[TriLUG] Embarq High Speed Internet - Opinions?

[Tarus Balog]

On Sep 10, 2008, at 10:20 AM, Chess Griffin wrote:

> One question:  do you know if they include a static ip in the service
> charge or does one have to pay extra?

I use Embarq at home and at the office. You have to pay extra for a  
static IP, but using dyndns is good enough for my home network.

I've been relatively pleased with the Embarq service, especially with  
anything dealing with having someone come to the house. I would  
recommend having them install the DSL filter at the demarc (tell them  
you have an alarm system and they'll do it) if you have a pair already  
picked out for the DSL circuit.

Speeds are pretty consistent, although Embarq does use DNS hijacking  
if you mistype a URL (you can get around that by using OpenDNS or  
something like that).

The only downside is that phone support pretty much sucks. Recently we  
had about 6 inches of rain in the period of about an hour and the DSL  
went away. I was out of town so my wife called their support line and  
went through the usual script of power everything off, back on, etc.  
She was also told to reset the "modem" which resulted in it going back  
into router mode versus bridge mode and thus pretty much broke my home  
network. Of course that didn't fix the problem because the circuit was  
down. It did come up a few hours later and when I made it home it was  
easy to reconfigure everything, but it was still a pain since I  
couldn't access my home network for a couple of days.

But I don't think that crappy first line support is just an Embarq  
problem.

I don't have an option outside of Embarq, but based on my experience  
I'd give them a 7 out of 10.

-T


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