Of course, the moron they sent to my house had to slapped, and I did the install myself (the 66 block in my garage through him. I think the patch panel above it might have killed him :-). Luckily they waived the install fee (they should have paid me for all the free training.)
:-) I figure in about five years we'll break even for all the time invested :-)
Anyway, I haven't had a complaint except that their technical support sucks! The other day I wanted to do something Usenet (not deja), and they've password protected their server. Fine. But when I emailed the stinking address it bounced. Grrrr.
And since then it's become a nightmare to try and get the service. Unless you want to cough up some serious cash for "static" addresses (which I get for the lowest base price, man I love getting in early), you get this PPPoE b*st*rdization "dial up" system. What moron thought this up???
And, PB and SBC aren't responsible for the install anymore. They've created/sub'd the actual install to some company called ASI. One of the VPs here wanted DSL, so through some unfortunate circumstances I ended up responsible for it (The guy I assigned it to flaked, lucky me).
Anyway, it took five months to actually get it in and working, involving well over 75 hours of my time on the phone (logged it all). There was a silver lining though, I'm much better at freecell and minesweeper (is that all MS Windows is good for?). Also, multiple problems involving the multiple lines into his place resulted in no record of the circuit at PB, so he doesn't get billed
So if you install it yourself, everything should be fine. If you are really feeling lucky and let the installer touch your computer, I shall not shed a tear for you. Remember, I told you so.
UugaBuuga
If you find any good answers in here let me know. I live in Ames, IA and have the exact same problem. However, the only two broadband providers that I know I could possibly get, besides some type of satellite service, are AT&T@Home or UsWest DSL services. I lived on the west side of town and was very happy with my DSL service from UsWest. I purchased a house and moved to the South East side of town and it is like I am in a different world. AT&T says @home will be available sometime in the next couple of months, and have been saying the exact same thing for the last six months! UsWest, now Qwest, won't even talk to me anymore. All I wanted to know was why my line didn't qualify. I feel people should be entitled to more information. Like, is it a length problem, a DLC, a load coil? Not just - "I get a red ball, therefore your line doesn't qualify." I could find that out from the web site! So here I sit with my Cisco 675 as a reminder of my high speed access days, and log on with my 56k modem that I can usually only get a 33.6k connection with. Once you have had reliable high speed access it is really hard to go back to dial-up.
DSL can be great, provided your connection to your CO is adequate (short, and copper, basically). After that, the number one factor that determines the reliability is the provider. In my experience, Pacific Bell sucks ass.
I've had so many problems with Pac-Bell DSL that it isn't funny anymore. They've lost my records twice, resulting in a total disconnection of my service. They also misclassified my connection as "Enhanced DSL", and tried to charge me twice the original price. If you call their tech support, 90% of the time you get put on hold for 15 minues, then you're sent to a voice-mailbox due to the "unusually high delay". If you leave a message, they won't call you back. If you do manage to get through to someone, they'll almost definitely transfer you to someone else, and place you on hold for 10-20 minutes. Most of their support reps are also complete idiots.
The last straw for me was when they (finally) sent me the CD (when they finally got around to switching bme to Basic DSL, which is what I signed up for in the first place). The CD arrived folded in half. I also noticed that Pac-bell Internet has started charging me for dialup.
The best part of this whole thing was when a guy from Pac-Bell DSL marketing actually told me on the phone "anything involving DSL is a nightmare". Thanks.
My Friend knows all too well the wrath of broadband. his @home cable modem has been down for 6 WEEKS. call ATT and nothing has happened. "Yea, we will fix it..." but yes im kinda glad i have my modem, if thats what i have to put up with.
I contacted PacBell a few months ago and they told me I was too far from their switching station. I figured PacBell was the only game in town, so I gave up on DSL at home.
On a whim about a month ago, I checked out Covad. Turns out they use their own equipment in PacBell switching stations. It also turns out that I'm not too far from the switching station. PacBell is only involved in that they send someone out to verify the loop.
Two weeks after contacting the Covad sales guy and one of their partners (FastPoint Communications, in my case), I had DSL up and running quite consistently at about 600k downstream, 128k upstream. The guy who installed it did so in about an hour, and he obviously knew what he was doing.
Although I haven't dealt personally with PacBell's DSL people, the Covad guy told me that many of his team members were former PacBell employees who couldn't hack the forced overtime and lack of family time.
I know four people who have had DSL installed by PacBell locally. One had a couple of minor glitches, and the installation required two visits by PacBell. Another had about the same experience. A third had a nightmare experience that spanned two months and entailed literally six visits to his house. The fourth just got hers up and running after three months, five visits, and numerous headaches.
Most people in my neck of the woods don't realize that they have options other than PacBell, but they do.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I've been using 768k sdsl from a local provider (TDS Metrocomm for those of you in Madison, WI) for about a year. No noticable downtime in the past year. Works well even with a small lan of 6 computers connecting up through it. It did take a few weeks to get setup, and we had to do a little inside house wiring ourselves (our inside wiring is being held together with some alligator clips). Can't complain, and better than a modem if you have a lot of people who want to get online.
I work for a small ISP in the bay area. We had to change DSL carriers because our previous carrier was full of incompetent people, and the process of changing carriers has taken ENTIRELY too long. All of the delay seems to be due to communication problems between management types.
In any case, even when things work well they take forever, and it's not just DSL. It's any digital line. I'm getting a T1 installed at my apartment (my employer is chipping in), and while the physical line has been setup for almost a week already, the order is still held up in provisioning, which translates into "PacBell is overloaded".
Remember when 28.8k was fast? Heh heh.
I went from @home provider to ADSL, I waited 2.5 months, it was the telco that was taking so long they cannot keep up to the demand of the requests from customers. The supplier for the ADSL equipment was backordered, you would think these telco's would have some stock on equipment?? now that I have it... it was well worth the wait for the reliability and speed.
Your problem is that you have a load coil on your line. Qwest will remove it for you, but you have to pay for them to do it.
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Then they started having some issues and didn't seem to have a clue what was wrong. The technical "support" helpdesk was useless, if you got through. I waited over an hour on hold once and so did a friend of mine. And it was expensive. I paid $300 for the initial install and $60 per month.
After moving, I have cable modem and am totally happy with it. Bandwidth is not quite as high on average (50-90 KB/s), but I have seen over 200KB/s once. They just upgraded the infrastructure with Cisco equipment and reliability is excellent after the 6 weeks or so of yo-yo-like downtime. It is also less expensive.
Bottom line, the DSL provider had little experience and when real problems occurred they were in over their heads. The cable company had problems with their upgrade and brought in techs from Cisco to help. I'll put up with a lot to have high-speed access, but I won't use Bellsouth after so many problems.
Oh, and their billing - don't get me started ...
i've had dsl from psn.net for about 3 months now. it is great (i hover around 6ook, synchronous). that being said: i still have my complaints. their tech support is non-existant(literally. they DO NOT reply to emails and i lose patience after listening to 45 minutes of cheez-jazz hold music. i managed to figure out what needed to know without them, but what if the line goes down? i live in fear...)and the installation was utterly traumatic, akin to a root canal that happens in three stages weeks apart by three providers (verizon -nee bellatlantic, northpoint and finally psn).
another thing, a friend of mine signed up with them maybe a month after i did. he got an email confirming an outside wiring date of christmas 2001!
auspicious, to say the least...
bottom line: the connection itself is excellent. everything else: suck-a-doody.
i dunno. are you a gambler?
The Covad technician is arriving on Monday with my ADSL router/bridge/modem - everyone has a different name for it. I'll be very happy to have my service up and running within one month of my original order. My install has not been trouble free, however. I have wanted any form of high-speed access since I moved in. My cable company - Adelphia - has given me three different replies to my inquiries - Yes, No and Never. GTE, now Verizon, ran three levels of super-special tests and said it could not happen. But Earthlink said yes! How? They asked the true provider of their DSL service, Covad, and the response was good. But how does Covad know better than Verizon. GTE has been one of only two local carriers in the majority of California for years and in that time they managed to get a reputation for slow, incompetent service. But this is the new Verizon! All has changed! Right. Covad put the order in to Verizon who came out to install the line whether I was capable of handling it or not. Unfortunately the first technician was given the wrong wires and would need to send out "the cable guys." Still no women in the workforce, I guess. It was the second tech that explained it all. The reason my three tests came up negative was that there was a second line installed previously. This line was not handled on a separate physical connection, rather it was multiplexed in a little box just below my bedroom window. This threw off the tests because GTE ran them without accounting for the multiplexer. Covad's affirmative data came from GTE publishing the numbers that are capable of receiving a DSL feed. Covad's data actually was better than the phone company's. So the line is fully tested and fully operational. Followed by some prodding of Covad, I should have service in a comparatively short time. May your install go so well even with a hitch.
DSL does indeed require a lot of patients, hard work, persistence, and sometimes just being a big pain in the ass. I made 37 calls. (Started tracking them after the first 4...) 37 calls to constantly inquire about the status of my order, to make sure they were coming out when they said to, to know the technical stuff, and to make sure Ameritech/SBC were covering their end of things. Also, if your looking to avoid the one year contract, I went with Telocity, a sub-contract ISP of Rhythms. The price was $49.95/MO, which is average for DSL. They've got a decent customer service department, but their tech support could use some help. The speed has been excellent. I'm rated for 384/384 service, and get typical downloads of 60-70K/s, uploads of 70-80K/s. All in all, for those of us without Cable as an option, DSL is well worth the wait, painstaking effort, and frustration in the end.
Chris
I live in Tempe AZ, and I couldn't get dsl through uswest either. I found this company called Phoenix DSL which is an isp for Northpoint. I had DSL within 3 weeks of calling them and its way faster and more reliable then the dsl I had through uswest. I would recommend them if you are close enough to their CO. Their website is www.phoenixdsl.net if you want to check it out.
I third that! I moved to my current appartment in NY on Jan 1 2000 (from the UK). I checked DSL reports and signed up with Megapath. I choose them as they offer a monthly rolling contract (I don't know how like I'll be in the US), gave me a discount for ordering at the same time as a friend, and were well rated on dslreports.com even back then. I've had maybe a couple of hours of downtime in 9 months. They tech support is available and reasonable. Last month I upgraded to 400k...
Not cheap but maybe you get what you pay for!
