RE: OT: QWest experiences???

>  I wonder if anyone has published a table
>of the capabilities of various good, local ISP's, such as Oz, Blarg,
>Drizzle, Zipcon, 2Alpha and others.

I know the Puget Sound Business Journal publishes a list once a year, 
but sadly they do not check the validity of the data and as such, 
some of it is grossly inaccurate.

Aside from that, I'm not really aware of one.  The UW CS department 
used to have a page dedicated to the topic but I think it has not 
been updated in a very long time.

Might be a worthy addition to the Seattle Wireless web, esp. denoting 
which ISPs are WiFi friendly and which have restrictive terms of 
service that deny you the right to use your connection as you see 
fit...

>  Would Oz be willing to share that
>information?

Of course.  Email me off-list with any specific questions and I'll 
gladly provide it.

>   Another aspect that I have wondered about is where the servers
>are kept. and what the backup, redundancy, UPS, etc. situation is.

These are very good questions to be asking.  It is difficult and 
expensive to build high-availability networks and server farms.  Many 
ISPs have historically not been able to do this due to the cost.  It 
has only been in recent years that it has become pretty much the 
industry standard amongst independent ISPs.  Redundant power, 
cooling, servers, storage, routing, switching, transit, load 
balancing, etc. are all essential at this point (from my point of 
view) as customers are very unforgiving about downtime.

>  Does the
>hardware usually reside in some hosting service somewhere?

Most of the WA ISPs I know keep their server farms in the downtown 
Seattle carrier hotel.  Some keep their servers off-site (e.g. at 
their offices) and others may use off-site colocation facilities.

>   There is a tier
>of ISP's, such as (I think) SeaNET, Olympus, etc. who charge more than the
>average, and the only rationale that I see is that they may have
>"industrial-strength" facilities, at least some of whose aspects could be
>more important for businesses that can't afford ANY outages (at least ones
>that don't take down their competition as well).

I don't know anything about the two you've mentioned, but would 
encourage you to ask the sorts of questions you have been asking of 
ISPs you are considering using, especially if your Internet 
connection is used for business purposes.  There are big differences 
in how things are built and operated behind the scenes.

>Note that they also ding you more if you want to run servers, which is
>aggravating since it seems that this only requires 30 seconds at the
>keyboard to unblock a port or several.

This isn't the issue.  The issue has been twofold: first, folks 
running servers tend to consume a lot more bandwidth than the average 
user.  Second, a lot of folks sadly set up insecure mail systems 
which often simply relay mail to the ISP's server.  This is a 
spammer's dream come true and every ISP's nightmare.

Many ISPs now filter port 25 in particular.  Some do not do any 
filtering.  (We are in the latter category, for purely philosophical 
reasons, but I can certainly see the argument for the former..  The 
question really becomes 'should we protect our users from themselves' 
and if so, 'where do we draw the line?'  It's a slippery slope, and 
one I'd personally prefer not to slide down.)

What I personally find most despicable is when ISPs like Verizon use 
this kind of a security issue as an excuse to force you in to their 
marketing programs.  Verizon.net, for example, will prevent you from 
using anything but a Verizon.net email address on their network. 
(They will not allow you to, for example, send mail as 
[email protected] from a Verizon.net DSL connection.)  This is 
nothing more than a marketing ploy; their argument that it is somehow 
a matter of security is simply nonsense.  I am amazed that their 
customers tolerate it.

>By the way, what is the implication of "Pro" services.  Is that linked to
>Qwest's "Pro" service, and what does this buy for you?  "Guaranteed"
>bandwidth?  Faster repair service?  Ego-stroking?

I'd say it has more to do with perception than reality, personally, 
but I suspect that Qwest would tell you something different.  On the 
ISP's end of things, the PVCs look and behave the same.  There may be 
subtle differences on the Qwest side that I am not aware of.

>Although I have great distain for Comcast in general, it seems to me that
>the definition of "ADSL" is that, "...we don't promise anything", so granted
>that what you say about loops is true, maybe it's not much different with
>Qwest or any of the others offering ADSL, where it may be the broken-down
>plant, rather than the traffic, that limits you, but you still have no right
>to having it fixed.

I think the biggest differences between DSL and cable modem service 
are choice of ISP (which leads to competition, lower prices, 
innovation, better service, etc.) and performance (because you aren't 
sharing the last mile connection with the entire city).  It's pretty 
much a no-brainer.  It is true that the ILECs have historically tried 
to paint DSL in a "best effort" or "non-business-grade" light as they 
were afraid of cannibalizing their very lucrative T1 & frame relay 
business.  They have more recently realized that if they don't eat 
their own lunch, someone else will, and have made great strides in 
this regard.  That said, DSL has its own set of technical limitations 
(relating to loop length and quality, mostly) and isn't perfect -- 
but in my experience, once it works, it's pretty much dead reliable 
and fades in to the background, much as electrical service does. 
YMMV.

-- Jared

-- 
Jared B. Reimer <[email protected]>
The River Internet Access Co.
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