Verizon DSL/Mac users: questions re: client software
Mike Flugennock
Any Verizon DSL customers here in the DC/Metro area: I have a few
questions about their Macintosh service/software and versions/performance
of same.
*Is this actually an "always on" service a la isdn, as advertised,
or does it require a client module, like some flavor of PPP, in
order to connect?
*When checking out DSL options at verizon.com, I noticed that the Mac
version of their software requires OSX. Are there any pre-OSX users here
on Verizon DSL? Do they really only serve OSX users, or are there
versions available for OS8.x - OS9.x as well?
*What's the overall quality of your connection and customer service been?
The only person I know who runs DSL (under Windows) is claiming outages
of an hour or so every few days, but that's just one user I've spoken to.
I prefer answers via email as I don't hang out on this group a whole lot;
obviously, I am actually _not_ the president of the Direct Marketing
Association. Reach me by email by souding out and typing in the address
spelled out in my .sig.
Thanks in advance,
.
--
"All over, people changing their roles,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
___________________________________________________________________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org
to...@aplawrence.com
>Any Verizon DSL customers here in the DC/Metro area: I have a few
>questions about their Macintosh service/software and versions/performance
>of same.
>*Is this actually an "always on" service a la isdn, as advertised,
> or does it require a client module, like some flavor of PPP, in
> order to connect?
>*When checking out DSL options at verizon.com, I noticed that the Mac
> version of their software requires OSX. Are there any pre-OSX users here
> on Verizon DSL? Do they really only serve OSX users, or are there
> versions available for OS8.x - OS9.x as well?
I can't speak for your part of the country, but in other areas most of
the DSL providers (including Verizon) have been providing little
DHCP routers that give your machine an IP address/gateway etc.
There's nothing put on the PC('s) but I think that the reason they
are still apt to only support a few platforms is that their installation
people need to do configuration for most customers. If you can do
your own config (which is usually nothing more than setting yourself
as a DHCP client and setting mail/news access if you use them), you
don't need them to understand your OS.
For example, I recently had Taconic put in DSL at our weekend place
in the Berkshires. They SAY they support Windows and OS X, but I
could hook this up to a Linux box or anything else: it's just a
DHCP router. As it was, the installer barely knew enough about
OS X to get it working; I had to help him out a bit and after he
left I changed almost everything he had done anyway.
Verizon up here in MA even offers static ip's now.. quite a change.
I did one of these for a client who downsized from 20 or so
employees to 2 (what recession?). He dropped his frame, and went
with Verizon DSL. Again, it was just a little router, so I was
able to easily hook up the same Linux firewall we had always used
and reconfigure to point at the Verizon router.
--
to...@aplawrence.com Unix/Linux resources: http://aplawrence.com
Inexpensive phone/email support
Download Free SCO Skills Test: http://pcunix.com/skilltests.html
Doug Brown
pres...@the-dma.org (Mike Flugennock) wrote:
> Any Verizon DSL customers here in the DC/Metro area: I have a few
> questions about their Macintosh service/software and versions/performance
> of same.
If you're in an area where the telephone company used to be Bell
Atlantic (if you're in DC, I think you are), you wll get a PPPoE
connection that isn't always on. If you're in an ex-GTE area, you'll get
a DHCP connection (always on). I know that there are plenty of people on
Verizon DSL who use OS 9. All you'd need would be a PPPoE client. If
you're in ex-GTE, no extra software would be needed.
Doug
--
Doug Brown - La Grande, OR
Idiot's Guide to Mac Cases - http://www.ircandy.com/maccases/
If you want to reply by email, remove "pleasenospam." and ".invalid"
Bob Harris
> Any Verizon DSL customers here in the DC/Metro area: I have a few
> questions about their Macintosh service/software and versions/performance
> of same.
I'm a New England Verizon DSL customer, but I would expect that the
software part of there service would be similar.
> *Is this actually an "always on" service a la isdn, as advertised,
> or does it require a client module, like some flavor of PPP, in
> order to connect?
Mine has been always on.
