 | 5 Star Rating System Version 1.3 - Last update 3/7/2003 |
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For our ratings, we are measuring the suitability of the ISP
for a typical Home User who already has some
experience with using Internet software. To summarize, the goal of
the ratings is to estimate the value provided by and the risks
involved with signing up with an ISP.
Of course, no rating system is going to cover every ISP customer or situation. ISPs are changing rapidly in this new business and so are people's needs. The ISP that is right for you depends on your needs and your budget. Use our ratings only as one piece of information in your
purchase decision. |
Here are the typical
characteristics of an ISP in each of our 5 ratings categories. These items are deliberately exaggerated to
make the points clearer. You should not infer that any particular ISP has these specific traits just because of the number of stars it has. These are broad generalizations, and ISPs may be rated higher or lower for reasons which are not covered by this list. This description is also intended, in part, to be entertaining and cause you to think :). You may notice a bias in this rating system to "Big is better". Some of the best ISPs are small, one person ISPs run out of a basement - but they are the exception, and if 1,000 people were to find out about them and sign up, they would no longer be a good ISP. |
Better to take your money and flush it down the toilet.
| Typical Features: | Web link to free email service. | |
| Usenet Newsgroups | Web link to Open NNTP Server list | |
| IRC | Only loosers [sic] use IRC | |
| Web Space | None | |
| Software available | Address for FTP warez server if you aren't a fed | |
| Business Character: | Ownership | Just me |
| Equipment | My old 486 | |
| Address | My garage (where I live is none of your business) | |
| WWW info | One page with 16 banners and ads for LD calling cards. You can make a lot of money doing this too! It's legal, really! |
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| Payment Options | Give me your CC number and I'll give you a good price on 3 year prepayment. | |
| Network: | Modems | Assorted v.34+ modems I bought for $5 on e |
| INet Connection | Dialup accounts I've scammed from another ISP | |
| Peering | What's that? | |
| Tech Support: | Method | Email, or that chat thingy when I'm on the computer |
| Web Support | I've got a page over on Tripod somewhere if they haven't deleted it again. | |
| Hours | When I can get to it, after I get home from high school. | |
| Staff | Me |
If you select this ISP, you won't be there long
| Typical Features: | 1
account included. Email works some of the time.
Don't try to send or receive an Email over 100k, okay? |
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| Usenet Newsgroups | Carries about 5000 groups, and keeps articles for 8 hours | |
| IRC | Chat is a waste of our modems. | |
| Web Space | We'll give you one page, so long as nobody looks at it. | |
| Software available | A list of pointers to freeware / shareware. | |
| Business Character: | Ownership | One of:
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| Equipment | All services running on one 200 Mhz Pentium III using Linux | |
| Address | PO Box or Mailbox, Etc. Mail drop | |
| WWW info | A couple of pages we wrote a few years ago. | |
| Payment Options | Credit Cards put through the merchant account of the flower shop down the street. Sorry, no trial period or refunds. | |
| Network: | Modems | 4 year old terminal servers, mostly.
When we start getting busy signal, we order a few more phone lines. I wish our customers would stop wasting our bandwidth. |
| INet Connection:: | Fractional T1 to a Next Tier ISP | |
| Peering | Only as good as my upstream ISP | |
| Tech Support: | Method | Local phone number that we answer when we have nothing else to do |
| Web Support | 2 paragraphs on how to open an account | |
| Hours | When I or the sales guy are in the store. | |
| Staff | Us between selling PCs, and that kid who hangs around after school |
For many people, this is good enough. In a rural area, this may be all you can get.
| Typical Features: | 1 account included, extra email accounts available for $10 setup + $5/month | |
| Usenet Newsgroups | Carries about 10,000 groups, and keeps articles for 1 day, no binaries | |
| IRC | A web pointer to the mIRC FAQ | |
| Web Space | 1MB, but don't even think of doing anything that looks like a business. | |
| Software Available | We'll send you a disk in the mail that includes free software from Netscape or Microsoft. | |
| Business Character: | Ownership | Partnership of several local solid citizens, member of BBB. |
| Equipment | Purchased from commercial vendor, with supported operating system and software - it's a mystery to us how it works, though. | |
| Address | Published address, with directions to where the office is. | |
| WWW info | Fairly
complete information for typical customers. Links to FAQs
written by others. We realize that investing the time to put support information online cuts down our support expenses. |
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| Payment Options | Credit Cards, checks, money orders, cash if you want to visit our office. | |
| Network: | Modems | PRI circuits, and some old analog modems out in those small towns around here. We try to monitor usage so that we can order new circuits before we have busy signals again. |
| INet Connection: | One T1 to one of the major backbone providers. We'll order another one when people start complaining about slow response time. | |
| Peering | Provided by my network provider | |
| Tech Support: | Method | Local phone number and one 800 number for customers outside the local calling area |
| Web Support | Online FAQ with the questions we have to answer over and over and over. | |
| Hours | Normal business hours, extended hours some evenings and part of the day Saturday. | |
| Staff | We employ some local geeks to answer the phones, in return for minimum wage and root access to our systems. |
More than enough for everyone except Power Users.
| Typical Features: | One for each member of your family - up to 5 accounts | |
| Usenet Newsgroups | We realized a few years ago that running our own News server isn't cost effective. We offer SuperNews or Giganews to the 1% of our customers who know how to use it. | |
| IRC | Detailed instructions on how to use IRC | |
| Web Space | 5MB, just don't do anything illegal, okay? | |
| Business Character: | Ownership | Corporation,
been in the ISP business since 1996.
