Teksavvy Nightmare

[Thomas Milne]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Anthony Verevkin <anthony-P5WJPa9AKEcsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org>wrote:

> > From: "Thomas Milne" <thomas.bruce.milne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
>
> > I noticed that you are sending from Sympatico. Maybe you can answer
> > my actual question, which was about technical drawbacks to their
> > service. I see Bell adds things like anti-virus and so on on top of
> > the service. Those things can sometimes have some unforeseen
> > negative consequences.
>
> > Do you find it generally fast and so on?
>
> Thomas, I think I could answer your question. I have moved to the new
> apartment a month ago and found that Bell might actually be an ok choice
> for me. I like having fast Internet but I do not download much. So I
> took the Bell 15/10 package with 60GB included for $43/mo promotional, $53
> afterwards. Provided 60GB is enough for me that price was actually better
> than Teksavvy who would also have to charge for the Dry-loop (I don't pay
> that with Bell) and modem rental (Bell gave me the modem for free and
> because they mentioned it is a $100 value deal I am sure I own it now).
> And there is no contract here, just a 30-day notice.
>
> I checked the speed with iperf towards my Blink connection at work and
> I had a no-loss exchange at the speeds of 14.9/9.9 which is the way it
> should be.
>

That's pretty impressive. The upload is a huge difference compared with
Teksavvy. I was thinking about it and that could come in very handy for
things like Dropbox and Google Drive and so on.


>
> Bell security was also something I was afraid of but the modem itself
> does not have any more features than what a stock router would have.
> Also like with all other Bell routers you can use it in a pass-through
> bridging mode and that's what I am doing, running a full scale Linux
> router in a virtual machine which establishes pppoe session and runs
> all the firewalling, VPNs, QoS and IPv6 encapsulation and serves DHCP
> back into the router (which is acting as a LAN switch + AP at this
> stage).
>

Wait, the Bell modem is also the router? Ew.


>
> There was also an email from Bell with a link where I could have
> downloaded their security software for my PC, which I didn't even check
> cause I don't need it.
>

Ya, I remember when I was with Sympatico waaaaay back when, and they were
binning legit e-mails as spam, and I had no way of getting them because
their client did not support Linux, certainly not Fetchmail anyhow. I told
them to please turn it off. Their CSR, thinking they were being clever,
said to me 'Oh, so you WANT to get spam e-mails?'. I guess you can imagine
how a young, angry, newly minted (at the time) Linux fanboy might respond
to that. Some bridges got burned.


> I cannot say if they throttle the torrent traffic as I don't do much
> torrents - the only movie I have downloaded since went through overnight
> and I can't say if it was fast or not cause I was sleeping :)
>


> Overall I am fully satisfied with me going with Bell now and if you are
> not going over 60GB/mo (which is a sum of upload and download), then
> Bell might actually be cheaper than the "independent" ISPs.
>
>
That's where I am going to lose out. I don't believe that anything is
throttled anymore, but the cap is way too low. Bell's prices, if you ignore
the 'six months special' price, are waaaaay higher than Teksavvy. For the
15MB service, I would be looking at $20 more per month and that is for a
much smaller cap. I might not reach Teksavvy's cap of 300GB, but I would
certainly go over Bell's 60GB some months. We watch a LOT of Netflix and,
well, you know, 'aarrrr, matey'.

I might get some break because of my spousal affiliations but then I saw
what they gave my wife for her new laptop. Bell has switched from Lenovo to
HP for their managers. Yes, HP. Any company that would make such a
horrifying blunder, I just don't know. ;-)

Thanks very much for the info.

-- 
Thomas Milne
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