Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2700 mails)

[Damon Register <damon.w.register@xxxxxxxx>]

Paul Cartwright wrote:
> I went to dslreports.com and found out that speedfactory services this 
> area, and they are also a local company out of Marietta..
> they have bellsouth as a phone-line provider partner..
> they also support Linux. I've emailed them and will look into it.
Does this and other posts on this thread mean that you are in
Marietta or at least Atlanta area?  We are neighbors.  I hope you
won't mind if I throw in my two cents.

My experience with BS over the years hasn't been positive.  Perhaps
the only good thing I ever got out of them were free tickets to a
Braves game for having been one of the first 50 customers of their
dialup service.  When I got ISDN that was a nightmare of lost
orders, system failures that took days to correct and the list goes
on.  When ADSL came along, that was a new nightmare.  The only way
to sign up was by entering my phone number on their signup web page.
Of course that failed since I had ISDN.  The only way to get it was
getting an analog line first and then checking to see if I could
get the ADSL.  Before doing that I asked a neighbor if I could
put her number in to see if that area had ADSL.  I got her
permission and the number passed so I ordered an analog line
and tried signing up for ADSL but got rejected.  Only after many
phone calls was that finally straightened out.  I got ADSL and
found it was nothing but trouble.  There were many times when I
could count on it being out sometime every day.  The biggest
problem was the quality of my analog line.  BS refused to correct
it saying that as long as I had a dialtone, they weren't going to
do any more.  Only by contacting the Public Utilities Commision
was I able to get anything done.  Even though there was some
improvement, my ADSL was never very good and when my neighborhood
got the cable upgraded to digital, I switched to the high speed
cable and have never regretted it.

Perhaps before making any choice for service, you should try to
find some important info about your BS in the new area.
1. How old is the house and phone wiring to the house?
   I guess if it is new enough to have that fiber that others
   mentioned, this would be irrelevant.
2. How far from the Central Office?
3. Is digital cable available in the new area?

Here is something else to think about: voice over IP.  I got a voip
service last year and said goodbye to BS and analog phone service.
The service has been great.  The savings I get by swithing to voip
and eliminating the analog service helps to pay the cost of the
cable service.  If you get DSL, you would not benefit by voip
since your DSL depends on having analog phone service.  Although
a coworker said last week that he thought there were ways to get
DSL without analog phone, he admitted that there wasn't any cost
savings

Ok so the above doesn't have anything to do with SuSE but this
does.  Others have suggested using a router up front.  I did
that for a little while but I am using a SuSE 9.0 pc as my router.
It is easier because I don't have to mess with forwarding router
ports to any services on an internal SuSE pc.  Then I can run any
services I want on the SuSE pc.  As for e-mail that you were
discussing in this thread, there is no problem with a dynamic
address.  At one time I tried my own e-mail just for fun to see
if I could do it.  I use no-ip to get a fixed host name for my
dynamic address.  They even have a Linux client that I run on
my SuSE pc to keep my address updated.  I noticed that no-ip
even offers e-mail forwarding service to alternate ports for
providers that block the e-mail port.

Damon Register