[Techtalk] Linux and home Internet connections

[Mary]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2005, Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> Well, as far as I understand, ADSL *is* a permanent connection.
> If you only want to surf the web a few times a week, then you're better
> off with dialup, probably.

It's potentially permanent, as in, when you connect, you're pretty much
guarenteed a connection that will last 'forever' (for values of
'forever' that are usually about four weeks on my provider, and then
they have a network outage for half an hour or so). But many people do
not actually use it as a permanent connection: they connect when they
want to, or when their computer is on.

ADSL has several advantages over dialup:
 1. speed: downloads will be at least 4x and often many more times
    faster
 2. very rare or unheard of to get refused a connection just because it's
    a busy time and all their modems are used up
 3. very rare or unheard of for ADSL ISPs to have a "2 hours of idle
    time and we disconnect you" policy
 4. very rare or unheard of for ADSL ISPs to have a "when we run out of
    modems we disconnect the people who've been on the longest in the last
    24 hours" policy

Its big disadvantage is not so much that it's overkill for him as that
it's expensive relative to dialup. So I'd certainly reommend price and
feature comparisons, but not that he reject ADSL solely on the basis
that he won't be using it as much as it's available.

-Mary