moving to Phoenix

[David P. Schwartz]

I had Qwest DSL for a while.  Last December, rather than getting sucked into
the Borg ... uh, MSN black-hole, I opted to switch ISPs to GetNet/InfiCad.
Things were a little bumpy at take-off because they were deluged with people
switching over from Qwest.  But since mid-Feb or so, I've had zero problems
with the basic service.  Qwest still provides the wiring, but it's routed
through GetNet.

I've got 2 static IPs (they don't offer dynamic IPs), and I'm paying somewhere
around $50/mo -- GetNet bills me $17 and Qwest bills me $29 or so.  This is
for a basic 640d/256u DSL line.

I've also got a SOHOWare NGP-800 4-port firewall/router/switch that does
NATting so I can hook up any number of machines to my local network.  (With
the way they handle static IPs, the Cisco 657 won't run its DHCP server, so
another device is needed.  Perhaps newer model modems fix this limitation.)

There is one annoyance with the DSL service -- the GetNet nameserver response
times are incredibly slow.  I used the @Home nameservers until they started
timing out, and now I use the Qwest ones.  (I'm not proud; if I get a decent
response time, then I'll use 'em!)  I still experience time-outs every few
days, which seems rather high, but I figure it's got more to do with Qwest
than anything else.  (The problem has become noticeably worse over the past
2-3 weeks.)

-David Schwartz