[oclug] Sympatico ADSL and y.k.w.

[Brad Barnett]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 19:17:13 -0400
Ross Jordan <rjordan at numb.ca> wrote:

> > > unprofessional and money grubbing, at least from my experience. They
> > > have had some reliability issues in the past; but I've otherwise
> > > been happy with their service.
> > > 
> > 
> > I doubt you do anything serious with your ISP connection then.  That
> > is, work from home, need stability or reliability...
> 
> Well, I wouldn't use istop for a business; I also would not expect
> to pay anywhere as cheap as they are for Business lines (expect 3x
> or more the price). I do host a couple domains off istop, run email
> and cvs servers etc. But, I am still happy with the cost/benefit
> ratio.

Nothing I listed above means you need a business line.  Working from home
occasionally does not denote that you need some sort of special line, or
that it should be a business line.  Do you expect to pay more for your
phone line, if you use it to call work?  Do you expect to pay more for
your cell phone, if you do the same?

Do you expect your phone or cell phone to operate below quality, because
you did not purchase a business line?  Certainly not!

> 
> > Sure, if you don't care whether or not your connection works when you
> > actually want to use it, ISTOP is for you.  That $5 per month you may
> > save might be worth it.
> 
> Well, I do care. Since Christmas, I have been unable to access my 
> server thrice; twice was because of Istop. I can live with that.
> 

Istop's downtime is much more extensive than three outages since
Christmas.  The outages they've had in the last 6 months would probably
range close to a thousand, as there have been several days when they were
up and down almost continuously (again, external traceroutes show where
the issues are here .. in istop's network, or connecting to it).

Again, I'm willing to bet that you don't use your internet connection a
lot (which is required if you are going to notice a vast majority of
outages).  Alternatively, perhaps you use your connection in
non-interactive ways, such as web browsing.  SSH connections are a lot
less tolerant to outages and packet loss than a web page which can simply
be reloaded.

> > Heck, in many cases ISTOP isn't even cheaper than superior ISPs.
>
> You can't find a cheaper business dsl line /w static IPs and reverse
> DNS. You can do better on a residential DSL line, but you won't get many
> options(i.e. dynamic IP, no servers rule, ISP blocking SMTP traffic
> etc.).
> 

Actually, most DSL ISPs do the above.  ISTOP isn't special in this regard,
it's just one of the pack.  ISTOP does offer a few things cheaper than
competitors, and they are a little more liberal handing out subnets, but
you pay for that with crappy service.  This is why I had a second
connection with a reliable ISP, when I used istop for a few other things. 
They simply were so unreliable that a second line was a mandatory
requirement.