[ale] DSL Options

[Stephen F Nicholas]

Hello Ale,
I know this has been beat to death, but my situation might open up a new
forum.

Prelims:  Tried RoadRunner.  Worked fine while it was up ( >50% ).
Customer service was pretty bad.  2 hrs + to get a body on the phone.
Problem was not local, as my neighbor also had it.  Everytime I would go
down (data light out), I'd call him and he'd be down also.  Support
insisted it was a problem on my end and I was going to have to interrupt a
software upgrade for 20 of the 34 libraries in the University System of
Ga.  I don't think so.  So I stayed with Mindspring / Earthlink.

My box is a RedHat 6.1.

Questions about DSL:  I'm ~8500 feet too far from the CO.  So ADSL is out.
Checking out http://www.dslreports.com/reviews/93 reveals that I'm
eligible for IDSL from Phoenix and Speakeasy at 144kb access.  There's
also RADSL from Covad (this also includes Speakeasy above.)  

My question(s) are :  How is the above service ?  Customer service ?  How
is performance for IDSL and RADSL ?  Both require a one year contract, but
after my RoadRunner experience, I'm somewhat relunctant.  I'm somewhat
familiar with IDSL, but have heard nothing about RADSL and the results.
It sounds like the modem negotiates the connection each time.  My question
is how has anyone who has had this faied out on connection speed ?  I just
don't want to extra money for a same connection speed I already have.
They state d/l speeds of 608 kb (maximum).  In reality, what is the real
speed ?

Sorry to bend the ears,  Just need to make an informed decision.

Steve

=======================================================
| Steve Nicholas             |                        |
| Unix System Programmer     |  A risk is not a risk  |
| Georgia State University   |  until it is taken.    | 
| snicholas at gsu.edu          |                        |
| 404-651-1062               |  BBROYGBVGW            |
=======================================================

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