| gabriel rosenkoetter on Wed, 8 Jan 2003 20:48:10 -0500 |
|
> On Wed, Jan 08, 2003 at 06:43:01PM -0500, epike@isinet.com said:
> > pardon if this topic has been discussed about so much already,
> > wasnt paying attention...so I'm about to go either speakeasy
> > or DCA.
Both good choices.
> > I'm switching over from comcast cable. The reason
> > being I want to run my own domain and services: primarilly
> > dns, web, pop, and mail.
You'll be able to do all of those things (and anything else you
might want to) with either.
I'll let Stephen's comments for DCANet stand (since he subscribes to
them and I subscribe to Speakeasy) and say what I've always said
about Speakeasy...
Good: They employ competent people, even on frontline tech support.
They exist for and by geeks, while being anything but alienating to
the less than fully clued ("geeks" includes Unix geeks, of course,
but they also have a lot of hardcore gaming users, who don't all
want to know how things work, they just want them to work fast).
They are very interested in comsumer broadband existing, being used
extensively and expanding. They encourage you to throw up a wireless
base station and share bandwidth, if that makes you happy (see a
somewhat recent Slashdot store). They're national (so if you move
somewhere else in the US, you can probably keep a lot of things
about your account exactly the same).
Bad: They're national (they're a bigger organization than DCANet and
are servicing more people, which *postentially* means that they'll
be slower to service, though I've never had them be anything but
admirable in this regard). They're more expensive (you'll get the
same service for vaguely $10 less from DCANet), partly as a function
of the former, partly because they peer with more networks at a
higher rate (if you haven't a clue what that implies, you probably
don't care).
You'll find, with DSL, that although your peak bandwidth is probably
lower than it (theoretically) was with a cable modem, it stays
pretty close to that most of the time, rather than fluctuating
drastically (and, worse, degrading as more and more people on your
block buy in). You'll also find that DSL providers have a
traditional ISP attitude (they're in business to provide people with
Internet service, and make some money) rather than a traditional
utility (in the Monopoly sense) attitude (they're in business to
make money by providing poor suckers with a service that they crave).
Again, either Speakeasy or DCANet is a good decision. Hope you
enjoy it!
--
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net
Attachment:
pgp1GaC381kS4.pgp
|
|