[PLUG] Any problems with Quest / Centurylink / Centurytel for Linux Users?

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 05:47:12AM -0700, Guy Letourneau wrote:
> Are folks here using CenturyLink or Centurytel (which used to be Qwest.)
> How is there dervice to Linux users?

My wife's office is in CenturyLink territory, a 60 year old building
in Northwest Portland with ancient wiring (cable? fiber? Oh, you 
mean the mechanical stuff they add to keep the building facade from
falling off).  CenturyLink is only marginally competent, and their
copper is slowly turning to mush, but they are losing customers
faster, so they can still provide replacement pairs.  We have
4 lines, 3 voice plus a combined FAX/DSL line.  We have had four
problems requiring line or switch maintenance over the last year.

With the DSL connection, we don't have a routable IP address - they
NAT us.  That is actually the way we like it.  We punch outbound
VPN connections to our offsite servers and the home network.  We
bought our own DSL modem, rather than their suggested models.  The
modem was chosen for Linux compatability.  I don't recall the brand
and model (I will document it on my next visit).  The main reason
for our choice was so that our ALIX firewall could handle internal
routing, VPN termination, address assignment, etc. without a "more
helpful" modem interfering.  Unless your setup is very simple, you
probably want a similar arrangement.

We have our servers offsite for a reason - virtuals with Rimuhosting
and Linode.  If those get hammered/slashdotted/baidu'ed, we still
have internet, and we don't have to worry about address assignment
and Terms of Service hijinks from C.L.  

Other than the fussy setup, and the hardware failures at their end,
it works OK.  It is not blazingly fast like Frontier FIOS at home
in the burbs, but it works well enough to connect a couple of IP
phones, which means we can use the office phone system from home.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs