George,
Have you switched to Cox yet?  I switched the first week that it was
available at Anthem.  I promptly went on vacation the next week (just
getting back yesterday).  I have not had any problems with their service
yet, though their speed is very questionable and the cable channels are in a
different order from Qwest's.

Personally, I did not use my Qwest VDSL that often (had it for nearly 2
years) and when I did it worked (I get enough Internet at work and usually
when I get home, the last thing I want to see is a computer and the
Internet.).  I noticed Qwest's Cable going out every once and a while.

I switched not because of anything that Qwest did, but for financial
reasons.  I paid about $80/month for VDSL and Basic Cable.  Now I pay an
undisclosed amount for Cable modem service and every cable channel COX has
(Its nice when your wife works for the cable company!).

Perceived Differences...
Cox seems slower.
Cox only provides 1 IP address (you can pay for additional), Qwest gave me 3
IP addresses.
QOS - it is too early to tell.
Cost - I think they are about the same.

If someone is only having DNS issues, I would install a DNS Cache server on
their machine.  My preference being Tiny DNS.

Gilbert


-----Original Message-----
From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of George
Toft
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 7:25 PM
To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Subject: Re: DNS Problems


That won't do any good.  Their DHCP servers (in Anthem) return three IP's:
a 192.168.x.x address, which routes but does not respond, plus the other
two mentioned below.  Last September (or so), the first DNS failed.  Then
the second one failed.  I confirmed this with ethereal.  I called them,
and the CSR politely took my complaint.  Later that day, a supervisor
called me back to explain failover - if the first one fails, it will
roll over to the second name server.  "Yes," I said, "but your second name
server has failed also."  It was down for over four days.  I set up my old
Sparc box (Solaris 7 - see, I use UNIX as well as Unix) as a DNS and got
back to work.  About once per week I would check on the name servers, and
the primary NEVER CAME BACK UP!!!  (Never being defined as until Christmas).

There's a reason they lost their exclusive contract in Anthem.  Something
about poor QoS maybe?  You can view my notes here:
http://georgetoft.com/qwest

If you read my notes, you will see the futility in dealing with them.

George