I'm was a little bit spoiled with @Home because they had at least a T-1 at the head end of my apartment complex, yet there were only 3 of us using it. When I moved, they were'nt available so I had to go the DSL route.
Rather than dinking around with shared bandwidth, unreliable service and talking with U.S. Worst (now Qworst) support, sales and customer service people, I decided to go with a Rhythyms business connection.
I'm 19,485 feet from the CO, so the phone company wouldn't even touch me; however Rhythyms was more than happy to tell me about how their superior equipment would allow me to get an ISDL connection with a 128k bandwith limit each way.
After Qworst screwed up the installation, forgot they were supposed to fix the screw up, fixed it for a few hours and promptly puked all over it again... You get the picture. The connection hasn't had a bit of downtime since (about 2 weeks now) and, while the speed is nothing compared to a cable modem, I at least have a reliable connection that I don't share with anybody.
As a bonus, I worked a deal to get 5 IP's so I can host my services. As a business account, it's perfectly agreeable to the TOS contract. All this for about $110 a month. A bit pricey, but it was well within my budget for my daily 'Net fix.
Hope that helps!
/tma
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Here in British Columbia, I am connected with Telus ADSL, and I must say I'm very happy with it. Aside from nslookup problems with some friends connected to their older subnet, I've had nothing but great, reliable service. And the lookup problems were easily solved by adding one of their name servers to my DNS list.
I used to be on cable with Rogers@home, and ADSL is much faster in general. Ping times in online gaming seem a bit higher, but the latency is much more consistent. In downloading much files, there is no comparison. With cable, I'd usually max out at 50-80kB/s, unless it was 3am. With ADSL, I regularly pull in at 160kB/s.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
The Bad: support is very uneven. When you break past the tier one script readers it gets much better. Having to buy "business" level service in order to have static IP addresses sucks - especially when support weenies start balking at helping you after the word "hub" or "network" is mentioned. From what I've seen at houses where people have cable modems they get alot more downstream bandwidth.
The Good: full bandwidth is consistenly available. The use policy places no restrictions on what you do over your connection. There have been two service outages. Once the Cisco died, they FedExed a replacement to me. Another time an ice storm hit and my phone line quality dropped to the point that a connection wouldn't stay up. I don't see anyone's traffic but my own.
Overall, I'm happy with the service.
There's more to it than this.
I contrast this to coworkers' experiences with cable modem. One coworker's connection tested out at 1.5 Mbps when he first got it installed. Now he says that during peak periods, it feels like about 100 Kbps.
Now I will say this -- ADSL has some problems. For instance, I've had problems getting online when some loser sets his computer to a static IP address and the BellSouth DHCP server hands me that same IP address. That usually requires about 45 minutes on the phone with a tech support person to resolve it. I wish BellSouth had a way to detect and squash such behavior. (They may have implemented something recently, since the problem hasn't happened in a while)
It also sucks that BellSouth uses MAC addresses as part of their authentication process (no Linksys routers for you!!!). I can only connect with the NIC they provided me. Once I set up Internet Connection Sharing under Win 98 SE with another NIC in the box, they won't provide me tech support. Pretty lame, if you ask me. The days of one-machine-online-per-household are limited, especially for early adopters of broadband.
But overall, I love ADSL.
Here's my report on my DSL. I recently got 1040Kbits/sec up/down SDSL from MegaPath in Palo Alto (SF Bay Area). Overall, I'm getting happy with them, but I'm still in the installation hell phase. Once the basic wiring problem gets sorted out, I can see that things will be very good, because the company is responsive and committed, and the hardware and network seem basically sound. Still, the installation problems are trying and frustrating and I am trying to get through it whole.
Wires:
The Pac Bell wire from my house to the phone company is about 9000 feet, and runs Frame Relay to NorthPoint. There's been a problem from day 1 with the line going up and down, but given that it took Pac Bell only 3 weeks to hook it up and it's only been up 1 month, I'm still well within the range of startup time problems that people have, and am expecting smooth sailing once the MegaPath/NorthPoint/PacBell menage a trois is done. Knock on wood!
Installation:
A disadvantage of not going with Pac Bell directly is that there are three companies involved and they all have to coordinate. An advantage of not going with Pac Bell directly is that because of the competitive/cooperative relationship, NorthPoint has much more clout with Pac Bell than I do, and MegaPath has clout with NorthPoint, and MegaPath is very responsive by e-mail and phone, so I don't have to spend hours on hold or wade through levels of official sympathizers before I get to talk to someone who can understand my problem. Every person I talked to was well informed, well versed in networking, and very polite. Conversely, I think they expect some level of technical sophistication in their users, but I haven't tested this hypothesis.
Service:
As I said, the support and tech people are all very smart and pleasant. They never talked down to me, and they were able to diagnose problems I'd caused myself. They are persistent in trying to get my installation problem straightened out and I am confident that the process will work. I often here of people with DSL installation problems who despair or give up because it appears that the process will not converge. I don't get that feeling, but I do see that it's going to take some time, because all three companies have process that they follow, and when you have a 2-sigma or 3-sigmal problem, there are a lot of steps to go through (replacing house wiring, monitoring etc., etc., etc.)
Connection:
MegaPath sells you a DSL WAN/Router/hub, and the only traffic you see on your wire is traffic to or from your house. With many other DSL and cable services, you get a "Modem/Bridge" device, wherein you see other people's traffic (and vice versa). The size of this "local" netwok varies with the provider, but I read on dslreports.com about a Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) customer who saw a broadcast storm every 15 minutes. He was able to see the ethernet address (shows you right there that it's really a shared ethernet!) and found it was an iMac. The tech support folks turned a deaf ear and told him not to use a network sniffer (reportedly). Another guy on dslreports read this, did the same, and saw that he could see it as well, and they were 30 miles apart! Again, I'm just quoting: here's the link. This kind of issue was a major reason for my going with MegaPath, since they don't have a large bridged network.
Security:
Not having other home users see your traffic and vice versa is a big deal in security, and if your provider uses a router instead of a bridge, then this happens. The router I got from MegaPath (a Netopia 7100R) has a firewall built in, and it comes with a NetBIOS blocker and a no-incoming-connections-at-all blocker, and you get to pick which one you want, or customize it (which I have done).
Performance: Throughput and Latency
Throughput
DSL Reports has test tools, and my 1040/1040 connection shows up at about 940/920, if memory serves me correctly. Given the TCP/IP and Frame Relay overhead, this seems fine. Other providers who offer "nominal" 1.5Mb/384Kb often lag behind by a greater margin, especially on the uplink. I've seen in particular that cable modems often offer in regular modem ranges for uplink. (As a side note, I found this way the USB ethernet adapter on my I-Opener only gets 20Kb/sec up!)
Latency
Most of the time I get <8ms from my house to www.yahoo.com, and less than 6ms from my house to www.megapath.net. Through VPN hardware and into my company at work is about 25ms, most of which is going from one backbone to another on the Internet. Occasionally, however, something in the local San Jose abovenet backbone screws up and I get terrible throughput, at night, for an hour or two, and then it mysteriously repairs itself. MegaPath is aware of this problem and is working with their backbone provider to get it rectified. It's not a usage problem -- it goes from fine to wretched in 10 seconds, and back again (after an hour or two) in another 10 seconds. Again, I'm confident that this is a transient problem I'm seeing and that it's not due to chronic oversubscription or poor network management.
I had the same service in Minneapolis. The performance was unbeatable, but horridly unreliable. The router would loose its connection and re-sync every couple of hours. I called tech support every day for a couple of months. They arranged to have my line checked on numerous occasions and it tested out fine. They replaced my Flowpoint router with another of the same model. I eventually learned to deal with the constant network outages and when my 1 year contract ran out, I moved.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
I used to live in New Jersey and had signed up with Flashcom in December 1999. By Feb the first Covad tech showed up and then stated that Bell Atlantic has to upgrade the lines, till then no dice.
By March no one had arrived yet. I cancelled and moved to California. I ordered DSL through Mindspring and Flashcom. Again time frame was 6 - 8 weeks. I said screw it and went with @home. Service is great. Service was installed in 3 days. I enjoy downloading at over 350k/s .
My $0.02
From my personal experience with coworkers:
Northpoint/Megapath SDSL: GREAT!
ADSL: SUCK
Pacific Bell: SUCK(2x)
Bell Atlantic: SUCK(4x)
MediaOne cable modem: SUCK(4x)
I have both cable and a DSL connection. My @home connections is very fast 400k downstream but is not very stable at all. My DLS is about 180k downstream and have yet to have and outage. I also work as support for an @home provider and the amount of service interuptions is rather humorus. Routers at max use, mail is down again, mail is down again, @home content down again, wait router down, ahh a fiber cut, should be a slow night here at support. DSL also has better latency so gaming rocks on DSL. So if you average the speed cable VS DSL and include the downtime of the service ..
DSL rocks by far.
(plug;) Check out WEBNAP
I was in #yourmom today
I know what astroturf is (an artificial football field material), but what does "astroturfing" mean in this context? Is it a marketing message disguised as spontaneous grassroots approval? Thanks in advance for any clarification.
I live in Scottsdale and have IDSL through Phoenix Networks (who is actually reselling Northpoint's service). In three months I've been down roughly three days. Price is $40 per month. Install was $250 with $250 refund (which I haven't seen yet). Overall I'm happy. Upload and download speeds are around 17kbs. I'm jealous of all of you that have download speeds of 100kbs or more, but what can I do? Nothing.
Ever heard of hobbiton.org?
They are a big provider of free Unix shells to those who have a need. And they've been shut down a few times (without cause) by fickle DSL providers who apparently hired their workers at gas stations.
Read the sordid story at http://hobbit on.org/ displayfile.cgi?title=News&file=/info/news. Some interesting tidbits on how they were treated by different DSL ISPs are provided.
~ Give me 101 plastic soldiers, and I will conquer the world.
First off, if you're not a joe average user and you're even remotely concerned about the quality of your home Internet connection, completely and utterly boycott cable modem. Read a story I wrote sometime ago.
Second, everyone saying you get what you pay for is on the mark. However, there is no company anywhere on the planet that can guarantee you 24/7/365/life connectivity for any amount of money, no matter what they say. It comes down to what level of service you can live with, and accepting the fact that there will always be problems at some point.
