Converting from SpeakEasy/Megapath--which plan(s)?

[CalvinFold]

A SpeakEasy customer for just over 10 years, and a Best Internet customer before that, so I immensely value good customer support and sales people who have a clue about the technical side of things. I detest contracted call centers with a passion, since they are by-and-large clueless.

Well, SpeakEasy survived being merged with Best Buy, but apparently Megapath has officially killed them. I lost Usenet access a month ago, never changed my settings, even changed Macs. Nothing. Even if I get it fixed, I'm leaving because they use a call center that has been giving me the runaround for weeks. The SpeakEasy I signed-up with would have had this cured within 24 hours...no joke.

It's ironic really, I would never have looked-up to see what the competition was up to had they just kept me happy. As it turns out, I can probably get better service, better speed, and better features with someone else. Megapath's loss. ;-p

SO! Looks like Sonic may be the new Best Internet of the San Francisco East Bay, so here I am.

I need a hand trying to figure out what services/packages I need. So here's what I have now for about $80/mo. (plus like $30/mo. for local landline):

CURRENT FEATURES:

• 1.5/384 ADSL

• AT&T local landline service with CallerID

• 3 static IPs (just one may be fine, I'm about to get an IPNetRouterX NAT running soon with luck).

• 1 shell account

• 7 available email accounts (only one in use, let's call it joe@bobby.com)

• managing my top-level domain ((let's call it "bobby.com" for these examples), including e-mail

• "star dot" email handling. Any email addressed to "@bobby.com" is valid and will be delivered to joe@bobby.com--I use this to manage/track the use of my email addresses and to filter emails from different sources. I like the freedom to "make up" email addresses as I go along. So I can just on-the-fly start using "amazon@bobby.com" or "sonic@bobby.com" or even "jerkface@bobby.com." Or if someone can't remember my exact email, they only need to get the domain right.

• 500 MB of web hosting

• DNS/Domain hosting

• Domain email hosting

• FTP (FTP to/from hosted domain)

• 5 available domain-level emal accounts

• 5 GB of newsgroup/NNTP access (near as I can tell, unfiltered, which means alt.binaries.* is available

My setup:
• Router to Megapath supplied by them (no idea what it is at the moment). It only has one Ethernet port, and that's all I need because...

• Cabled ethernet to all computers via two Asanté 1000/FDX switches behind a patch panel

• Also have an Apple AirPort Extreme handling the wireless (manages two iPads, an iPod Touch, and two AirPort Express for music distribution in the house)

• Generally one Mac, one gaming PC, and a PS3 online at any given time.

• With luck, I will eventually have an older Mac between the router and the Asanté switches as a firewall using IPNetRouterX (with a proper two-NIC firewall, NAT, port forwarding, etc.).

In addition to this, I have key questions of Sonic:

• Are you using a contracted call center, or do you have real-life locals who can help? Folks who know your systems, setup, and gear.

• Can those tech support people "think outside the box" to get things solved? Or do they only know what's on the decision tree. I tend to only call when things are really FUBAR and only after checking my end to death. I want the folks ont he phone to realize they can skip-over the "is it plugged in" part of the tree. ;-p

• How is your latency for gaming? Speakeasy years ago had a Gaming service (low-latency, very few hops to the backbone). I never signed-up for that, but I found even their Admin-level accounts (which I have) had very low latency for the games I played.

QUESTION: What services(s) am I looking at to approach/meet/exceed this from Sonic, and how much per month?

Apologies for the long-windedness. I noticed knowledgeable Sonic folks cruised this Forum and rather than slog through sales with all this, seemed easier to start this way.

[toast0]

First, check if you're within range for Sonic Fusion; ADSL2 delivered from the CO http://www.sonic.net/solutions/home/internet/fusion/ If so, that takes care of of phone, internet, 1 ip, and a shell account. If not, you're probably behind a Remote Terminal (RT), and you can do line shared DSL1, you'll need to keep your at&t landline. The fusion qualifier will tell you about the speed options, and you can pick between one dynamic or 1, 4, or 8 static IPs. You almost certainly want Fusion over DSL1 even though you can get more IPs with DSL1.

For email and web hosting, you probably want Basic hosting, http://www.sonic.net/sales/hosting/basic-hosting.shtml I think that should do it (not totally sure about *@ but I think that's covered). Newsgroups access is currently provided (including alt.binaries) with no transfer limit, but be aware that it's not certain for how long, see this thread for the latest viewtopic.php?f=5&t=505

Sonic does not have a contracted call center, it's all real-life locals. My experience has been that they are very good, and they will accept you at your word when you say you've tried rebooting already etc. Latency has been good for me, typically about 15-20 ms to get out of Sonic's network (I'm on line shared DSL), but there are line conditions which can increase latency.

[CalvinFold]

So if I read this right, that's $40 for Fusion + $20 for web hosting, and means I can drop my separate land-line plan. But in the future I may have to opt for a separate Usenet provider (which is about $10-20 near as I can tell).

So right now I have something like $80 + $30 = $120, replaced by Sonic for $60? If so...wow.

Any idea what kind of speeds I can expect for being about 7500 ft. away? The charts are confusing since they don't have a legend (the X/Y are not labelled "speed" and "distance", at least the ones I've seen so far). I'm gathering it will be better than 1.5/384 regardless?

Good to know Sonic has tech support with a clue. Head's up to Sonic if you're watching: switch to a call center and you're just another commodity provider. Don't ever do it. I don't want commodity (I'd get cable internet if that's all I wanted).

Thanks!

(On a side note, got my Usenet back with Megapath...was something stupid they never bothered to mention until I practically threatened. Apparently the schema for entereing logins had changed...morons. Still planning to switch after this experience. They were truly ambivalent and quick to blame me...and in the end, it WAS them.)

[dane]

At 7500ft, looks like the average is 6-7Mbps down. The product is 1Mbps or better upstream for pretty much all distances.

Re: our Santa Rosa support team - noted!

-Dane

[toast0]

So if I read this right, that's $40 for Fusion + $20 for web hosting, and means I can drop my separate land-line plan. But in the future I may have to opt for a separate Usenet provider (which is about $10-20 near as I can tell).

So right now I have something like $80 + $30 = $120, replaced by Sonic for $60? If so...wow.

Yes, although if your $30 landline includes taxes and fees, you need to include them for Fusion too (they have a list of estimates)