Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 01:32:45 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: chat@freebsd.org Cc: support@primenet.com Subject: ISP pooping out; any BSD friendly ISP out there???? Message-ID: <200103240132.SAA05871@usr05.primenet.com>
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Primenet, whom I have been very happy with for many years, and have recommended without reservation to other people, resulting in more than a few customers for them, was purchased a while ago. It stayed the same great service after that, and I had no real complaints. Everything was fine until very recently, when they decided to retire their shell account services, and sell their existing dialup user base to EarthLink, which does not off shell account access, and is not UNIX friendly (they want to send me a CDROM with a customized version of a browser and other Windows programs, on the theory that I am either a Windows user, or am short of coasters). Since I know that UUNET charges $9.00 in bulk for dialup points of presence for month, I am totally mystified as to why they are throwing away $11.00/month in revenue; it can't be costing them that much to run their BSDi boxes on which their shell accounts are located. This looks like an attempt to turn customers into a round of funding, to me, since that is the only reason I can think of to turn over an exisiting positive revenue stream. -- So... I am now looking for a BSD/non-fixed-access friendly ISP. I need a shell account; minimally, it needs to be able to run "elm", so I can get at my email from work or from home, without it having to be POP'ed off, and become inaccessible, unless I bring a work machine home or a home machine to work. In other words, I need to be able to get to a single shell, regardless of whether I am dialing up from home or the road, or telnet'ing in from work or a borrowed machine. I would like it if I could run traceroute, nslookup, and whois, as well, so that I can do directional diagnostics from another point on the net, when I'm having local connectivity trouble somewhere with a leased line link. It would be annoying, but I can live without that, if I can just get a shell account with elm access. The ISP should permit dialup access, and not care about specific client type (e.g. I will sometimes use a BSD box, and sometimes use another box, to dialin). In particular, it should not be Windows-only (though I may use a Windows box, if that's all I can borrow, when travelling, it can't be a requirement). I'm looking for some DNS on top of that (but I could have NSI or whoever do the mail forwarding for me, since almost all registrars offer that service for free these days, anyway): The ISP should be willing to set up MX records and an entry for a single account in a virtusertable so that mail to any address in a domain ends up in a single maildrop,ie: tlambert@isp.com -> tlambert/.incoming-mail xxx@lambert-org -> tlambert/.incoming-mail terry@lambert.org -> tlambert/.incoming.mail (or wherever incoming mail is stored). Any suggesions welcome. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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