[OT] Geek friendly provider

[geoffrey mendelson]

On Dec 13, 2009, at 10:48 AM, Boris shtrasman wrote:

> Hello ,
>
> I wish to connect my house to a stable Internet (for the last 4  
> years i used free public wi-fi).
> Since I Know only two providers ( Hot and Bezeq) I pretty against  
> the wall:
> One is known to use bad attiude against paying customers (EX. "Pirat  
> operation" , knock on doors operation and more ) and the other ,  
> well it is Bezeq.
> And i don't wish to be bullied to much (both of them are bullies i  
> believe).
> If there are any others im be more then happy to know.

Your choices for infrastructure are BEZEQ, HOT and the cellular  
compaines. CellCom has the best data plan, but someone on this list  
found that it was limited in both protocols allowed and maximum usage.  
Orange's is also limited, but last I checked, it was only 5g a month,  
which is very small.

Everyone has an ISP story, my personal ones are Pelephone and BEZEQ  
International. I personally recommend that you avoid both of them at  
any cost. The new consumer protection law may help.

All ISP's have cheap accounts which don't work very well. Consider  
paying the extra for "business class" service, or a "gamer's" package.

HOT has more options, better speeds and real service if you go  
throught their "business office". The big downside is you can not  
combine a business internet connection with TV and landline phone  
service. For me it meant when my neighbor called first thing Sunday  
morning to complain that his internent was down, they said they would  
come on Tuesday. When I called (I have business service), they were  
out in 1/2 hour and spent 1.5 hours out in the rain fixing the  
problem, which fixed my line and my neighbor's.

Off topic, IMHO YES has a better product than HOT, and if your taste  
is English language programing, you can get it all on the internet  
anyway. YES used to have a special internet deal for customers (using  
BEZEQ aDSL and a random ISP), but they no longer do.


BYNET which is a large commercial ISP, has a consumer/small business  
division called QOS (www.qos.co.il). Worth a phone call.

Most of my 012 problems disappeared when I added the gamer's package  
to my connection.

As for Linux friendly, why bother? Routers are cheap enough and  
universally supported. BEZEQ charges and extra 10 NIS for router  
support, even if you get a router from them. When I had initial  
problems with mine, I called and after doing a line check, the tech  
told me that I had to pay the extra money for more support. He said  
that I could find all the information I needed, along with any  
firmware updates on their web site, so that if I could do it myself, I  
did not need to pay the extra money. I was able to fix it myself, YMMV.

Note that not all routers work well between wireless and wired  
networks. The BEZEQ standard Siemens router works fine, a 130 NIS TP- 
Link router I bought from Ivory does not. If you try to run full speed  
data from a sever (ethernet) to a netbook(Wifi) the router crashes.  
For normal low level loads, such as internet or sharing a printer,  
watching a video, etc it was ok.


> Any good things about Bezeq ?
> Plus any good ISPs ?
> I was actom customer few years ago (I believe in the early 2000) in  
> search for Linux ISP.
>
> Pirate operation:
> http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1000518926
> http://rotter.net/cgi-bin/forum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&oakm=27448&forum=scoops1&viewmode=all&keywords=hot#4



I can't read the Hebrew, but HOT has been known to conduct fishing (or  
is it phishing) expeditions by calling customer's that have canceled  
and claiming they know they are stealing service.  Sometimes people  
have just signed up again and paid the "fine" because they were  
caught, often people do it because they think they were caught at  
something they did not do but don't want to fight. One way to prevent  
it is to make sure that they don't just take the boxes, they  
disconnect the service outside of you home.

BTW, YES also does it to people who connect their own receiver to a no  
longer used YES dish.


Geoff.

-- 
geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendelson at gmail.com