I asked for advice choosing a new ISP a while back - here's the results: > We need two or three POTS phone line ports, an 8 port static address > block, and at least DSL speeds on our data. We run a mail server, > list server, two FTP sites, DNS, a low bandwidth Apache web server, > and firewall into our internal network so we need unrestricted access > to all the normal ports. > > We do not need (and will not use) "n" mailboxes, domain hosting or any > of the usual "extra" features that most vendors seem to want to add > into the contract.
We're out Old Hammond Highway, north of Millerville which limited our choices to BellSouth, Cox and Xspedius. The other vendors do not have service out here so they were not considered. The results in alphabetical order: BellSouth - Apply via email and wait - and wait and wait... Bellsouth eventually phoned back after we had made our decision. This was a shame because I have Bellsouth DSL at home and like it (2800kbs down, 280kbs up). Cox - a human came out to see us, offered us several plans and was more than willing to modify a plan to met our needs. They looked good on paper but left the impression that they weren't quite there technically. Xpedius - a human came out to see us, seemed to know what they were doing and made us an offer that was technically superior to the Cox offer but somewhat more expensive. We went with Cox in the end, 2 VOIP lines (we kept one Bellsouth POTS line), getting a medium speed connection (~3500kb down, ~450kb up). Their installation people turned up on time and put in a modem (2 POTS lines + data) with the network switchover a couple of days later... then the fun began. On Friday we had two voice lines installed and an internet connection that I verified with a laptop. I came into the office on Saturday about 7am and started making the changes to switch over our Eatel IP addresses to the COX IP addresses but found that the COX internet connection was no longer working. After running tests at this end to check that it was not a problem with my systems, I called the Cox technical support folks around 2 o'clock on Saturday afternoon. We walked through some tests and then he told me that there was a problem with the modem and that someone would call me with 30 minutes to deal with it. (The tests exposed one problem - any reset of the Cox modem caused the VIOP phone lines to drop meaning that I had to wait until Cox called back after every test.) After waiting for a couple of hours for the Cox tech to get back to me, I called technical support again around 3:30pm and was again told that someone would call me within 30 minutes. About 5 o'clock I called the tech support line again and was told once more that they had paged the technician and that he would call me within 30 minutes. I asked to speak to the supervisor and been told that they don't have the supervisors phone number but that they can send them an email and that this will page the supervisor. I told them to do this. Eventually the tech called at 5:20pm (the supervisor never did call) - the tech was out in Baker and eventually arrived about 6:30 - he was convinced that the original modem was not configured correctly and promptly installed a separate modem for the data connection and spoke to tech support directly - everything was working by 7:00pm Saturday. I came back into the office on Sunday morning and finish rolling the DNS data over - we were back up by about 10am. I've attempted to speak to the Cox rep since then about this and had no reply to my emails or phone calls. My conclusion at the end of the day - insist on separate data and VIOP modems so that problems with the data connection do not disrupt phone conversations. The Cox techs are good but overworked and don't expect too much in the way of technical support. As for after sales service - they don't appear to have heard of it. Since then the data and voice service has been fairly solid - data did drop one day and the tech that I spoke to thought that the problem was probably caused by static on the line - due to the dry air in the winter... Many thanks to everyone who made suggestions and recommendations originally. Regards, Edmund Cramp
