[SLL] Nationwide Internet: melting down?

[Ken Meyer]

It's becoming clear to me that the offerings of all ISP's should include
information that defines, at least in general terms, where their servers are
located and the redundancy they have in: servers, colo's, upstream
connections, power, security, whatever.  I have not seen any that do so,
though some hosting services tout the bulletproofness of their facilities.

What do you think the local set of ISPs would respond to such requests --
rudeness?  Note that I do not think that it is necessary to provide
addresses, though I would really like to have a tour of a facility I was
planning to adopt.

Maybe a request with a copy to this list would suggest to an ISP that there
was an expert community associated with the request??

Ken M.


-----Original Message-----

From: linux-list-bounces at ssc.com [mailto:linux-list-bounces at ssc.com]On
Behalf Of Brian Lane
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2007 9:16 PM
To: linux-list at ssc.com

Subject: Re: [SLL] Nationwide Internet: melting down?

Ken Meyer wrote:

> So, I'd be interested in your experiences with Wave.  How have you found
the
> reliability and quality of the connection and the quality of customer
> service?  Seems like at least their speed is pretty good on your end
though.

Wave has been over here for 3 ro 4 years now I think. The biggest
problem I had with them was then I discovered we were still paying
$10/mo for TV we don't use they came out and disconnected the cable --
after I had made it brutally clear that they had better not just pull
the cable. But that got fixed within an hour or two.

Longest outage was lasts December's storm. All the lines were down on
our road for 4 days, and they came back up with the power.

Every time there has been an outage there has been a message on their
tech-support line explaining it (or at least acknowledging that it
existed and was being worked on).

Its reliable enough that I feel comfortable hosting all my sites and
those of a few friend here. Although after December's outage I did add a
2nd DNS server with John Companies.

Personally, I can live with an outage here and there -- I understand
that they're not going to provide me with 5 9's of reliability. And I
also understand that on the whole that kind of reliability isn't worth
what you would have to pay for it.

When I deal with companies, I value honesty and feedback higher than
perfection. If there's a problem, at least let me know about it. Stuff
breaks, no matter who you are or how hard you plan.

Now in Tim's case, it sounds like the outages are becoming consistent
(not a very good thing!) and that there may be some buck-passing going
on. That's another problem with DSL, you've got several layers to deal
with. With cable you *know* who is responsible.

Satellite may be an option too, but in my experience with DirecTV's
asymmetric system a few years back, it was almost as bad as dialup. I'm
sure 2-way is better, but we'd have problems with their gateway
crashing, signal problems, etc. And the final response from the nice que
card reading Indian gentleman was 'I am sorry that I cannot assist you
any further. An engineer will contact you within 2 to 3 days'.

Brian