[PLUG] Was looking for new ISP

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Thu Jan 25 19:11:16 UTC 2007


On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, eehouse wrote:

> * Home DSL is too unreliable to allow me to run a site from home. Hell, my
>  DSL modem alone is so flakey I've had to put it on a timer resetting it
>  every 24 hours, so the site's guaranteed to go down once/day.  (Qwest
>  does not consider a modem that must be power-cycled every few days to be
>  broken.)

Ed,

   That's a Qworst issue, not DSL. I have Verizon wire here and it has been
totally reliable for years. Now, the power brick on the Fujitsu modem
croaked a year or so ago, but the Verizon tech loaned me his until I could
buy a replacement. I found one on eBay (whole 'modem') for $18 (with
shipping) that same day; I was the only bidder. Problem solved.

> * On a more general level, I'd rather not sign up for the security
>  headaches assocated with running servers on well-known ports, nor do I
>  want to pay for the business-grade service plans that permit it. I have a
>  LEAF-based router at home, separate DMZ and trusted LAN, etc. -- but I'd
>  still rather keep the public stuff somewhere else.

   I let Aracnet handle the security for my web site and DNS services. They
have full-time experts who do an outstanding job. I run my MTA here, and
with the help of the fine folks who populate the postfix, spamassassin, and
FuzzyOCR mail lists, it's now tuned to grand prix performance. My inbox spam
has dropped to zero the past two days ... except for some UCE from Qwest.

> * Many ISPs won't deliver mail to the IP ranges known to belong to DSL
>  providers.

   Why not register your own domain name and get a static IP address from
your ISP? Then you can use either fetchmail/getmail to suck it down from
their server or you could run your own.

> * I traval a lot, and read mail from many different places.  With a shell
>  account, I run mutt inside screen and keep it running for as long as the
>  host stays up.  I disconnect when the plane closes its doors and
>  reconnect from work a few hours later and am right back in the emacs
>  session I was using to compose a reply.

   I ssh in from any place with free wired or WiFi access and use pine on my
office system from a console on my notebook. Of course, the work I do is
sufficiently non-critical that I don't need to instantly reply to anyone.

> * I want to use an email address I will always control, and URLs as
>  well.  No more ehouse at some.random.isp.com.  Google still finds links
>  to one of my sites at my old ISP (which page doesn't exist) ahead of
>  the same page where it's been for the past year.

   Well, buy your own domain name. Have your ISP of choice point the MX
record to your server.

> * Once I'm running sites elsewhere, I have to be able to edit and debug
>  them in place.  You can't upload a PHP-based site, let alone compiled CGI
>  binaries, and expect them to work on a different host. I know that's the
>  goal of scripting systems like php, but it's imperfectly realized.

   I don't do php, but the couple of cgi scripts I've uploaded to my little
corner of the hosting disk are working just fine.

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |    The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |          Accelerator(TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517      Fax: 503-667-8863



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