This evening I came home to a familiar sight, the blinking "ready" light on my DSL modem indicating that it cannot achieve a sync with my central office. I had perfect DSL service (Earthlink through Verizon) for about a year (after a month of anguish at the beginning) and within the last month it's been out more than it's been on. So I called into tech support for the sixth time since this started. Two separate tickets are open, HOURS of time between being on hold and talking to slack-jawed techs...

So I call into tech support tonight and the automated voice says...

"All of our representatives are with other customers.. Your call will be answered in ... one.. hundred... and...... forty... four... minutes."

Yes, that's 144 minutes. As in two hours and 24 minutes. I found it amusing that the computer was programmed to speak numbers that high for hold times. I wonder if someone out there is actually waiting that long.

DSL is such a disaster. If cable was available here I'd be all over it. The only thing worse than DSL service is DSL service through the phone company. And the only thing worse than DSL service through the phone company is DSL service through the company which is then resold by Earthlink. There is no pain worse than realizing the idiot you're talking to can't help you, and the people who can do something about it (the phone company) will hang up on you as soon as they realize you're an Earthlink customer.

I guess I could have stopped at "Earthlink sux0rs" but I've had a lot of fun ranting here. Hope someone else finds this amusing. If not, hey, one for the post count. :)

You're preaching to the choir. Read my home page lately?

I just got hooked up with a local ISP who is much better, and is comitted to providing long-term hometown service (i.e., they're not looking to get bought out any time soon). I'm now hooked up via 802.11 wireless to my ISP, and it's more reliable than DSL so far. Maybe you have a local ISP which offers a similar service?

At the risk of starting a flame war, that's what you get for supporting a moneygrubbing, litigious, victimizing, and possibly felonious cult.

Hmmm. Someone has a scientology axe to grind.. I was just bitching about my ISP...

Go yell at John Travolta or something.

I was just offering it as yet another reason to go ahead and switch. Certainly, we all have more than enough reason to bitch about our ISPs. Mine, for example, just decided that it would be a good idea to limit bandwidth to their news server to 128kbps. Overnight, my bandwidth was reduced by 90%. Goodbye, porn. I'm seriously thinking about switching, too. Anyone have Speakeasy DSL service? They look good.

802.11 to the ISP. That sounds expensive. Are a lot of ISP's offering that now? I haven't heard of anyone else connecting to their ISP with 802.11. Is EVERYTHING better in California?

There are hometown ISP's everywhere but DSL is basically a monopoly. Your average Joe ISP is offering DSL over Telco lines. The CLEC's are all dead now or will be soon. Cable is similar in its monopoly, but cable companies are a little better on the service end (at least around here.)

Hmm at least Earthlink is liberal about their usenet feeds. No bandwidth limitation. I guess scientologists like their pr0n. :)

Speakeasy was one of the highest rated back when I looked. They were $79 a month though, Earthlink was $39. If you're using DSLreports, make sure you look at current reviews in your own town.

Mine, for example, just decided that it would be a good idea to limit bandwidth to their news server to 128kbps.

wfaulk, Let me guess.... DirecTV DSL. I have them also and so far, they have exceeded my expectations. I reviewed them here. I was surprised by the newsgroup throttling also, but I am not a porn addict, so I still have no serious gripe.

As for DSL in general, I am a fan. I know my friend in Manhattan doesn't get a static IP, and he experiences slow-downs during peak times. I wouldn't get cable modem anyway since I have DirecTV satellite TV. Getting cable modem would force me to rewire my place.

It's too bad that cable isn't offered in more places. I can't believe that I've had it here in Williamsburg for over a year, and it just got to my parent's house in the suburbs of DC (parts of the county are some of the richest in the nation I think). Doesn't strike me as being wise to take so long to reach them.

Anyway, Cox (or the alternative spelling which is how I used to think of them), is very good with my service. It hasn't been down in a year as far as I know, and it's fast enough for me. In the beginning there was some sort of router problem that prevented me from logging onto the sites I run as webmaster (student organizations), and that took the inevitable 40 phone calls everytime something's wrong.

Anyway, good luck finding a solution. I know I'm not of much help

Yeah. The weird thing is that it's the best news server I've ever used. It was remarkably fast (I regularly got 150KByte/second downloads -- pretty much the max I get on my DSL) and it never seemed to miss an article. They limited it supposedly because people were getting bad service. I can't see how. This is DirecTVInternet, BTW, in case anyone is interested. Otherwise, the service is very good. Oddly, it improved dramatically after it was acquired by DirecTV -- it used to be Telocity.

Yeah -- I love the static IP. The DSL service tends to be excellent, especially since DirecTV took over. Plus, I can get a bill now instead of having it automatically put on a credit card each month. I hate automatic charges. (Plus, they were never consistent with when they'd charge; sometimes I'd get two charges in one month after failing to bill me the previous month.)

But this news server thing really horks me off. I could understand if they were really having a problem, which is what they said, but it seems to me that they weren't, as no one has come forward to state that they were experiencing poor news server service. What it really is, I'm sure, is that they decided that they weren't charging enough for that service.