I have worked for several ISPs. I've dealt with ILECs and CLECs. I can tell you that your best bet for DSL service is to find an ILEC or CLEC that offers DSL directly (i.e try to cut out as many of the middlemen as possible). The trick to this is finding one that has a "fair" acceptible use policy in regards to home LANs, VPNs, personal servers, etc.
With my current DSL service in Chicago (PhoenixDSL is the ISP, NorthPoint is the CLEC, Ameritech is the ILEC), I am caught up in the middleman game. Phoenix is a decent (read: semi-responsive) provider, but when there are problems the only people I can bitch at is them. I can't go to NorthPoint or Ameritech directly, but instead have to get Phoenix to complain on my behalf. And let me just say that an ISP in their situation only has so much pull with the CLEC (given that the CLEC is what enables them to do business in the first place.) The ILECs and CLECs generally do not cooperate with one another, since they are the competition. Finding an ILEC or CLEC who offers DSL directly gives you slightly more control -- when you call them, they can't point the finger at the other guy.
Finally, take the suggestion of another poster. Take lots of detailed notes. Be a jerk in the sense that you don't let anyone push you around. At the same time though, remember that your $40-50/mo. plan works out to roughly $1.50 a day. So unless you're down for a month or are explictly paying for better service (i.e business class with an SLA), keep in mind that the initial person you're yelling at on the other end of the phone isn't responsible for your problems.
-phillip
You'd expect the Phoenicians most likely to demand fast wires to be near Arizona State U... I'm in an apartment just a few miles away, and a Cox cablemodems should have been in my room by now. My friend has a house across the street and is getting the runaround over Quest DSL. Good luck.
I'm an early adopter with PacBell, and the original installation was slow and sloppy. But after some early problems (bad card in the DSLAM and the line not properly prepped--a couple of bridge taps not removed), the actual DSL service has been excellent. I run about 800K downstream, and I'm about 14,000 feet from the CO. So, PacBell (the Telco) is good.
Pac Bell Internet (the ISP) is pretty lame. News servers frequently down, and speed capped on their news servers, along with a lot of missing posts. This may be slightly improving, but you may do better with a different ISP. The actual DSL service is good, and seems more consistent that some of my co-workers report from @home.
I've got 1.1Mbps SDSL in Detroit. Works beautifully. My install only took 1.5 weeks start to finish. (I've been told this is very unusual.) I had a few problems up front, but Speakeasy credited me for the time I was unhappy. During the day it's almost impossible to get a person on the phone. (At night it's a snap.) The best part of Speakeasy's service is their VERY knowledge tech support staff. I reccomend them to anyone that is in their coverage.
I'd been having intermittent problems with my old amati modem temporarily loosing signal (repeated 1-12 second outages). Telus recently replaced it with a 3com unit. After an afternoon of problems, it's now been pretty rock solid for the last couple of days. (a running ping test has dropped 5 packets out of 84000 in the last day.
Bandwidth seems clean. I have often gotten downloads in the 25KB~120KB/sec range (as measured by netscape). Evidence from trying multiple downloads with gnapster indicate that bottlenecks are rarely, if ever local.
I've been paying $70CAN ($50US)/month for the service. When they replaced my modem they seem to have downgraded me to $35/month ($20US). Since I don't loose effective bandwidth, I'm not going to complain.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I probaly would not but from them
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
TST OnRAmp oversold their bandwidth several times over. During business days, during the day, our service averages a 2000 ping to any service. Sometimes we can actually pull 128kb/s through the connection we have... but doing anything requiring reasonable pings is impossible, and often bandwidth drops into the 64kbs range. Sometimes, we can't even reach some hosts that others have no problems reaching.
- MaineCoon
Meow.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
What I found with DSL Reports is that people are much more likely to focus upon the negative aspects of a service - those who are happy with their providers tend not to post positive reviews.
For example, I read the reviews of my provider, Telocity, after I'd ordered the service, and thought to myself, "Oh, shit, I guess I'll have to cancel the order."
As it turned out, my modem arrived two weeks early, the service was impeccable, and I haven't had a single problem with them in the five months that I've used their service.
DSL Reports certainly has value, and in concept it's fantastic. In practice, though, it's not all that it's cracked up to be. You'd be much better off asking a friend - or, if there's a Linux User Group in your area, ask them -- the Philadelphia user group has been exceedingly helpful for lots of people.
I've been thinking about organizing some sort of group to express the overall dismay with the @home mail servers. I had the misfortune to speak to a 'tech' again today on the subject and he said that they only consider it a problem if the whole mail server goes down. Please contact me at pmm42@hotmail.com and let's get the ball rolling. -Pete
I got DSL a few months ago after giving the boot to a really awful unidirectional cablemodem. Admittedly I ordered it around the end of March and it wasn't installed until early June, but that was Verizon's fault (Verizon also mistakenly broke one of my phone lines in the process, boo). I've seen a lot of crappy DSL companies out there (ie Infospeed), so I was very careful about reading the contract when I found one I liked. And it worked! Bell Atlantic didn't have an office in my area, oddly enough, though they stuck an advertisement on my doorknob...so I contacted about five Covad ISPs with questions about policies and finally found mine. Now I'm surfing the web on a 1500/384 RADSL connection from Speakeasy.net (also the Seattle-based owners of one of the first ever Internet Cafes) and haven't had even a second of downtime since it got activated. They're all very helpful, and you get two free IPs with your order. You can get dynamic or static--your choice, and up to eight extras for 2.95 each (for more you need a business account). Plus I can run just about any kind of [non-IRC] server without violating the contract, and they'll even help me set up my hostname, et cetera. Two email addresses too, and a Q3A server. It's unbelievable--I must be extremely lucky. The only downside is that the closest POP is New York, and they route you through Seattle as default (you can request another POP, but they have to change your IP addresses--and that's not so bad anyway), even if you live in Washington, DC, like I do. But they're planning new POPs all over, including one in Phoenix if I remember correctly. For more information, they're at http://www.speakeasy.net. If you register, please put down Aciel as the reference. Happy surfing! Aciel aciel@speakeasy.net
I love DSL. It is the greatest net connection one can have for 60 bucks a month.
But it is also the biggest headache you will ever encounter when obtaining net access (unless your trying to get an OC48 to your apartment)
I first called in for access in February. I was told it would be about 4 weeks before an install. My ADSL modem, network card, and low pass filters arrived within two weeks. No problems there.
About the 4 week mark, the tech arrived, as planned, and everything was setup and working properly. Only minor hitch was getting DHCP to work with my linux installation.
Well, everything was awesome. I was consistently able to get 1.2Mbps download, yes, 1.2Mbps. Upload was about 200Kbps.
It was pure heaven for a whole week. Then SWbell decides that they need to use PPPOE to authenticate DSL customers, and prevent users from getting 20+ DHCP leases, and tying up IP addresses.
Well, this fucked everything up. I could no longer get DHCP replies because the routes were fucked, and this left me dead in the water. They would not convert me to PPPOE, and even this wouldnt have solved the problem apparently.
After two and half months of getting nowhere, I gave in and bought the static IP package.
I now have 5 static IP addresses for my DSL line, and no worries with DHCP and all that crap.
And its back to 1.2Mbps.
Sweetness... as long as it works.
So, buyer beware, and expect problems, and lots of frustration. It will not be smooth. And if it is, its an anomoly, so be happy.
Maybe I'm lucky, but : I ordered my DSL line in February, had it installed by a tech who made *one* visit ( including installing Enternet ) in mid-March, had some problems with slow data rates in July, and am otherwise happy! Probably because I'm in a city, and living in a recently ( 15 y/o ) constructed building, so I don't have to deal with loading coils, etc. Just want to balance the picture a bit!
I run US West (er, Quest) DSL in Tempe. It's been for the most part stable (few outages here and there). For some inexpicable reason, they upped our bandwith from 256k to 650 last month without charging us extra (I'm not compaining) The sales system out here, however, is subpar. I had a client out in Glendale who kept getting mailers for DSL. We'd call up to order only to be told it's still not availble, that the local telco location had not been upgraded to the new equipment. It wasn't until we got fed up with waiting and went to order an IDSN line that the ISDN salesperson told us DSL was in fact availble and the equipment had been online for quite sometime. A few frustrating hours of going back and forth with US West to get all their departments to agree, and we got the thing ordered. Two weeks later it was up and running. I don't know how US West has changed since Quest took it over, but I think the moral of the story is, keep calling back and talking to different salespeople until you find an answer that you like.
The Internet is generally stupid
I'm in Colorado too, and have experienced both cable and DSL, and after all is said and done I'd prefer DSL.
My parents got DSL in Boulder after a 6-month wait in May of 1999. Granted, the wait sucked ass for them but as far as I could it wasn't entirely due to USWest's complacency. I have a cable modem at college in Golden at the wait was less than a week, so clearly cable wins in this department.
When DSL is on, however, I'd take it over cable anyday. The bandwidth is much more consistent (as noted on Napster), pings are consistently lower (as noted in CS) and although my experience doesn't seem to be the norm, my peak speeds have come on DSL not cable (random DLs & Napster). Best of all, USWest/QWest has yet to license @home's Random 2-Hour Service Outage (tm) patent. Keeping in mind that USWest/QWest is massive, the service my parents get has been pretty good overall, but then again I've never had to call @home for anything in 1.5 years. :)
Finally, the filters for phones are the day-to-day annoying thing about Napster, they don't always stay on properly so sometimes phonecalls have a fair bit of noise in the background.
I have got to share this with someone... Montana is very rural and I live about 40 miles from the nearest small city, 12 from the nearest place with any people, however the local phone company, Centurytel (the cover alot of places all over the country) has a switch about 2 miles up the road so I get excellent DSL service. The hardest part was getting the modem. No one seemed to know when UPS was going to deliver it. I ended up driving into town to get a loaner modem from them. But otherwise the setup has been very easy. So, I think some places have their shit together and others do not. There is another small phone company in the valley south of here and you cannot get any residental broadband, except perhaps a T-1 or 56k, and that will not change for many years. The pain of local exchange monopolies...
I'm also in Austin. We ordered DSL in June from SWBell, cancelled the order last week, and now have RoadRunner (installed in three business days.) FYI, I used to be on the Austin Telecommunications Commission... TW made a commitment to the Commission that RR speeds in Austin would never drop below 128K. Whether or not they hold to that, hard to say, but hopefully they will. ---Ellen B
For new york people, I would recommend looking at INYC.COM first and then flashcom second. I pay about 80 bucks a month for 2 static IPs @ 1.6mbps down and 384K up. I usually get these speeds too.
