[wplug] ISP Recommendations

[James O'Kane]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003, Mike Griffin wrote:
> I haven't tried telerama though, so I can't 
> say one is better than the other.

I have used telerama and speakeasy each for a year or more. I didn't have 
a problem with support from either of them. For telerama I could go on IRC 
and ask them support questions. With Speakeasy I still needed to call an 
800 number, but the hold times were minimal. Both staff accepted that I 
might know what I'm talking about when I give them diagnostic information 
about my problem, and neither have a problem with servers or non-monopoly 
operating systems. I switched from Speakeasy to telerama because I was 
laid off and I needed to cut my expenses. I had a semi-beefy business SDSL 
connection from Speakeasy. 
I think I'm going to go back with Speakeasy when I move in 35 days (23 
hours and 56 minutes). My needs have changed a little and I'll be sharing 
bandwidth between more people and computers, and I would like to have a 
continuous block of 16 or 32 IP addresses again.
Unless this is important to you, it wouldn't matter, but if you are 
hosting a webpage with Telerama, and you get an IP address of 205.201.9.x 
for example, people who share that subnet will have trouble viewing your 
page. This is partly a feature of the technology, and part the trade-off 
of manageability on telerama's end and what the average user's needs are.
(There was more talk about this in January if you want to check the 
archives)

The other consideration is Telerama uses Verizon as the provider of the 
copper, Speakeasy uses Covad. As far as I can tell, If you're using 
verizon, you need to have dialtone service to get the line needed for 
ADSL. Covad just leases dry copper from Verizon in bulk, and it doesn't 
need to share a line. This might actually be a ADSL vs. SDSL thing.

The thing that I don't think anyone has ever gotten right to my
satisfaction is easy of billing information on the web. It seemed very
hard to tell what period of time the check I was sending was covering and
to what date I was paid up until.


-james
ADSL from Bell Atlantic 1998-1999
SDSL from Verio 1999-2000
SDSL from Speakeasy 2000-2002
ADSL from Telerama 2002-Present
Owner of about 10 different DSL modems. :)