[rescue] looking for a Multia

Tue Aug 12 11:41:15 CDT 2003

>Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 10:58:39 -0500
>From: "Joshua D. Boyd" <jdboyd at celestrion.net>
>To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] looking for a Multia
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>On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 11:03:54AM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
>
>>   You using a modem or something?
>
>Yep, I'm stuck in dial up.  Well, actually, that's not even working
>right now, either, but hopefully it will be by the end of the day.
>
>I moved.  There is no high speed internet service convienient to the
>apartment building I now live in.   I've had the apartment for 4 weeks
>today, and I still haven't been able to get definate answers from
>Comcast and Verizon about what options exist.  The phone company
>insisted on connecting my apartment to a switch that is 4 miles away
>instead of the one that is 2-3 miles away.  The apartment building does
>not have any pre-existing cable service run to it, so cable would have
>to be run from the road, which is down a 3-4 tenths of a mile lane.  The
>cable company won't even talk to me, actually, they will only talk to
>the landlord.  I'm supposed to have an answer about whether the cable
>company will do it and what the potential cost would be early this week,
>but it hasn't come through.

If cable is available in that area... see if you can find a cable
subscriber that will allow you to setup a WiFi link.  Offer to split
the internet portion of the cable bill with them, and you'll provide
the equipment (or something like that).

>
>ISDN is definately available, but with a hefty install and a 30-60 day
>lead time on installation.  Further, I haven't been able to get the
>phone company to give me the business pricing talked about on
>dslreports.  Instead they keep running me around for hours then dump me
>on residential, which is obscenely expensive (dslreports.com reports
>that business service is far cheaper in this case).  Verizon wireless is
>also available.  The speed on that ranges from 40k to 144k.  They won't
>say what I'd actually get from my apartment.  They aren't even clear on
>what model phone would be best.  Both ISDN and Verizon Wireless require
>a 2 year contract, and I don't know that I'm really all that likely to
>stay longer than a year.  Obviously I only want to go with either of
>these as a fall back position after everything else is ruled out.

Unless the RBOCs have changed, the cheapest ISDN is till residential
and you use DOV (data over voice) which merely flags a bit saying that
this is a voice call, not a data call.  You lose 8K per channel (you
get 56K per channel with DOV instead of 64K), but if you have equipment
and your ISP will support dual DOV B channels, you'll get 110K of bandwidth
without per minute/per packet charges.

>
>BTW, no one was willing to give me authoratative answers about whether
>DSL or cable were available until after I took the place.  I hate
>comcast and verizon.  I look forward to the day that I can just pick up
>a fractional T to either epix.net or D&E (two local companies that have
>been nice to deal with in the past), or better yet, maybe Patrick would
>want to expand into that area of business.
>_______________________________________________
>rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

Knock on wood, I've had pretty good luck with Comcast (Media One ->
AT&T Broadband -> Comcast).  I've had very few problems... once in a
long while I'll have to log into the 3620 and do a shut/no shut to
get cable back up, and if that don't work, power cycle the cable modem
(even though it indicates it has a connection with the head end).... but
that isn't required very often (about once every 6-8 weeks or more).

While I never wanted to get ISP services through the cable company, I've
personally had good luck with them (knock on wood), and I can't get
anything else where I am to rival the speed for the price....

-- Curt

Curtis Wilbar
Hawk Mountain Networks
rescue at hawkmountain.net

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