[CLUE-Talk] OpenSouce Friendly ISP [WAS Re: [CLUE-Tech] Easiest DHCP]

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Collins Richey wrote:

*snip*

> I must be blind to some of the problems.  Yes, I was out of service for a
> few days during the cutover to @attbi, but since then I've had nary a
> problem, nor do I care whether they support linux (or others) or not,
> since I'm sitting on a router (NetGear) that I only needed to touch to get
> the correct domain name for the @attbi service.  The email servers have
> been much more reliable than @home (they would take the server down on a
> whim).

Most of the problems that I've had with AT&T aren't related to the
uptime or whatnot -- I've had some serious billing problems (mixing up
a phone payment, claiming it wasn't received and cutting off my
cable service) and my username wasn't properly registered in the
database for something like two weeks.

> As to the other matters, please help me understand why a company that has
> an express policy prohibiting you from running a server on their link (and
> thereby potentially sucking down the available bandwidth for everyone on
> the link) would be interested in helping you run a server?!  It would seem
> to me that a commercial offering is what you are describing rather that an
> individual user offering on @attbi.

I don't think anyone said that they expect any of the companies to help
them run a server. Support for servers and not being forbidden from
running a simple server for mail or a small Website are two different
things.

I don't think that it should require a commercial account to be
able to run your own website or mail server within the constraints
of your bandwidth. I maintain a website that gets very few hits, but
I have to pay for hosting because I can't (legally) run a Web server
on my cable service. I've certainly got the hardware and ability to
run my own Web server, but it's against AT&T's TOS to do so.

IMHO it shouldn't require a commercial account when the bandwidth
usage isn't exceeding the constraints of their bandwidth caps. (You
don't need a static IP, either -- there are services that allow
resolving hostnames to dynamic IPs...)

The other concern about AT&T -- soon to become Comcast -- is that
they're going to try to prevent people from using multiple computers
without paying extra for the priviledge. That's ridiculous.

Take care,

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier -=- jbrockmeier at earthlink.net
http://www.DissociatedPress.net/
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"Computers are like Old Testament gods;
 lots of rules and no mercy." -- Joseph Campbell