[PLUG] ISP shell access still in demand?

[Bill Barry]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 01:20:12PM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
>   I guess that I've been missing something here. Unless I have a shell
> account, to what am I connecting via ppp when I call the ISP's phone number?
> Don't I want a system prompt so I can then ssh to my network?
> 

You use the shell prompt on your laptop to do the ssh.

To further expand on my previous post,

It's fairly easy these days to get an ISP who will give you a list of numbers
nationwide where you can get local access. 

Large ISP's have their own numbers in many cities, but smaller ISP's and even
the bigger ones buy numbers from dialup wholesalers like
http://usbackbone.net/
or even qwest
http://www.qwest.com/wholesale/pcat/wholesaledial.html

For instance locally, Pacifier has national numbers
http://www.pacifier.com/dialup/index.php

and Coho says they offer nationwide dialup
http://www.coho.net/PnSChoice.htm

Then there are the large ISP's like Earthlink who
have their own numbers nationwide and they also
resell wholesale numbers.
http://support.earthlink.net/support/ACCESS/

I am sure there are others.

Just make sure that the places you normally go 
are covered and that the
numbers in those cities are not overbooked. i.e
you constantly get a busy signal. It can't hurt 
as a precaution before choosing a provider to 
just pick up the phone, dial one of the numbers
you are interested in and see if it is busy.

Bill Barry