[TriLUG] broadband in the Triangle area

Ben Pitzer uncleben at mindspring.com
Sat Aug 23 21:36:43 EDT 2003


> A few questions about Time Warner.
>
> 1) Is it true about limiting email attachment sizes?

Faheem,

I'm a sysadmin for TWC/RoadRunner.  Yes, we do limit attachment sizes for
email, however you'll find that this is fairly standard for most ISPs,
cable, DSL, or dialup. I think the limit is 5MB, but I'd have to check to be
sure.  Not often we bump into that.  Plus, you only have a 20MB mailbox, so
allowing massive attachments would only cause problems elsewhere in the
system.

> 2) Does the setup require a login demon? Debian has a package called
> rrlogind for use with roadrunner. My impression is this is somewhat
> area-specific.

RR no longer does PPoE, so the rrlogind is not required.  That was used in
the pre-DOCSIS days, when we required PPoE to authenticate our users.  Now,
we do it simply by only provisioning IPs to modems with registered mac
addresses.  The DOCSIS standard is pretty cool, and someday I may do a talk
on it for the LUG, if they're interested.  Basically, for RR, you just
connect your modem to an active cable outlet using coaxial cable, then plug
your Linux box's ethernet card into the ethernet port on the modem.  Boot
your PC, and so long as it's configured to DHCP an IP address, you should be
live.  Of course, since you are given a public IP address, I suggest you get
very familiar with iptables or ipchains (I recommend iptables, personally),
and build your self a firewall before connecting.  Lots of port scans out
there, y'know?

> 3) Has anyone got experience of the differences between Time Warner and
> Earthlink? What are the other main options as far as cable go in this
> area?

Well, my employers probably wouldn't want me pointing this out, but
Earthlink got the JD Power and Associates award for Best Customer Service by
a Broadband ISP.  RR's isn't horrible, but it leaves room for improvement,
and that improvement is coming.  The fact is that customer service, though,
is the one thing that you should consider if you're going with cable.  Time
Warner owns all the cable plant in this area.  AOL, Earthlink, and Inter.Net
all sell cable broadband services over our lines, which we must allow them
to do by federal mandate.  They themselves provide all DNS, email, news, and
other network services to their customers.  RR and TWC do not provide those
services to those customers, only to our own residential and commercial
customers.  However, all issues of connectivity for all ISPs using our
network are managed by TWC and RR.  Naturally, it's in our interest to make
sure your connections are good, because if the other ISPs connections are
flaky, our own are flaky, and we'd like to avoid that.  The better our
service gets, the better everyone else's gets, too.  In all honesty, though,
the only reason you'll probably need customer service is if your cable
connection gets flaky, and then it doesn't matter whether you use Earthlink,
AOL, Inter.Net or Road Runner:  you run Linux, and that's not supported by
any of them in any real sense.  I say go straight to source, and use RR, but
then again, I'm biased.  Our network services are comparable to any of those
other ISPs, in my opinion, and I've worked for one of them in the past, so I
oughtta know.  Of course, there will be those on this list with their little
grudges against RR for some outage that happened last November, or some
other long ago issue, but the only real beef I'd listen to, were I you, is
the ones that say that in their area the connectivity and speeds have been
less than stellar.  Fact is, we're working on upgrading the plant, and
moving at a pretty rapid pace.  Most RR users I've talked to say that their
service has improved, as have their download speeds, over the last several
months.  Folks who wish to dispute some of this, please, keep the flamage to
a minimum, and direct whatever vitriol you care to spit in my direction, and
keep it off the list.  I'm happy to debate it with you, but the other 952
people on this list don't need to hear it.

One last thing:  If you decide to go with cable, buy your own cable modem.
The $5 or so you save every month will pay for that modem in about 1.5 years
or better.  Now, since my boss regularly checks this list, I'll go pray that
I keep my job come Monday.  Good luck!

Regards,
Ben Pitzer

---------------------------------------------

"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety
 deserve neither liberty nor safety."
 --Ben Franklin--






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