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

Kris Anderson ciscoaix at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 27 08:28:18 PDT 2005



--- "Gary W. Swearingen" <garys at opusnet.com> wrote:

> Kris Anderson <ciscoaix at 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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> 
Wowzers, I think I'll get a couple of tin cans and a
string.

Thanks Gary, and everybody else who replied. Most
appreciated.

~Mr. Anderson


	
		
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