[lug] Qwest Basic service w/ single static IP

William D. Knoche Bill.Knoche at Sun.COM
Fri Sep 16 13:12:15 MDT 2005


On the other hand...

> Have you looked into other providers?  Speakeasy is the only other provider I
> have personal experience with, but I can tell you the difference between
> Speakeasy and Qwest is night and day when it comes to technical support. 
> Even their bottom-tier people know what they're talking about.  There have
> also been recommendations on this list for several local providers that
> sound like they can provide that kind of service too.  I'm paying $55/month
> for 1.5/384 with 1 static IP, and Speakeasy is the only provider I know of
> that allows you to run any server at that price, and also explicitly allow
> wireless sharing in their TOS.  Can any of the local providers match all
> those terms?  I would have gone local (assuming any of them could match all
> the conditions I just mentioned), but I thought it was likely I'd have to
> move before the contract was up.  Also, my service always seems to go out at
> night and I figured a national provider would have better tech support at
> night, is that the case?

I went the other way. I use Qwest Basic which gives me little or no services from Qwest other than the static IP. I bought a used Actiontec for $15 so don't even pay for the monthly rental ($5/month) on that. I believe this is currently costing me $29 for the DSL and $10 for the ISP parts, so $39 total. It is 1.5/384.
I run all of my own services, dns (server/client), ntp, mail, web, voip, etc... so really all I needed was a static ip and connectivity.
The only service I am missing is a news feed (and I do miss it) but now I use Google groups and that is ok. I was probably spending too much on news anyway but if anyone knows of a reasonable news feed for little or nothing...

In all I am pretty happy. I have pretty much the lowest possible cost for the bandwidth. I don't get any support from Qwest but don't expect any (other than keeping the line up - there have been few outages).
Even the Actiontec has worked fine once I put it in transparent bridge mode and use real firewalls/router.

When things fail it is almost always my fault and I just fix it. It has also served to keep my interest and skills more or less up to date. While I grouse about having to all the work I do prefer it. (yep I do all the work on all my cars, too) It isn't for everyone but works for me.

Have a great weekend!

--bill




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