Thanks for your reply, Greg (Gregory.Stigers),

Before my responses, whatever happened to LMDS (wireless, high bandwidth,
stationary)?  Did the landline companies buy up all the licenses?  Are those
licenses being retained unused for some other future purpose?  Just
wondering, you telecom experts.

>... my provider, recently acquired by AT&T, will not
> directly support
> anyone's home network, and offers to provide home networking
> service for $14.95..... Ironically, on their provided
> news server, they also host their own member-only forums (at least, I
assume they are
> unavailable outside their network), one of which is dedicated
> to networking!

My research into AT&T did indicate that at the basic rate, they should not
actually support a home network, but, they don't discourage it either.
ViaWest/Northpoint actively discourages it and goes so far as to reserve the
right to not provide technical support for users on the residential plan who
have multiple devices!

>... how much
> additional bandwidth can one household chew up? Normal use
> should not bring
> down a commercial provider, nor flood my local segment that
> badly......
> It is an easy
> enough thing to
> come up with schemes to consume all of one's available
> bandwidth for hours
> on end...


Right, I was thinking web-based security cameras, plus, I do max out my DSL
on the download side for a few hours at least three times per week.  My DSL
is hardware limited to the stated available bandwidth, however, so the only
reason I can think of that they might find full bandwidth usage a hardship
is if they have budgeted and built their facilities on the assumption of a
relatively low aggregate or average percent of usage across all customers -
a bad assumption that has a lot of cable data users complaining about slow
speeds during prime time.  I have found, however, that the advertised
bandwidth is pretty much available to me 24/7, and have proved that via
dslreports.com throughput tests (free- recommend a visit to their site.)

I give ViaWest an A+ on the quality of the physical service, and a "D" on
technical support. (Viawest uses Northpoint... I believe Northpoint is
buying them out.)

> Still, if
> your provider wants to sell some kind of multiple connection
> subscription,

Yes, that's their SOHO package - many more dollars.

> Supporting what one's customers want to do with their own
> service beats
> ticking off your potential customer base, or your regular
> customers

ViaWest was the only available service short of ISDN time 2 from Quest, due
to distance from the local office. I believe that at the time they were
relying on the longer run lengths of IDSL to capture market share. They
don't tell you until installation time that you're getting IDSL and it's
slower speeds, though. ISDN has come down in price, but using it for voice
as well as data (analog lines would be redundant) is not cost effective or
simplistic.  I researched residential ISDN heavily over the last few years -
there is not enough technical savvy at the BellCo to address issues of the
vast configurabillity and flexibility of ISDN.  They generally cannot handle
a customer who wants to use digital voice equipment. They support only one
model of ISDN "modem", which uses POTS ports for voice or fax.  They
recommend retaining regular analog service for local power outages or ISDN
service outages (a cell phone or UPS.......!)

>....all of these companies have or are getting competition. I
> expect that most of us do remember when THE phone company
> wanted to control
> how many phones one had in one's home, and cable companies
> wanted to limit
> the number of TVs that were hooked into cable.

I always pay for a single cable hookup, and run whatever I need myself for
distribution.  That means that before I place a service call, I have to
disconnect everything but the primary connection.  My in-laws, however, pay
for all connections, but have made many service calls on each to get the
quality perfect on each set.


> In your case, it is probably not a Herculean task to
> temporarily remove your
> firewall device while requesting tech support. I'm just
> surprised that they
> would make a fuss over it. I am mildly curious about how they
> could even
> tell, though.
>