Steve Holmes wrote:
> I'm thinking of switching from Sprint BroadBand to Cox for no real
> reason other than to save a few bucks a month and increase download
> speeds.  This does bring up some questions however.

If you are talking the old SpeedChoice turned Sprint.  I made this 
change within the last six months.  The downstream is similar. 
Sometimes on SpeedChoice I could pull over 3MB down if the right 
situations were happening.  HOWEVER, upstream was slower than a 28.8K 
modem.  This is the number one reason a switched (as well as wanting a 
lower price point)  I have been happy so far.

> What steps should a linux user like me take to make the hookup run
> smoothly?  I do know they use DHCP and we do have dhcpc available
> here.

My install took all of 2 minutes once they pulled the wire.

$dhclient (and I was done) :)

  > What are people doing about the mail thing? I'm referring to the
> blockage of port 25 and the forcing of users to use Cox's SMTP server
> for all outgoing mail.
Their SMTP servers seem to work okay for me.  I have never understood 
this fetish with running own SMTP server for home email.  I have never 
understood running a mail server on broadband for home email for that 
matter, but that's a different rant.

> All and all, is it worth it?  The price ain't bad and Sprint is still
> OK for me but I'm looking to reduce my monthly expense if possible
> without giving up much:).

You will gain significant upstream.  You will lower cost.  The support 
will be the same (none for GNU\Linux) and the uptime will be similar. 
If you have DSL in your area I would investigate it as well if more 
solid connectivity is required and you want to run servers.  Especially 
if you can get VDSL.

-Derek