[wplug] DSL or higher ISP?

[Tom Rhodes]

On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:52:03 -0500
"Brian A. Seklecki" <lavalamp at spiritual-machines.org> wrote:

> 
> On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 10:41 -0500, Arenlor BloodLeaf wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > I live in Beaver Falls and am fed up with Verizon's lack of supporting
> > customers who use Linux, no not lack of support for Linux, lack of
> > actually giving ANY support (I had to lie to get billing support). So
> > I'm looking for an ISP that is DSL or higher which will let me ask them
> > why my inte
> 
> 
> Yea screw Verzion and their crappy IP backbone.  Worst BGP view out
> there. The Westell bridges are part of the problem, but the new
> Actiontec FIOS units really take it home.
> 
> Penn Telecom has always been Pittsburgh's best DSL L1 provider, with
> your choice of IP carriers or Penn-Telecom themselves (aka, Nauticom).
> 
> They use the Paradyne Hotwire MVL Bridge/DSLAM.
> 
> Most ISPs on the SDSL side use bridged WAN space (as opposed to some
> stupid insanity with PPPoE).  If your ILEC is Verizon, they'll resell
> you a brand new copper run all the way from the DSLAM to your DMARC.
> 
> Hard code your WAN interface IP and it will run solid for years.

LOL I just left Verizon after being a customer for < 24 hours.
That entire PPPoE issue was just too much ..

Support: Are you running Windows?
Tom: No.
Support: Are you using MacOSX?
Tom: No.
Support: Are you running Linux?
Tom: Now why would I want to do that?
Support: Sir, what operating system are you using?
Tom: FreeBSD
Support: Free what?  What is that?  Some sort of Linux?
Tom: No, it's a "Unix-like" operating system.
Support: Sir, is that like, Linux.
Tom: No, Linux is sort of "Unix-like."  But I don't use it.
Support: Sir, what operating system are you using.
Tom: FreeBSD.
Support: Sir, I don't understand, what is that.
Tom: An operating system which, if the world had gone without, you'd
be working hotel support right now since that is what TCP was native
on.  NOW!  I want to speak with an engineer please.

In the end, I canceled my account with them for several reasons,
one is the entire PPPoE over DHCP (which I was told the latter
was available and then told otherwise).  So lying was the first
issue.  I would consider it a mistake, but two people told me
I could use DHCP.  What would have been wrong with say "Sir, I
don't know, let me get an engineer?"

The next, having PPPoE login adds another point of network
failure when doing diagnostics.

And to use PPPoE via a shell prompt, I'd need to install more software,
ISC dhclient comes native in *BSD, why should I install more
software?

Call it whatever you want, Verizon, in the end, it's still PPP
just that you encapsulate frames over ATM and send them over
Ethernet at a lower MTU (RFC says 1495 - not much different than
1500 but still, every little bit counts).

In the end I demanded they disconnect my account.  They offered
me a free month of service and to set up my PPPoE connection
right there - of course, that's not what I asked.  A year of
free service wouldn't have made me happy.

The punchline - they never fully disconnected my account, I was
billed for phone service which I asked to be canceled as well -
I didn't need it.  I have too many cell phones as it is!

So I got to spend another hour getting that disconnected and
the bill "adjusted."  In the end, the bill was "adjusted" and
I was owed .85.  How?  I have no clue!  Never paid for anything
and apparently I'm owed that.

Moral of the story, you can get enough for a bag of chips with
your lunch if you just fight with Verizon.

Sorry for the rant,

-- 
Tom Rhodes