I did not need to install any additional software (but I also us Mac OS
X)
They use PPPoE. Does Mac OS 9 have PPPoE support? I never needed to
PPPoE before last month so I didn't have any reason to explore whether
Mac OS 9 TCP/IP control panel had a PPPoE option.
My actual connection is via a D-Link Cable/DSL router. It provides the
PPPoE hookup and I then attach my 3 Macs to the house side of the net.
I use an Airport Base Station for a Pismo and an iBook, plus an ethernet
attached B&W G3.
If you have more than one Mac to connect, I would suggest some kind of
Cable/DSL router between you and the DSL connection providing NAT
services to help keep the nasties out of you household network, and to
allow you to have more than one system use your internet connection.
> *When checking out DSL options at verizon.com, I noticed that the Mac
> version of their software requires OSX. Are there any pre-OSX users here
> on Verizon DSL? Do they really only serve OSX users, or are there
> versions available for OS8.x - OS9.x as well?
Like I said, I use a D-Link Cable/DSL router. After that I could run
anything on the household side. Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, 8, 7, 6, a PC, a
PDA with WiFi access (my next toy I think :-), etc... As long as it
spoke TCP/IP and talked to your router, it should work nicely.
The only software was an installation CD that did a very nice job of
walking you through the hardware installation, but it did not leave any
software on my system. And the final on-line registration can be done
via Internet Explorer, so as long as you can get to the registration
site, you should be able to do the whole thing with Mac OS 9.
However, since I am only speculating, and have not actually tried Mac OS
9 with my setup, you must take what I say with a gain of salt.
> *What's the overall quality of your connection and customer service been?
> The only person I know who runs DSL (under Windows) is claiming outages
> of an hour or so every few days, but that's just one user I've spoken to.
My connection has been rock solid. I've gotten about 1.4megabits/sec
download speeds, and I live about 19,000 feet from the switching office.
Previously all DSL services have said I'm too far away, so either
Verizon is using new technology, or they have installed a substation of
some kind closer to my home that I don't know about (which would be
easy, since I don't pay all that much attention to what the phone
company does around town :-)
Of course I live in New England and the quality of phone service will
vary depending on the region as much as on the condition of the phone
wires and equipment setup in each region.
As for customer service I have not had a reason to really talk to them.
The only thing that I did call them for was that initially I could not
setup my web page. Kept getting an error message. Customer service
scratched their heads, but nothing happened. About a month after I
signed up, I was able to initialize my web site and now I can access it
via FTP to update it on my own or use their web site creation services.
Lee Phillips
>
> Any Verizon DSL customers here in the DC/Metro area:
I'm one of those. The practical answer to your questions is: get a router
that has pppoe login built in. That way the service appears to be "always
on" and you are never aware of the login sequence. If you don't use (such
a) router then you need some kind of pppoe software on your computer
to authenticate, and this is much less convenient. I use the service with
Mac OSX, Mac OS9.x, and Windows, with no problems (except for the
problems inherent in Windows). The only time you might need to run
software provided by Verizon is when you configure your connection when
preparing to use it for the first time. I did that back when I was using OS 9.x,
so I don't know how it goes with X, but it wasn't a problem.
> *What's the overall quality of your connection and customer service been?
> The only person I know who runs DSL (under Windows) is claiming outages
> of an hour or so every few days,
The quality and reliability has been superb. In over two years I think I've noticed
one brief outage. I've never had to test the customer service. The hardware
was delivered early and the service was ready before they promised it would
be.
> I prefer answers via email as I don't hang out on this group a whole lot
It's generally expected that you will hang out enough to get your answers
here and perhaps even contribute something.
Karen Wheless
> that has pppoe login built in. That way the service appears to be "always
> on" and you are never aware of the login sequence.
