[TriLUG] Re: OT: Dial-Up ISP

[Jim Wright]

Of course that unfriendliness extends to anything that is not provided
by them...whenever I have had problems with rr, I connect my wife's
plain vanilla XP laptop up directly to the rr modem, bypassing any home
networking.  If you say you have xyz router that is not provided by
them, or use xyz wireless card not provided by them you won't get
anywhere either.  Basically anything that is not on their
troubleshooting script will get you booted out.

That is understandable, though...they need to have a frame of reference
to do the troubleshooting.  And they really don't want to be scheduling
a truck roll when all that was needed was a bouncing of your xyz router.

It would be nice if the modems themselves had a little more capability
in providing connectivity troubleshooting.

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On
Behalf Of Ken Mink
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 11:43 AM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
Subject: [TriLUG] Re: OT: Dial-Up ISP


Hey Ben,
    I completely understand your point of view about supporting Linux. I

don't expect RR to support Linux. The number of distros and the number 
of version in each distro make that unreasonable.
     However, I expect an ISP to support their network. I called RR 
support because my connection was down. I mean the lights were on on 
the modem, but I could not ping out. Once I said that I was running 
Linux, the support drone stated that they did not support Linux and 
could not  help me. When I pushed that I wanted support of the network 
not my machine, the drone held the corporate line and eventually hung 
up on me. I did get kind of hot, but never swore nor was I abusive. I 
was really pissed off at that point. That is Linux UNFRIENDLY.
     I have never expected an ISP to support my Linux machine. ISPs 
provide network connectivity and I expect then to support their 
network. A network does not, or rather should not, depend on the 
machine I'm using. Simply supporting the network connection regardless 
of the OS of the client would be Linux friendly enough for me.

Ken


On May 8, 2004, at 1:31 PM, Ben Pitzer wrote:

> Mike,
>
> Well, take it from a career ISP man:  If you have enough customers to
> keep
> yourself in business, it's not practical to support every possible 
> piece of
> software that they might be running.  Fact is, there are half a dozen
> different modem dialers for Linux.  Add to that the different modems 
> that
> Linux might or might not support, 50 different distros, and the fact 
> that
> two people running the same distro might have boxes that look 
> completely
> different from one another, and you've got a support quagmire that's 
> just
> ridiculous.  You can't support Linux in a cost-effective manner (as an

> ISP,
<SNIP>
---------------------------------------------
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."--Benjamin Franklin "
'Necessity' is the plea for every infringement of human liberty; it is
the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."--William Pitt

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