[TriLUG] broadband in the Triangle area

[Jon Carnes]

UncleBen is speaking the gospel truth - even though he *does* have a
vested interest in seeing RoadRunner succeed.

I've been on RR for many years now, and the speed and up-times are
fantastic.  I also love the new email servers!  The mail is fast now.
Plus they automagically scan for viruses - and whoever is in charge of
keeping the viral signatures up-to-date seems to be on the ball.

To UncleBen: I would love to hear a talk on DOCSIS.

Good Luck and welcome to the area!

Jon Carnes 

On Sat, 2003-08-23 at 21:36, Ben Pitzer wrote:
> > A few questions about Time Warner.
> >
> > 1) Is it true about limiting email attachment sizes?
> 
> Faheem,
> 
> I'm a sysadmin for TWC/RoadRunner.  Yes, we do limit attachment sizes for
> email, however you'll find that this is fairly standard for most ISPs,
> cable, DSL, or dialup. I think the limit is 5MB, but I'd have to check to be
> sure.  Not often we bump into that.  Plus, you only have a 20MB mailbox, so
> allowing massive attachments would only cause problems elsewhere in the
> system.
> 
> > 2) Does the setup require a login demon? Debian has a package called
> > rrlogind for use with roadrunner. My impression is this is somewhat
> > area-specific.
> 
> RR no longer does PPoE, so the rrlogind is not required.  That was used in
> the pre-DOCSIS days, when we required PPoE to authenticate our users.  Now,
> we do it simply by only provisioning IPs to modems with registered mac
> addresses.  The DOCSIS standard is pretty cool, and someday I may do a talk
> on it for the LUG, if they're interested.  Basically, for RR, you just
> connect your modem to an active cable outlet using coaxial cable, then plug
> your Linux box's ethernet card into the ethernet port on the modem.  Boot
> your PC, and so long as it's configured to DHCP an IP address, you should be
> live.  Of course, since you are given a public IP address, I suggest you get
> very familiar with iptables or ipchains (I recommend iptables, personally),
> and build your self a firewall before connecting.  Lots of port scans out
> there, y'know?
> 
> > 3) Has anyone got experience of the differences between Time Warner and
> > Earthlink? What are the other main options as far as cable go in this
> > area?
> 
> Well, my employers probably wouldn't want me pointing this out, but
> Earthlink got the JD Power and Associates award for Best Customer Service by
> a Broadband ISP.  RR's isn't horrible, but it leaves room for improvement,
> and that improvement is coming.  The fact is that customer service, though,
> is the one thing that you should consider if you're going with cable.  Time
> Warner owns all the cable plant in this area.  AOL, Earthlink, and Inter.Net
> all sell cable broadband services over our lines, which we must allow them
> to do by federal mandate.  They themselves provide all DNS, email, news, and
> other network services to their customers.  RR and TWC do not provide those
> services to those customers, only to our own residential and commercial
> customers.  However, all issues of connectivity for all ISPs using our
> network are managed by TWC and RR.  Naturally, it's in our interest to make
> sure your connections are good, because if the other ISPs connections are
> flaky, our own are flaky, and we'd like to avoid that.  The better our
> service gets, the better everyone else's gets, too.  In all honesty, though,
> the only reason you'll probably need customer service is if your cable
> connection gets flaky, and then it doesn't matter whether you use Earthlink,
> AOL, Inter.Net or Road Runner:  you run Linux, and that's not supported by
> any of them in any real sense.  I say go straight to source, and use RR, but
> then again, I'm biased.  Our network services are comparable to any of those
> other ISPs, in my opinion, and I've worked for one of them in the past, so I
> oughtta know.  Of course, there will be those on this list with their little
> grudges against RR for some outage that happened last November, or some
> other long ago issue, but the only real beef I'd listen to, were I you, is
> the ones that say that in their area the connectivity and speeds have been
> less than stellar.  Fact is, we're working on upgrading the plant, and
> moving at a pretty rapid pace.  Most RR users I've talked to say that their
> service has improved, as have their download speeds, over the last several
> months.  Folks who wish to dispute some of this, please, keep the flamage to
> a minimum, and direct whatever vitriol you care to spit in my direction, and
> keep it off the list.  I'm happy to debate it with you, but the other 952
> people on this list don't need to hear it.
> 
> One last thing:  If you decide to go with cable, buy your own cable modem.
> The $5 or so you save every month will pay for that modem in about 1.5 years
> or better.  Now, since my boss regularly checks this list, I'll go pray that
> I keep my job come Monday.  Good luck!
> 
> Regards,
> Ben Pitzer
> 
> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> "Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
> safety
>  deserve neither liberty nor safety."
>  --Ben Franklin--
> 
>