[rescue] misc old Sun resources

[James Lockwood]

On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Bill Bradford wrote:

> Thats why I went with SWBell DSL - in the end, they're not going to be
> another CLEC going out of business, and I dont have to deal with a CLEC
> fighting with ASI (bell's installers division, etc), etc, etc, etc.
>
> It all comes from one source, and Just Works.  I'm fucking IMPRESSED.
>
> (I heard plenty of horror stories about bell dsl 2.5 years ago)

Most of the problems I had could be chalked up to poor communication, poor
equipment (Alcatel 1000's) and next to zero training for the linemen.  It
took me five months to get an intermittent connection repaired because the
only test gear that the linemen had for the digital side was...a battery
powered Alcatel 1000 in an aluminum briefcase.  If the light was green, it
was officially "ok" and they could sign off.

I also recommend that everyone avoid stacking ADSL and POTS on one line if
Pacbell's service policy is representative.  With this setup, when I had
problems with the POTS side of the line, all service requests had to be
routed through the DSL group even when it was clearly not a DSL issue.  I
had POTS service down for five days at one point because nobody could give
me a straight answer on who was handling my issues, I finally had to
threaten PUC action.

"We don't care.  We don't have to.  We're the phone company."

> Damn, go for that... just put a 10baseFX converter on either end, and
> plug straight into their switch, or something.

Problems: cost of fiber, cost of installation.  If I could either get more
neighbors on board or be very sure that the house/ISP would be stable for
many years it would be more tempting.  The next closest ISP is 5+ miles
away, if this one tanked then doing anything else would be costly.  At
least with an 802.11b solution I could reuse the equipment for a number of
other projects.

Postscript: I am 100% in favor of ISPs metering bandwidth.  Flat rates
make customers happy but are extraordinarily bad business sense,
especially when potential bandwidth use is high.

-James