So far so good ...
I've been using Concentric for almost a year. I ended up going with them because at the time my local telco, Ameritech, wasn't offering DSL, and Americast, their cable unit, didn't (and still doesn't) have the infrastructure to offer cable modems. Covad provides the back end unit at the telco, but that's transparent to me. It took about 6 weeks from first contact to a live connection. The biggest delay was getting Ameritech to bring in a new line to the house, of course. It turned out that so many people in the neighborhood had 2nd or 3rd phone lines that they had to upgrade their hardware to accomodate any more. I've encountered only one unscheduled outage this whole time, and it lasted just a couple hours on a weekend evening. Scheduled outages come every month or two, usually in the middle of the night for a few minutes. They always send out a warning a few days ahead of time, and they've never caused a problem for me. Tech support quality? Can't really say since I haven't needed it. When I signed up, they provided straightforward instructions on configuring my system, and it's been very solid ever since. Cost? Since my employer pays for it, it wasn't a factor in selection, but I pay $89/month for 4 static IP addresses. I don't own any stock in or work for Concentric, Covad or Ameritech/SBC.
Sympatico high speed is good.. I have three computers connected (directly.. yum) to it and no one has complained so far... The service has never been down and the only problems I've had have been with the billing deparment typing in the wrong expiry date for the credit card 4 times... (butt heads)
I use IDSL (it's all I can get--PAC BELL SUCKS) from NorthPoint through InternetConnect and it's fine.
I moved into my apartment 5 months ago to find that cable tv was on. Time Warner has repeatedly mailed me postcards warning that the service will soon be cancelled, but, five months later, its still on.
I would like to get some kind of broadband service, but (being a grad student) cannot really afford both cable TV and a net access.
There is one dsl service us here, but the reviews are not too good, so I am considering going with RoadRunner. My question is then, if I get RR installed, will the installer discover that the TV is still on and turn it off (or worse charge me for the last five months), or are the two systems distinct enough that it might slip by?
The reason some companies will give you DSL at 144 both ways and your TELCO will not give any, is because they are offering what is know as IDSL. You know what the "I" stands for? ISDN!! All it is is cross between ISDN and DSL. That max speed IDSL can get is 144 each way. And you can be a long ways away from the CO also. Rob
DISCLAIMER: I work for a data competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC)/DSL provider, who shall go unnamed because i want to make it clear that this is my personal opinion and not related in any way to any position taken at any time since the beginning thereof by my employer. these are *my* opinions, and my employer can't have them.
L LLLTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you want to know where a lot of ridiculously long lead times come from with DSL service, I'd say that you OFTEN need to look at your local phone company (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier, ILEC).
The situation you have when buying DSL from anyone but your phone company is that the company you're contracting with (Rythms, Northpoint, Covad, etc.) has to set up your DSL line in conjunction with your local phone company. The problem is that your local phone company would prolly like to sell you DSL, either now or when they can, and they don't feel any particular need to cooperate with the CLEC. Sure, the CLEC can go to court and sue the ILEC for X million dollars for non-cooperation, but the CLEC is likely to just take the hit and file it under costs for maintaining their market share (and these awards are generally not large enough to make an ILEC blink an eye).
Add that to the general phone company principle that it's a bad idea to ever cooperate with anybody, and you get things like trouble tickets that mysteriously get closed with no action being taken, orders that get dropped, never acted upon, or acted upon weeks after they're placed, transmission techs who have trouble getting access to ILEC central offices in order to fix or install equipment, etc., etc.
If, on the other hand, you ordered DSL from your local phone company, you probably have a nicer experience, one tempered only by the incompetence of your ILEC (these are the same people who made ISDN such a smashing success, and who insisted for years that connecting third-party equipment to your wall jack would single-handedly bring down phone service in entire neighborhoods).
Now, you might think that since ILECS were supposed to implement line sharing in all their central offices by 6/6/2000, that some of these problems are going to go away in the near future.
Essentially, this means that you can put DSL on the same voice line that you already have. So, it's a lot less work for the ILECs. My personal prediction, though, is that they'll just find ways to screw the CLECs. I mean, they still have to run the wire pair through a splitter and from there punch it down to a bundle that goes to the CLEC equipment, and I bet they find plenty of excuses to delay even that tiny bit of labor.
PBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBLLLLLLLLLL
-k. ^-^ ^D
I live in the Berkeley Area on the fourth floor of a very ghetto apartment that slants... My apartment was the only one that came with 2 phonelines, and the one that wasn't set up initially was the only one highly rated enough for DSL...so I came out lucky. I ordered DSL in July, and was very excited about Mindspring's offer for 50 bucks for the first 3 months. The problems began happening when PacBell reported problem after problem... my voltage was too high, they couldn't gain access to the box...this time they brought the key, but they couldn't fix the voltage... it went on and on. Finally when the digital line was installed, I arrived and was called by the Mindspring rep. The customer service person told me by all means I HAD to have the phone box open. So I leave a message for the manager to open the box--but he has no key--in fact the only ones who have a key are PacBell...I call up the PacBell service number and ask them if they had the key--they declare they cannot have a box locked if it could potentially block other companies from accessing the box... so then I go to my lock picking specialist, and he comes in with all the tools and starts to try to open the PacBell lock... my god... my manager just happens to come on the scene and gets completely pissed off that I'm trying to pick the lock... so my friend hands me the tools and tells me that if I want to pick it...I should go ahead. I call PacBell again to get them to open the lock. They say "don't call us, we'll call you". I'm again in the dark. I go down by myself with the intent to pick the phone box lock... ok this time I can do it--concentrate........ and suddenly I hear loud boots..... CLOMB CLOMB CLOMB... I remember seeing a pac bell truck outside of the apartment and I quickly put 2 and 2 together... and drop the tools into my pocket and try to look innocent. YEp--a gigantic pac bell repairman comes on the scene... and UNLOCKS the very door I was trying to pick.... he doesn't notice my guilty look and I "innocently" ask him if he can please leave the box open so this repair man can install DSL.... He tells me I can if I get my manager's permission...so I race around looking for the manager that got pissed at me earlier--no where to be found. Damn!! the pacbell man is late for his appointment elsewhere adn can't wait for the already late Mindspring install man. He leaves...and I'm again faced with a closed and locked door... Finally I get the call (exactly at 5, the latest time that the DSL guy said he could come)... I tell him about my plight...and he tells me that he'll see what he can do about it... indeed he was a huge guy...and he RIPPED off teh cover of teh DSL box..... BLAM... opened--locks hanging from the hinges--useless....... man if my manager had seen that he'd have flipped out.... anyhow...the DSL was successfully installed...and I'm getting pings of 45 ms (not that great for quake) and download speeds on average of 150 KB/s (yes that's kilo-bytes...) really kewl :-D ...unfortunately it took them from early july to late august to get it installed...but hey it was worth it!!!!!
Howdy all!
My dad ordered ADSL from Earthlink/Mindspring on the 5th of September, I got the DSL modem on the 12th and had it up and fully working by the end of the evening. I was amazed when it worked, it only took 1M30S to d/l all my email for the day. on my 28.8 modem, it would take more than 20M!
Just my $.02
Thnx,
Fuller
ps. I live about about 400' from the local exchange box thingy and 4398' from the Telco CO.
#BBS-Files on DALNet IRC, Come and Chat about the good old days of BBSing!
I link in the Western burbs Illinois and am 19,000 feet from the CO. My DSL is through Telocity, which contracts Rhythms to do it. NorthPoint is the provider. The installer came with two trainees to my house, and they were all kind of looking at each other with a "holy s--t it actually worked" expression. Since then people who live a few doors down have tried to get DSL, and even Telocity/Rhythms refuses to put it in because they are "too far away from the CO". I personally had to call about 10 DSL co's. before I could I talked to anyone who was willing to install it out here. The line itself has always been reliable, its been down for a day twice, but this was due to some router at the NOC biting it.
If you don't believe me, then this posting is a figment of your imagination.
http://bellsouth.linuxgod.net/bellsouth/
OUT PHONE COMPANY IS NOTHING BUT A BUNCH OF FAGS.
I work as an intern for Gromco, a small internet startup that does ISP comparisons. At www.ispmenu.com you can put in your address and we pre-screen to see if you can get DSL at your address and list what plans are available... end of self-plug...
We work with DSL a lot and generally it is simply a bit of a pain for home users for several reasons including the local phone companies and unmotivated DSL salespeople. Generally though people do get what they want in the end.
Jeff Senter
I've had Pacific Bell's residential DSL service (in L.A.) for eight months and from the downloading point of view it is certainly 'all that', a reliable 145 to 150 Kbps. (You can test your connection speed here.) It took several phone calls and a trip to a downtown hotel to get the service established and hardware installed. However, as an obsessive mp3 and porn consumer, I am incredibly satisfied with the service, especially the price. Caveats: (1) the basic residential package limits up-stream to around 12 Kpbs, making DSL a bad choice for uses like video-conferencing, and (2) you can use the DSL line simultaneously for vox calls but filters are required and even with filtering there's occaisional line noise; if I had it to do over I would use a fax/comm line for the DSL.
Obviously, the company I work for doesn't have its act together and hasn't for many months, and many of its customers are getting the shaft as a result. Customer service has gotten so bad that the purely technical staff (moi) have had to step in to address problems. (I've been hanging on for the near-free wicked fast Internet connection offered to employees and for the stock options, otherwise I would have left by now.)
Since my CO isn't up and running with my company, and is months behind schedule, I got hooked up with SpeakEasy (Covad). Slick organization, everyone I've talked has known their stuff and been very polite and professional. Too bad I don't live in the Seattle area, or I'd apply for a job there. Their online order status is really slick, too.
Have you looked into the Sprint wireless solution, seems to be quick self-install option.. it's wireless and fast from what I've heard. I know several people in Tucson using it already, and it's supposed to be available in maricopa county. http://www.sprintbroadband.com This isn't like the DSS dish thing where you still have to dialup for upstream traffic... apparently it's a roof mounted flat dish wireless tranciever. Might be worth a look... could this be the future? Can't wait for this to come to california.
