[vox] DSL Recommendation?

[Christopher James McKenzie]

Hi

I know people will opine with wails all over the place, but really, AT&T 
(SBC) is the best out there.

You can use the free dyndns to get effectually the same as a static ip 
address (it works great - I've been using it for 3 years and serve lots 
of data to lots of clients with lots of services 24/7).

The AT&T Tech support does not have a clue what they are doing.  They 
will recommend you use things that they don't know the purpose of and 
subscribe to services that they don't understand.

They have to be dealt with at this way, and you have to know exactly 
what data you need from them - you can't rely on them to gain any 
semblance of an understanding about how your service works, what it is, 
what is offered, or what is going on.  I highly recommend quantitative 
questions only such as "What is the URL that I need to go to to register 
the DSL service?  It's something like blah blah blah - do you know 
exactly what the address is?"

Getting past all of this, why do I recommend it?

1. Reliability
As long as you know what you are doing, my experience has been better 
uptime and more consistent speed then any other provider.

2. Price
If you pay close attention to their deals you can get basically steals - 
everything from $13 1.5MB/s DSL to $25 6.0MB/s DSL with and without 
contract with no equipment (as long as you have the modem) or set-up fee.

3. Open
They never block ports or seem to really care too much what I am pushing 
over my line.  I have heard nightmare stories about some other companies 
blocking people's port 25 or so in order to be "safe" or what not.  In 
my experience, AT&T simply doesn't do this - ever.

My experience with other companies is that they generally have more 
knowledgeable (then a toaster) people working for them but they are less 
reliable when it comes to connectivity and certainly almost always more 
expensive.

~chris.

Richard S. Crawford wrote:
> My wife are moving from Dixon to Sacramento in a couple of weeks, and I'm 
> afraid I've delayed the process of hunting for a good broadband provider.  
> Right now we're with Pacbell or SBC or AT&T or whatever they are this week, 
> but I'm wide open to signing up with a new service.
> 
> One thing that would be really nice: we currently have a static IP address 
> (because we signed up back when they were giving them away like candy), and 
> we would love it if we could have one with a new provider as well.
> 
> Does anyone have any recommendations for high speed/broadband service 
> providers in the Sacramento area?
>