[TriLUG] OT: Earthlink and ISPs and USENET

[gigaFusion at earthlink.net]

Jim,

I live in Apex and have plain old Earthlink thru TWC and I get a pretty 
reliable 6 megabits down and about 350 kbps up, out of a theoretical 7 
megabits down and 384 kbps up.

I *suspect* that what you get in the "Max" plan is to be a great 
robo-citizen and maximize their profits for them by accepting a 
never-guaranteed data rate. So I say, f**k them, and stop paying extra to 
get screwed. Go with basic service!

Note too that the Earthlink account consists of 8 sub-accounts, and each is 
entitled to 5 gigabytes of GigaNews Usenet (formerly SuperNews) per 30 day 
period (sliding window accounting method) before any throttling sets in. 
That usenet service is not restricted to use through your EL IP#, but can be 
used from anywhere, including the use of different sub-accounts 
simultaneously in different cities.

GigaNews Usenet has a Binary Group article retention time of at least 200 
days in my experience, (possibly as long as 841 days: "Giganews' Usenet 
access offers 841 days of binary retention, 2713 days of text retention" 
http://www.giganews.com/usenet-glossary/Usenet-Access.html )

Access for Earthlink customers is through any (or all) of 5 different News 
Server Names, all of which carry over the older SuperNews server names, and 
all apparently resolve to the same IP#.
See http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r23026094-Earthlink-usenet-Giganews and 
http://support.earthlink.net/articles/tools/earthlink-newsgroups-faq.php and 
http://blogs.earthlink.net/2007/08/usenet_moves_to_supernews.php

-- Steve


> Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:25:05 -0500
> From: Jim <jjtuttle at trilug.org>
> Subject: [TriLUG] OT: Earthlink and ISPs
> To: Trilug Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
> Message-ID: <4CED4A71.7030006 at trilug.org>
>
> I recently moved to Earthlink Max and am pretty disappointed in the
> service.  Max is advertised as (up to) 15 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up.  My
> peak realized speed is 10 Mbps down and 500 kbps up.  On evenings and
> weekends, though, I get ~3 Mbps down and 250 kbps up.
>
> I was trying to escape TWC who, after dropping their Business Class deal
> with Duke, dropped my speed by 50% for the same price.  Dealing with
> Earthlink has been pretty awful.  It always goes something like this:
> Call Earthlink call-center in India; get transferred to Time Warner; get
> told that your problem should be handled by Earthlink support and
> directed to call Earthlink.  Later, rinse, repeat.
>
> I was looking into Initrex because I thought they had a DSL package.
> I'm interested in getting away from companies that treat me like crap.
> Any suggestions?
>
> jt
>