[sllug-members]: DSL in SLC

[Cade Call]

On Dec 12, 2006, at 12:41 PM, Adam Barrett wrote:

> I won't lie to you... Speakeasy is expensive compared to the other  
> options.
>
> Technically you are getting a Qwest physical line, but I send them
> nothing, Speakeasy (and Covad) take care of that.
>
> I am paying about $80/month for the line, ISP and QoS (the most  
> important part).

I had speakeasy DSL for about 3 years. I was paying about $80/mo.  
for  a 1.5/768 line, the real beauty (and why it was worth paying the  
extra money) was there were no bandwidth restrictions. I used to  
share out bittorrent iso's for fedora core releases and would push  
through hundreds of gigs of traffic (both up and down) and never once  
heard anything from speakeasy about it. The only painful part of  
having speakeasy was when I had line problems (usually 2-3 times per  
year), when the problem was on speakeasy's end the fix was usually  
quick, when it was something covad handled for them it would take on  
average 12 hours to get fixed, when it was on qwests lines (yes covad  
leases the physical lines from qwest) it became extremely painful to  
get it fixed, often I would be down for days at a time. I simply  
wasn't a priority to qwest.

>
> On 12/12/06, Steve Dibb <steve at wonkabar.org> wrote:
>> Adam Barrett wrote:
>> > You will have to get a line from Qwest, unless you go with a  
>> premium
>> > ISP like Speakeasy.net or the likes.
>>
>> Now that's something I didn't know, that you could completely ignore
>> Qwest by going with Speakeasy.  That would be pretty nice, actually.
>> Has anyone tried Speakeasy?  Whats your take on it?
>>
>> Also, I do remember now hearing a lot of horror stories about the
>> Actiontec DSL modems.  Are there any other kinds than the Cisco ones
>> available to get?

I would highly recommend the cisco 678 dsl routers. I even rigged one  
up to work with speakeasy because the Zyxel one that speakeasy  
provided wasn't reliable enough. Xmission had several 678's for sale  
a while ago, they may still have some. Although if you were using a  
linux or bsd router/firewall you could always go with a Sangoma  
(http://www.sangoma.com) pci DSL card. It would allow you to  
eliminate any need for an external device to translate the dsl to  
ethernet.

-Cade