speakeasy/megapath (was RE: CenturyLink/DirectTV)

[Carruth, Rusty]

I use what used to be Speakeasy, now is megapath (bought out).

I was VERY happy with Speakeasy - you call their tech line, they are
TECHNICAL folks.  I could talk routers, NAT, whatever with them and they
knew it.

I have what I call the 'sysadmin at home' DSL package - 2 static IP
addresses, telnet access to a server there on their site, almost all
ports open, and 'minimal' tech support for $60 a month (I think I'm at
2.5Mb/s down, but I'd have to look - a while back they did a 'free'
upgrade from the 1.4 or whatever that I had before that).

I end up calling them for something about once a year - usually because
I forgot a password.  Last week I had to call them because I was
installing a new firewall and the hard drive of the previous one died so
I had no idea of my static IP addresses OR my default route! (oops) They
weren't quite as quick and techy as I remembered, but then all they had
to do was look up my static ip addresses and default gw, so it really
didn't matter.

I run mail server at home (which is why I chose them), I have run a web
server there (plan to set it back up 'real soon now' :-) ), both with no
issues.

However, you guys talking about 'outages' make me go - huh?  Outage?
I'm sure we've had some, but I haven't seen anything but the periodic
lockup of my DSL modem such that I have to power cycle it (no more than
once a month - in fact the last time I did that was probably 4 months
ago) - and I'm not sure I can blame them for that (it's my own modem -
previous one died and I just threw my own in there).  Well, ok I
remember there have been scheduled outages at times, but their scheduled
maintenance is almost always between midnight and 6am, as far as I
remember, so I don't remember ever being offline due to them.  I may
have been, but I don't remember it...)

Overall I've been very happy with them.  But then I've not had to really
deal with them since the MegaPath switch.

Rusty