Re: [PLUG] from Paris to Phily

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 11:23:52AM +0100, christophe barbé wrote:
> Is the call included in the 20$ cost?
> In france we have to pay the line for data access and for voice
> access (even local call) and we also need to give money to the ISP.

US telephone usage is billed differently than in Europe. Your call
to the ISP will be a "local" call, over which you're welcome to do
whatever you like. One pays for local calls with a set fee per month,
not per minute. This gets a little hazy in metropolitan areas like
Philly that have two area codes--215 and 610--where calling to the
other area code is qualified as "regional calling" and may have a
usage fee. But, generally, only long distance phone calls charge a
per minute fee worth worrying about.

So, unless your ISP meters it, you have no limit on the amount of
time you spend with the dial-up connected.

> In France I was using a bundle including the ISP fee and 50 hours of
> communications for 98francs (~13 US$).

Well, you'll get more (probably unlimited, if you can manage to use
it ;^>) time on line, but it'll cost you more per month. :^>

On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 11:29:06AM +0100, christophe barb\xe9 wrote:
> Le 2001.12.05 22:43:54 +0100, gabriel rosenkoetter a \xe9crit :
> > On the other hand, dial-up is really the low-end of the totem pole
> > these days.
> Yes but to have a correct price for a high speed connection you have to
> sign (and prepaid) for one year and I'm not sure that I will stay one year
> in my first house.

Fair enough.

I'm not sure how long I agreed to with Speakeasy... I certainly only
*pay* on a monthly basis and, yeah, paying a full year in advance
does shave some money off it, but I've either not been sure that I
wanted to keep their service or not been sure that I'd be here a
full calender year.

> btw Are these providers using PPPoE or still DHCP ?

That's kind of comparing apples and oranges, if you meant them to be
compared.

Most DSL uses PPPoE in some sense, but good DSL providers give you a
DSL modem that speaks it and hides it. My understanding is that the
only ISP around here that sticks you with dealing with the PPPoE
yourself, inside of their modem, is Verizon (neé Bell Atlantic),
though there could be others. Verizon also insists that you use
DHCP, won't let you get more than one DHCP lease on the same line,
and isn't to keen on your hiding a network behind the machine with
the DHCP lease.

Both ISPs I mentioned (Speakeasy and DCANet) have sane DSL modems
that just speak TCP/IP inside of the DSL modem, give out static IP
addresses (I understand DCANet lets one have something like 10,
though that may no longer be true; Speakeasy only issues two, but
more are a small--$2.00--monthly charge away each), and have no
problem with your running multiple machines or machines which don't
run Windows.

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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