Generalissmo Francisco Franco...

[lwood]

...is still dead.

Speakeasy called Covad, who theoretically dispatched someone to the CO (think Morlock Hole, Gentle Readers) for Deep Network Hoodoo--replacing a DSLAM card

Covad's tech either balked at replacing the expensive thing, or never made it to the CO because he was eaten by a grue, or something, because lo, nothing was actually done.

Speakeasy is Not Amused and have Spoken With Covad. I believe the phone call went something like this:

Covad: "Hey, Speakeasy, watch me pull a DSLAM out of my hat!"

Speakeasy: "Oh, Covad, that trick never works!"

*Covad pulls, and gets a huge rat instead of a DSLAM card.*

Covad: "...guess I didn't know my own strength!"

We are Informed that they really really are sending a tech out... "This time for sure!"

And, therefore:

Overall Status	Explanation
	The current status of my server is Elmo as the network is DOWN.

However, I am pleased to report that a nearby EVYL EMPYRE is only too happy to do everything Speakeasy had been, only faster and for less money. While I'm normally a happy little Green Libertarian, and agin' Evyl Empyres wheresoever they may be, the little guy is not giving me the level of service I need: two significant outages in three months is, simply, unacceptable. Yes, I know Speakeasy has to work through the New and Improved Death Star, but really, there are things up with which I will not put!

-- Lorrie

Comments

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

Obviously, it's your connection and you gotta do what you gotta do. But my take?

I will never get a network connection from a company that started off as a phone or cable company, not if I have any other option. Why? Because phone and cable companies are used to being monopolies. Even when they've moved into more competitive arenas, like Internet connectivity, they still retain that "We're the Phone Company. We don't have to care" attitude.

Speakeasy is currently failing to provide you with service, true enough. (Even if it's apparently Covad's fault.) But at least Speakeasy is doing its damnedest to: A) keep you in the loop about what's going on; and B) get it fixed. I suspect Comcast would tell you, at best, "It'll be fixed when it's fixed."

Also, will Comcast really "do everything Speakeasy had been"? Comcat's Acceptable Use Policy explicitly disallows email, web, and similar servers (paragraph xiv), and it looks like even connecting your own LAN to their pipe is dodgy or outright banned (para x).

In short, most providers don't consider your pipe to be yours at all; they think they're doing you some kind of favor by allowing you to connect to the Internet at all, and you should be grateful to be able to receive all that content. So I don't give them my money, and I urge everyone else to boycott them, too.

Sorry for the rant. Like I said at the beginning, if Speakeasy is simply not meeting your needs, then you gotta go with someone who will. I just question wheter Comcast is or ever can be that someone.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know--all of it. I've given that rant myself, even.

The part where Speakeasy isn't doing more than "best effort" is that we're technically doing this with residential-level service, which means that they're very responsive on the phone, but don't actually have anything saying "and if we don't have it back up in X hours we nip out back and commit seppuku". They have "best effort" which is, well, where we are now, yippee.

The sucktastic Comcast customer AUP &c is why we're signing up with business-level service with Comcast, which allows the kind of service we need--static IP and all of that. Our residential cable modem has never failed us (*knock on head*) and the overall service will soon be getting upgraded from 5.0Mb/s to 6.0Mb/s.

The only thing that I could think of that could suck less is putting lorien in a colo, which I'd rather not do--price becomes a consideration, alas. 8-(

-- Lorrie

[countgeiger.livejournal.com]

After reading the AUP for the Comcast Business account, it looks to be like part of the reason for the residential AUP is to ensure they get extra $$$ for more services.

Obviously, running a mail server, web server, etc, causes substantially more upload bandwidth than the typical home user who does nothing but web surf, etc. This causes them to have to change their bandwidth characteristics (Typical home user would be fine with 5M down/128kup, for example).

The business agreement is about 10 pages long, and is mostly legalese about payment terms, SLA, etc. It pretty much winds up at "Don't do anything illegal or we cut you off."