DISCLAIMER: The following represent soley my opinions. Fearing the ILEC CLEC wars and such, I embraced the dark side and signed up about June with Ameritech, now an SBC flunky. First, the line work: My neighbor ended up with my phone line for over a week. Me -- no phone service. My answering machine was toasted. Ameritech's response: "That can't happen." Multiple no-shows during 4 hour windows -- gee, I like taking time off for no reason. Second, the service: As often as not, I'll connect to the local collector but can get no further. Pinging, tracing IP's passed back for DNS dies without completing. Only 'fix' is to wait for the 'glitch' to pass -- can be hours or days. When you call to sign up, the phone is answered within a minute. Any tech call, count on at least 1/2/ hour before hearing a voice. Then, they usually can't fix anything. They're nice and don't sound exceptionally incompetent, but they're subcontractors and have no real control. It seems the only thing they can do is walk you through you own system's configuration. If it's anything to do with the network, you're talking to the wrong people. Talk to an insider you know, and they'll admit the tech side is severely understaffed. Recommentaion: STAY AWAY, STAY AWAY, STAY AWAY from Ameritech (and, I imagine, SBC)!!! My dial up was more reliable.
Interesting that so many of you are having problems.
;)
The first thing I want to say is that Verio can rot in hell. I had dialup access with them (which I cancelled when I got DSL) and spent 8 months fighting bogus charges and inept billing and customer service reps, before I finally threatened legal action and got somebody to return my emails.
In any event, I received an ad for GTE DSL right around Christmas of last year, called, and had everything set up within 2 weeks, right after Y2K. No problems, zero downtime for almost 10 months now, fast as sin (half a T1 down) and only $5 more expensive than my second line and double-56k dialup. GTE (local telco) provides the aDSL link, bright.net provides the connection and mailboxes. Free installation, free equipment with 1-year agreement.
My boss recently got hooked up with a startup called BigNet, which provide service on Covad DSL. They worked everything out, including problems with the wiring between the local telco (Ameritech) station and his house, and he was up in 3 weeks.
I haven't heard of ANY DSL problem amongst my friends, relatives and peers here in Cleveland. The cable modem people who got RoadRunner 2 years ago at 10 megabits, and are now paying the same monthly fee for 200 kilobits-- they, on the other hand, are really torqued.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
Bad news first. If Quest (formerly US West) says your line isn't good enough yet for DSL, fastq won't sell you service. I must be one of the few people in the west who are happy with DSL. I went with fastq, a Quest DSL reseller, because their rate was the same as the Quest rate for bundled DSL/ISP service and they gave me a better price on the router. Quest was insisting that I buy the router from them. fastq's approach was "Use any router you want. We have some deals." I liked that approach better from the get go. Things started bad when Quest didn't have my connection hooked up by the promised date. Fastq handled the hassle and didn't charge me till the connection was ready. They also supplied loaner filters till the ones from Quest came in the mail. The service is reliable and there is almost 24/7 phone support (no support Sunday after 2:00 pm). I have connected with Linux, MacOS 9, MacOS X and Windows. I've never had a problem. I also bought a hub and plugged in my wife's machine and my Intel box. Everything just worked.
Our business had MANY problems getting service from Concentric and ultimately canceled our order with them. Granted, ou order was during the Verizon strike and that was uncontrollable and understandable, but we had people show up and point fingers back and forth all the time. My take is that nobody has figured out a brilliant integration method for managing the installation of service across two or three companies (umbrella like Concentric, Local Telco, and actual Local DSL Provider). We have started the process over with Verizon themselves in an effort to get better customer service (we got less than none from Concentric) by taking out at least one variable... DSL is a crap shoot! I also have it in my house and that went off without a problem...
We have DSL and have had no problems with it at all. We're actually too far away from the "home office" (what a BS ridden euphemism) and our line was installed by mistake. Even so, after boosting the voltage the router uses for its uplink we got a 384/256 connection that is stable and hasn't given us any trouble at all.
We're using USWest to provide the copper of course, but we certainly aren't using them for our ISP. No, we're using another company called Inficad which provides us with a static IP which is always on. We're paying a little extra to go with Inficad, but I know better than to use "UsWorst." To be fair USwest does offer a good 56k dialup service, at least in my area. Even so, I'd heard enough rumors of problems with their DSL to avoid using them.
One of the nice things about using a small company like inficad is that they aren't bandwidth nazi's. They don't care if I set up apache or even an FTP server (not that I have one, I'm not some lame brained warez "dood"). Also we get 5 email addresses and 50 megs of web space if we want to set up a page on their servers. Not a bad deal for ten extra bucks a month.
No, I don't work for inficad and no I don't get kickbacks from them. I'm just happy with the service they have provided and wanted to pass this experience on as DSL seems to be taking a PR pounding.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I wish I had seen this earlier. Wireless is probably your best bet. I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico where we have also been screwed by US Worst. (now Qwest)
I had heard a while back (on slashdot I believe) about wireless in the Phoenix area. They were using radio waves to transmit the net. I thought it was kinda cool at the time but figured I'd never see the light of it.
Come to find out there is a solution in Alb. from a company called Clearwire. We just ordered it today after seeing a demo. It was fast. (the demo we saw was 512k down, 256 up.) Clearwire peaks at 640k down 256 up, which is MUCH better than the isdn line we've been using. US Worst will never get us DSL or T1 for that matter. (even though Intel has a large fab a mile from my office, I still can't figure that one out) Anyway, search for a wireless service. Your local ISP's probably already know and can deliver it to you. Oh, they will be installing it next week which I can't wait to see. Only involves attaching an antenna to the roof and a router to our hub, all of which are being provided as part of the server. ($200 per month for 512k down. This is much better than the $300 plus that US West was quoting on DSL)
This DSL provider was aweful. I live in Boston, and my gateway was in LA. If they told me that, I never would have signed up. 200 m/s pings to a gateway, to me, is rediculous.
:)
When I called them to complain, they told me this was normal, and that all their east coast customers were set up this way. To the untrained eye, the service was probably ok, but I make a living dealing with net conjestion, and I noticed right away. This pissed me off, it was like they were pulling the wool over the eyes of internet users who were probably switching from dialup and didnt know they were getting hosed.
THEN it took 2 months to cancel. Several calls to tech support, who in turn opened a ticket with covad, a provider on the east coast who they were partnered with, and who was responsible for the last mile connectivity. Of course the ticket is closed immediately, "customers line looks fine", and no one calls me to followup.
So then, Im on the line with this bitch of a billing person, who wouldnt know a router from a rollar skate, tells me that I have no grounds or evidence to cancel. Then I asked to talk to her boss, she told me I couldnt talk to anyone other than her. So After I called her some naughty names, and refused to never get off the phone, I got to talk to a manager... and finally cancel. it sucked. worst experience Ive had in a while. Thank goodness I was able to use citibank to reject the charges of the two months I was on the ropes.
So Im back to roadrunner, and Im fairly happy. And thats that.
Here in Canada (the land of ice and snow). DSL and Cable are bountiful! Getting 1.3Mbps/160kbps (down/up) is considered BARE MINIMUM! There are several of the major centers in Canada that are offering 7Mbps/1Mbps and for under $100US/month (its $100CDN/month). For basic 1.3/160 I pay $35CDN/month which is about $25US Cheers Sputnik sputnikid@hotmail.com
Although I will not have DSL until October 2nd, my experience so far has not been great. I got a new phone number almost a month ago now and wanted to get DSL hooked up. Unfortunenlty Bell (my telco) said that DSL isn't avaliable on my phone line (even though I knew it was) so they said wait 5-7 days. I did that, still nothing after that time. Finally 3 weeks later they finally figured out we could get it, so like I said at the beginning of this post it's getting hooked up October 2nd. I hope it will be a better experience from this point on!
My wife is having bandwidth blues at her office (our ADSL at home really spoils her). Problem is that her office is essentially a converted barn in the middle of some fields, miles away from the closest central office. @home won't even talk to her and ISDN would be too expensive (because PacBell would have to run the wires 10 miles or whatever).
One day she gets some junkmail from one of the major US ISPs that just started offering DSL service which claims they can give her DSL. She figures, what the hell, and gave them a call. The sales guy was clueless or something. He looked up their address and instead of telling her that they couldn't really get DSL (like every other DSL provider did), he said they could get at least a 144 (IDSL, I guess). She didn't believe it, so she asked if he could fax her a signed guarentee that this ISP and Covad would provide her with a 144kb/sec connection to their office. He faxed it right over!
I will mention Covad because they're great guys - I was very impressed with the install they did on our line at home (the guy was running late but he still came and did it at 19:00 instead of rescheduling). This ISP tells my wife just to call Covad and schedule the installation. So that's what she does and Covad laughs, going, "But your location isn't serviceable!" So my wife tells the Covad guy about the written agreement (which is binding on Covad here in CA) and he gets like the VP of Covad or something on the line, then they party call the ISP and get the origonal salesguy on the line and he gets like the VP of sales for the ISP on the line (and this is like one of the big 10 US ISPs we're talking about here). Covad completely rips the ISP a new oriface, but all agree that the contract is binding.
My wife was hoping they'd just drop a T1 line to the office, but instead Covad is installing an IDSL head in a junction box like a mile from her office, then Covad has to connect the head to the central office miles away (as well as to the office, of course). Of course, they're charging the ISP through the nose for this. And my wife's office will have decent bandwidth for like $39.95/month and no installation fee.
The moral of the story is that DSL providers may make a lot of claims - just be sure to get them in writing.
Finally - I will join the masses in saying that Speakeasy.net (which is who I have here at home) totally rock. If you can get them, definately do. Other's have noted that people don't post reviews on DSLreports unless something goes wrong, and that's totally true. I've been a happy speakeasy customer for a year now and only now (prompted by this /. story) went and gave my thumbs up for them on DSLreports.
-"Zow"
- It is more secure
- Your neighbors aren't going to slow you down.
- It is more consistant
There seems to be some unreliable cable service around here.Last weekend I was trying to download video drivers for someone on their cable connection (7 meg file). It took me 5 tries before it actually finished downloading without stopping. I DLed it at my house using telnet at a nice constant speed (~40k/sec) in a couple minutes from the same ftp. It didn't seem like the cable was good for any kind of streaming at all. 30k would come in at a time, then wait 30 seconds before receiving another chunk. It never got above 12k/sec. Of course the guy says "it was fast when I got it." :)
Sound familiar anyone?
Forgot to mention, I have GTE for the line / phone service. GTE in my experince is much better than QWORST.