Names of the managers are online on our web pages. Member of ISP/C and BBB. We sell web hosting, ecommerce and frame relay services to businesses, so that we can break even some day.. |
| Equipment | State of
the art computers and communications gear.
Each service (Email, Usenet, DNS, WWW) runs on its own server. |
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| Address | Published address, sales, support, and fax numbers. | |
| WWW info | Searchable
database of support information.
A well informed customer is a happy customer. |
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| Payment Options | Credit
Cards only, unless you're local and we verify your identity. We do name and address verification on the credit card the first time we put the charge through, to make sure we aren't opening an account for a spammer or a stolen credit card. |
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| Network: | Modems | PRI
circuits, ISDN available on all numbers, ADSL where available.
We understand radius passthru, and now offer
nationwide roaming using Qwest or Level(3)
.
We've put up an 801.11(b) wireless broadband antenna in our home town, since the ILEC has locked us out of the DSL market here. We carefully coordinate our marketing plans with our network capacity, so we don't outgrow our capacity. |
| INet Connection: | Multiple fractional T3s to multiple backbones. We are multi-homed and have been running BGP4 for several years. Most of our customer's network traffic now bypasses our computer room completely via CLEC gateways, so we aren't strangled by ILEC tariffs and installation delays. | |
| Peering | Since we have multiple network vendors, our network is robust and not as susceptible to peering changes. | |
| Tech Support: | Method | 800
number for all support activities.
Because we are paying for the call, we answer the phones quickly. |
| Web Support | We have a full-time person who does nothing but improve our web site continuously. | |
| Hours | 9AM to midnight using our own people. We learned the hard way about the real cost of outsourcing tech support |
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| Staff | We train our support staff for several weeks before they answer the first phone call. We place a premium on people with good communication and listening skills. The first person you speak with is trained to answer most basic questions. They will quickly transfer you to Level 2 support when your question exceeds the issues for which they have training. |
The Cadillac* of ISPs - be prepared to pay accordingly.
| Typical Features: | 5 email accounts with very large limits on space.
If you send email spam, our lawyers will be paying you a visit - You'll never have an account again on any ISP. |
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| Usenet Newsgroups | Carries almost every group, keeps articles for 2 weeks. | |
| IRC | We run our own IRC server, and our IRCops actively monitor it. | |
| Web Space | 10 MB or more - do whatever you want so long as it isn't warez, ripped MP3s or naked pictures of Britney Spears, okay? | |
| Software Available | CD
including licensed copies of all the software you are
likely to need. Self-Installing.
WWW filtering is available so your entire family can use the Internet safely. |
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| Business Character: | Ownership | We almost went public with an IPO on Nasdaq, but decided to stay in private hands. |
| Equipment | State of
the art computers and communications gear.
Each service (Email, Usenet, DNS, WWW) has multiple servers for backup and load balancing. Everything protected by UPS and/or motor-generators. Computer room with restricted access, raised floor, modem racks, We have a formal disaster recovery plan and have been certified ISO 9000 compliant. |
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| Address | Published address, sales, support, and fax numbers.. | |
| WWW info | Searchable
database of support information.
We hired a graphic designer to communicate our corporate mission. We have an affiliate relationship with one of the national portals. |
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| Payment Options | Credit
Cards only. We will confirm your identity, and make sure you aren't in the spamming blacklist database. |
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| Network: | Modems | Our
datacomm is colocated at the phone company and/or CLEC, and we carefully choose the
providers in service areas which don't yet justify our
own equipment. ISDN available on all numbers, we're experimenting with the next generation
of datacomm technology. Roaming is available both nationwide and internationally. |
| INet Connection: | We built our own SONET fiber network, and run our own GigaSwitch. | |
| Peering | We have direct connections to multiple NAPs, as well as several private peering relationships. | |
| Tech Support: | Method | 800 number, email, staffed IRC channel, Autoresponder, extensive WWW pages. |
| Web Support | We
carefully designed our web site so that no answer is more
than 2 clicks away. We keep the look and feel consistent
so that people feel they are part of our community.
We publish the status of our systems on a prominent web page. When we have a problem, we admit it. Honesty is the best policy to build customer loyalty. |
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| Hours | 24 x 7. We have support centers in multiple locations to reduce costs and take advantage of time differences. | |
| Staff | We hire
only people who already have at least one year of
experience in ISP customer support. We pay good people a
good salary, and treat them with respect.
We have a formal escalation procedure. Each problem is assigned a ticket number, and is tracked until it is resolved to the customer's satisfaction. The resolution is entered into our knowledge base so that Level 1 will have access to the answer next time this happens. |