UncleBen is speaking the gospel truth - even though he *does* have a vested interest in seeing RoadRunner succeed.
I've been on RR for many years now, and the speed and up-times are fantastic. I also love the new email servers! The mail is fast now. Plus they automagically scan for viruses - and whoever is in charge of keeping the viral signatures up-to-date seems to be on the ball. To UncleBen: I would love to hear a talk on DOCSIS. Good Luck and welcome to the area! Jon Carnes On Sat, 2003-08-23 at 21:36, Ben Pitzer wrote: > > A few questions about Time Warner. > > > > 1) Is it true about limiting email attachment sizes? > > Faheem, > > I'm a sysadmin for TWC/RoadRunner. Yes, we do limit attachment sizes for > email, however you'll find that this is fairly standard for most ISPs, > cable, DSL, or dialup. I think the limit is 5MB, but I'd have to check to be > sure. Not often we bump into that. Plus, you only have a 20MB mailbox, so > allowing massive attachments would only cause problems elsewhere in the > system. > > > 2) Does the setup require a login demon? Debian has a package called > > rrlogind for use with roadrunner. My impression is this is somewhat > > area-specific. > > RR no longer does PPoE, so the rrlogind is not required. That was used in > the pre-DOCSIS days, when we required PPoE to authenticate our users. Now, > we do it simply by only provisioning IPs to modems with registered mac > addresses. The DOCSIS standard is pretty cool, and someday I may do a talk > on it for the LUG, if they're interested. Basically, for RR, you just > connect your modem to an active cable outlet using coaxial cable, then plug > your Linux box's ethernet card into the ethernet port on the modem. Boot > your PC, and so long as it's configured to DHCP an IP address, you should be > live. Of course, since you are given a public IP address, I suggest you get > very familiar with iptables or ipchains (I recommend iptables, personally), > and build your self a firewall before connecting. Lots of port scans out > there, y'know? > > > 3) Has anyone got experience of the differences between Time Warner and > > Earthlink? What are the other main options as far as cable go in this > > area? > > Well, my employers probably wouldn't want me pointing this out, but > Earthlink got the JD Power and Associates award for Best Customer Service by > a Broadband ISP. RR's isn't horrible, but it leaves room for improvement, > and that improvement is coming. The fact is that customer service, though, > is the one thing that you should consider if you're going with cable. Time > Warner owns all the cable plant in this area. AOL, Earthlink, and Inter.Net > all sell cable broadband services over our lines, which we must allow them > to do by federal mandate. They themselves provide all DNS, email, news, and > other network services to their customers. RR and TWC do not provide those > services to those customers, only to our own residential and commercial > customers. However, all issues of connectivity for all ISPs using our > network are managed by TWC and RR. Naturally, it's in our interest to make > sure your connections are good, because if the other ISPs connections are > flaky, our own are flaky, and we'd like to avoid that. The better our > service gets, the better everyone else's gets, too. In all honesty, though, > the only reason you'll probably need customer service is if your cable > connection gets flaky, and then it doesn't matter whether you use Earthlink, > AOL, Inter.Net or Road Runner: you run Linux, and that's not supported by > any of them in any real sense. I say go straight to source, and use RR, but > then again, I'm biased. Our network services are comparable to any of those > other ISPs, in my opinion, and I've worked for one of them in the past, so I > oughtta know. Of course, there will be those on this list with their little > grudges against RR for some outage that happened last November, or some > other long ago issue, but the only real beef I'd listen to, were I you, is > the ones that say that in their area the connectivity and speeds have been > less than stellar. Fact is, we're working on upgrading the plant, and > moving at a pretty rapid pace. Most RR users I've talked to say that their > service has improved, as have their download speeds, over the last several > months. Folks who wish to dispute some of this, please, keep the flamage to > a minimum, and direct whatever vitriol you care to spit in my direction, and > keep it off the list. I'm happy to debate it with you, but the other 952 > people on this list don't need to hear it. > > One last thing: If you decide to go with cable, buy your own cable modem. > The $5 or so you save every month will pay for that modem in about 1.5 years > or better. Now, since my boss regularly checks this list, I'll go pray that > I keep my job come Monday. Good luck! > > Regards, > Ben Pitzer > > --------------------------------------------- > > "Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary > safety > deserve neither liberty nor safety." > --Ben Franklin-- > > -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
