Comments for blog.limedaley.com/post/internet

Comment #542

2005-11-14T20:19:49Z

I somehow missed your comment - yes, it is in Verizon's interests to make it hard for the competition, but Speakeasy was at best lazy in getting it back connected, and don't forget that all of this was due to Speakeasy disconnecting it originally.

I just got a credit due to cancelling the service - they charge a month in advance. Due to some billing trickery, they changed the billing date after they gave me the first free "month", but left the contract date where it was, so they made me pay at the end of the contract, where if they hadn't played with the billing date it would have been part of the free month. Yay - another $20 to Speakeasy for the privilege of having a broken DSL line for 5 days.

Comment #541

2005-10-25T11:41:54Z

I'm just glad you're back in business! But Porter says don't be too quick to blame Speakeasy; local companies like Verizon make it very, very difficult for the competition, then pick up the service when customers get frustrated.

Comment #540

2005-10-25T04:31:55Z

To continue the port forwarding stuff from the article, I realized earlier today that I forgot to mention to make the web connection work on the desktop, I also had to set Firefox to use the laptop as a proxy server, by setting the proxy server to localhost, port 3129 (thus going over the ssh tunnel to the laptop). I could have told Firefox to go directly to the laptop, instead of going to the localhost, but my way allows for two ways of being more secure, one, the desktop->laptop http traffic is over an encrypted connection, and two, I only know how to make ssh ports accessible via the localhost, or everywhere, and not just restricted to one host.

Also, my way didn't require any change to be made to the XP firewall (which defaults to no access).

Comment #539

2005-10-25T04:28:11Z

Verizon installed DSL today - pretty impressive, since I only ordered it online on Friday. They said it wouldn't be ready until Friday, and actually said to not plug in anything until Friday, but I had already installed an old Verizon DSL modem, so I knew the service was installed this morning, and the new modem arrived this afternoon, and was installed easily (though I had to use their silly audio guided windows utility, when really, all I needed was a web page to sign up for a PPPoE account.

It is noticeably slower than our previous connection, though much faster than the dialup, and $85 less than our previous connection, so well worth it, I think.

Now, I just need to break the news to Speakeasy that Verizon was able to install it in 2 business days, why can't Speakeasy reconnect previously installed service in 14 days...

Comment #538

2005-10-21T14:55:03Z

Definitely one of my favorite geeks, too! I don't understand what you did, but it's pretty amazing.