In search of >1.544Mb/s bandwidth & a static IPv4 address for home

Mon May 3 10:55:24 PDT 2010

I inquired about folks' perceptions about 16 months ago, and the
concensus seemed to be that Sonic.net was a clueful provider that could
meet my requirements.

Unfortunately, it turned out that they were unable to provide what I
sought, as they use AT&T's copper, and AT&T was unwilling to provide the
requisite connectivity.  (AT&T has what looks suspiciously like a cabinet
housing a DSLAM at 832 Canyon Rd; I live at 751 Canyon Rd. (Redwood
City).  Apparently the DSLAM is for the folks further up the hill than I
am, as they would be out-of-range for DSL without a nearby DSLAM -- it's
just a little over 10Kft from the CO by ground; I'm pretty sure the wire
distance is not less than that, and probably isn't a great deal more.)

Does anyone have:
* Reason to believe that Sonic's options have changed for the better?
* Other suggestions for an ISP?

Despite some early "turbulence," I've been relatively happy with the
level of service from AT&T: the connection stays up for months at a time;
when outages do occur, they tend to be short (<2.5 minutes) -- though
that is undoubtedly in large part because I have some automation to
monitor, log, and take evasive action.

It would, in theory, be possible to augment the existing connectivity
with (say) an additional connection (e.g., from Comcast), but while that
might well be an interesting learning experience, it's a complication I
don't really need -- and the existing connection (to AT&T) has a price
($50/month) that is not really competitive with recent offerings.  (Yes,
I undertsand that I have a static /32, while the "recent offerings" are
not static.  I'm also disinclined to destabilize the status quo unless &
until I have a viable alternative: at present, were AT&T to tell me I
have 30 days to cope with an impending transition to DHCP-assigned
address, I'd be under a fair amount of stress.)

Thanks.

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
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