Harriet Manor Cut Off From Outside World

[davidschroth]

Once again, Harriet Manor is without access to the inter-tubez. Qwest has scheduled someone to come out Monday morning to diagnose and (hopefully) fix the problem.

I find it odd that after three trouble-free years of service, our DSL has failed twice in the span of a few months. I find it curious that it always manages to fail on Saturday morning, which leaves us cut off from the inter-tubez for the entire weekend.

I suppose I should start investigating alternatives to Qwest, although I'm not sure we have many options left (both Comcast and AT&T have removed themselves from consideration).

Anyway, the best way to get in touch with either mizzlaurajean or myself is through the telephone. Or knock on the door, and hope we're home.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

It's kind of expensive to have multiple connections to the house, but if you do (we haven't gotten this desperate either) you can plug two of them into a special router that knows tricks, and have whichever one is working carry your traffic, and if they both are, get more bandwidth (at least for multiple applications; I don't think they're smart enough to exploit both paths for a single tcp connection).

The city wireless could be one of them -- completely independent path from Qwest. Well, at least it doesn't look like the poles they're mounted on near my house also support phone lines, just power.

[guppiecat]

A Linux-based router system like IPCop, Untangle or Astaro should allow you to bond the interfaces and leverage them together for speed, then fail silently* if a line drops.

This is generally only a problem if you are accessing a site that expects a nonstateful connection (HTTPS, usually) to only arrive from a single IP (check built into session checking). In those cases, you can force a specific protocol to come from a specific interface in a bandwidth shaping rule.

It's a bit of a hassle, but I've done it and can state that it works pretty well.

* Well, the admin would be notified. Traffic shouldn't drop though.

[guppiecat]

Consider asking the TCLUG who they recommend. Linux User Groups, all their faults aside, are often quite knowledgeable of decent smaller providers that don't immediately respond to issues with scripted "No"s.

My own local group has two recommended providers, one of whom I moved to from Qwest.

USI Wireless

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

I've been pissed as hell at USI Wireless because we tend to get cut off too... for several seconds at a time.

USI Wireless

[chasophonic.livejournal.com]

Over two and a half years = satisfied customer. Excellent customer service.

I don't run multiple connections though. The citywide roving is nice as well.

[kalikanzara.livejournal.com]

I've been on USI for a year and a half and a good antenna helps, as does sometimes dropping the MTU, and I've just tried turning on cts/rts on the wifi router they gave me.

That said, I'll often lose packets, and am not surprised if I'm down for an evening. OTOH, it's $20, and I have a 3g card as backup, so I haven't switched.

I'm holding out for Clear to come in with 4g though and I'll likely switch.