From TNPC issue #4.07...

High-speed Internet Connection: What To Do When Yours Goes Down - Part 2

by Lee Hudspeth
April 5, 2001

My first article in this series generated several emails from folks incredulous that I would suggest using AOL under any circumstances. I appreciate these readers' cries of alarm, and here's my reply.

I consciously chose not to get into a discussion of AOL in my initial article. In retrospect, that was a mistake. Too many readers may have inferred that if Lee says AOL is okay for a backup plan, it must be okay for general use. In my opinion, it's not okay for general use, but under certain very specific circumstances it can provide a safety net (more on this in a moment). I never had any direct empirical evidence that AOL was causing system instabilities, only that it had what I considered a poor user interface and bad technical support. The "bad UI" judgment was easy to make; AOL connection software is proprietary, frenetic, and laden with "eyeball traps" that simply shouldn't be part of a paid-for online connection experience. I made the bad technical support judgment based on the experiences of numerous clients and friends, all of whom reported extensive problems with the service, but I had never used it myself. (As you'll read in a moment I now have my own bad AOL experiences to lament.)

I recommend that people NOT use AOL, but I didn't clarify that in my initial article. What I should have said was this. All the Internet connectivity tools at my disposal at the time were broken (DSL was down, my ISP doesn't offer dial-up for DSL subscribers, and NetZero was belly up). With several time- critical consulting projects on deadline, I chose to take a risk and sacrifice a clunker PC to AOL. When AOL worked, I was able to connect, browse the Web, and conduct my email business for three days while waiting for my ISP to fix the problem. So, yes, AOL worked for me under those circumstances. But thanks to TNPCer Michael Zipf, we can all study important empirical evidence of AOL's insistence on destabilizing systems. If I had known then what I do now, I would have further qualified my comments.

Michael shared a link to an online article penned by the venerable Fred Langa, Publisher of LangaList (http://www.langa.com) and freelance computer/Web author, about his AOL experiments. You can find "AOL 5.0: The Upgrade of Death?" at:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/407/tr.cgi?lee1

In fine empiricist form, Fred took a perfectly clean, stable Windows 98 SE system; cloned an exact "disk image" copy so he could always return to the same "clean PC" state; and installed AOL 5.0 on it. AOL wreaked havoc on the PC's networking protocol stacks, created several online security vulnerabilities (this was reported in a more recent version of the article that's not currently available online), unnecessarily installed Virtual Private Networking (this was reported in a more recent version of the article that's not currently available online), changed power management Registry settings, and added or replaced numerous system files, all for no apparent reason. To add insult to injury, AOL's uninstaller did not return the system to its original state. Fred concluded that AOL 5.0 was a high risk because it made so many changes to a system for no logical reason (AOL technical support engineers were never able to intelligently answer any of his questions). He repeated the experiment with AOL 6.0 and found it made only slightly fewer changes.

Oh, but it gets worse and closer to home. I read TNPCer Richard H.'s email and filed it away for future reference when he wrote, "[Regarding canceling AOL before your initial free 30-day trial,] been there did that, make sure you ask for reference number, and be willing to put up with timeshare-like jerk on the AOL cancellation desk." I cancelled well before the 30 days had ticked by, but not without almost getting duped out of at least one month's charges.

When I called to cancel I took careful notes, but I had forgotten Richard's advice about the cancellation confirmation number. The rep (I'll call him Eric) responded to my cancellation request by saying, in his best huckster patter, "I'll waive the bill date until May 12th blah blah blah..." and kept on with some goofy spiel, so I stopped him and said, "No, I want to cancel forever, right now, not extend or waive anything. I want you to unequivocally guarantee me that it is cancelled and that there will be no charge for AOL ever on my credit card. Do you guarantee that?" Eric answered yes. Twenty minutes later while working on this article, I remembered Richard's warning and that I had forgotten to get a cancellation confirmation number, called back, and got a different rep. She looked up my account and it was alive, un-cancelled, and "extended" to May 12th at which point the billing would have kicked in. I quoted her my notes, explained that I wanted to escalate to a supervisor and file a formal complaint about Eric. She apologized, quickly filed an electronic complaint about Eric (so she said), asked if I would be willing to be contacted by phone by a manager in regards to the regrettable incident (I said okay), and then gave me my cancellation confirmation number. Just bad karma? Whatever it was, it was bad. Take heed folks, and take Richard's advice: always get the cancellation confirmation number when canceling your AOL account.