I work for an ISP based in Tempe, AZ. We have just begun to roll out our new wireless solution. We have been developing this solution for about 2 years from concept to the first real non beta installations. It is different from MMDS solutions in that we have many head ends (cell sites) which allows our sector size to be much smaller, thus providing more control over bit error rates (the stuff that makes that high latency). This seems to be the problem with the other wireless solutions in the Phoenix area. We also developed a linux based router for the Customer side to help maintain QOS, do bandwidth management and other services for the customer. While we are not currently positioned as a residential service we do have some residential customers. And plan to offer residential wireless service in the future. As for DSL the only real hope you have for DSL is an alternate DSL provider (a local CELEC) which will be comming on line in Q1 2001. IDSL is worth the money in most cases because it is much more reliable technology in Phoneix. I offer this not as a sales pitch but as hope for you. There are other solutions on the way that wil not be distorted by so many men in the middle (ISP->CLEC->RBOC->customer=lots of finger pointing in most cases).
of course everyone must agree that in general people are not inclined to compliment when things go smoothly but are very likely to complain when they don't. the problem is, DSL has a very high rate of not going smoothly. i don't know all the legal details, but a class-action lawsuit was filed against pacific bell (my local DSL provider) because of how bad their service is/was. that isn't just a few dissatisfied customers complaining. that doesn't happen to cable providers.
my personal experience with DSL was quite horrendous. i signed up in december and was given a january installation date. i was under the impression that my service would be a 128/384-1.5 line with one static IP and one email address, and would come with an alcatel DSL modem (according to their website). after the installation (for which i was not present) i returned to my computer to find some very unexpected things. the first thing i noticed was that the modem was not only not an alcatel, it wasn't even plugged into my NIC. it was USB. i then noticed a new icon on my desktop labeled "DSL Connect." that's right, i was given dynamic IP dial-up DSL. they never told me that. it wasn't announced. they secretly changed the service without telling anyone on january 1st. over the next week the service disconnected continuously while i was using it, not to mention it automatically disconnected after a rather short period of idle time (making FTP hosting and other such activities impossible). i was outraged. i demanded to have the service revoked due to being completely duped, and after about six one-hour-long phone calls they seemed to relent. but i was still charged on my phone bill for the installation and first month's service. i'm sorry, but that is just simply ridiculous. (i was able to get those charges dropped from the bill eventually).
i'm now back on 56k (cable is *still* not available here, though they claimed it would be in three weeks about 14 months ago) and i can't say i'm sorry. the outright shitty service offered by pacbell is not worth $50 a month by anyone's standards.
the real issue is that pacbell (and probably other dsl providers) are completely overloading their capacities. on top of that, they continue to advertise ("always fast, never shared" my pasty ass) and try to bring in new business when they can't even begin to deal with the customers they already have. if that isn't illegal, it damn well should be.
yeah...the phone noise is a HUGE issue in my house right now. Some phones have become fairly unuseable (especially when my dog is eating right next to it ;-)
i have to note, you're one of the lucky ones. just wait till your service breaks...then you'll discover why they're called Qworst.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Alright.. here's the real deal.. as far as Concentric, now XO, does it.
Provisioning takes 35-90 Days. Why!. because the ILEC has to run a new loop.. why! because not until recently was a law passed so that Clec's could do line sharing, and thus a new loop must be run. Soon Covad/XO will be offering adsl line shared connections, then it will take about 10 days for an instilation. but for sdsl and idsl it will still be 35-90 days, unless you want to run the loop yourself.. then by all means.. go for it!
ADSL from XO (and as far as I know other places as well) is RATE ADDAPTIVE! meaning you sync up on the fly at whatever speed you can depending on distance and line conditions. and so that means that you could go down to idsl speeds.
Why does dsl take so long to be fixed when it goes down? because the clec and test the line, find an open, tell the Ilec to fix it.. they go out and comeback and say that their was nothing wrong, obviously the open is still there, the Ilec just needs to do their job, so a vender meet must be scheduled between the Ilec and the clec, making the resolution time longer..
if you want reimbursement for the time your are down, call billing, the numbers on your bill. and besides.. scheduling dispatches that the End User has to be their to let the tech in for TAKES TIME no matter who you are. or what business you run.
lastly, problems that are actually on XO's end are fixed very rapidly and don't happen that often.. we're (concentric) known for having stable fast networks. and Covad runs a very good business.. think about it.. its phone wire!.. not fiber! this stuff was put in back in the 16th century.. so don't complain.. and be happy you can get a dsl connection.. consider the alternatives.
and really.. think about it.. dsl is going to go down no matter who your with.. if you are completely crippled and losing money from you dsl line being down.. please get a T1, XO offers good prices and good networks!
BOFslime
XO dsl tech support rep
*disclaimer: what I say was for informational purposes and is what I tell my customers, but I'm nicer on the phone, to nice..
XO will be offering all in one services. YES! you can get dsl from one company!
one bill for local, long distance, and data.
no middle companies. everything comes from XO
we are the ILEC, we are the CLEC, we are the ISP...
We Are XO communications!
Not Just Talk!
www.xo.com
It took us about 4 weeks to get the router and everything, then we plugged it in, put in our name and password and nothing, so we call tech support, they say WTF, log on again, heh ok easy fix wrong password, here you go. Then we bullshitted for an hour or two about quake and unreal tournament. After that it went great till about a month ago when it would go down for about an hour every day for about 2 weeks. Ever since then it's been great and VERY reliable and EXTREMELY fast shoot I'm running my website off of it. http://matt.rapturesoft.yi.org btw. All of my friends went with cable using @home, and not one of them has ever managed to download at the speeds I'm getting(100-200k) and they can upload at only 10k, so it's definitly worth it if you plan on doing any type of filesharing or anything.
Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
My company has several Sprint DSL lines here in Las Vegas (nevada) at buildings other that our offices. The DSL service is ok, we have a problem much more often than we should but when they are up the speed is good 512K/128K. The biggest problem is with the customer support not even being able to figure out that the DSL line isn't at the building our office is in. Hell, they don't even know the phone number to our office, let alone where our lines are at.
A few of the problems:
1. Service is just turned off at the CO. Our modem finds the modem on the other side but no data is able to get there and back.
2. We have static address on each line. They gave away one of our ips to another customer 4 times.
3. For an on-site call, they entered a ticket, gave me the ticket number and then 3 weeks later claimed the ticket never existed so we had to start the process all over.
All this would be bad enough if it was a personal account, but come on, this is a business account.
Interesting... you live in dallas... I live in the mid-cities close to Fort Worth and I have @home as well... my provider is charter communications. I am very happy with @home here. The only time the cable connection went down was because a tornado ripped thru downtown Fort Worth and lines went down... Otherwise, I have had no connection problems.. I usually download above 200kB per second. I even hit a sustained rate of 700kB one time and I was shocked. That 700 kiloBytes(not bits) per second!
Otherwise, I have heard stories much like your own where weekly downtime seems to be a norm. I helped a friend of mine configure his IDSL connection which is slow as molasses and he had to wait god knows how long to get that. I really think the level of service for DSL vs. cable varies from area to area. Who is your local cable company? Maybe, in your case, DSL is the better choice.
I've had VelocityHSI service (http://www.velocityhsi.com) (I believe they work through PacBell lines) through our apt. complex for a year now, and though service may be down/sluggish for part of a day once a month, I regularly get 80KBps to 120KBps downloads (that's B for Bytes.) *Schweeeeett* We end up paying around $50/mo. for 3 static IPs et al. Unfortunately, I'm moving out of the apartment and into a nearby house; I'm not looking forward to the trials of getting service straight through PacBell, from all the grumblings I'm hearing. {Sigh.} But, I'm addicted.
Id like to praise the dsl offer Germanys ex monopolist 'Deutsche Telekom' has. Its *very* reliable. I got it 3 months ago and since then I never ever had any problem with the service. Its a 756 kbit/s upstream and 256 kbit/s connection via adsl-modem. And this is a fact. When I do an apt-get dist upgrade in debian the connection speed never drops below 85 Kb/s on the german mirror. Upload speed too is always as promised. And the best thing is that it the cost is only an additional 4$ to the ISDN fee. Flatrate is at around 34$. I am absolutely pleased with T-DSL.
I had Charter Cable and left them because of this, and also because they only provided 27K/sec. (I'm not shitting you. If you had two ISDN TAs and figured out a way to get all 4 B-channels to work together, you could actually beat it by a few K/sec. The promise of Cable was that it was supposed to be tens to hundreds of times faster than ISDN. How ridiculous.)
When I got DSL, I was pulling down 160K/sec. Then they had to drop me to 768k/sec (=~81K/sec) because of capacitance on my line; I live >10,000 feet away from the CO, so that really isn't so bad. That, plus the fact that my bandwidth to the C/O is A) dedicated, B) cannot be examined by other customers' DSL equipment, and C) PacBell is cooler than shit and giving me 5 IPs, letting me run my own servers, and even delegating reverse DNS to me, for about $80 altogether. (Something like $45 and you get 1 dynamic IP and you can't run servers, much less get to do your own reverse DNS. Still way the hell better than paying Charter $80 total for ~1/3rd the bandwidth.)
Used to have @home and full cable TV service. I got PO'd with our darn government forcing us to pay ever-increasing cable fees for channels neither you or I would ever watch. So, canceled the cable TV. Cable company said my @home service would then increase to $49.95 per month. I told them where to put the fee increase and signed up for ADSL. I was happy with my @home service and I would have kept it if the monthly charge remained the same. ADSL costs the same as @home did $39.95.
My observations are that ADSL is consistantly faster than @home. I will not get the tremendous bursts of speed on ADSL that I sometimes got on @home. I'll take consistanty faster any time over a few rare, 5am surfing time, bursts of speed. Telusplanet (aka the local phone company) offers excellent service and I have yet to have an outage. Get good bandwidth too. 1.5Mbps down and 0.5Mbps up.
The best part? I still have full cable TV for free. Phoned the cable company back in May to let them know I was not disconnected but they have not pulled the plug yet. Fsck 'em, bloody monopoly.
-- Spammers: My E-mail server is in California. Consider yourself warned.
