I just Switched from Charter Pipeline to SBC YaHoo DSL

[Void Main]

As anyone who has been a member here for a while knows I have had intermittent issues with my Charter Internet service (that this site runs on) for years. On top of that Charter continues to increase their monthly charge (currently $45/month) until I call and complain and they drop the rate. Well, I finally got tired of it so I decided to try out the very basic SBC YaHoo connection (768/256) for $10/month.

I got my modem in the mail and they ship a CD that is supposed to be run in either Windows or on a Mac. Well, of course I don't have either of those so I plugged the modem in and connected my laptop to the Ethernet port and brought up the configuration page in Firefox (v3 on my Fedora 9 laptop). I see a box for the PPPoE ID and password so I called SBC DSL support and talked to a young lady. She first asked if I had Windows or Mac to which I replied I had neither of course and that I just need to get my PPPoE ID and password and I would be all set.

Well, it was *almost* that easy but in order to get a permanent PPPoE ID and password I had to enter the default temporary ID and password which got me connected to the ATT network where I could get to a registration page to sign up for an ATT user account. I guess due to some crappy web programming on ATT's part Firefox would not work. I would click the "NEXT" button and nothing happened and it had some sort of JavaScript error message at the top of the page. I told the support person that it wouldn't work and when I told her I was using Firefox she said "oh yeah, it won't work with Firefox, you'll need to use IE". I said "but I don't have IE" so she asked if I had another browser. I connected with Konqueror and sure enough that worked so I was able to get my PPPoE account information and configure the modem.

Later I did a search regarding the browser and I might have been able to just change the user agent to IE and it might have worked. Pretty sad really from something as simple as a registration page to not work in the 2nd most popular browser on the planet. At any rate, I'm up on the DSL connection now and so far even though the speed is supposed to be lower the connectivity seems to be *MUCH* better than Charter. I might give it another day or two of testing before I call Charter and tell them where they can put their pipeline.

I guess I should check how much more it would cost to upgrade to a little higher speed and static addresses.

[Copperhead]

I had PacBell/SBC/SBC Yahoo!/AT&T for about six years, and I know what you are going through. After all of those mergers, I guess that they decided to ditch anyone who didn't succumb to the M$ era of point-and-click programming.

When I first moved to California, and SBC was good old PacBell, it was great. They simply e-mailed you your password, and all you had to do was some basic configuration on a Linux machine to get it going. They even had a page that you could pull up that had a nice HowTo for Linux, although there was no phone support. Now that they have merged about ten times, with a bunch of M$ wannabees, I saw how quickly it went downhill. I had to do the same thing as you -- explain to them, to their utter amazement, that I don't have IE or Windows, and that I was not going to "upgrade" once Yahoo! bought them out. So, I canned them, and went with Time Warner Cable. No real complaints, other then a shotty modem. Then again, I never call "tech" support with any of these companies anyways.

SBC's static DNS packages are pretty expensive. I looked into it at one point in time, and I believe they all start at around $99.95 a month. This was a few years ago, so who knows. It might be different where you are at.

[Void Main]

Actually it was Charter Cable who I was not happy with. SBC hasn't been bad at all so far, except for the little browser incident but that wasn't a big deal either. For 10 bucks a month it's hard to complain. They do have a static IP package for under $50/mo that gets you like 1.5/384 (I think) and 5 addresses.

[Master of Reality]

why would you need multiple static IP address for one consumer dsl line? (i never figured that out)

[Void Main]

I could sure use a couple more IP addresses because I like to run my own mail server, ftp server, multiple web sites, etc, etc. I can squeeze almost everything I need into one address but not quite. For example, if I want to set up an SSH server on port 443 I can not also have an SSL web server (https) running on that default port of 443. I am a consumer and do not run a business off of this line and it's something I want to be able to do. It also can make certain types of VPN easier. Having said that having a static addresses is more important than having multiple addresses. You have a better chance of getting off an RBL list and getting mail out. Yes, I might be an extreme example but there are people like me out there who could take advantage of multiple static addresses.

[Calum]

sorry to be a bit dense but why not run the ssh server on a different port?

[Void Main]

The firewalls at work restrict outbound traffic to just very few common ports (basically 80 and 443). There are only so many things you can spread across two ports on one IP address. I already have several web sites and ssh and would like to have more, like be able to use 443 for SSL on the web sites.