[NBLUG/talk] DSL provider recommendations?

William L. Thomson Jr. support at obsidian-studios.com
Tue Apr 22 10:08:01 PDT 2003


My 2 cents,

On Tue, 2003-04-22 at 12:53, Steve wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 11:50:36AM -0400, Bob Blick wrote:
> > I love Sonic, but really there's nothing _wrong_ with Covad and it's less
> > money.
> 
> Except they are always borderline bankrupt.. Think they did chapter 13 a
> year or so ago. =)  I personaly don't feel covad is stable enough.

Sonic is assume. They are one of the only ISP out there providing
Bridged ADSL lines. You bet much better through put due to less
overhead. If you have a choice, go with Sonic, and forget the rest.
In Sonoma County, and surrounding areas where Sonic's services are
available I would rate them as #1.

Covad is a rock solid and stable provider. I had an SDSL line with them
in Petaluma for over a year. The line was ordered and installed just
after Covad filed for bankruptcy.

Now I have recently moved to Florida, and if it weren't for Covad I
would be in really bad shape. I have a SDSL and ADSL line with Covad
here in Florida. When I had my ADSL line with BellSouth I was getting
200-215 both up and down. That was for a $100.00 a month business line
with a single static IP. I bitched and yelled, but BellSouth did
nothing.

So I switched to Covad. Now I get up to 900kbps up/300kps down for
$70.00 a month with a single static IP.

I sure do miss my Sonic business ADSL line @ 1300kbps down/200kbps up on
average for $80.00 with 4 ip addresses and dial up any where in the US.
 
Now to the most important part,

Covad, BellSouth, PacBell, and etc. all use PPPOE, or something along
those lines. Sonic does not. PPPOE adds a bunch of overhead that kills
your bandwidth.

At the moment with my Covad ADSL line I am using the ADSL modem router
that they provided. Sitting just below it, turned off, is my Cisco
827-4v ADSL. I have been playing with it, but I can't seem to get it
configured correctly to deal with the PPPOE packet site. I have adjusted
MTU and MSS with little imporvement. But it has become a huge pain to
dial in.

I had a few headaches getting a similar router to work with Sonic.
However since Sonic does not use PPPOE I never had to deal with MTU or
MSS and etc.

With Sonic things worked, and my speeds were great.

Now I am not sure about Sonic's current offering but Covad does now have
a 3Mbps down/ 768kbps up line for $150.00 a month. However all Covad
lines use PPPOE.

If it was my choice to make, I would go with a bridged connection. If
all providers use PPPOE, go with the best and cheapest one. The price
does not always have anything to do with quality.

Now FYI, if you can look into services provided by ATG. I had a 1.1Mbps
SDSL line with ATG for $80.00 a month. I payed MegaPath/Covad $340.00
for a similar line.


-- 
Sincerely,
William L. Thomson Jr.
Support Group
Obsidian-Studios, Inc.
3548 Jamestown Ln.
Jacksonville, FL 32223
Phone/Fax  904.260.2445
http://www.obsidian-studios.com




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