Re: Qwest DLS & MSN Premium & Linksys Router & FreeBSD.. Oh my

From: Gary W. Swearingen (garys_at_opusnet.com)
Date: 10/25/05

  • Next message: Kris Kennaway: "Re: fatal trap 12 in kernel mode" 
    To: Kris Anderson <ciscoaix@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 11:51:21 -0700

    Kris Anderson <ciscoaix@yahoo.com> writes:

    > I'm getting off cable (Comcast and 6 megabits) and

    Good move.

    > Their fine print -

    Don't forget the finer print. "Invisible print" might be a better
    term; good luck even finding it before committing yourself. More
    below.

    > home phone pac kage ($24.99 otherwise), free

    Check out which "phone pac" that is. I doubt very much if regular
    phone service is considered to be a home phone pac; I mangaged to find
    (after considerable searching) their page for ordering non-pac phone
    service to get a 12.50 basic service (before more than that in various
    fees and taxes, one which seems to be part of _their_ taxes -- grrr).

    > restrictions may apply. MSN ISP requires agreement to
    > MSN Acceptable Use Policy.

    Yeah, after considerable searching I found a "MSN Subscription
    Agreement" link at http://support.msn.com/ which took me to a member
    sign-in form. Do you really want to do business with a company that
    does business like that?

    > So am I right in still thinking that with MSN as the
    > ISP my setup it isn't going to be FreeBSD friendly and
    > that my spiffy little Comcast setup isn't going to
    > work with MSN as the ISP?

    I can't help you; and I wouldn't help MSN if I could. I know I
    first bought a (used) modem that was "guaranteed" to work with
    Qwest and a non-MSFT ISP, but I later learned that it would only
    work with Qwest+MSN and had to pay a "restocking" fee to get most
    of my money back. Grrr.

    I found what seems (in about 5 mo) to be a good ISP at opusnet.com .
    Relatively good contract terms and in actual practice, so far. And
    about as cheap as they come.

    Note that _almost_ all ISPs have indemnity clauses whereby you agree
    to pay their legal and other costs if some third party makes claims
    against the ISP which involve you in any way, whether or not you've
    done anything wrong in most such clauses. Another facter is how far
    away the courthouse and your lawyer would be.

    Last time I looked, Quest had no indemnity clause for their pure DSL
    service, but they had one in their ISP contract and, of course, MSN
    does too. I say "of course", but I should note that MSN.net is one of
    increasingly-few web sites that has no indemnity clause in the
    site-use contract. Even such "open source" sites as Slashdot have
    them these days. I assume the risk of using such sites in read-only
    mode, but seldom, if ever, post anything to them. BTW, my insurance
    guy knows of no personal insurance against such indemnity risks.

    I bought a DSL modem at Fry's for about 10 $ more than Qwest's, mostly
    because Qwest has given me many reasons to dislike and distrust them
    and partly because my modem has a 2-yr guarantee. It is a Zoom ADSL X5
    and seems to work fine and was easy to configure once I got past some
    problem that I had with Mozilla not accessing the modem's
    configuration web forms correctly. (I've already forgotten the
    cause.) Beware that the Zoom modem package says in big print that it
    comes with DSL filters and in fine print it says how many it comes
    with, which I didn't notice was _zero_. Grrr.)

    With the Zoom modem, at least, you may configure it to run DHCP and
    give the modem a fixed (eg, 10.something) IP address or run DHCP on
    whatever you connect to the modem. The Zoom X5 is also a 4-port
    router, but this one was not wireless like the Qwest modem.

    Finally, beware that a few weeks ago DSL providers like Qwest got
    permission (from the US gov) to refuse to do business (after 2005,
    IIRC) with good ISPs like opusnet.com, so don't be suprised if your
    choice in 2006 is between Qwest+MSN and Comcast+Comcast. Grr.

           -- Grry
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  • Next message: Kris Kennaway: "Re: fatal trap 12 in kernel mode"

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