Sprint broadband

[David P. Schwartz]

I signed up with Speedchoice (because it was my Onlychoice) back before they had symmetric service (ie., phone uplink, RF Downlink).  I
upgraded to the symmetric service and bandwidth JUMPED!  It was very erratic for a while, and they steadily racheted down the max
speeds.  After Sprint bought them, it became Slowchoice.  Service went into the toilet, the sales and customer service people basically
lied about some things on several occasions, and performance began approaching 14.4k dial-up speeds -- even worse between 4PM and 8PM
and 11PM-1AM.  I switched to Qwest's DSL and am much happier.

One caveat: if you use this service, GET A FIREWALL!  I got a D-Link DL-701.  LinkSys makes something comparable; there might be
others.  (A DL-701 and the LinkSys box are the size of a modem.  If you've got room for a desktop, then configure Linux.)  No IFs, ANDs
or BUTs about it --  GET ONE!!!!  There are some strange self-replicating worms that move through their network and if your C: drive is
not pasword protected (even if you don't have a LAN), there's a good chance one of these suckers will infect your machine.  Their modem
is not like the xDSL Cisco 675 that handles this stuff.

I don't think I'd want to host a server for anything but casual use -- their access speeds and latencies vary considerably (as in, a
LOT) throughout the day.

-David Schwartz

Eric Richardson wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Anybody using this service?
>
> Recommendations are welcome. I can't get cox@home or DSL from qwest for
> my business partner.
> They say you are not suppose to put up a whole network but they said a
> firewall box is okay. They use fixed IP.
>
> Thanks,
> Eric :-)
> p.s. I have DSL with FastQ as my ISP and find it very usable.