Cox is pretty much the best option in the metro valley.

35/mo for 5 up / 1 down. and they only close of port 80 and the various smtp ports (but allow you to use their smart forwarders)

Century link is offering 20/mo for 10 down / something up (im guessing 2mb or so) but i have no idea what they filter and block.

Google fiber is coming and everyone is now touting gigabit internet but nobody is saying where it will be yet.

then there is T-mobile with one of their unlimited plans for 50/ month and either 10mb/month or unlimited internet which you can tether to for 50-60.

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 12:44 PM, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com> wrote:

[Apologies if this is too off-topic: I'm a new user of this list.]

For how cheap can one rent a reliable, Linux-compatible internet connection in the Valley? What I mean, why I ask:

I was a longtime user of TWC/Roadrunner (data only--been TV-free for decades) for internet access at my previous home. ~2012 (IIRC) TWC raised their internet-only price to (IIRC) >60 $/mo. I raised both middle fingers and switched to FreedomPop's {$24, 10 GB}/mo Sprint-4G-based home service. FP

* played well with my (now-aging, but all up-to-date Debian) laptops and WRT54GL router

* was generally reliable (except during major thunderstorms). Particularly, it tolerated my then-employer's kludgey VPN (used for SSH-ing into compute/storage clusters).

* was fast enough (though faster is always better :-)

* gave just enough data (I don't game or stream much video) that I never went over-limit (which would have incurred fairly onerous charges).

- had very bad customer service/support, which I was barely able to tolerate given the price delta with local competition.

I recently relocated at roughly the same time as FP announced its home device (the FreedomPop Hub Burst) would EOS. This is not currently a problem--I'm sharing a roommate's ISP--but eventually I'll probably need to get my own connection. So I'd like to know what other folks (if anyone on this list is as cheap as I am :-) are doing for cheap internet access. Bridging off phones? Jumping from one yearly teaser rate to another? Something Completely Different?

TIA (if not OT), Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>
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