In the Netherlands, ADSL is a disaster right now. I work for one of the ISPs that offer ADSL to their customers and we are facing major problems with our supplier. Most of the country can't be serviced yet, not by our supplier or any other one. The way the technical setup is right now, means that our customers have to log in on a website of our ADSL carrier provider and then log in to our system. The whole process involves Microsoft PPTP which makes it virtually impossible to run secure tunnels over the ADSL link. The amount of intermittent failures of the ADSL provider we use are also much higher than we would want to accept, but since there is no good alternative, we will have to make do with what we get. ISDN is almost no alternative, since only one provider offers a 24/7 ISDN uplink. This provider is a new player on the market and has a very limited service area. Because ISDN and PSTN in our country are charged by the second, staying online 24/7 is not affordable at all. The other alternative, Cable, is also not a serious one in most areas. Most of the country has no option of an uplink by cable, if there is one, there is usually no choice between upstream providers. The government ruled that for the coming 2 years, the monopoly on the TV cable is being prolongued. This results in high pricing and bad service from the cable companies, since their users have no real alternative.
I recently ordered Telocity for my small business. It should be up and running today and perhaps I'll post an update when I get to work. But this whole process has taken less than a month and I'm fairly pleased, although there has been some snags such as "software problems" on their end that have hindered me from being up and running. All the hardwiring was done by last week, which would have been only 3 weeks from when I placed my order. Good thing about Telocity is there's no contract. And you get a static IP. And about different providers saying they can and can't give you DSL... My understanding is different types of DSL can go different distances. I believe the max distance for ADSL (like Earthlink) is 10,000 feet. But for SDSL (like Telocity) it's 18,000 feet.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
Well i live in Denmark where the XDSL market explode this year. Earlier the prose was just to high (and only one provider offered flat rate).
But all is not well just the same. Until recently there was only one national phonecompany TeleDanmark (TD) (divided in regional offices of course, but you only had one choice)
Recently it was sold of, and the laws governing the telephone system was changed. But TD still owns all the copper lines.
TD themselves offer ADSL through your existing line, but they will not let competitors use the existing phone lines (they say it might cause interference). As a result you must have a new telephone line installed to get XDSL. As TD owns the infrastructure it is TD that must put in the new phone line. As they have an obligation (because of the de facto monopoly) to supply regular phone lines, they will only install a new phone line for XDSL if they have sufficient redundant capacity.
So if you want XDSL from the competitors TD can turn you down if they judge that do not have enough backbone in the area.
Furthermore since TD technicians install the new lines, and there are a lot of people wanting XDSL, the waiting time for the installation is ridicolous. I ordered my in mid-may, and got the line installed in mid august. And i was lucky since I was one of the first to order after the prices went down!
First TD has to find out if there is spare capacity, that takes up to a month! then they have to get a technician out which also takes time.
If I had ordered ADSL from TD, they can deliver in just 2 weeks since they just use the existing phoneline with a filter!
Well all that is ancient history now. I have my XDSL connection (using a 1-meg modem from nortel) 384/128 connection. Its not a monster connection, but for private surfing it's supreme. RH7 downloads in ok time so all is well.
So far, my experience with Telocity has been positive...although the DSL is not officially installed (due to my being on the road), the modem came before expected, and the service was installed before quoted. Telocity is month-to-month and does not require a time-based contract. More importantly to me, they don't have an issue with you running servers at home...as any decent pipeline-provider should.
I live in a wide spot in the road, 15 miles SW of Wichita, KS. My local phone company (which isn't a baby Bell, but an independant) is also my ISP, since they are my only choice (any other ISP would be a long distance call). They started out being pretty lame, running on some abomination of a Windows based server called GalaxyComm. When I ordered service, they asked, "What kind of computer do you have, Windows or Mac?" "Unix" "<E_OSNOTFOUND> -- What kind of computer do you have...." Every month or so they'd dink with something, and change the login proceedure from begin done before the PPP link came up to PAP. I'd call them and ask them to make up their minds (politely), and they'd say they didn't change anything. However, eventually they started to clue in, and things stabilzed.
One day, there was a bright light over their office, Angels Sang, and they converted to running Linux (note to BSD bigots: by this I mean they went to a Unix-like system, as apposed to NT. We are all on the same side.). Things got much better (and I have to wonder if their sysadmin didn't start realizing that I actually DID know what I am talking about...)
Then I received a flyer in my phone bill: they were offering DSL in "limited areas". I knew the answer, but sometimes it's the questions you don't ask, so I called them: "I know I'm dreaming, but will DSL be available in Viola?" "We are doing an experiment this afternoon, and if it looks good, yes." "OK, then, thank you anyway... WHAT!?!?! " The experiment was a success, and I signed up the next day. They sent the tech out to survey the site.
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(In case you don't know, G.DMMT (pron. "god-dammit") means they put a splitter at the NID (network interface device, the box on the side of your house), as compared to G.Lite, where every phone in your house has to have a splitter, which KILLS your signal)
I threw a third NIC into my firewall, and pulled CAT-5 from the NID, and set up a jack for the DSL feed next to the server. They came out, walked into the house. "Which computer does this go on, that one?" "No" "That one?" "No" "That one?" "No, walk this way." They got the DSL router! running, and the installer asks me for a piece of paper, upon which he writes 2 IP addresses. "This is your gateway address, and this is your address." "<E_NOT_DHCP> You mean you're giving me a FIXED IP ADDRESS?" "Yes, it's easier for us than setting up DHCP, and you're going to always up anyway."
Now, being that the service is through the phone company, they take downtime very seriously, and other than one time their main router went stupid (e.g. I could get to them, they couldn't get to the 'Net), I've had no service interruptions.
(Egads! when will this guy shut up! ) Be thankful I didn't tell you how my brand new NIC was bad, or how my server's mobo died that day, or....
The reason I am going into such detail is that I want to show that not ALL DSL providers are jackasses, nor are all DSL providers huge faceless companies. You might be surprised if you can get a smaller ISP/Phone company to service you. For $60 I have my connection (384/128 minemineMINE ALL MINE I DON'T HAVE TO SHARE WITH ANYBODY ELSE), in-house service, and my account. (Remember, there's not any other choice where I live, they could REALLY screw me on this) Servers? You got the bandwidth, it's your problem, just don't break the law, mkay? You're using a NAT firewall and feeding your network in the house? And this should concern us how?
As you can see, I'm rather pleased with my experience. Now, if the !@#()$* mirrors would free up so I can pull RH7.0 down!
www.eFax.com are spammers
I've had Concentric DSL here in Boston for the
last 6 months or so.
No problems. Works fine. No congestion, even
during brownouts on cablemodems.
Note- Bell Titanic (er... "Verizon" claimed I
was too far away from the C.O. to get DSL, but
Concentric said "no problem". Apparently they
second-source the actual wiring to a company named
"Covad" but it all works just fine.
I even get four _static_ IP addresses and they
don't care if I run servers.
-Dr. Crash
So far I've had no problems (6 months) Great speed and also, since I still have my account through my local ISP, they are hosting my webpage and shell account, while COVAD provides the ADSL connection. Download speeds are impressive. I just upgraded my Mandrake-linux through a net.img directly, it took about 2.5 hrs through midnite EST. The install was about 600M. happy happy happy ;-)))
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
In the past year I've moved from Lexington, KY to West Haven, CT. I've had ADSL service in both places. Here's how it went:
In Lexington, I had GTE (Verizon) provide the DSL and IgLou Internet provide the ISP service. I had the Bronze Plus line, 768/128 for $32/month, and the $30 package from IgLou. IgLou has a strange pricing scheme, in that they have two bandwidth levels (normal and really bad), and they offer different levels of service which really are throughput limits - for $30/month you get 3000 megs of throughput at normal priority, after which your bandwidth drops to about 64k.
GTE was pretty impressive; they came out when they said they would and the installer wound up rewiring basically everything (I had 50 year old lines) - from the pole to the house, new network entrance, new line from basement to DSL jack). The guy didn't leave until he had three green lights on the modem.
Service was OK, it was bridged DSL with static IP, but the network was way oversold -- in particular, at one point IgLou had a single ftame T1 between GTE and themselves -- and ping times would get up to the 400's during the day. At night and on weekends though it was fine. Using it with linux/ipmasquerade was trivial since it was "just ethernet" as far as the boxes were concerned.
Then I moved to Connecticut. This time I decided to just go with the ILEC and get the whole ball of wax from SNET. They offer a $39/month package 1500/128 (384/128 guaranteed) with their ISP service and self install. I took it; everything was basically delivered and turned on on time and the microfilter solution seems to work. The speed is great - I'm pretty close to the CO, so I get the full 1500/128, and latency is good at non-peak hours - one weekend I played Quake against some of my friends back in KY and had lower ping times to the server box at one guy's house than anyone else in Lexington at the same ISP was getting.
Unfortunately, SNET uses PPPoE. I use Roaring Penguin rp-pppoe on my P90 firewall, it works fine and reconnects reliably within 30 seconds when the ISP drops the connection (which it does on a regular basis, I'd say about four times a day). I've rigged up a little cron job to ftp the output of ifconfig ppp0 to a website at Tripod every 10 minutes so I can get back in from outside. I guess it works.
The real problem with SNET is their network. Although most of it is fine, and there is no problem getting data from the DSL/ATM cloud out to the actual internet, there is a well-known chokepoint with a SBC/WCG router in Stamford, CT, that can't handle the amount of traffic flowing through it. From 6PM to 11PM every weeknight, pings go up from 150 to 250 to hosts that otherwise give 60-80, and throughput will drop from 150KB/sec down to maybe 50KB/sec. Still quite usable and *much* better than 56K, but irritating nonetheless.
In short... I think that DSL is a decent solution. It's a better technology than cable modem, and more secure, and easier to set up with non-M$ or Mac operating systems. But the main problem is that a lot of ISPs and telcos have jumped onto the bandwagon without having the infrastructure to handle the demand. Both of the ISP's I've had had oversold their bandwidth, and I think the old argument that DSL proponents gave against cable modems ("wait til everyone in the neighborhood has it") applies equally to DSL.
I ordered DSL in New Jersey a few months ago, they told me 4 -6 weeks, and 4 weeks and 1st day I got my DSL connection. It works fine, the only thing is there were two lines coming in and they bum about on that all the time, Suddenly my line has to be switched from one line to the other. After complaining numerous times ( close to a dozen times) it has been resolved and over the last 2 months I have no problems what so ever. Verizon's web site (Bell-Atlantic when I got my installation done), gave faulty information, they said it could not be installed, but DSL reports said I could get it working, when I called Bell, they said it would work and kaboom now I am on a fully functional DSL.
