[vox] DSL providers?

[Norm Matloff]

On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 03:41:31PM -0700, Jan W wrote:

> --- Zach Johnson <zjohnson at math.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
 
> But one thing, if you talk to SBC support, just give them the idea that
> you're using Mac or windows, if you say you use linux, you're on your
> own;  Omsoft will help you out if you want to use linux on your DSL...
> at least that was my experience...
 
> The best way that I have found to talk to SBC support is to do exactly
> what they say, without doing it, and just keep telling them what the
> problem is.  It's your right to run any OS on your DSL line, however,

I've been using SBC DSL for a few weeks (in the Bay Area, not Davis).
It's been fine (I have not experienced any dropping of SSH connections),
but I did have a very bad experience with SBC's tech support a few days
ago.

What happened was that the service was temporarily interrupted in my
area, apparently by the effects of unusually high winds on the telephone
lines.  I heard from colleagues the next day that this happened to SBC
service in Davis too, in the neighborhoods in which the phone lines are
not underground.  

I asked the SBC tech support guy specifically if there was an outage in
my area, and he said no.  He then told me that it was a problem with my
DSL modem (which SBC had provided).  He insisted on doing a remote
reconfiguration of my modem, even though I told him not to.  After that,
my router would no longer work, and the SBC guy said that that was due
to his reconfiguring of the modem, and that I would have to call "our
router department."  When I suggested that I simply try power-cycling
the router, he insisted that I would be wasting my time.  He also
assured me that SBC's "router department" was open 24/7.  So, I called
the number he gave me, and found that (a) it was the router
manufacturer's number, not SBC, and (b) they were open only during
business hours.  I then tried power-cycling the router anyway, and what
do you know--everything worked fine. :-)

The only good part of the experience with SBC's technician was that he
didn't object when I told him I was running Linux. :-)

Norm