🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <E4y2Gw.u7@hippo.proxyon.imp.com>,
	andy@hippo.proxyon.imp.com (Andreas Gutzwiller) writes:

> Kann mir jemand seine Erfahrungen mit Linux mit ISDN (HiSax)
> und seinem Provider geben. Probleme mit NNTP, POP usw.
> Arbeitet evtl. schon jemand mit der EUnet und kennt Probleme
> (oder besser keine)?

In der Firma (Firma != alphanet, which is non profit), haben wir Linux
als Internet-server, mit ZyXEL 2864 Elite ISDN (X.75 one B channel).
[blush; german stopping here] Software is diald with a application-level
proxy. Mail is transferred with the EUnet xscript trick (ie it tells
EUnet to transfer the mail when connected), and news is sent with
nntpxfer, and received with suck. I want to switch to kernel-level
packet routing (and possibly masquerading) soon for more speed.

You can also ask for UUCP over TCP, this might be good if you transfer
a lot of data, e.g. news, we don't. Also, at some point in the past
(when migrating from an earlier non UNIX mail solution, guess which),
we used popclient on that Linux system to pump the mail. We had to do
so because of the delay EUnet personal took to install a redirection
alias (see below for administrative delays) last year.

The only problem I had recently is X.75 dial-in problems to POP
Neuchatel; the old number is sometimes busy, and the new numbers don't
work; and I had no feedback yet from support personal; however except
that (and the administrative delay which has always been a problem
with EUnet, probably reminiscent of the non-profit days :-))
everything is right. Also, according to a friend having done some
quality tests with other Internet access or service providers, EUnet
is very good, constantly during the day.

Also, EUnet is one of the few (I think with PING) offering UNIX shell
accounts (very handy!), proxies (I think Unisource does too), and UUCP
(PING does; Access was rumoured to do so; but last time I asked, they
told me that the UCP (sic) service was being installed, so ...). And,
EUnet is also one of the few sending upto-date technical reports to the
customers (and sometimes even non (or previous) customers do receive
them :-))

Also EUnet has been around for some time, and has a great deal of UNIX
experience, has its own international connectivity, with peering with
most other networks and so on, and was not born just to milk the
Internet cow, like most of the new Internet service (or access?)
providers in Switzerland (especially those born in 1996 or 1995). 

Of course EUnet is quite expensive (especially since we are not in
local zone). And until recently (from 93 on, before they had a
technical employee maintaining it very nicely) they had a totally
unusable WWW server with absolutely no useful information inside (I
can't tell if this improved, didn't go recently). Only an exploded
milked cow.

PS: compared to the US (our subsidiary uses Netcom there in the
    Orange County/CA area), the quality of both the phone system and
    the service provider is currently better in Switzerland:
    a lot more stable; it already happened in US that the system
    was down for 3-4 days and nothing happens if you don't tell
    the support people; with EUnet, rare are the problems lasting
    more than a few hours in Switzerland. The prices are also much
    higher here. Also we don't use X.75 in US because _that's_ expensive
    there.