I don't know if this is just me or if other Verizon customers have this
problem, but just recently, I completely lost my ability to use my
router. I have tried everything and I can't get connected using my
router any more. I had to go back to using MacPOET, much to my
disappointment. I'm not a very experienced router user, but I got the
router set up in the first place, but suddenly, nothing works, and I've
done everything I can think of. I feel rather stupid but getting a
router set up with PPPoE sometimes seems like voodoo - even following
the directions exactly doesn't always get results. I posted a question
about it here but got no replies.
Verizon does support a router setup, but only using a Linksys router.
There are a couple of different Linksys models that they support, which
are listed on their web page. I have an XSense router, and they won't
support it - it's almost identical to the Linksys, but just different
enough so I can't get it to work. Anyway, if you're going to use
Verizon and buy a router, it makes sense to buy one that Verizon
supports - Linksys makes good routers anyway. I think their customer
support reps are usually pretty clueless about Macs but I bought a used
Linksys off of ebay - I'm hoping that once it arrives, I can somehow get
it working. I'd drop Verizon altogether except that buying a new router
is cheaper than paying another $120 per year to another ISP.
My problems may be unique, but if you're going to buy a router and don't
have any special one in mind, it might help to know which ones Verizon
supposedly supports.
Karen
--
---
Books for Sale!
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze234sc/pages/booksforsale.html
Brian Hall
Wheless <karen....@verizon.net> wrote:
> My problems may be unique, but if you're going to buy a router and don't
> have any special one in mind, it might help to know which ones Verizon
> supposedly supports.
I haven't heard anyone mention airport. Can you just plug an airport
into the DSL modem that Verizon supplies?
Lee Phillips
> I don't know if this is just me or if other Verizon customers have this
> problem, but just recently, I completely lost my ability to use my
> router.
Nothing to do with the service provider. Your router might be broken or
it might need to be reset.
> getting a
> router set up with PPPoE sometimes seems like voodoo - even following
> the directions exactly doesn't always get results.
I have a DLink - I just entered the username and password, basically.
The setup was trivial.
> Verizon does support a router setup, but only using a Linksys router.
No problem with the DLink. I strongly suspect you can use a very
wide variety of routers.
Vincent Vega
Brian Hall <brian...@markspace.com> wrote:
> I haven't heard anyone mention airport. Can you just plug an airport
> into the DSL modem that Verizon supplies?
Yes. Worked fine for me till about a week ago. Intermittant cutoffs. :(
Think I have another bad modem because when I connect directly via an
Ethernet cable, I get the same problems. However, when the modem has
been fine, the connect via Airport has been great.
Karen Wheless
> > problem, but just recently, I completely lost my ability to use my
> > router.
>
> Nothing to do with the service provider. Your router might be broken or
> it might need to be reset.
I've reset it several times - no help. I suppose it could be broken but
I can still access all the setting files and use it for printing. At
the time this happened, I suddenly stopped being able to use "DHCP" in
the TCP/IP control panel. The Verizon tech tried several things, just
wouldn't work. Finally he had to give me manual settings, which will
work with MacPOET but not with the router.
My original router setup was just to put in the username and password,
but those no longer work, I get "server not found" or "could not
connect" errors over and over. I don't know how my router could be
broken enough not to connect properly but still be able to access its
settings and use it for printing. But I guess it's possible.
Karen
Robert Bononno
Bob Harris <har...@zk3.dec.com> wrote:
>
> If you have more than one Mac to connect, I would suggest some kind of
> Cable/DSL router between you and the DSL connection providing NAT
> services to help keep the nasties out of you household network, and to
> allow you to have more than one system use your internet connection.
I have DSL that uses PPPoE via a local provider that goes through
Verizon (in Manhattan). I have not been able to connect my Asante FR1004
router to the DSL modem, however. How did you set up the NAT services in
the router? Did you set the router to do Dynamic IP (in my case the
PPPoE is handled by the DSL modem, which is both good and bad).
Ron Parsons
Robert Bononno <rbon...@erols.com> wrote:
Verizon may be expecting the MAC of your Mac. My Asanté FR allows you to
copy your Mac's MAC and report it to Verizon.
Use DHCP at each level towards Verizon and NAT at each level towards
your Mac.
--
Ron