Please recommend an ISP

19 years ago

Our ISP is a small local company, and they've been fine until now. As of right now, the mail has been out for many hours, and the status report online hasn't been updated in 5-1/2 hours. The brief time I got on mail thru their website, my inbox shows 984 pieces of mail, and even tho I get 50-75 a day, 984 is excessive for overnight, don't you think? Are small companies losing their ability to handle ISP service? (Note, my Gmail account gets zero spam). (And the latest and greatest spam filter is a dorky thing that requires people mailing you to enter a code, sorry, but that is unacceptable.)

So, what do you recommend for a major DSL service provider? Is the local company unable to keep it up anymore? Are services like Earthlink reliable and spam-free? Who else?

Here's part of the message that I have gotten today, unchanged in 5-1/2 hours as of now:

UPDATE 9:30am

We rebooted the backup to handle the current load. The spammers are really hitting us hard right now so please have patience why we use the backup server and work on. We sync the main and backup server everynight. Depending on when you last checked email and you email program, you may download email that you already downloaded once before. Sorry about that, but it can not be helped.

UPDATE 9:10am

We need to increase the number of connections allowed on the backup server. Currently it is not keep up with the demand. We will reboot with the new settings in 2 minutes.

UPDATE 8:25am

Conversion to the backup server is completed. We will repair the original file server and later this weekend switch back to it and the syncronize the email between the two.

UPDATE 6:58am

Our main fileserver failed again. We are moving to the backup server while we trouble shoot the original server. We estimate service will be restored at 8am.

UPDATE 6:48am

Our main fileserver was put back online at 6:45 am. We are planning to migrate to a new faster fileserver as soon as our testing is complete.

UPDATE 5:48am

One of our main fileservers is being repaired. Email to/from ****.com is offline. We estimate that services will be restored by 8am.

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Comments (5)

mikie_gw
19 years ago
Sounds like a very nice isp. Just having growing pains and needs bigger backup pipes or more connection capacity. Which is very expensive for them! Plus a new computer for the main mail server apparently. They'll work out the spam thing eventually.

Big guys personal support is just about ziltch. So if you occasionally need isp type support you might be better served sticking with your Nitelog, Red whatever.

Verizon is nice if they're in your area for dsl.
fairegold
Original Author
19 years ago
So I should be patient? Sigh. That's SOOOOOO hard to do!

Thanks for the perspective, tho.
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our ISP is having the same problem....have been with them for over 10 years...plan on sticking with them. Here is an excerpt from their last email....

Hello ISP Customer,

Recently, the internet has suffered a dramatic increase in the overall amount of
junk email, or spam, that has been sent out. In the last year alone, there has been
over a 120% increase in the amount of junk email, to the point where there are 9
pieces of spam email out there for every 1 piece of legitimate mail.

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email to have to sift through every day, which is why we have used our PureMessage
spam filter to help cut down on the amount of unwanted emails that make it through
to your email box. While our filter does a good job of keeping out unwanted emails,
we want to take things a step further to help filter your email even more
effectively.

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delivery that will help to ensure more accurate email filtering with faster delivery
time. This will prevent delays between when email is sent and when you receive it,
while still keeping all the unwanted emails out of your inbox.

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jatfla
19 years ago
I signed up with Sprint (now Embarq) about 7 months ago...leaving AOL because of the price for DSL. No regrets. I don't know how I lived without DSL and I highly recommend Firefox as the browser. Firefox has an e-mail system called Thunderbird which is wonderful if you can get it set up and G-mail is simple and very efficient.
fairegold
Original Author
19 years ago
I use Firefox, but not Thunderbird. I'll have to look into that one. Thanks for the recommendation. I am so tied to Outlook Express, tho, because I have a bunch of folders there. I hope I can switch them over easily.

We seem to back online now, and I deleted 900 spam mails.

Please recommend an ISP

Comments (5)

mikie_gw

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Please recommend an ISP

Comments (5)

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