> I'm gonna have to step in here for the Waller guys. Over the
> last few months
> I have been in close contact with one of the head guys .. Dave
> Reimer, and
> I have worked with him on this problem.
In what manner?
> I've hooked up this stuff before, and it isn't rocket science.
So have I!
> Nothing to it, right? Well when they started experiancing these problems,
> they switched out EVERY piece of hardware in the loop. They took
> the hardware
> to other sites, plugged it in there, and the hardware worked perfectly.
> They've had numerous network consultants come out and try to
> diagnose their
> problems ... time warner people, swbt people, contractors, etc,
> etc. And all
> have left shaking their heads saying 'it should work fine'.
Did I say they weren't working on it? Was it just me, or did Dave Reimer
not just send out an e-mail telling everyone that he was basically clueless
on to what was wrong? Did I say it was because they weren't working on
it? Did I not say they had replaced equipment 3 times, as well as
run a new T1? Did I ever say the employee's of Waller were incompetent?
> > I only stick up for them in this matter because I being a person
I wasn't putting him or the Waller Creek people down personally, even
though I feel I have good reasons to be frustrated with some of them,
particularly Mike Coffey. Dave Reimer has been responsive after the
initial two months, and I'm grateful for that, however, I'll be much
more grateful when I have no reason to need customer service.
> Other than
> these minute pauses, the rest of the service works perfectly. And even at
> 25 dollars a month, I can live with some slight pauses.
These "slight pauses" are long enough to kill any sort of transfer I am in
the middle of. Since I rely on the connection for work and for play, it
is more than a "slight annoyance" to have to babysit every moderately
large file transfer I wish to send (It was a real joy to try and download
the redhat 5.1 distro), among many other things. I like to listen to
NPR over the net, but I can count on restarting an hour show 3 or 4 times.
I'm supposed to start alpha testing Quake III in the immediate future, which
will be more than slightly annoying when I can count on being disconnected
every 20 minutes. I really don't think I'm out of line relating that the
connect doesn't work as a T1 connect should work, do you?
Of course the rest of the service works perfectly. What else is there
to it? Provide speed, provide uninterrupted service. They've got the
bandwidth part down!
As far as the $25 bucks a month goes... talking of your experience, I
imagine then you are familiar with SWB rates on T1's in the Austin area.
I am also sure that you have the math skills to figure that with 308
apartments here, Waller Creek is likely going to be turning a nice
profit on this 'amazing' deal. Charging this amount is not a "hey
we just love to lose money because we're just so crazy about giving away
great value!" -- it's a buisness decision to try and generate the most
profit.
Heavy internet users like you or I would likely to be happy to pay twice
that,
but you can count on the fact that most people around here use their connect
for
e-mail and web browsing. To get this majority of the potential customers to
sign
up, you need to provide the service at a cost they'll pay for, and $25/mo is
just a bit more than you'd pay for modem service, without tying up your
phone.
Once cablemodems are widely availible (not too long?) and perhaps ADSL
(if SWB drops rates comparable to something like what Bell Atlantic offers)
then you need to make sure you're charging less than these services.
So forgive me if I don't see this 'great deal' as being any sort mitigation
for
having flawed service.
Waller also provides us cheaper-than-SWB rates on phone service, would you
consider
"slight interruptions" during your phone conversations acceptible as well? I
hope not,
and I don't know about you, but I'm using the T1 far more often than my
phone.
>If you
> don't like it,
> you should just cancel your service and go back to a modem connection. I
> guarentee you won't have any pauses.
Interesting. I remember who you are from the meeting we had here,
you said a large part of the reason you moved here was because of the
ethernet port sticking out of the wall. Guess what? Me too! A very large
part of what makes a connect like this nice is not just the speed,
but having a constant, uninterrupted connection -- which I have not had in
the 4 months I've been here. And, crazy me, when I hooked my machine up,
I expected a fast, uninterrupted connection! We still don't have it, and
it's
frustrating. If I'd known before moving in we'd been experiencing this
problem,
I would have considered other complex's with service, or somewhere in the
area that Time Warner was going to offer cablemodems early-on.
Anyway that's plenty for the Linux mailing list. If you choose to respond,
I propose we take it offline. My intention here was not to 'flame' Waller.
With all the talk of cablemodems here, I thought I'd point out to people
there
were other options like this, as well as give a warning. Whether or not the
problem
very obscure and Waller Creek has the most intelligent group of ISP techs in
the
world working on it, the fact is their service here has experienced a
signifigant
problem over the last 5 months (I am assuming it didn't work from the
start). I
thought before anyone considered moving here for the connect (as I did) they
might want to make sure it's working before they signed a lease.
-- Tom
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