I signed up for service from MediaOne in the fall of 2000 and things ran pretty smoothly until June of 2002 when AT&T decide to restructure their provisioning. At that point the connection went out and the modem wouldn't connect. Repeated calls to tech support got the usual response of "shut down the modem, shut down the PC, wait 45 seconds, restart the PC and restart the modem ... doesn't work? Sorry someone will have to call back" and of course no one ever called back. This went on for a week or so, and then they said they'd have to send someone out but that it would be at least 10 days. At that point I canceled. Of course, with AT&T, canceling the service is just the beginning of the nightmare. Getting them to stop billing me and credit my account for the extra charges took a half dozen calls over the next four months. The problem seemed to be that when I returned the cable modem it had never been posted to my account. They could search their database and find that the modem had been returned to their Roseville storefront, but the return had never been linked to my account. Finally a supervisor overrode the whole thing and it was straightened out ... or so I thought. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for Comcast broadband through the deal we have here at the U. A confused sales guy called me back to see if I wanted to switch my current broadband service over to the U plan. While the AT&T supervisor had cleared up the billing on my account, he hadn't dealt with the modem issue and so as far as Comcast was concerned I still had service even though I hadn't been billed for 18 months. He also said that they wouldn't be able to activate a new modem on the account until the old modem came off, but said he would pass it on to the techs. The installer came out and the modem was provisioned without a problem so I'm hoping that the 'techs' cleared it up, although I wouldn't be all that surprised to get a bill that included billing for 18-months of service and the missing modem - only time will tell. Once the guy left I cloned the IP address of the desktop into my SMC access point and everything has worked fine since then. The performance is quite a bit better than what I get here at the U so hopefully things will work out. I haven't put up any servers yet, but I will probably punch a hole for a ssh server in the near future so I can rsync my linux boxes between work and home. --rick Justin Kremer wrote: >I suppose I should throw in some comments on this one, too. >My mom has been using AT&T and Comcast on and off when my sister has been >home from college. Overall, the service is decent. When I'm there, >everything seems to be working quite well, and speeds are nice. >My mom has complained that sometimes things are slow, but I think that is >their main page, since they have webmail provided there and that's mainly >what she would use. Never any speed complaints from my sister, and she >uses other e-mail. >Their tech support is less than desirable as far as I can tell. I spent 2 >hours being their tech support while I was out of town because Comcast >couldn't figure out what was wrong...but I eventually could. This >wouldn't be a problem for an advanced user, though. It ended up being >something fairly simple IIRC. >The other major problem was with getting them to cancel service. The last >time my mom cancelled her service they were still sending her bills (new >bills, not something she forgot to pay) 2 months after she cancelled it. >This was eventually remedied and she didn't pay any more than she should >have, but it was a bit of a hassle. >Overall, I think that they would be sufficient for a geek who likes fast >speeds and doesn't need to run services locally. I wouldn't recommend >them for someone who knows nothing about computers, though, unless you >feel like supporting them. > >------------- >Justin Kremer <kremer at ringworld.org> > > >_______________________________________________ >TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org >https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list