response 27 of 91:

May 14 03:53 UTC 2000

maybe ameritech would give grex a break on its phone lines costs if it
agreed to let them be its internet provider as well-- a package deal.
surely someone in ameritech's marketing department has a little intelligence

response 29 of 91:

May 14 04:44 UTC 2000

I think we should get the installation and monthly rates in writing before
we commit to anything.

response 31 of 91:

May 14 06:31 UTC 2000

Ameritech was just bought up by SBC Communications, which apparently has a
much better track record with DSL, but it could be a while before the takeover
effects trickle down to Ameritech's customer base and service area.

Steve, if putting in the order results in having a contract drawn up but does
not commit us to anything, then by all means go ahead, but I'd still like to
see us get similar information from other attractive providers such as
speakeasy.net.  If the same situation applies there, then let's get their
numbers also.

response 33 of 91:

May 14 16:49 UTC 2000

My search for DSL providers wasn't amazingly thorough or complete, but I
think I did hit a pretty good sample.  Good enough to establish that
voyager's prices are on the very bottom end of the spectrum.  I think it
is very unlikely that many other cheaper alternatives can be found.

Of those few that appeared to be cheaper, most appeared to be offering
services that were in some way incompatible with Grex's needs - single
IPs instead of multiple IPs, bridges instead of routers.  Upgrading them
to what we need would make them more expensive than voyager.

Speakeasy is the only one I found who offers a service that meets our
specifications at a price that is lower than voyager's.  They'd save us
about $10 a month, and they appear to be kind of cool, but as Steve
says, they are a *much* smaller organization than voyager, less
technically proficient, less experienced, and with no real presence in
our area.  With DSL, if we have problems we have to talk to our ISP, who
talk to Covad, who talk to Ameritech.  It's good to have an ISP who has
a lot of experience dealing with those chowderheads, and who is big
enough to have some influence with them.  Steve says speakeasy.net is
not multi-homed, which is really rather pathetic.  I think even Dorian
was multi-homed, so going with speakeasy could be a step down in network
reliability.

Personally, I'd kind of like to do business with the smaller company
offering the lower price rather than the big major player.  I've never
liked the "nobody ever gets fired for buying Microsoft" philosophy.  But
on the whole I think the advantages that voyager offers are worth $10 a
month.

I also believe in trusting the judgement of our experts, and Steve is
definitely that.  I'm willing to try to convince him that speakeasy
might be worth looking at, but I'm not going to argue with him if after
due consideration he thinks it's a bad idea.

If we want to go with a reasonably large and well-established company,
then we don't really need to do any more searching for altenatives. 
We've looked at everyone who is big in this business in this area. 
Voyager is clearly the best deal of the lot.  Even the vast majority of
the second tier companies offering inferior service cost more.

So I think Steve should go ahead with the voyager deal.

There are a couple things that weren't quite clear to me on the voyager
deal:

  - There was talk of them giving us a break on the installation, due
    to being such nice guys.  I'm not sure I know exactly what this
    break consists of.

  - I've seen some hints that the DSL prices generally quoted on the
    net don't include taxes, and some hints that the taxes can be
    substantial..  I'd like to know how big the taxes would be on
    our payments.

response 35 of 91:

May 15 03:13 UTC 2000

I didn't mean to hold up the process, and I certainly don't want my opinion
to be given undue weight against that of someone with the specific applicable
technical expertise that I lack.  If the choice is clear then go right ahead.

(This may sound like a petty retort but it's really not.  Trust me.)

response 37 of 91:

May 15 16:43 UTC 2000

temp isdn while waiting for dsl will not be a prob on our side.

response 39 of 91:

May 20 23:23 UTC 2000

From what I've seen I get the distinct impression that Voyager is the best way
to go.

From what I've seen of DSL installations in Boston, some work perfectly,
and some have issues.  Knowing that we can get ISDN from Voyager until
the DSL line has been installed and tested has a lot of value.

Knowing competent people who can offer good support is valuable.  Apparently
grex knows people at Voyager who have a clue who we can actually talk to
when problems appear.  With speakeasy, grex would just be another random
customer quite likely, which generally doesn't lead to a good level of
support.

I'm not convinced that relying on InterNAP to do outsourced BGP4 multihoming
is all that horrible if they happen to be doing a competent job.  I deal
with maintaining the BGP4 config for a company of about 75 employees,
and I've occasionally wasted substantial amounts of time working around
uunet lossage.  Having someone else pick the optimal routing can have
its benefits in reducing the amount of attention needed.

That said, I'm not sure InterNAP does a great job; they seem to heavily
prefer sprint, which tends to heavily bias traffic between me and them
through MAE-EAST, even if I'm going from one point in Boston off of cent.net
to another point in Boston that's going through InterNAP.

As of a few months ago, speakeasy in Boston was sending all the traffic
through internap in seattle.  Now they're only sending Boston customer
traffic through New York on its way back to random things in Boston.
Speakeasy in Ann Arbor may or may not send all their traffic through Seattle.

response 41 of 91:

May 22 03:11 UTC 2000

I'm not especially familiar with exactly what internap does, but it seems
that internap is capable of setting things up so that their customers
have multiple redundant connections to internap, such that this shouldn't
necessarily be a problem.

response 43 of 91:

May 23 01:34 UTC 2000

OK, I'm willing to buy these arguments.

And certainly, a competent ISP really ought to have people who are capable
of dealing with setting up BGP4 anyway.

response 45 of 91:

Jun 22 17:29 UTC 2000

That is still the case.  I've had us escalate with Covad three different times
now.  the "FOC" date was 6/9 and has long since passed.  I'm attempting
to get ISDN ready for you now.

response 47 of 91:

Jun 23 06:14 UTC 2000

Hopefully we'll have something in the way of an update somewhat before then...

response 49 of 91:

Jun 23 16:38 UTC 2000

Thanks, Jared.