Best Internet Provider

[Kenyth]

While I agree that it SHOULD be part of the equipment they provide, I've seen more nefarious practices in years past. First, they will probably give you an option: you can either buy their modem for, say, $75, or rent theirs for $10 a month. In which case, it would depend on how long you were planning on being there as to which plan you'd go with.

What's more worrisome is that you will probably just be buying a modem, which is very necessary in connecting to the Internet, but very useless all by itself. I also connect my modem to a router, a wireless router at that, to keep my house wireless and I like the idea of a hardware firewall. Should you decide to go with a router, there are numerous ways to go about setting it up. I use WPA encryption with an impossibly long password full of lower, upper characters, numbers, and symbols, a masked SSID, and MAC address authentication. The 70 year old neighbors probably will never notice, but a Wardriver will.

Bottom line: I've just always suckered up and paid the telco for the modem. I guess I could take a stand and buy mine independently, but I just never have. If you do get their modem, and have a router you want to connect, and can't, you may need to bridge your modem to work with your router....but the above should get you going for now.

The benefit of buying from the Telco is that it should be set up for use when you get it. They filter devices by MAC address, so if you buy your own, you have to deal with a long call to tech support to get it going. Tech support reps also tend to be more difficult if you buy your own equipment.

WPA with a good passphrase is a good idea, but MAC and IP filtering is pretty useless these days. It doesn't take much to spoof those. They are deterrents only to the most casual wireless sniffers. Your encryption is your first, and best, line of defense.

[mrtr33]

WPA with a good passphrase is a good idea, but MAC and IP filtering is pretty useless these days. It doesn't take much to spoof those. They are deterrents only to the most casual wireless sniffers. Your encryption is your first, and best, line of defense.

Thanks for the advice. I know I should probably use WPA2, but I can't get it to work with all OS's in the house. I wasn't aware that masking your SSID or MAC filtering were an ineffective security measure now.

[Bassfever]

I have Charter at home and the office. They are reliable as far as staying connected but slower than I am used to

[Kenyth]

Thanks for the advice. I know I should probably use WPA2, but I can't get it to work with all OS's in the house. I wasn't aware that masking your SSID or MAC filtering were an ineffective security measure now.

WPA is still good enough. The actual encryption key used constantly changes with WPA. That makes the actual cracking of the encryption almost impossible. Instead, they use brunt force type attacks to try and crack the passkey (think password). That's why making a good long complex random passkey is a good idea. Your router is the next place you should set access security. Use a good password for your router access. Turn off wireless access and public network access to the router control console. That way, you have to hook up to the router with a physical ethernet cable in order to access the controls. You can also set up the option for each connected wireless node to be segmented into it's own LAN. That way, if a wireless device does connect, it can't access other wireless devices on the network. If you need to have multiple PC's or wireless nodes on your network talk to each other (like a wireless printer), don't enable this option.

[chefchris]

It was either buy a modem for them and get suckered into a 2 year contract, or buy one yourself with no contract.

I hate contracts.

Any cheap places to buy a DSL modem?

[mrtr33]

Like Kenyth was saying, they normally won't troubleshoot on any device not pre-approved by them. If you really know what you are doing, and never need them, then you should be fine. But if you don't.....

I don't think, however, that they can monopolize connectivity to their services, so somewhere on their website, they should have a list, or be able to provide you with a list of approved services. Keep in mind, however, that should you move again, and need to go through all of this all over again, the modem you purchased for this ISP may not be compatible with the next.

Sucks, don't it?

[logan37]

It was either buy a modem for them and get suckered into a 2 year contract, or buy one yourself with no contract.

I hate contracts.

Any cheap places to buy a DSL modem?

www.buy.com

www.newegg.com

[daredog4]

This was not an option for me becuase i live so far out in BFE that my choices were dialup or satellite. I ended up going with hughesnet satellite and have been pleased. It will cost you more than cable or DSL so if money is the primary issue then don't consider it. However, I must say that my plan is 1.2mbps down/ 200kbps up, and it seems incredibly fast. I never have to worry about peak usage times.....it works all the time. They provide you with a router and all the equipment to make it work. I have a network switch hooked up which allows me to connect as many computers to the router that i want (currently only two). Anyway, good luck. These days you gotta have good internet.

[daredog4]

I have now quit using Satellite internet. In the past few months it has really began to lag and it is my belief that they have not added or replaced any servers for some time. Some times it won't connect and other times it is as slow as dialup. Many others I have talked to had the same issues.

Now i have switched to Alltel wireless internet. This internet is faster than my Satellite was by about 2x and you get signal wherever you get a cellphone signal. Mine was not good in the house so i made sure to buy a wireless modem that had a port for an external antenna. I got on ebay and found a 40" roof mount antenna with extra cable. I get 80% signal and I am about 10 to 15 miles away from the nearest tower.

For those of you who have limited options then you should consider this. Also because it is USB plug and play, you can put it into the laptop and use it on the road as well. For many of you Alltel may not be the best provider so get on the net and look up the coverage areas. I know that Verizon and many other companys are also selling these.

[Carlos]

The cell option is a good one for many people, but you do need to be aware that the "unlimited" plans with Sprint/Alltel/Verizon/AT&T are not unlimited. You get a 5GB limit on the high end plan, and less on the cheaper ones. Every now and then I hear about someone receiving a bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars for going over.

Also if you want to share it at home, there are routers that you can put the card into and then it is re-distributed by Wi-fi. We use the Kyocera on our boat and it works extremely well, cost about $150.