IP: RE: A personal view from your IP Editor -- A missed Broadband Opp ortunity

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 18:16:39 -0400
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: Steve Crocker <steve () stevecrocker com>
>
> Dave, et al,
>
> I just finished shutting down my tiny DSL-based ISP.  I had feeds from 
> Verizon and Covad.  Both companies had their strengths and weaknesses, all 
> of which have been well documented.
>
> One of the reasons I shut down was lack of control of the service.  I 
> lived in constant fear that a wholesale disruption would leave me with 
> many unhappy customers and no means of doing anything about it.
>
> At home, I have two distinct DSL services, one based on Verizon and one 
> based on Covad.  Yes, that's obviously more expensive than a single DSL 
> line, but it's a whole lot less expensive than even one T1 line, and the 
> service is roughly in the same league.  (Purists will argue; so be it.)  I 
> *vastly* prefer having two DSL lines to having one DSL line and some other 
> form of back up such as ISDN or dial up.  ISDN continues to be a 
> nightmare, and dialup is too slow.  And configuration issues favor having 
> two DSL lines as well.  A standard PC running Windows can be configured to 
> know about two routers.  If one line goes down, little or nothing is 
> needed to get all the machines to switch to the other line.
>
> A dual-DSL configuration is not likely to catch on for home use, but for 
> business use I think it's an excellent balance between cost and reliability.
>
> There are, of course, some shared points of failure.  The copper loops 
> will likely run through the same trenches and on the same poles, and 
> they'll terminate in the same central office.  Even so, there can 
> be  happy surprises.  An idiot operating some construction equipment a 
> block from my house took out a bunch of overhead telephone lines a year or 
> so ago.  The entire neighborhood was affected.  To my surprise, only two 
> of my POTS lines and my Covad line went down.  My third POTS line, which 
> also happened to have my Verizon DSL service on, was apparently routed 
> differently and I was still operational.
>
> Another possible form of back up is Ricochet...
>
> Cheers!
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> At 05:52 PM 4/3/2001 -0400, David Farber wrote:
>
> > > From: Anthony Dye <ADye () evokesoft com>
> > > To: farber () cis upenn edu
> > > Subject: RE: A personal view from your IP Editor -- A missed Broadband Opp
> > >         ortunity
> > > Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:43:01 -0700
> > > X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
> > >
> > > You can send this out if you like...
> > >
> > > My company (Evoke Software) was completely abandoned by Northpoint AND our
> > > provider, Verio. Verio made only the barest of efforts to contact us about
> > > the impending demise of Northpoint; the email address they had was bad (typo
> > > on their part) and they made no effort to phone anyone from the company,
> > > even though they have numerous contact numbers for us. If we hadn't paid a
> > > bill, I'm sure they would have been in rapid contact with us... but customer
> > > service is not their strong point. Verio no longer provides new DSL
> > > accounts, even for their Northpoint users. Our San Francisco office uses
> > > Verio and Covad, but Verio wouldn't give us a Covad line. They offered us
> > > free dialup for 60 days... of course, we only have 4 analog lines for
> > > dialout, and we'd have to open up our firewall in SF to let the connections
> > > in.
> > > They also offered to upgrade us to T-1 access (30 days to install), or else
> > > we could call Earthlink and maybe get DSL from them...
> > >
> > > So, Monday morning, our entire Austin office was suddenly without access to
> > > the net. Time Warner Cable says it'll take 90 days to get us cable modem
> > > access, SWBell can get us a new DSL line by Thursday of next week.
> > >
> > > Both options stink... we're sharing modems, 10 people to a connection, until
> > > SWBell can get out here.
> > >
> > > Lesson? No business should go with DSL if they can possibly avoid it. The
> > > lack of a SLA means that outages can last for hours, or days, or forever,
> > > and companies have no recourse, legal or otherwise. SWBell won't even
> > > prorate your bill for the downtime. They make no guarantees of uninterrupted
> > > service, either. Get a fractional T-1 if you can, and if not, make sure all
> > > your public servers are co-located somewhere else.
> > >
> > > And make sure you've got a different connection set up for emergencies. When
> > > you consider what it's costing us to be without net access, the cost of
> > > maintaining a 128K ISDN line is pretty insignificant.
> > >
> > > -Tony Dye
> > >  Technical Services
> > >  Evoke Software
> >
> >
> >
> > For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/
>
> ----------------------------------
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