On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 13:00:47 -0400 Neil Carpenter <primate@mindspring.com> wrote: > > in many places, the choice of broadband providers is quite poor. see > > my earlier posting about my client for whom Ameritech DSL was the > > only affordable choice, and we just barely made it work for their > > application. > This seems like a specious argument. The client had chosen, as you > indicate, to scrimp on their broadband provider to save money. You also > indicate that other providers were available. > The nature of picking any product is cost vs. benefit. In this case, > the customer chose to favor cost and, thus, received less benefit. well, they'd dumped Covad for abysmal service. anyone else was so pricy that the project would not go forward at all; the monthly recurring cost was simply a budget buster. it's not a matter of scrimping so much as a matter of whether the project is even feasible under the budgetary constraints. port NAT enables some folks to run lots of computers behind small subnets, sure, but it also has the side effect of disabling or nearly disabling lots of other technologies. the folks who have the hardest problems are the ones with the least cash. telling someone with a small budget that they can solve their problem with an application of more money (to get a better provider) isn't advice that goes down so well. richard -- Richard Welty rwelty@averillpark.net Averill Park Networking 518-573-7592 Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security