IP: RE: A personal view from your IP Editor -- A missed Broadband Opp ortunity

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 18:16:39 -0400
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>From: Steve Crocker <steve@stevecrocker.com>
>
>Dave, et al,
>
>I just finished shutting down my tiny DSL-based ISP.  I had feeds from 
>Verizon and Covad.  Both companies had their strengths and weaknesses, all 
>of which have been well documented.
>
>One of the reasons I shut down was lack of control of the service.  I 
>lived in constant fear that a wholesale disruption would leave me with 
>many unhappy customers and no means of doing anything about it.
>
>At home, I have two distinct DSL services, one based on Verizon and one 
>based on Covad.  Yes, that's obviously more expensive than a single DSL 
>line, but it's a whole lot less expensive than even one T1 line, and the 
>service is roughly in the same league.  (Purists will argue; so be it.)  I 
>*vastly* prefer having two DSL lines to having one DSL line and some other 
>form of back up such as ISDN or dial up.  ISDN continues to be a 
>nightmare, and dialup is too slow.  And configuration issues favor having 
>two DSL lines as well.  A standard PC running Windows can be configured to 
>know about two routers.  If one line goes down, little or nothing is 
>needed to get all the machines to switch to the other line.
>
>A dual-DSL configuration is not likely to catch on for home use, but for 
>business use I think it's an excellent balance between cost and reliability.
>
>There are, of course, some shared points of failure.  The copper loops 
>will likely run through the same trenches and on the same poles, and 
>they'll terminate in the same central office.  Even so, there can 
>be  happy surprises.  An idiot operating some construction equipment a 
>block from my house took out a bunch of overhead telephone lines a year or 
>so ago.  The entire neighborhood was affected.  To my surprise, only two 
>of my POTS lines and my Covad line went down.  My third POTS line, which 
>also happened to have my Verizon DSL service on, was apparently routed 
>differently and I was still operational.
>
>Another possible form of back up is Ricochet...
>
>Cheers!
>
>Steve
>
>
>
>
>At 05:52 PM 4/3/2001 -0400, David Farber wrote:
>
>>>From: Anthony Dye <ADye@evokesoft.com>
>>>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>>>Subject: RE: A personal view from your IP Editor -- A missed Broadband Opp
>>>         ortunity
>>>Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:43:01 -0700
>>>X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
>>>
>>>You can send this out if you like...
>>>
>>>My company (Evoke Software) was completely abandoned by Northpoint AND our
>>>provider, Verio. Verio made only the barest of efforts to contact us about
>>>the impending demise of Northpoint; the email address they had was bad (typo
>>>on their part) and they made no effort to phone anyone from the company,
>>>even though they have numerous contact numbers for us. If we hadn't paid a
>>>bill, I'm sure they would have been in rapid contact with us... but customer
>>>service is not their strong point. Verio no longer provides new DSL
>>>accounts, even for their Northpoint users. Our San Francisco office uses
>>>Verio and Covad, but Verio wouldn't give us a Covad line. They offered us
>>>free dialup for 60 days... of course, we only have 4 analog lines for
>>>dialout, and we'd have to open up our firewall in SF to let the connections
>>>in.
>>>They also offered to upgrade us to T-1 access (30 days to install), or else
>>>we could call Earthlink and maybe get DSL from them...
>>>
>>>So, Monday morning, our entire Austin office was suddenly without access to
>>>the net. Time Warner Cable says it'll take 90 days to get us cable modem
>>>access, SWBell can get us a new DSL line by Thursday of next week.
>>>
>>>Both options stink... we're sharing modems, 10 people to a connection, until
>>>SWBell can get out here.
>>>
>>>Lesson? No business should go with DSL if they can possibly avoid it. The
>>>lack of a SLA means that outages can last for hours, or days, or forever,
>>>and companies have no recourse, legal or otherwise. SWBell won't even
>>>prorate your bill for the downtime. They make no guarantees of uninterrupted
>>>service, either. Get a fractional T-1 if you can, and if not, make sure all
>>>your public servers are co-located somewhere else.
>>>
>>>And make sure you've got a different connection set up for emergencies. When
>>>you consider what it's costing us to be without net access, the cost of
>>>maintaining a 128K ISDN line is pretty insignificant.
>>>
>>>-Tony Dye
>>>  Technical Services
>>>  Evoke Software
>>
>>
>>
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>
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