Re: ISP

[David Talkington <dtalk prairienet org>]

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Oded Ben-Ami wrote:

>Then I had EarthLink and their service is reasonable, but when I moved all
>the email that was important to me from Hotmail to their software, I found
>out that after a few days I couldn't get to that mail anymore.
>Their support people just know how to copy-paste answers and their first
>suggestions to me was "try uninstalling and reinstalling our software".

Despite your experience, I strongly recommend Earthlink/Mindspring, on
both technical and legal grounds.  They're honestly the only provider
I've dealt with that seems to know what they're doing.  They use
PPPoE, which eliminates the baby nonsense of hijacked IPs and MAC
address headaches of services like @Home; they responsibly block most
inbound service ports, but allow incoming SSH, so you can tunnel
whatever you like; they block outgoing 25, but they know how to run a
mail server which prevents relays and does not restrict legitimate use
(unlike Verizon);  their AUP is intelligent and non-invasive (read
Quest's sometime);  their DSL modems don't crash when they're scanned
(Quest is facing legal challenges here over extended downtime due to
Code Red).

As for their software, who gives a squirt?  You won't be using it,
because you're going to put your network behind a Linux gateway anyway
and use Roaring Penguin's PPPoE client, right?  Mine works
beautifully, with only occasional hiccups.  I'd estimate my
connectivity flakes out about 5-10 minutes a day.  For consumer grade
service, that's ok with me.

Good luck.

- -d

- -- 
David Talkington
http://www.spotnet.org

PGP key: http://www.prairienet.org/~dtalk/0xCA4C11AD.pgp

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
- --Ronald Reagan

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