Comcast Alternatives? Was Re: Why must Comcast's DNS suck?

[Ben Scott]

On 11/14/06, aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net
<aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>   The best results I've gotten, looking at the whole picture (price,
>> performance, reliability, customer service, etc.) are with local ISPs
>> doing fixed wireless.  The major advantage is that by eliminating a
>
> Really?!  I don't know this to be very popular.  Is it now?

  Popular?  I certainly like it.  It is not that common, though, which
I suspect is what you're really after.  You need RF line-of-sight and
cannot have more than several miles between stations.  As it happens,
there's a big hill in the middle of Amesbury, covered in radio towers,
so it's convenient here.  Elsewhere in hilly New England?  I dunno.  A
lot of it is luck-of-the-draw.  Find out if there are any ISPs homed
near you and give them a call.

> Any local providers you can suggest?

  We're using MVA at work (http://www.mva.net).  I'm generally happy
with it.  We're getting everything we pay for.  It's a symmetric feed
with SLA, CIR, and all those other acronyms.  I'm sure a home user
would be horrified at what we pay for it, but it's a whole different
class of service vs. a consumer feed.  They do offer consumer feeds,
but I have no idea what the terms or rates are like.

  Reliability has been very good over the three years or so we've had
it.  There was one outage due to equipment failure at the tower once.
It went out around 4 PM and was back later that evening.  Said owner
was there, at the base of the tower, in the rain, until the techs got
finished fixing things.  There have been maybe two or three other
times were performance got bad due to upstream circuit trouble, but
those were all resolved within an hour or so.  The NET^W NYNEX^W Bell
Atlantic^W^W Verizon frame relay circuit we had before that wasn't any
more reliable.

  Again, the "local company" factor is huge.  Trouble is always
acknowledged and sometimes proactively reported.  I'm on a first-name
basis with the owner, and I can call right into their NOC if I need
to.  No run around, no recordings, no help desk b*llsh*t.  Even if
something happens, I at least know what and why and when.  That's
worth a lot to me.

-- Ben