Two Internet connections

[bowlcut]

So, work will pay for my Internet connection if I want them to since I work from home quite a bit. Now I dont want them to pay for my main account. Because it has to be on the company credit card, and since my comcast bill is for also cable tv...would be a billing nightmare. So instead of getting into all that...it would be nice to get rid of that bill...

But Im debating, would it be worth getting a second connection? A DSL line from a "friendly" company like speakeasy or here Butler.net. Comcast and their "unlimited" has been told to me to mean 200gig a month or less...so Im always watching my usage. Im wondering if getting a second connection to handle the load might be worth my time.

Any thoughts of that? And how would you implement such a setup if you had it?

My only other option would be to find a way to separate the cable internet from cable tv... Or see about doing reimbursements of say 60 bucks on the cable side of things....

[pjs97talon]

I'm confused. Comcast has a limit???

[easilyobsessed]

I'm confused. Comcast has a limit???

There is not a "hard limit", but Comcast has stopped service for people who "abuse" their connection. It actually happens to a very limited number of people, but sites such as Slashdot have hyped it and made it seem worse than it really is.

[eric96ser]

My company used to pay for our internet, and all we needed to do, was submit a copy of our bill and we got reimbursed for the charges. Can they not do that?

[bowlcut]

Yea i can do that, it just is a bit of a paperwork nightmare. Its a big corp remember....we own S&P, JDPowell...and all the book stuff. So like 60k people I think. So its a complicated process to get things in the system. My boss says he would want it just on my credit card and submit it that way. I may try the other way, you can manually put stuff into the system and get reimbursed.... sometimes :( I hate Concur, Lawson, PMP all that crap that HR/finance uses...


But yes Comcast has a limit. Its not a hard limit. They will not tell you that you are near a limit. Basicly what happens, is if enough people on a node complain its slow, they go though the logs and find the heavy users and call them. They say to cut back your usages you used too much. You ask what the limit is, they say there is no limit but you are in the top 3% of all users and to back off. They called me for using 300gig in one month, and to stay under that to stay under the radar. If you get called twice, actually you dont get called they disconnect you without telling you. You call the 800 number and no one knows whats going on. You have to call the abuse number, they dont answer. You wait for them to call...usually 2 days or so. They scream at you, then turn you back on.

So for now Im laying low, not got past step 1. My router emails me when i get 80% of 200gig that usually gets me 3 weeks out of the month. Im waiting till saturday before starting any downloads. Funny thing is i looked at my logs. they said 300 was horrible...that was a light month, june of last year was 700gigs. my 1.5terrabytes here in the house has to be worked out all the time ;).

Comcrap is only one step away from being the worst out there. The moment they start passing peoples info over to the RIAA or MPAA WITHOUT a warrant, I am off them period. Speeds are nice, but customer service sucks. i wish verizon was here for their fios service...

[SupaRice]

I've used Butler.net for about 5 years now. I've had 2 outages. And only one of those lasted longer than 30 minutes.

Butler.net = TOP NOTCH

They're exactly what you need if you work from home. Reliable. Granted they're using Bell copper to get to your house, but unless you live in the sticks you'll be fine.


As far as how to implement, you'll have to use a load balancer. I would guess the cheapest one would be a Linux based firewall. They also don't take much in the way of machine so if you have an old desktop laying around you could use that.

Check into IPCop and SmoothWall:
http://ipcop.org/
http://www.smoothwall.org/

[bowlcut]

Way ahead of you, already running IPCop, for about 2-3 years atleast. Once I found out that linksys router's limit your speed to about 4mb i switched. And have been very very pleased about it. Only bad thing is I will need to use another pc as the small form factor I have is out of pci slots. yea yea i know assign another virtual IP to the red side and plug in a switch...meh i like physical speration.

I dont know if id want to do load balancing or just pure pack pushing. Like all my usenet stuff go over butler, but all my surfing over cable. Load balancing might be nice tho. its just a thought at this point. Im going to look around the system here at work and see if i can figure out how to submit just part of my bill for reimbursment. Tho i would LOVE to get off comcrap. but i do like the speed