Verizon DSL vs Comcast Cable

[bbj at innismir.net (Ben Jackson)]

> I have used both RCN and Comcast cable-modem service.   Both work
> straight-up.  Any OS you want, as long as it can talk to the Ethernet card
> and obtain an IP address, unless you run a "broadband gateway/router", in
> which case the cable modem can talk to the gateway/router, and you do
> whatever internal networking you want.

RCN = bad. RCN was the only provider in my area for a while, and I don't
have a good thing to say about them. They transparent proxy all the
webpages you visit, the don't allow inbound port 80 (which is common these
days, but I still hate it, it's why I went to Speakeasy), for a long time, they
routed our all our connections through San Franciso (I sat on hold for a
long time complaining about that one), and for unknown reasons, out latency
between the 4th and 5th hops outside our apartment would skyrocket (2s+).

Don't use RCN. I don't know if they have improved, but I would not give
them a second chance.

My SO uses Comcast, and its simple getting a Linksys router up on the
connection, so Linux shouldn't be hard either. They do have intresting
proxy issues though, but I haven't investigated.

				~Ben