[ale] XO to Telocity: So Far, So Good.

[John Mills]

ALErs -

My US$0.02 on the ever-popular "I [love|hate] my [ISP|DSL\
Provider]" thread:

Thursday, 29 March, I lost the ssh link to my home around mid-day. By
early Friday I understood I was a casualty of NorthPoint's demise.
Recourse to DSLreports led me to another carrier out of East Lake CO,
which was Telocity. One static IP, no startup fee or minimum service
period [at that time and as-of this writing], 4 e-mail accounts, at $49/mo
(considerably cheaper, if less lavish, than XO) so I signed up around
mid-Friday.

I prepared to "hurry up and wait" while falling back to web and dialup
access to my dear, departed XO accounts.

Actually on 11 April, I got a note saying my ASDL "Gateway" was onboard
Airborne Express 2-day service to me: 1 1/2 weeks post-order. Friday, 13
April, I received the unit, installed it, and in about 10 minutes had the
family iMac surfing away. (Initially I had connected to the nice, new
phone line BelchSouth had brought in for the XO SDSL link. When it failed
to lock in 2x10 minutes, I moved to our old phone line, and then had lock
in a couple of minutes. Now that it's adapted to the line it takes more
like 20-30 sec. to synch.)

Slipping the firewall back in, reconfiguring it, and getting basic net
access to the Linux box was another day or so, delayed by a priority
response due the IRS. &8-P

After a predictable number of bulletholes in my feet, most of my older
Linux services were runing smoothly around mid-week.

I'm still migrating mail service to my Linux box to preserve my
domain-name mail accounts, and y'all can expect to see my pleas for help
as that progresses.

I have not seen any problems attributable to Telocity. I ran one set of
speed tests which came out c.1,500 kbps downloading[!] and c.220 kbps
uploading. Given that I don't serve anything more complex than ssh console
sessions, I can live with that. (XO came out about 720-740 kbps either way
- it was _S_DSL, after all.) Based on one sample, Telocity's telephone
customer support is willing, a bit slow to reach, and deal best with Win
and Mac setup issues (_not_ Linuxphobic, but basically provide generic,
minimal *NIX support). E-mail support took 4 days (but it included a
weekend), and the reply was pretty much to the point.

I'm sure I will have problems from time to time, but at the moment I
consider I came out quite well.

-- 
Regards -
 John Mills




--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.