DSL providers in Toronto

[Fraser Campbell]

On January 7, 2004 04:27 pm, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> So now that I am getting pretty fed up using 56k dialup for the last few
> weeks, I think I need to consider DSL (No I am not talking to Rogers).
>
> What I would like:
> *ADSL 1 to 3Mbit
> *I can buy whatever ADSL modem I want
> *I can run services if I want to
> *Static IP
> *Reasonable transfer limits per month (although none is of course always
>  nice).

I've been with istop for a while (I think a little over 2 months) and I have 
no complaints so far.  There was one lengthy outage (4-5 hours) overnight and 
one short outage during the day.  My connection has failed at most 5 times 
and in all but the above 2 cases restarting the ppp connection resolved the 
problem ... I haven't checked my ppp settings yet, I'd think it should 
automatically reconnect.

My service is (I believe) 384K/1.7M, bandwidth cap is 25GB but there is no 
bandwidth cap from 0200 to 1000.  I download my Debian updates and do some 
rsync backups at night so it's nice that those don't count.

> Would be nice but really not needed:
> *Choice of what static IP resolves to

I haven't asked for that but I can't see why they wouldn't do it.  My ip 
resolves to istopusername.tor.istop.com.

> What I don't need:
> *Tech support to tell me how to configure programs I already know better
>  anyhow.
> *Email (I have plenty already).
> *Web space (I have that too).
> *Unreliable service

Well istop does give you email but as far as I recall none of those other 
items (unless you pay a little extra to get them).  You can configure istop 
email forwarding through their web interface.

> If that's possible for under $50 per month, that would be nice.

With static ip and all taxes my monthly bill is just over $36.  I could knock 
of $5/month from that if I'd gone for a one-time $50  static ip setup fee.

> Any suggestions?  Any horror stories?

I'm satisfied with istop so far that doesn't guarantee anything though.  Ralph 
was pretty busy on this list but has been non-existent lately, perhaps he 
went and got too many customers.

Still what is promising for me is that istop actually stopped accepting 
customers for a while, that indicates to me that they're willing to control 
their growth rather than just accept customers willy-nilly.  My downloads 
from Debian mirrors peak out at 143+KB/sec, a few times I've seen it get up 
to Bell speeds (183 KB/sec).  I actually use their proxy server which slows 
me down, I just use the proxy because I think it's a good thing to do.

> Toronto freenet looks promising, but someone said they just resell some
> not so great service.

I seem to recall someone mentioning that they resell 
Wiznet/DSL/Velocet/whoever service, if that's really true I wouldn't consider 
them no matter how good the deal.

-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser-Txk5XLRqZ6CsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Georgetown, Ontario, Canada                               Debian GNU/Linux

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