4/5     My girlfriend lives in Daly City, and want to get broadband at her
        house.  Cyberonic(reseller of Worldcom DSL) says her house is 18000
                \_ this sounds like a melding of Cyber and Moronic.
                   \_ Did you once work for Duhflushtech?
                   \_ Yeah, the name sucks, and support kinda sucks as well
                      when things break, but what other ISP can give you
                      1.5M/768k for $49.99 a month with no contract? -op
        ft from CO, so she can't get normal ADSL.  But for $10 more, there's
        a new DSL technology they call "REACH" that'll give her 512k up and
        down(their normal ADSL is 1.5M/768k).  I never heard of this "REACH"
        technology, nor can I find any info on the web.  Anyone heard of it
        or know what they might be talking about?
        \_ Check with SBC to see if they offer service. SBC has been setting
           up what they call "Remote Terminals" which are basically DSLAMs
           at a half-way point. They will often cut down the distance for
           far away customers from ~15k ft to ~2k ft.
           \_ Many(most) of the ISPs out there are basically reselling SBC's
              DSL service.  And for these ISPs, SBC will allow them to use
              the remote terminals.  But Cyberonic is a MCI Worldcom DSL
              reseller, and thus SBC will not allow the use.  When I switched
              from SBC reseller(DirecTV dsl) to Cyberonic, my download speed
              went down a bit because of this. -op
        \_ I don't know if this is what they're using, but if the modems used
           spread-spectrum, there's no real limit on distance (and hence
           signal/noise ratio).  The farther from the CO, the lower the speed.
           DSL providers generally impose a maximum distance so that they can
           provide a consistant quality of service.  Imagine your average non
           techie person orders DSL and gets only 100kbit and can't understand
           why.  As for the extra $10 per month, it's either to pay for more
           expensive DSL equipment, or else "because we can".
           \_ That's why I was asking, and asked the sales rep why she couldn't
              just sign up for the regular service and just suffer the lower
              speed for the same price of $49.99/month.  But he said that at
              that distance, she'd only see 256k up/down. -op
           \_ Actually some of the providers began going beyond their
              advertised distances to allow customers to have access, but
              the same customers began complaining to the PUC about very
              bad performance and the PUC came back and smacked SBC very
              badly for it. After that, they all began sticking to their
              limits again.
              \_ which is lame.  they should be able to sell DSL to
                 customers with the understanding that it will only
                 be say 128kb/s DSL, and charge accordingly.
        \_ You might want to consider a cable modem if upload speed and super
           fast pings aren't that important.
           \_ I've got cable, 1.5/256, fast pings.  Works fine.
              \_ But what about during peak hours?  I've heard that AT&T
                 used to scan ports and cut off your service if they find
                 an open ftp/mail/whatnot server port.  Does Comcast do
                 this as well?  She primarily needs it for VPN for her work.
                 Will it be fast enough? -op