PS: My previous post was supposed to be on the system hours ago, but didn't actually post for some reason. I had to go back in my browser history and repost it. This is about the fourth time that this has happened in the last month or so. Anyone else have the same problem?

Wow, I had no idea their CEO was such a complete idiotic freak. I'm so glad I dumped them.

802.11 to the ISP. That sounds expensive.

In my particular case, it's costing me $45.95 per month, all inclusive.

I get a price break because I'm on a hilltop and will be acting as a relay station to the next valley below. So they installed two separate antennas on my roof. Bit of an eyesore, hence the discount. Normally it's something like $65.00/mo.

Cable is similar in its monopoly, but cable companies are a little better on the service end (at least around here.)

Strange. My cable company sucked so bad with regard to TV service that I vowed never to get a cable modem. Not that it's ever been an issue because cable internet service is still not available in my area.

Scott Adams said it best. Cable modems will never be as successful as phone-company services for this reason: The people who work for the cable company are the people who couldn't get jobs at the phone company.

Scott Adams said it best. Cable modems will never be as successful as phone-company services for this reason: The people who work for the cable company are the people who couldn't get jobs at the phone company.

True enough (I'd never dispute Scott Adams' wisdom in these matters) but somehow in our area the phone company manages to screw things up worse than the cable companies.

I didn't know 802.11 was a viable broadband Internet solution, I assumed it was just for company LANs and campus area networks. Aren't there security concerns? Someone cracked the 802.11 encryption if I recall correctly.

I didn't know 802.11 was a viable broadband Internet solution, I assumed it was just for company LANs and campus area networks.

All it requires to go long-distance is a directional antenna hooked into a jack on the 802.11 transceiver.

My ISP has built his own custom routers from off-the-shelf parts. They're tiny little PC's on a board with some flash RAM, ethernet, and PCMCIA sockets for the tranceiver cards. He's written his own routing software to run from the flash on these things, he puts in all sorts of great little features. They're firewalls with DHCP and NAT and everything.

Give you one guess as to which Linux distro he uses to write the embedded code on these things. Yup, Debian. His routers are like tiny little Empegs, I'm not kidding.

Aren't there security concerns?

Yes, but only to a slight degree. There are things which help us out, though:

1) He locks down the routers so that they will only accept transmissions from specific MAC addresses. So my router will only talk to the next router in the signal chain.

2) The antennas are directional, so you would have to be within the narrow range of the antenna sweep to hijack the signal. Or you would have to be very close to the router to get the omni signal.

3) The router itself is locked down pretty tight, so even if someone managed to spoof a MAC address, they would basically be in a situation that was no different from someone on the internet trying to packet-sniff transmissions outside a firewall.

My internet transmissions aren't top-secret, though, so it's no big deal to me even if someone does packet-sniff my stuff. And I don't leave my PC's on all the time, and they're behind this router/firewall, so I'm not worried about hacking much.

Hmm.. Doesn't sound like 802.11 Internet access is that widespread, then. Even the mom & pop ISP's around here don't have it. Pennsylvania sucks.

Sounds like you have some sort of fixed wireless solution. I was interested in this when I had my DSL taken away. Problem is nobody around here supports it. Sprint and AT&T seem to have the most support for this.

If anyone else is interested, these are the other two broadband solutions I explored:
-NovaRoam
-Homebrew SDSL (I would have run my own DSL line from my office to my house and mooch their bandwidth)

Sounds like you have some sort of fixed wireless solution.

Sort of. It's not like what you linked. It's a little different. Here's a diagram:



The second wireless card isn't part of a normal installation, I just have it because I'm in a prime location to service more customers and I get a discount for doing it.

The antennas aren't very big, smaller than DBS antennas. The mounting poles are bigger than the antennas.

Also, this diagram shows me going back to the ISP directly, but I'm actually going through another relay point before I reach my ISP.

I read about using wireless in this way a few months ago, too bad the city I live in is so flat.

Sean

Flat is good. It works better in flat cities (a given antenna can cover more ground). It's more troublesome in my mountainous area, but they're still doing it. Works well, too.

Hmm maybe I need to knock on the door of someone closer to the phone company central office and offer to pay for their dsl if I can share it. But I don't know of any isps that are doing wireless here.

Sean

Kewl, I've been to Cobb's Comedy Club once. One of the guys kept going on about how much he liked Amsterdam, which is nice to hear of course.

I haven't laughed as hard as I did that night for a long time!

/Pepijn

The bad thing about flat is that line of sight is required for the antenna on your roof. This neighborhood has no broadband options whatsoever, I wish some isp would come in with something like rooftop. http://www.wbs.nokia.com/index.html

Sean

<sigh> too bad they're not doing so hot financially. (understatement..) I have excite@home - and I'm VERY impressed with the service... (knock on wood) - one outage in the last 8 months, and it was for about 5 minutes:) download speeds of about 175-225k/sec during the day/ 300-350k/sec during the night:)
-mark
ps - excite@home