[GRLUG] ISP Review

[Aaron M. Brummitt]

> Had LDMI/Cavalier - big mistake!  Service went out
> often, they seemed to have one guy.  Yes, one guy as tech.  Currently
> have Paetec (they bought McLeod) w/ similar "Smart-T" product where
> voice and data share T1 channels.  Definitely not as fast as when we
> had full T1 with Latest Wave.  If you're downloading a CD image at
> around 150-180kb/sec, every other connection crawls.  Ping rates go
> from 50ms to close to 200ms and remote VPN customers start
> complaining.  Awful.  It was the same with LDMI though.  I think it's
> the whole sharing bandwidth w/ voice thing.

I'll echo the "big mistake" with LDMI/Cavalier.  While I have not used
them for data I would never consider them after my experience with
them with voice.  Poor reliability, poor support and slow response
time when issues did occur (often).  Switched to AT&T voice and all of
the problems disappeared.

Currently with, and unhappy with Choice One/One Communications.
Latency consistency is awful with ping rates ranging from 60ms to
600ms+ and that is only to One Comm's tier one peer (GLBX) - the range
gets worse to the endpoint.  Support with One Comm is friendly but
that is about it.  The link is doubly leased so any time there is any
issue, One Comm has to call TDS who has to call AT&T - it's a mess and
the unfortunately the contract was signed before my time and without a
SLA.

We are currently working with AT&T and Qwest for a new solution.  Both
AT&T's T1 and fiber service have SLA's with latency < 37ms to anywhere
in the US.  If I remember correctly Qwest's (T1) was slightly higher
somewhere near 50ms.  Uptime and response times were nearly identical
between the two.