systemic problems?

Sat Nov 30 02:40:29 PST 2002

On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 03:29:42AM -0600, Rob Windsor wrote:
> The outages come'n'go.  I was down most of Wednesday, but up all day for
> turkey-day.  Today, I was out for about an hour in the afternoon.
> 
> I'm not sure which is more gruelling, "just coping" with the outages or
> attempting to breach the level-1 tech support to catch someone with a
> clue.  Of course, their first recommendation is going to be "did you
> reboot your PC and power-cycle the cable modem?", which doesn't fix the
> problem (network has come back many times already without needing to
> reboot) and is a rather detailed process considering my setup.

	what I do is to run redundant ISP connections (one dsl, one not)
	and use one as default with another as a backup.  
	(This is easier
	said than done, and of course it costs more.  Getting backup
	connection from your employer for free as `your only' dsl can be a good
	option, if such things still exist nowadays.)

	I have almost never had serious outages, though;  
	For reference, my providers were:
	Pacbell DSL (SDSL, then ADSL, both on above-the-cheapest level),
	Concentric DSL (now xo.com),
	Speakeasy.net.

	All these gave me static addresses, which was necessary for my dynamic
	routing setup.