response 152 of 176:

Aug 25 00:50 UTC 2001

A friend of mine drives around town now and again looking for open wireless
networks.  Does that count?

response 154 of 176:

Aug 25 22:55 UTC 2001

I was thinking of something more like an encrypted tunnel
over 802.11 between the Pumpkin and a local ISP.  As the
connectivity problem is much more associated with the "last
mile" wiring than any lack of bandwidth, that might be
something to look at.

response 156 of 176:

Aug 26 18:42 UTC 2001

Yeah, an encrypted tunnel would solve the security problems.

response 158 of 176:

Aug 27 00:34 UTC 2001

Merit isn't doing wireless these days.  (I asked.)  They've experimented with
it in the past, but it hasn't panned out.

response 160 of 176:

Oct 7 05:39 UTC 2001

Grex is too far away for me to provide 802.11b type wireless.
doing wep or similar things is doable, and one could do some ipsec
encoding in addition to the wep at the router level at each end of
the link to provide sufficent security to make such a link secure.

some rural isps (datawise.net for example) use wireless to interconnect
nodes that are distant.  there are also people who make interesting wireless
devices (adaptivebroadband[.com]) for one.  i talked to them a few years
ago at an interview and their technology was quite interesting and
sprint broadband uses them.  last i checked we were not in an area
that had access to such service.  the ameritech dsl stuff would be an
intersting choice as some people (ic.net for example) resell it.  i
also talked to comcast folks about cable modem stuff (static ip, etc..)
and they can provide service that would be usable to grex but
at a much higher cost than dsl.

if grex were to get in a bind for connectivity some staff person
could call me and i can attempt to arrange some sort of
backup connection (isdn, static ip dialup, etc..) in short
order.

response 162 of 176:

Oct 8 00:30 UTC 2001

Grex used to be connected via ic.net.  They've got some local peering;
at least, when I do a tracroute from work, they don't go via sprint for
any hop, and don't appear to exit the state of michigan.  Losing DNS
servers won't be an issue for grex (well, except for the reverse arpa
thing).

response 164 of 176:

Oct 10 02:50 UTC 2001

One other thing.  http://www.sprintbroadband.com/ people are good for
connectivity.

Aside: provider bashing, fnsi, ic.net, sprint, verio, cw, etc..
is popular for most of you people here who don't understand how
the internet works.  please tread lightly in areas where you are
not an expert.  All providers large and small have had issues over
the years due to hardware and software instability by the vendors
(cisco, juniper, and yes, even when ibm had routers in the core
of the internet).  also, when people like (voyager, verio,
bbnplanet/genuity, c&w and others) have done network integrations
to their 'corporate' world/way of networking things never go
as smooth as initally expected.  (Anyone who has worked for any
sort of company that was acquired/purchased/sold can obviously
vouch for this, it can be confusing and there are a lot of problems
that can happen.  company re-orgs can be just as confusing and
problematic).  A lot of providers have gotten bad names for various reasons
in the past, but one should keep in perspective that these problems
do not linger for years and tend to crop up due to administrative
or engineering snafus.

While we should keep in mind past performances of providers in insuring
grex has a good reliable internet connection we should also insure that
the data we are working with is current and understand that providers
may ecounter growing pains or problems continuing to operate in this
environment.  (hence my starting of this thread with concerns about
rythms, covad, northpoint, etc.. and grex being stuck without any
internet connectivity).

ISDN/Dialup has gone wholeseale as well as DSL.  I'm not sure
what the right connection is for Grex as a small business
and a 501(c)3 org.  T1 is too expensive, dialup too slow and
we need to keep in mind the static-ip requirement.  (grex only needs
one, the terminal-server/lan can have a secondary/vif netblock out
of rfc1918 space if necessary).  The solution is not obvious to me.

response 166 of 176:

Oct 10 15:03 UTC 2001

Re #164: Yes, I know, and I realize that most of ic.net's problems are 
with their upstream provider, which they only have a certain amount of 
control over.  However, I consider peering with an unreliable upstream 
provider to be a good reason *not* to work with an ISP.  For a while, 
earlier this year, we were experiencing outages every couple of weeks 
that went on for hours, where both their primary and secondary 
connections were down.  I don't think this is particuarly good for a 
company that purports to provide business-class T1 service.  It should 
be *more* reliable than my $50 ADSL connection at home, not less.  (It 
certainly costs a lot more.)  Given the non-critical nature of Grex I 
suppose it'd be acceptable, though.

Being an Internet provider is tough. It's like being a phone company or 
a power company.  There's little room to really make people happy, 
since they expect 100% reliability as a matter of course.  (Amusingly 
enough, at home both my Internet service and my phone service are more 
reliable than my electrical power.)

response 168 of 176:

Oct 11 15:12 UTC 2001

Re #167: Yup.  Generally with Internet providers bigger is better these 
days, because the small ones are either taking on more accounts than 
they can handle or going out of business.  (That's a big reason I went 
with Ameritech for my DSL connection at home.)

response 170 of 176:

Oct 11 20:10 UTC 2001

Re: 169.  I think that what Jared was trying to say was that after the initial
long term contract it should be possible to go to a month-to-month contract.
(As opposed to places that only renew in long terms.)  It sounds reasonable
to me to require a lengthy initial term (to recoup installation costs) but
not to require long-term commitments every renewal.

response 172 of 176:

Oct 29 21:46 UTC 2001

re #169,

        Mark,

        I believe the current contract was a 1-year contract
that would auto-renew for another year unless someone called-in
and changed it.  Something that might want to be checked on.

response 174 of 176:

Nov 14 19:39 UTC 2001

Covad, the DSL provider, is in the business news today.  
I do not have the story in front of me; 
however, it was reported that Covad got a large cash
infusion from SBC, and Covad now believes it can operate into 
late 2003, by which time Covad expects to be profitable.
 
My reading of this is that we can stop worrying about a 
Covad business failure knocking Grex off the net for a year or so.