[wplug] ISP providers in Pittsburgh?

Tue Dec 5 13:06:38 EST 2000

Well my experence has been about the same with service
providers.

When I started fooling with Linux I was using
Stargate. I liked them as a provider for my Win boxes.
I got lucky and found the one guy they have on staff
that knows Linux. I think his name was Mike??
But for some reason I coulden't connect above 26.4Kbs
even my transfer rates were down in the 2.4 - 3.0
range. But when I dialed to a number in Butler (I live
in Cranberry) I could get 48-53Kbs. I have been told
everything from; "it's a problem with the lines in
your area" to "you must have a bad modem".

Vince D. 
--- Mike Procario <Michael.Procario at science.doe.gov>
wrote:
> I would sign up if I still lived in Pittsburgh.  Let
> me ask a question
> about how ISP's work.  I have had terrible
> experiences here in Frederick
> using both Linux and Windows.  I usually connect
> with a reported speed
> of 40-48K. However, I find my average performance is
> quite a bit worse
> by timing multi-megabyte downloads. 
> 
> I use kppp which can plot the instantaneous data
> rate. It consists of
> spikes of activity interspersed with periods of no
> data.  The spikes
> reach 6 Kbytes/sec which you would expect for a
> 48kbps connection. A
> particularly bad times the dead periods are much
> longer the active
> periods. This looks like the connection from the POP
> (point of presence)
> to the ISP's "backbone" is being saturated, and that
> the ISP is time
> slicing the connection out of the POP. Is my
> analysis correct?
> 
> After putting up with this for awhile on Mindspring
> (since bought by
> Earthlink). I decided to try some local Frederick,
> MD ISP's. The two
> that I tried were both as bad. I also tried another
> national ISP, who
> also performed badly.  My second question is do
> ISP's share POP's? 
> Might there only be POP in Frederick and all the
> various ISP are
> actually using that same connection out it? In my
> research an awful lot
> of ISP's claimed to support Frederick. If each ran
> their POP we would
> have a hundred different POP's in town.
> 
> Mark Dzmura wrote:
> > 
> > Fellow WPLUG'ers:
> > 
> > I try to avoid shameless advertising in a forum
> such as this, but - given the recent
> > discussion thread on ISP's - I think folks on the
> list should be aware that we at
> > Digital Mission LLC / digipath (who have been
> hosting the WPLUG web server
> > for almost two years) offer a full line of
> connectivity services, in addition to our
> > hosting and colocation services.
> > 
> > Our dialup service is normally $19.95/month, but
> we offer a $5/month discount -that's $14.95/month -
> > to Linux users (that is, to folks connecting with
> Linux boxes - we can tell!).  Our service is very
> reliable
> > and uptime is extremely good (we had a total of 20
> HOURS of downtime last year, due to two separate
> > incidents (beyond our control) in which fibers
> were cut - and which brought down other providers
> and
> > hundreds of local businesses.
> > 
> > Our basic dialup includes unlimited access,
> personal web page, 10 MB of disk space, etc...
> > We are presently testing our web-based secure
> email access - it needs some polishing on the HTML -
> > and expect to have it fully operational before Jan
> 1 2001.  With regard to specific things that you
> > might want: as some of your fellow WPLUG'ers could
> tell you, we are a lot more flexible than the
> > competition, and we understand YOUR platform - our
> infrastructure is built almost entirely on
> > Linux (with a little bit of Solaris for good
> measure.)
> > 
> > In addition to dialup, we also offer DSL services.
>  Due to the nature of the industry, we haven't
> > yet found a way to be competivive with ADSL
> pricing, but our business-oriented SDSL
> > services are both price-competitive and
> high-performance.
> > 
> > Our managed virtual hosting, managed/unmanaged
> server co-location, and shopping cart/
> > e-commerce services are flexible, featureful, and
> reasonably priced.
> > 
> > Once again, I apologize for the shameless
> commerce, but felt that we have an option that
> > WPLUG'ers should know about.  If you are
> interested in these or any of our other services,
> > please contact us as follows:
> > 
> >     * email to me, Rob Dale, or sales at digipath.net
> >     * Rob Dale is usually on IRC
> >     * our sales # is 412-429-6002
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Mark
> > 
> > "Christopher W. Aiken" wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Dec 04, 2000 at 06:06:52PM -0500,
> Jonathan S Billings wrote:
> > > -|Telerama too.  (http://www.telerama.com)
> > > -|(I'm happy with them, they have a tux on their
> front page!)
> > > -|
> > >
> -|_______________________________________________
> > > -|wplug mailing list
> > > -|wplug at wplug.org
> > > -|http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
> > >
> > > Yep.   Telerama.com is VERY good.  Shell access,
> news servers,
> > > 5MB for home pages, AND webmail for us travelers
> ( along with pop/smtp ).
> > > I've had them for over a year.  $20/month.
> > > --
> > > --
> > > Christopher W. Aiken, Scenery Hill, Pa, USA
> > > chris at cwaiken dot com,   www.cwaiken.com
> > > Current O/S: Debian 2.2 GNU/Linux
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > wplug mailing list
> > > wplug at wplug.org
> > > http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
> > 
> > --
> > )))) This email routed via a wireless gateway!!
> ((((
> 
> -- 
> 
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mike Procario                 DOE-Division of High
> Energy Physics
> Phone: 301-903-2890           Email:
> Michael.Procario at science.doe.gov
>
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