SPUG: ISP Recommendations

[Kenneth W. Meyer]

Joe -

I have been with Alternate Access for several years, and DSL with them for about a year.  You can get their DSL connection for $17.95, and through US West, the wire is $29.95 for a direct connection and $19.95 for a pooled access (at the DSLAM, not at the ISP).  With the latter, you're still always connected to the phone-line, but you need to be assigned a port when you light-up the keyboard, much like dialing-in and getting a modem port.  I have heard some complaints about service in the GTE domain, but what else is new?!

AA also provides Unix shell accounts for $5, and a static address costs the same; they run on Solaris and Linux (not sure if they have an NT box).  I don't know the details of their ability to host all manner of active web apps.  They have a real Geek technical director (who started the company) and they are really fastidious about connection quality.  They also will connect your DSL via Covad, but this service is substantially more expensive.  

I have had no real problems at all with US West reliability.  Only one down-time that I am sure was their problem.  However, there can be a real hassle getting support from these guys, and you may end up speaking with Denver and Phoenix and Seattle before it's over; I would imagine that Covad is much better about this.  We had an outage on our phone line; and for about a week they kept bouncing me around and claiming that the problem was in our house.  Of course, I swapped the wires for line 1 and line 2 at the outside box and the problem remained on the other line, so they finally fixed it.  I think they drowned some cables during a spate of heavy rain, but it was Hell to get them to face up to it.

In all, I find this to be a good service with a real local presence, and it seems to me to be a good price for something that doesn't involve accepting obnoxious advertisements.

Anyone with contrary experience out there?

Ken Meyer
kmeyer at aa.net

----------
From: 	Joe Slagel[SMTP:slagel at geospiza.com]
Sent: 	Wednesday, January 26, 2000 3:33 PM
To: 	spug-list at pm.org
Subject: 	SPUG: ISP Recommendations

Does anyone have a ISP recommendations?  We're considering
switching.  Any recommendations would be great!

- Joe



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