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Grex > Coop11 > #249: Internet Connectivity Revisited |  |
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| Author |
Message |
| 11 new of 176 responses total. |
gull
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response 166 of 176:
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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.)
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jared
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response 167 of 176:
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Oct 10 21:17 UTC 2001 |
re #165
most providers that can assign one can easily add more.
re #166
as much as i sometimes dislike the evil "big companies", they are making
strides in the right directions. in these market conditions
they need to otherwise they won't survive. i've seen a significant number
of providers and their suppliers move to spend more time insuring customers
are happy than signing up new people.
times are always changing. i just want to insure that grex does not get
stuck paying money to people that are providing poor/improper service
for what grex needs. (ie: not a 5 year long-term contract).
i believe the current contract requires grex to eject on a 12-month
marker from the contract inception. ideally (imho) any contract that
requires a minimum time to be in will allow one to remove from
the contract anytime after that minimum timer is met.
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gull
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response 168 of 176:
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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.)
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aruba
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response 169 of 176:
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Oct 11 16:09 UTC 2001 |
Re #167: Jared - I didn't understand your last paragraph. Could you
rephrase?
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blaise
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response 170 of 176:
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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.
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keesan
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response 171 of 176:
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Oct 11 23:51 UTC 2001 |
I much preferred my small ISP, that I could phone with questions and get
through to right away, and that fixed things right away, to the national one
that bought it out and took 40 min of waiting to reach and never answered
email, and also to the giant that bought them out and quadrupled the price
(but they do send me form letter emails). I am about to switch to another
small local ISP - when you phone their 800 number tech support answers.
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jared
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response 172 of 176:
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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.
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aruba
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response 173 of 176:
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Oct 30 04:16 UTC 2001 |
You mean, you think we should change it to a month-to-month contract, if
possible? That would allow them to up the rates on us at a month's notice,
wouldn't it?
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krj
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response 174 of 176:
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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.
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devnull
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response 175 of 176:
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Nov 15 03:43 UTC 2001 |
``expects to be profitable''? Is this an expectation by an overly optomistic
CEO? Or am I too cynical?
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mdw
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response 176 of 176:
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Nov 15 22:58 UTC 2001 |
Could be, but considering the general direction of the telecommuncations
market, chances are the company will be bought out before that happens,
rendering this a moot point.
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