Don't think any ISP can force you to use their's. FIOS ones i guess could force their's on you but you should be able to bridge it and use your own anyway.
Don't think any ISP can force you to use their's. FIOS ones i guess could force their's on you but you should be able to bridge it and use your own anyway.
Sure they can: 1. Break the user's feed by reconfiguring things in the company's plant - and do it incorrectly. 2. When the user calls in to get things fixed, tell him that the problem is in his modem and you don't support that modem - or any modem not purchased from the ISP. 3. The user must buy a modem from the ISP before the ISP will bother to fix things at their end. 4. Profit!
I recently had a ONE MONTH! (to the day) AT&T DSL outage. (My town doesn't have fiber to the home, and fiber to the curb got bundled with the U-verse tarbaby and had several other downsides. So I was on legacy DSL. And as an early adopter it was VERY OLD technology - in Internet Time.)
In the process of decommissioning some of the now-nearly-redundant DSLAMs (as they get most of their customers moved over to U-verse), they moved my legacy DSL line to a new box. This box didn't support the modem I had, and they also screwed up the propagation of the routes so the packets didn't reach the new DLSAM. But they didn't bother to tell me (until they finally let me talk to an actual tech, nearly a month later after purchase of two replacement DSL modems) that they'd made any changes.
My legacy DSL modem was old enough that the web configuration interface was an extra-cost option - which AT&T hadn't chosen to buy. They gave me instructions for getting to the interface (IF it had been present) - and we were both convinced that the modem had failed.
I was unable to find the replacement that they recommended at any (silicon valley!) dealership - including the AT&T phone store. So I purchased a Linksys DSL modem at Best Buy that claimed AT&T (non U-verse) capability. Hooked it up, got the web interface. Had ATM sync (yay!) but no ping (boo!).
Called service to get things running. "Sorry, we don't support that modem. We don't support any modem that we don't sell."
So I bought ANOTHER DSL modem - from an AT&T store - that the store claimed was supported. Also a Linksys. An older model with fewer features, but with AT&T approved firmware and from their own store. And about 1 1/2 times the price.
NOW they were willing to debug the problems in their own plant. After another week, being switched to still another DSLAM (becaue the first one they'd put me on was on a router that had also been decommissioned), and having the routes re-propagated, I was able to get ONE of my (changed!) fixed IP addresses live.
And by this time I was past the return date for the modem from Best Buy. So I ended up with store credit, rather than a refund.
And the new DSL connection is PPPoE over ATM, rather than Ethernet over ATM (which the new DSLAM doesn't support). That adds 8 extra bytes to every packet.
And the official modem I bought from AT&T doesn't support a subnet, so I have to run in bridge mode to get more than the router's own address. I won't get the rest of my (changed!) fixed addresses up until I have time to configure a PPPoE daemon on the firewall/router machine (which is currently running software from before the PPPoE standards were finalized...).
Now do the same for ISP's that force you to use (Score:4, Insightful)
Now do the same for ISP's that force you to use there routers
Re: (Score:1)
Sure can: By causing an outage and not supporting (Score:5, Informative)
Don't think any ISP can force you to use their's. FIOS ones i guess could force their's on you but you should be able to bridge it and use your own anyway.
Sure they can:
1. Break the user's feed by reconfiguring things in the company's plant - and do it incorrectly.
2. When the user calls in to get things fixed, tell him that the problem is in his modem and you don't support that modem - or any modem not purchased from the ISP.
3. The user must buy a modem from the ISP before the ISP will bother to fix things at their end.
4. Profit!
I recently had a ONE MONTH! (to the day) AT&T DSL outage. (My town doesn't have fiber to the home, and fiber to the curb got bundled with the U-verse tarbaby and had several other downsides. So I was on legacy DSL. And as an early adopter it was VERY OLD technology - in Internet Time.)
In the process of decommissioning some of the now-nearly-redundant DSLAMs (as they get most of their customers moved over to U-verse), they moved my legacy DSL line to a new box. This box didn't support the modem I had, and they also screwed up the propagation of the routes so the packets didn't reach the new DLSAM. But they didn't bother to tell me (until they finally let me talk to an actual tech, nearly a month later after purchase of two replacement DSL modems) that they'd made any changes.
My legacy DSL modem was old enough that the web configuration interface was an extra-cost option - which AT&T hadn't chosen to buy. They gave me instructions for getting to the interface (IF it had been present) - and we were both convinced that the modem had failed.
I was unable to find the replacement that they recommended at any (silicon valley!) dealership - including the AT&T phone store. So I purchased a Linksys DSL modem at Best Buy that claimed AT&T (non U-verse) capability. Hooked it up, got the web interface. Had ATM sync (yay!) but no ping (boo!).
Called service to get things running. "Sorry, we don't support that modem. We don't support any modem that we don't sell."
So I bought ANOTHER DSL modem - from an AT&T store - that the store claimed was supported. Also a Linksys. An older model with fewer features, but with AT&T approved firmware and from their own store. And about 1 1/2 times the price.
NOW they were willing to debug the problems in their own plant. After another week, being switched to still another DSLAM (becaue the first one they'd put me on was on a router that had also been decommissioned), and having the routes re-propagated, I was able to get ONE of my (changed!) fixed IP addresses live.
And by this time I was past the return date for the modem from Best Buy. So I ended up with store credit, rather than a refund.
And the new DSL connection is PPPoE over ATM, rather than Ethernet over ATM (which the new DSLAM doesn't support). That adds 8 extra bytes to every packet.
And the official modem I bought from AT&T doesn't support a subnet, so I have to run in bridge mode to get more than the router's own address. I won't get the rest of my (changed!) fixed addresses up until I have time to configure a PPPoE daemon on the firewall/router machine (which is currently running software from before the PPPoE standards were finalized...).
B-b