[sf-lug] Using Linux with AT&T internet service.

[Michael Paoli]

On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 3:49 PM Robert Johnson <emailbox6357 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> and he wouldn't expand. Veto... Then I checked an option that I didn't
> know was available. Comcast/Business. I mean, I'm not a business... Thanks
> Jim. And they had an inflation fighting option that would cost pretty much
> what the Sonic and AT&T service would cost. A solution, finally... I really
> would have liked to use Sonic and their fiber optic service as a change of
> pace. I've been forced to use
>

Last I dealt with Comcast Business on installation (2019-12-12),
for any cable runs that were >10 years old, they wanted to replace 'em with
a new run.
So ... landlord 'n holes 'n all that ... may or may not be an issue for you.
In my case, I got 'em to do new cable run reusing the existing hole that
had the old cable run
(which has been unused for more than 19 years).

And yeah, "of course" Comcast Business works with Linux ... that doesn't
mean they support it,
but not really all that relevant to Comcast Business ... you're more likely
to get some
semi-reasonable levels of cluefulness there ... and I think they kind'a
expect same from
their customers ... given what much of their customer base is.  Though
results may be
more hit-and-miss with their first tier support.

Anyway, at the time, I went with Comcast Business (while holding my nose at
least a bit
... Comcast doesn't exactly thrill me).  They were one of the few ISPs that
covered my location (including building), that also could provide what I
required:
several static IPv4 addresses (preferably 5, a /29)
unfettered Internet access, including outbound to TCP port 25
Many ISPs, especially "consumer" services, wouldn't provide either or both
of the above.

I also know at least one person that's doing AT&T fiber with Linux and are
quite satisfied
with that ... but I don't know much about their particular use case, and
it's actually outside
of the former SBC territory.

And Comcast Business isn't like the "big boys" with (near-?)optimal support.
E.g. they can't even do RFC-2317 for "reverse" DNS - so any setup or
changes there
take a support ticket, and take about a day to be implemented ... ugh,
really?
So, yeah, it's a little bit rinky-dink ... I think probably most of their
customers are
smaller to medium sized businesses, and probably little to none in the
enterprise or data center class.
And certainly far from optimal availability levels (definitely not talkin'
five 9s).
But ... for the most part ... it mostly works fairly well, and though they
have
way more outages than I was used to (I was relatively spoiled with
Raw Bandwidth's DSL - but they discontinued that for my location), at least
for
the most part they're fairly timely about getting 'em fixed, and fairly
good about
having status and restoral estimation information available.  Not great and
up to the
moment, but ... fairly good, and generally updated with fairly reasonable
frequency.
So, when their sh*t goes out (it does, and fair bit), if one otherwise
checks on Internet
(e.g. via browser on phone), one can usually get updated status information
... not
exactly instantly, but it seems to catch up to reasonable approximation of
reality
with 30 minutes to an hour or so.  So, e.g. when it's out, some peeking,
and might
have an idea of how big of a mess they're dealing with (e.g. storm and lots
of
scattered outages, or just one single outage - which might be small ... or
larger).
So, typically outage, I typically wait 10 or 15 minutes, then have a peek.
Can even
check from such, if Comcast Business is able to "see" the cable "modem"
device one
has ... or if they're unable to communicate with it.  So, ... at least
semi-hand and
fairly functional.  And if their map, etc. doesn't (yet) show the outage, I
typically
just chill, and check back like about an hour after the outage started
(sure, could
phone 'em, but likely much wait time, and first tier may not be more
cluefull than
what that same outage map can tell 'em anyway).
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