[ILUG] Esat Clear "flat rate" costs

[Padraig Brady]

> > Yep, but I was thinking about HW. (upgrades, specialised 
> external HW access,
> > etc.)
> 
> Upgrading every n days is much overrated, but perhaps it's 
> just a linux
> thing.  To be honest, IOL don't upgrade their servers more 
> than about once
> every 1 - 1.5 years unless there are very good reasons to do 
> so (which are
> rare enough).  You will provide a much better quality service to your
> customer by choosing a particular O/S version (we use FreeBSD 
> these days for
> a variety of reasons), and sticking to it and not taking the 
> server down for
> hours in order to install new kernels and so forth..  
> Software (apache/etc)
> can easily be upgraded remotely, and almost everything can be 
> done without
> any hassle.

Yep, I guess unless your site is like slashdot or something
the HW is not going to be the bottleneck (depending on the
dynamic content generation of course).

If you need to connect to specialised on site HW
though you're stuck.
 
> Normally we have pretty good uptimes in there (recently spoiled due to
> planned server maintenance last friday night), but uptimes of 
> 150 days are
> quite common and often, they go above 300 days.
> 
> All FM joints will give you office-hours or 24-hour access if 
> you require.

Cool. This would help a lot.
 
> > How does this help?
> 
> SMTP + domain names (see my earlier rant to ilug about SMTP and all of
> that).  Domain names are important for brand identity.

Yep, but you wouldn't need a leased line for domain names?
The ISP could just bang everything in a mailbox for *@company.com
and the LAN mailserver could pick it up whenever.

I can't comment on the UUCP/SMTP thing as I don't have
enough knowledge of these protocols.
 
> > > no need to bother about the risk of the link being down,
> > 
> > i have to say I've never had problems connecting to IOL
> > in over 3 years. I can't speak for other ISPs.
> 
> Modems are inherently much more unreliable than most other pieces of
> equipment.

True, point taken.
 
> > > good quality customer service from ISP's, 
> > 
> > Hmm that would be a help OK. I usually get feed up
> > and figure things out myself.
> 
> This depends on what your priorities are in life.  Mine are 
> to reduce the
> amount of brainless work (server upgrades and old pokey, 
> bit-tweaky stuff)
> necessary.
> 
> > > cleaner, easier configuration, less maintenance, etc, etc, etc.
> > 
> > how?
> 
> Well, you just get a router preconfigured from your ISP, you 
> get a line from
> TE (or Esat or whatever), and you put them in the corner and 
> you forget
> about them because under normal circumstances, they require 
> no maintenance
> whatsoever.
> 
> Modems, on the other hand, are not always very stable; they are not in
> general designed for 24 hour usage (unless you get a very 
> good modem), and
> tend to give trouble.  You might be lucky and I might be 
> biassed, but I can
> guarantee yo that in the long run, my recommendation will 
> lend itself to
> less work while providing a better quality service.  It may, however,
> appear to cost more from a superficial point of view.
> 
> Nick
>