Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Your Qwest Leads To MSN

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the there-is-a-tiny-lawyer-to-the-west dept.

bee writes: "Qwest.net has announced an alliance with MSN that will 'transition' Qwest's dialup and DSL customers to MSN Internet Access. If you're a Macintosh user, you'll be able to continue on Qwest until they figure out what to do with you. Zero mention, of course, is made of Linux or BSD. Here's the FAQ they're pointing their customers to."

2 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. No, because... by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative
    I have their Officeworks deal. According to the FAQ that'll still be Qwest. Plus I have static IPs on my Officeworks account. Well that, by it's very nature, means it doesn't matter what OS I use. I have an external Cisco 675 router that actually does all the logon and authentication, then routes everything to my little subnet. The router just talks to my switch and the switch doesn't care what's plugged into it, so long as it speaks eithernet.

    Basically I think the "Windows only" thing is probably only an issue for people with internal Intel DSL routers. Since these things actually sit in a PCI slot, they need drivers and if those drivers are only available for Windows, that's what you have to go with. However when you have an external router, it's different. It has a phone jack on one side, and eithernet on the other. It is actually what talks to the equipment and logs you in and so on, the system behind it has no involvement.

    I'm additonally unwilling to leave Qwest since they seem to be the only ISP willing to work with me on the static IP thing. None of the other ISPs I talked to had a workable deal for static IPs, and some just wouldn't offer them at all.

    At any rate, I'm not staying with their service just ecause it works with my stuff (I also have a Linux server on the network), but rather because they have the best deal right now. If someone else can offer me something equal or better to what Qwest has, I'd consider switching but I'm not going to move to an inferior solution.

  2. I do tech support for MSN... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... and using linux, or any other PPP capable device on it is not hard... You do not need to use the software at all, the username just needs to be prefixed with MSN/ and you need the, easily accessable DNS server IP's which tech support would give you in a heartbeat.