[TriLUG] DSL vs Road Runner Recomendations?

[Tanner Lovelace]

Ben Pitzer wrote:
>I've also had some experience with DSL lines, and to be honest, the
>problems existed primarily with the telephone company when they
>occurred.  Bell Atlantic wasn't exactly wonderful about getting to
>Covad's DSL customers.  Not sure how Bell South might be, or how much
>better DSL has gotten in the last two years, but when we had a customer
>whose service failed, the average time to come back online was probably
>between 12-24 hours.  Not that customers had such problems often, but
>when they had them, it could take a while to fix.  Perhaps going through
>Verizon, with their connections to Bell South might make a difference.

Well, actually, Verizon has nothing to do with Bellsouth.  Bellsouth
provides local phone service and DSL for Wake and Orange counties
while Verizon (formerly GTE) provides local phone service and DSL
for Durham county.  I'm not looking at getting service through
Verizon, though, but through BritSys, a local ISP.

And Sinner from the Prairy wrote:

> I use BellSouth DSL myself.

You must not live in Durham county, then. :-)
 
> Good points:
> 
> -no/few problems. So I haven't realy tested their customer service
> -speed. 1.4 Mbps/350Kbps. But it depends on how close you are from their DLS 
> hub

Unfortunately, my distance from the CO limits me to the lowest
level of service: 768Kbps/128Kbps. :-(

> -free dsl modem (ethernet) when I signed, around 16 months ago

BritSys provides a free modem (you have to return it if you
cancel before a year passes, but after that, it's yours to keep).

> -no closed ports

Hmm... I should check on this.  I don't think they would
have closed ports, though, since they mentioned it would
be perfectly fine to run servers...

> Bad points
> 
> - No fixed public IP !!!!!!!!!

All Britsys connections are static IP and extra IPs are available
for $2.50/month extra.

> - bad webmail service

I run my own web and mail servers, so I setup IMP to do webmail for
myself.  I'll probably just have the e-mail they provide forwarded
directly to my server.

> - poor newsgroup service (but if has improved from "bad" to "poor" in a 
> year)

Britsys will provide access to news, but for $2.50/month extra.  I'm
not sure I'll need it that badly...

> - a couple of times, I felt like someone was trying to install a Microsoft 
> DNS server... or so it seemed when I was unable to get DNS for a few hours 
> or so.

I run my own DNS servers, so this shouldn't be a problem...

> The IP thing *really* anoyes me. I would like to provide a mirror to my 
> Linux colleagues in Spain (http://www.escomposlinux.org) . But I cannot. So 
> far, I must use a dyndns.net redirector.

How should this prevent you from providing a mirror?  Mike Broome and
Lisa Lorenzin run their entire domain off of a dynamic IP address
using a similar setup (I believe they have a dynamic domain name
from some place like dyndns and then for their domain name they
just point a CNAME at the dyndns name...).  Perhaps one of them
could explain better...? :-)

So, basically, it sounds like I could do better, but I could
also do a lot worse.  And for 50% off, especially when neither
my wife or I have a job, I'm not sure how I can not do it...

Thanks very much to everyone who replied...

Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace at wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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