[ale] DSL -> Cable

[Jeffrey B. Layton]

James,

   I was getting ready to post, but I can't say enough BAD things
about charter without resorting to lots of foul language. I just
went through a 2 week outage with them. Once the connection
came back up it promptly went down again with a hollow
promise of "it will take 24 hours." Any time you have a problem
it takes at least 11-14 days to get a repair tech to come out (this
has happened to me three times this year). Their tech support is
the worst. They read from a script and they don't have any
information about outages, what's wrong, what's being worked,
or anything else. I would rather talk to someone in India because
they have nice accents and I can ask them about life over there.
   I know you want to find cheaper net access, but Charter is not
one I would recommend. Is there anything else you could try?

Good Luck!

Jeff

P.S. While I'm on the subject, I'm looking to kick the shit out
of charter. I know people recommend SpeedFactory, but what
about Covad or Cyberonic?

P.P.S. I've also had problems with my cable (our for a week)
so I'm looking to replace it. Anyone care to comment on Dish
or any other satellite service?

> Currently, I use Speed Factory for my ISP. I'm still on the old 3Mb
> service with a static IP so the monthly fee is kind of pricey. I would
> like to drop my Bellsouth service and get Vonage's $15/mo service. To
> do that I would have to move to cable for my internet service. I am
> only able to get Charter where I live so I know I would have to use
> them.
>
> My setup is like so. I have an old Pentium II machine acting as my
> gateway. It is connected to the DSL modem which is setup for pass
> through mode. So the gateway is authenticating with Speed Factory via
> PPPoE.
>
> My question is this: If I move to charter, would the same setup work?
> I know I would have to get a cable modem but I don't know how I would
> authenticate; I've never used cable for internet connectivity before.
> I would prefer to have the "modem" pass everything through to the
> Linux box so it can manage the connection.
>
> Also, I imagine I would have to deal with a dynamic IP again. How does
> the PPPoE client deal with that? If Charter assigns a new IP every few
> hours (or days) should I notice any hiccups in service?
>
>