On Thursday 12 January 2006 18:03, Regis Matejcik wrote:
On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 17:15 +0000, Vince Littler wrote:
<snip> I tell them that the client OS is irelevant, and I want service to my router. Of course, I take responsibility for everything from the router to the client PC, and if I can browse to the router, then that's my side clear.
Vince
Fred,
Everything Vince says is correct, but...
In the past I've rarely gotten a support person to get past "we don't support linux." Generally there are some fairly simple router configurations to make, and they usually are done through a web interface that works fine in linux, but they won't talk to you unless you're looking at a MIE screen.
Possibly helps that at the moment I am with an ISP who supply [and therefore expect to support] routers. I just stone wall on what OS, and say I have my router's config in my browser, and they just get on with support. My first ISP was IBM in the days of OS/2, Ever since then I have never been of a mind to put up with nonsense about the OS, and I left the only ISP who tried it after very few months. My last contact with my ISP, I told the guy that I had a hardware router with a firewall, a SuSE box with a firewall acting as a second router and a linux network, and if I did boot anything to windows it was subnetted so it couldn't see the internet. "So you are unlikely to have virus problems", he said. I think where you have a capable ISP, they tend to look favourably on Linux and probably feel that Linux users cause them less grief per head, partly because the community tends to look after its own and partly because, even if they don't officially support Linux, they do have people around who know Linux and will informally assist. The less capable ISP's use script readers, who are probably already aware of their own technical limitations and therefore tend to try and close the call ASAP to keep their stats up. Vince