[wplug] Pittsburgh DSL questions

[Lance Tost]

On Sun, 15 Feb 2004, Beth Lynn wrote:
> 1. You'd most likely be on their north hills network which is over
> subscribed and very susceptible to downtime. Libcom will tell you
> they are just about to "upgrade the network in that area" but they
> never do.

I live in Observatory Hill and rarely have outages... not sure if I'm on 
their north hills network or not.

> 2. They ask if you are running a "server" that they are given your
> "administrator" password so that they can login any time to make
> sure you are obeying the terms of service

They've never asked for any password to my machine.

> 4. Sure, libcom dsl is a deal, if you can live with 3 days to a week
> of downtime each month.

I am monitoring my website from a remote server... I believe it checks 
every 5 minutes or so and it's been up since Dec 17th... and there's no 
guarantee that that was because of my dsl.

> 5. Your packets will drop left and right. 3% packet loss is the best
> you can hope for. The president of Libcom himself told me this is 
> acceptable.

Current mtr output to yahoo.com ... ran about 5-10 minutes as I typed this 
email:

Hostname                                %Loss  Rcv  Snt  Last Best  Avg  
Worst
 1. router.unixgurus.net                   0%  542  542     0    0    0      
1
 2. 123.12.12.12                           0%  542  542    10    9   13    
193
 3. 123.12.123.123                         0%  542  542    10    9   13    
224
 4. 200ewan2-pitts-45.coretel.net          0%  542  542    19   19   29    
237
 5. 500.Serial2-11.GW4.BWI1.ALTER.NET      0%  542  542    23   19   22    
137
 6. 555.at-0-1-0.CL2.BWI1.ALTER.NET        0%  542  542    22   19   22     
99
 7. 0.so-1-1-0.XL2.DCA6.ALTER.NET          0%  542  542    25   23   25    
114
 8. POS7-0.BR4.DCA6.ALTER.NET              0%  542  542    25   23   26    
112
 9. 204.255.174.186                        0%  542  542    25   25   28    
127
10. bhr1-pos-0-0.Sterling1dc2.cw.net       0%  542  542    26   25   29    
184
11. csr11-ve240.Sterling2dc3.cw.net        0%  542  542    28   27   40    
319
12. 216.109.75.254                         0%  542  542    28   26   30    
202
13. vl30.bas1-m.dcn.yahoo.com              0%  542  542    28   26   30    
235
14. p9.www.dcn.yahoo.com                   0%  541  541    29   26   30    
183


> 6. Connection to other sites in Pittsburgh are horrid, especially
> Pitt, CMU, PSC.edu, and PSU.

No experience to these sites.  

> 7. When the SQL worm bouncing around, the entire isp was down for 
> 10 days. Libcom's explanation was that they had installed Microsoft
> SQL on some laptops that they use for internal business so they
> were going to shut down until they got things under control. sheesh!

???  I did not experience this outage.  Then again, I don't rely on them 
for much.  I do my own DNS and receive my own smtp mail.

> 8. They say they sell SDSL up and down 512 but it never got above
> 128 for me. One time it got below 28.8K!

I actually get a bit more than 512 sometimes... but yeah, speeds are not 
guaranteed (no residential class service will be) and there are times of 
slowdown... nothing too horrible for me though.

> 9. I sent several emails to support. All where ignored. They don't 
> answer the phone when they have downtime and if something goes down
> during regarding the dsl network during the weekend, oh well, you've
> got to wait till Monday 10am. Oh by the way, most of the dsl outages 
> would occur during the weekend.

Support hasn't been great, agreed.  But all I've really needed it for was 
the reverse DNS issue I mentioned.  

> 10. They constantly blame North Pittsburgh Teleco for their problems
> but they refuse to get more specific than that.
> 

No experience with that since I haven't had major issues.

> I ended up going with Verizon DSL for the remainder of my time at that
> apartment since they were going to get me up and running the quickest
> and they didn't charge me for setup or modem. No contracts either.

I had Verizon before Libcom... Verizon does PPPoE and no static IPs (not 
even one let alone two).  Plus, Verizon is known for blocking well-known 
ports especially if a new worm comes out.  I've never had ports blocked by 
Libcom.  Also, the reason I dropped Verizon was because my DSL went down 
and was down for a week... I could see my link light wasn't coming on on 
my modem but their support insisted that I clear out my "Internet history 
folder" or something like that.  I mentioned I was running Linux and I 
could prove via traceroutes that the problem was on the network but he 
wouldn't talk to me til I ran Windows and cleaned up that pesky folder.  I 
hung up on him and got switched providers.


-- 
Lance Tost <ltost at pobox.com>