Most DSL providers have some serious issue and the person responding from not-reseller (wholesaler?) of DSL is right about the he-said she-said nature of dealing with reseller-to c/ilec-to wholesaler nightmare of communications. Unfortunately, is doesn't get any better if you are dealing with a c/ilec that has their own DSL infrastructure. Again, the previous poster said, the cable plant is a nightmare, the clec doesn't like to clean it up and they tend to ignore the problem. The other problem is that the ilec ignores the problem.
My experience directly relates to HarvardNet. I previously was collocated in their Charlestown, MA, datacenter AND had a DSL circuit to my home office (no backhauling of T-1's allowed since they want to be paid twice for bandwidth). I also manage vender relations for clients that happen in some cases to have DSL circuits from HarvardNet.
So the DSL story is the circuit install took a long time (don't remember the actual number) and (this one I do) to an additional 8 weeks for service to be reliable even if it was in a degraded state. At the time, they exclusively offered rate adaptive DSL (RADSL). I signed up for a 256/256 kb circuit and received about 112/112 kb. As long as it stayed up, I could like. They were still unwilling to charge less than the 144/144kb minimal service offering they had.
Service sort of was stable with a few outages daily lasting from several seconds several minutes, mostly around I think 10 AM and 10 PM. 10 weeks after mostly stable 112 kb connections, the line quality fell apart again. So they turned up the circuit from the 256kb setting (remember I was seeing about 112kb) to 784kb and then I got about 200kb/200kb with the same routine outages daily. No problem.
Then they sold their soul to Cisco and threw out the Paradyne equipment and latency went away and so did what line reliability their was.
At this point getting things fixed became even harder because the basically ignored any repair tickets.
While all this was going on, I was having trouble in the datacenter as well that I won't go into here. They took forever to resolve any problems and they would always resurface. And billing was a disaster.
Finally, I had to declare my contracts with the breached. Their VP of Sales said in a conference call that it didn't matter if they didn't provide the service they promised; they expected to get paid. Our attorney's are talking. I assume HarvardNet's VP's attitude comes from the fact that DSL is not a tarrifed service like voice calls or traditional data circuits (not subject to the same duties and rules). That must be why SBC is being sued by their customers here.
Regarding clients, one in particular received installation service from HarvardNet when the customer premises equipment was left unplugged on a box of toilet paper in the telephone closet. That was their installation. I installed the CPE for the customer 3 months after the HarvardNet install (I came on the scene for the customer 3 months later). The services that were contracted for (DNS, webmail, etc.) had not been set up as stated by a fax dated 13 weeks earlier from HarvardNet. Someone even called from HarvardNet tech support asking 2 weeks prior to my installing (read that as plugging it into power and ethernet) asking if they had a firewall because they couldn't access the CPE. That would site outside the firewall and does. This customer receives 1/2 to 2/3 of the bandwidth they are supposed to. HarvardNet doesn't want to deal with it. I get called about it daily by someone in support asking to if the problem magically went away so they can close the ticket.
HarvardNet used to be a great company to deal with. Then they had 25 people (January 1999). Most of those are gone since they received venture capital and early this year they had in excess of 300 hundred, largely unskilled contractors. They said early this year that they expect to reach 700 this year.
The reviews of DSL reports are largely right on. Of the HarvardNet reviews (9 last I looked and none from me) 6 were negative and 3 positive. 1 of the positives changed to negative and the other 2 obviously were from HarvardNet employees, especially the anonymous one from an internal address range used by HarvardNet employees.
What makes this so bad is that HarvardNet charges a premium and markets to business customers, not home users. They claim great service. Unfortunately, the only place they deliver is pre-sales.
DSL potentially is a great technology but what hinders it is terrible technical infrastructure, lack of communications and lack of desire to fix problems. And I don't think my situation is unique.
In my medium sized town, Lincoln, Nebraska, we have one choice for DSL line service. Alltel, our telephone company, in a word, sucks.
I ordered DSL two weeks ago from a third party ISP and was told to pick the router up from the telephone compnay at the end of the week so they could program it, etc. I called the telephone company in the middle of the week to see if they had my order on hand and make sure everything was going to go as planned.
I had ordered the router with a special deal that stated I could buy the router for $99 and they would wave the $100 line installation charge if I signed up for a year. I was told by Alltel that they would not have my router for nearly a month because they were, "having problems with our hardware supplier." I guess they don't have the brains to order enough of these things when they run a special like that.
In short, I won't get my router for another two weeks and who knows when they will get around to flipping the switch on my line so I have service. Bitter? Who? Me? No...
user@host:/usr/bin$ whatis
java: nothing appropriate.
I'm in the Boston/Brookline area. I find DSLReports quite accurate but it depends on who is being sold to that determines your price. If you are a home user, than your price is cheap. If you are a business customer, frequently you have to bend over comparatively.
I work in the ISP industry. I don't know why people have not figured out that Broadband is a social experiment yet. The ratio of people that are happy with service is skewed from my end of the spectrum. The only people you talk to on my side of the business are the people that are unhappy.
Remember that old technology ISDN. I bet half of you don't remember when it was brand new. It was the same exact way. Orders from everywhere for installs,installers didn't know there ass from a whole in the ground. You were suprised they new what the phone and the RJ-11 jack was. This is the same with DSL.
The biggest problem with DSL today is the piece of equipment called the DSLAM. When I worked for Verio, the DSL provider NorthPoint changed code on the DSLAM more often than the toilets flush arond the world. All of the providers suck, Northpoint, Covad, Rythms, the bells. The only reason they do suck is because of the choice of equipment they buy and some of the code changes. Some of the changes to code can't be tested until they are put into a real environment, hence, downtime.
Just relax and don't scream so loud at the people that answer the phone. They are there to do a job and not be screamed at. Turnover is high in this industry because of people always screaming on the phone. Some people scream so load you can hear there hemmrhoids about to bust. Relax. As time goes on vendors will figure it out and DSL will be as stable as ISDN.
Huh?
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
We had DSL from Bell Atlantic for about six months. Worked great for a while, then there were a number of outages including one that lasted *5 days*. Their customer service is atrocious. They also appear to do no monitoring whatsoever. If something fails, no one at Bell Atlantic will notice until you call them.
We switched to cable modem service from RCN and have been very happy. At first the service was blindingly fast, now it has slowed down probably because they have added a bunch more homes in my neighborhood. It's still a good deal. There have been some outages but only briefly. Another benefit of RCN is that they include dialup service at no extra charge, so if the cable network goes down (or if you are travelling) there is another option. Bell Atlantic offers no backup for DSL at all; when it's out, you're out of luck.
WHy, they've already got everyone's money, why improve service, same thing with v.92 at the dial up ISP's, they ain't goning to do it
Read my plan to save the Bengals
The real issue with the Onvoy/Covad service is that its split between two providers, one selling the transport and the other selling the IP service, and neither one knows what's going on with the other.
The strange part about that relationship is that Onvoy has absolutely no oversight of Covad's network services and yet Covad has every incentive to oversell their trunk network -- to Onvoy competitors!
Both have really braindead people in their organizations. I had a Covad tech tell me he did a traceroute from *my* computer to another Onvoy-connected machine and say it went through Chicago. The Covad tech was too stupid to know that traceroutes, even from his management station, are going to be sourced from *his* network not mine..
As far as reliability goes, once mine got up correctly it's been really reliable. I'm going to miss it when my contract runs out -- they're offering something much less than 768/384 these days for more money. My corporate rep says they're not making money on home DSL. Given the gross incompetence (or gross incompetants, as the case may be) in their business, it's hardly surprising.
Well, it sure sounds like I'm in the minority, but I signed up for DSL from what was then Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) last spring and really have mostly good things to say about it! I hated the long wait between signing up and activation, but true to their word, it was ready when they said it would be. I've been using it steady now since the very beginning of June and only have the occasional disconnect, but it generally reconnects within a minute or two. Certainly not as bad as my old dialup problems!
:)
:) I just wish BA/Verizon would make the signup form available as a secure web page that you could fill out from a working connection instead of requiring a Windows program to run....
:)
Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I haven't done any timings, but transfers are VERY noticeably faster than the old dialup connection. The other nice thing is that when I signed up, they had a special where the modem kit was only 99 bucks and your first month was free! So, by the time I had to actually pay for a month, the price had been dropped from 49.95 to 39.95 a month... That was nice.
My only really big complaint was that it was a PAIN to configure the account intially. For some reason, the brainiacs at Bell Atlantic decided to make a program that you could either download or load from CD that you ran that would connect up the first time and collect billing information and user information from you and submit it all to their machines and create your account. The problem is, it's a Windows program!!!!! So, for someone like me who doesn't RUN Windows, it was a pain. I ended up borrowing a laptop from work and carrying it home to create the account. Once it was created and I had a userid and password, it only took a minute to plug the info into my Linux box and I was up and running!
Overall, though, it's been a pretty positive experience except for that one headache with the user account creation.
-Ken
My geek household (4 people, 20 or so computers. I've lost count) has been on DSL (780K bi-directional) for some time now. Except for a couple of very short area glitches that were not the fault of the provider (bayarea.net) it has been very dependable and quite nice. We recently expanded the service as we were running out of fixed IP addresses. The vendor turned everything around with hardly a glitch and had the DSNs all working within an afternoon.
I have had a good experience with Sprint/Earthlink DSL in Fort Myers, FL. I ordered DSL mid-July and it was installed mid-August. The Sprint tech had DSL up and running using his test account within half an hour. Then he stayed until he made sure my username and password were working. He was on hold with Earthlink from 12PM to 5PM and was shuffled from one person to another. Finally he got someone who could activate the Earthlink account. I was pleased with the service he gave and wrote him a letter of customer satisfaction. Now while Sprint only supports DSL with Win95/98/NT/2000, I had Linux using the DSL with RP-PPPoe in minutes. I asked Sprint on their support line why they will only set up DSL for Windows users and they explained that they're not in league with Microsoft, their support people are just not qualified with anything else. I have had my DSL for over a month now and I had only a few hours after midnight one night of downtime. I normally get 50-60 K/sec download speeds throught my Linux box or the other machines connected to it.
"As flies to the wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport." - William Shakespeare, King Lear