Here are several Internet connectivity options to consider if your primary high-speed connection goes down. (Some of these options work well when you're traveling, too.)

1. Get a high-speed connectivity provider that offers free dial- up access.

Our colleague Al Gordon reports that as an AT&T RoadRunner cable subscriber he can use a free dial-up connectivity service called "Mobile Access Beta Test." Al reports that this may be the world's longest-running beta test: three years! However, Al relates that RoadRunner does *not* offer its own proprietary Web- based email, and yet AT&T WorldNet does. Go figure. Others I have corresponded with cite arrangements like this: Telocity DSL subscribers get free dial-up access through an 800 number (limited to 60 minutes per month); PacBell DSL provides free dial-up with a local number; and so on.

Your DSL provider may not proactively advertise its free dial-up access. Listen to TNPCer Gary V.'s tale, "I have ADSL through Bellsouth for $40 a month. They do not advertise this fact when you sign up for ADSL, but included along with the ADSL is a regular dial-up account. I found this out from a Bellsouth tech rep when I had to call about an ADSL service outage."

2. Use a free dial-up service like NetZero.

If you're going to have this as part of your safety net, be sure to have an updated copy of the connection software handy or you'll be stuck, unable to connect to get the software.

3. Use a free public email retrieval site that allows you to connect to any POP3 provider via a Web interface (thanks to Jonathan A. to be the first to make this suggestion).

Here are some of the most popular sites.

Mail2Web:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/407/tr.cgi?mail2web

POP2Web:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/407/tr.cgi?pop2web

ThatWeb:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/407/tr.cgi?thatweb

4. Use your provider's proprietary Web-based email interface (as mentioned in my initial article).

In my unscientific tests, Verizon/GTE's interface seemed slower that the public email retrieval sites listed above.

5. Pay for a limited-usage dial-up account as a backup.

Thanks to subscriber Lee H. for this tip. Check with your ISP as mileage may vary.

6. Completely segregate your email service from your ISP.

Thanks to subscriber Craig R. for this tip. To reduce the risk of being dependent on the same company for both email service and connectivity, never use your ISP's email infrastructure. Instead get your own domain name and get a reliable host that provides an SMTP server and allows you to manage your own POP3 mailboxes.

7. Dan Butler's suggestions.

TNPC Editor-in-Chief Dan Butler believes that receiving email is more important than sending, because with an unreliable email provider you won't ever know if incoming email has come in or not (Email Metaphysics 101!). In a pinch you can almost always use phone/fax to replace the temporary loss of the outbound email medium. Dan's suggestions include: (1) buy a domain name (say, example.com) then have mydomain.com redirect--it's a free service--any email sent to example.com to the location of your choosing;
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/407/tr.cgi?mydomain

(2) find an ultra-reliable email provider so you don't have any email problems; and (3) alternately, run your own email server. For great tips on choosing an ISP, see our ebook "The Book That Should Have Come with Your Computer" chapter 17 "Making Internet Connections." Dan's ideas will be addressed in more detail in a future issue.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?tugpc2

Credit is due to TNPCer Mark L. for his timeless advice, "I knew the e-mail would still be waiting for me when I got back, the Web sites wouldn't disappear and try as it might, the world would not come to an end just because I didn't see it over the wire at 300Kbps."

TNPC subscriber Stephen G. kindly but tersely :-) offered a clever plan for me, "Get cable." Fair enough, and cable is available in my area. For now I'm sticking with my existing DSL infrastructure, but that got me thinking about what your experiences with cable and DSL have been like, so here's a short survey I'd like you to fill out if you're in the mood. I'll publish the results in an upcoming issue.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/407/tr.cgi?survey

I'll close with some high-speed facts to consider: in North America, DSL users grew 185% in 2000 to 2.9 million (Cahners In- Stat), and cable modem users grew 144% to 3.4 million (Gartner Group). That's 6.3 million individual cable and DSL connections combined.

You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
mailto:leehudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

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