RE: [MLUG] ISPs

["Roberts, Michael J. \(IATS\)" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I am in Vanderveen and we have CenturyTel ADSL.  We have the cheapest available package ($29.99/mo).  I will say you get what you pay for, but the service has been very stable.  We have only experienced one outage in the last year, and that was due to a major fiber cut that took place a couple weeks ago.

 

In Vanderveen, we have the option of Mediacom or Charter.  I had a Mediacom cable modem for a couple months.  There was nothing wrong with it, except the price.

 

CenturyTel uses PPPoE, which is easy enough to setup on a Linksys, DLink or Netgear router.  I have mine setup to always stay connected.  You could probably get Socket DSL, but they may still lease the physical plant for CenturyTel.  There is nothing wrong with this option, but it could complicate things when you troubleshoot.  I made a simple spreadsheet of all the available ISPs, speeds, prices, contract lengths, etc.  Once I had everything on paper, it was pretty easy to decide.

 

-mike

 

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From: EMAIL:PROTECTED [mailto:EMAIL:PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phillip Kelchen
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2005 10:46 PM
To: EMAIL:PROTECTED
Subject: [MLUG] ISPs

 

This spring, I am going to be moving to a house and need to find an ISP. The house is a little west of Blue Ridge Road, near Vanderveen subdivision. I know that Mediacom is the cable ISP and that Socket and CenturyTel can provide DSL. I currently have Mediacom's service in my apartment and am relatively happy with it. However, I know people that live in nearby houses and say that the service is much spottier up there, so I kind of want to examine my options.

Here are my questions:
1. Has anybody had either of the DSL ISPs? What kind of service did you get from them, both in customer service and line speeds?

2. I know that the CO sits near Rock Bridge 16,500 feet away, so I am limited to 1.5Mbps downstream speeds. Will I see much of a difference between 3Mbps cable service in real-life use and 1.5Mbps DSL?

3. Does the modem work well with a router or with a Linux computer? My parents have BellSouth as a DSL ISP and their modems require being dialed directly via Ethernet via an ActiveX script in IE. I plan on sharing the connection, so that would be unacceptable to me on two counts.

4. Are there any other ISPs that serve cable or DSL besides the ones I mentioned?

Thanks for any input!

Phillip

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