DSL annoyances and choices

[Rich Jordan]

I've been using Megapath ADSL at home for 2.5 years. I used Speakeasy IDSL before that because there was nothing other than a T1 available in this area that would provide a static IP address with no service restrictions. It was great except for the price (and speed); 100% reliable and excellent customer service.

The current DSL rides on an SBC phone line and at the time the choice was slower SBC PPPoE with restrictions or one of their 'approved' resellers like Megapath who provided unrestricted 6M/608K service. A bit pricey but it worked; total cost with the phone is a little less than the IDSL used to be.

The Cayman 3346 just died, out of warranty, and Megapath wants $225+ to replace it. I don't have the Megapath codes to configure a self-bought replacement Cayman (they used to provide that but stopped about a year ago, and its not the same now as what I had recorded).

Speakeasy is now apparently able to provide equivalent service for similar price. They used to be a great provider but I've seen complaints about them recently. I'm waiting on a quote for install and service.

Thoughts? Megapath has become a pain. Online service now requires you to use a wintel PC and internet explorer (it did NOT used to) and phone support is usually overloaded and slow. But for the price of the Cayman I'll get back stable and reliable service, no DNS or firewall changes, etc.

BTW the Cayman keeps resetting. It runs for about 90 seconds, the DSL syncs up, then the lights go out, power turns on red, and the cycle starts again. I never see the Cayman's IP on the LAN side. Already tried a known good power brick, same symptoms, so it looks like the router itself has failed. I'll try some 'cold' treatment tomorrow to see if it runs long enough to pull a config from if I can get Megapath to divulge the login info.

Thanks for any thoughts. Once I get quotes from Speakeasy and a local vendor I'll post them too.

[mekender]

what area are you in?

[HTRN]

Considering that the price of the yearly contract has the cost of the box built in usually..

If you've had their service any length of time, they should be replacing it free.


HTRN

[Rich Jordan]

Palatine, IL; a NW suburb of chicago. For being such a populated area it took forever to get DSL here.

HTRN, I'm going to see if they have any customer retention options once I get quotes from the alternatives. The contract for two years waived installation and equipment fees, but it was pricy enough that the cost of the unit was certainly covered.

Its annoying; I've had to redirect email (I run my own mail servers for a couple of domains) and put up a 'sorry, offline' page in place of the sites I have on the home server.

[mekender]

Palatine, IL; a NW suburb of chicago. For being such a populated area it took forever to get DSL here.

HTRN, I'm going to see if they have any customer retention options once I get quotes from the alternatives. The contract for two years waived installation and equipment fees, but it was pricy enough that the cost of the unit was certainly covered.

Its annoying; I've had to redirect email (I run my own mail servers for a couple of domains) and put up a 'sorry, offline' page in place of the sites I have on the home server.

have you looked at getting a business class cable internet service?

for SBHO users they dont run much more than what you are paying for the DSL... and they are MUCH easier to work with.

[Rich Jordan]

May be worth checking. In 2005 when I got this service they wanted $300/month for the lowest tier service that provided static IP addressing, and didn't block port 25 and 80.

Also, cable uplink speed used to always suck. Perhaps its better now.

[mekender]

May be worth checking. In 2005 when I got this service they wanted $300/month for the lowest tier service that provided static IP addressing, and didn't block port 25 and 80.

Also, cable uplink speed used to always suck. Perhaps its better now.

IIRC the lowest end small business/home office packages are right about $115 or so a month...
also, is there a reason that you cant use a dynamic dns instead of a static ip?

when i hosted stuff off my residential line here, that worked really well... give your local cable business class company a call... im betting that they will make you a hell of an offer...

[Rich Jordan]

Will call tomorrow.

Most of the dynamic service levels around here came with port 25 and port 80 blocking to keep customers from running servers. And to be honest I've been using TCP connectivity long enough (at work and home) to be a bit bigoted about it; static service is professional. Dynamic service is cheesy consumer grade, and PPPoE is bottom of the barrel Yugo level service.

[mekender]

Will call tomorrow.

Most of the dynamic service levels around here came with port 25 and port 80 blocking to keep customers from running servers. And to be honest I've been using TCP connectivity long enough (at work and home) to be a bit bigoted about it; static service is professional. Dynamic service is cheesy consumer grade, and PPPoE is bottom of the barrel Yugo level service.

well i spent about 3 years working for Road Runner... they do not block ports... they do employ traffic shaping for torrents and newsgroups... but no blocking... the business class cable is probably second only to fiber to the curb when it comes to reliability.

[Rich Jordan]

Megapath got the Cayman working again once I did a basic reconfig. We'll see if it holds up. It depends on what caused the problem in the first place.

I put in a contact request with Comcast but they haven't responded yet. I'll keep that option as a backup. They list 6M/1M, 16M/2M, and 50M/5M available, but no prices, static 'available' (so probably an extra cost) and a bunch of microsoft crap that I wouldn't need but apparently get to pay for with the service.

It took a couple days to get support on (partly my fault; I filed it as an equipment problem ticket instead of a line down).

Current speed tests on the 6M/608K service are coming in at 5120/520 kbps. Not great but not too bad.