On Thu, 2006-05-11 at 14:42 -0600, Gabriel Gunderson wrote: > We currently have ELI as our primary data provider and plan on keeping > them. However, we are looking to off-load our internal web surfing and > off-site backups to another connection. > > I've never been in the market for DSL or cable for a business (only > personal use). Is there anything that I need to know about before > choosing a provider? Do they tend to cap upload speeds like they do for > residential users? Do they have better uptime then they provide for the > home users? How about static IPs, reverse DNS and port blocking (such > as port 25 out)? > > I know many of these things will differ from provider to provider, but I > thought you all might have some recommendations for me. If I'm going to > wait on hold for 15 minutes per provider, I'd like to be able to ask the > right questions :)
As an employee at an ISP, a few things come to mind. We give first priority to trouble tickets from business customers. I think (don't quote me) we have guarantees on turn around time for some things, such as setup. Where we do traffic shaping, we give precedence to business customers. Static IPs are standard, but we're not exactly Mr. Scrooge with those for residential either. Reverse DNS and port blocking (or unblocking, I suppose) should be available to all customers, IMHO. We don't block port 25 for our users anyway, so that's not an issue here. I would also recommend asking about alternative contact information. For our business customers we provide a number where they can get directly to our NOC as we assume they've probably got a clue and don't simply need to reboot. And finally, ask about monitoring. We'll monitor w/ Nagios and call you if anything goes down. Corey
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