Rogers high-speed internet

[JoeHill]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:25:45 -0500
John Macdonald got an infinite number of monkeys to type out:

> On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 10:42:47AM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 09:25:46PM -0500, Charles philip Chan wrote:  
> > > Sympatico is not too bad if you can support yourself. Although the speed
> > > is slower than cable, but the speed is constant since I don't have to
> > > share my connection with the whole neighbourhood.  
> > 
> > But you do have to share the ISP and the rest of the internet with them.
> > Big freaking deal.  That claim is one of the lamest marketing scams the
> > DSL people have come up with.  DSL is very nice, and has the advantage
> > of not having to deal with rogers, but the sharing with your neighbours
> > thing is just a load of crap.  Some cable areas may be badly designed
> > and have too many users on one segment (cogeco seems to love doing
> > this), but from what I have seen rogers does a decent job keeping the
> > number reasonable (I have no problem getting 700KB/s transfers
> > regularly).  
> 
> More a case of outliving its best-before date - the original
> cable service in most areas was widely reported to nosedive down
> to dial-up speed in the early evening.  As the cable companies
> put better equipment into the local neighbourhoods so that there
> were fewer people sharing the local connection, that became less
> of an issue.  The memory takes a lot longer to go away.
> 
> > > Which is of no use since their TOS forbids servers, IIRC.  
> > 
> > All the larger generic consumer oriented ones have that.  I don't
> > consider having ssh access to my PC to make it a server.  A web server
> > or mail server would be another issue.  
> 
> That's the killer for me.  I want to run my own mail server
> to support my own domain; having a web server is something I
> haven't done but if I did it would not be to broadcast info to
> the world, but to allow me remote access to things on the local
> system (which I currently do through ssh), so an ISP-provided
> web site is of no value.  The mail "server" is only handling
> my family's email, nothing commercial, so I view terms that
> forbid it as carelessly attempting to solve a problem that is
> not relevant in my case with an overbroad policy.

Bingo. What always bugged me was that these id10ts would outright ban something
as benign as a what you describe, without the faintest idea of what they were
even talking about. I understand they have to watch out for people like me
inadvertantly setting up an open relay, but I really don't see what's wrong
with accepting inbound mail. I just went through an 'outage' which would not
let me retrieve my mail for 12 hours, and despite the fact it was the first
problem I've experienced with Sympatico in over a year, it was...disconcerting.
Having my own mail server, at least to accept incoming mail, would have allowed
me to bypass this 'outage' and in fact I never would have even known it was
happening.

Of course, they don't seem to have any specific problem with all the youngsters
downloading many GB's through what, for all intents and purposes is a *massive
network of easily compromised servers*, AKA P2P. Good luck trying to explain
that to them. What a bunch of dolts.

> I switched from Sympatico for my DSL service when Sympatico
> started blocking incoming SMTP.  And since Sympatico lied and
> told me that they had not made such a change when I first
> asked, and only admitted it after I'd spent a lot of time
> trying to find some other cause for the problem, I'm not
> planning to return.  (Their arrangements with MS have just
> cemented that feeling.)

Tough call for me. I get a pretty good deal on the monthly rate, and like I
say, the service has been by and large reliable. However, after 12 hours with
no mail, I was basically told a lie (it was an 'accident'...riiiiiiight), then
hung up on when I had the temerity to demand a supervisor. My call to their
'Executive Office' for complaints, or whatever, has so far gone unanswered.

This arrangement with MS will doubtless become the breaking point when, at some
point, I need to actually admin my e-mail accounts. As far as I can tell, I
would need to set up a Passport account with MS in order to access my Sympatico
e-mail service via the web. There's about as much chance of me setting up a
Passport account as there is me flapping my arms and flying to the moon.

Looking at Teksavvy right now, just trying to figure out if the Alcatel Speed
Touch modem I have is the right one, really cannot afford a new one right now
(this has always been the breaking point for me, is having to buy/rent a new
modem).

-- 
JoeHill
++++++++++++++++++++
Bender: Fry, of all the friends I've had, you're the first.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists