I realize that this thread seemingly died out a bit ago, but my busy shedule has kept
me from my reading regimign. Please forgive my tardiness on the thread.
I'm afraid that I may not offer much direct help on the original subject but perhaps I
can shed some light on the subjects which did spawn from it. Mr Tharp, if you are
interested I can have an Earthlink help desk tech contact you at your convience to
work on the problem. If you would like to discuss a time or the details of that please
contact me at my personal e-mail address. Tech support calling you, how's that for no
hold time, eh? On to the subject, though.
Earthlink uses rented "POP numbers" from companies such as uu.net and alter.net so
that they can provide service to the number of places that they do. While doing this
allows them to be "The number one provider of the real internet" it also means that
there is no mainline when it comes to connecting to them. If you have ever wondered
why the ELN/ is required before your user name or had to connect with another ISP(Such
as MSN) and entered your full e-mail address, rented POP numbers are the culprit. (If
you're familiar with any of this then please skip the following ramble) Multiple
providers rent the same number. That number directs the user to an authorization
server which reads their provider and then sends them to the appropriate authorization
server for that provider(As is my best understanding, anyway. If am wrong please
correct me.) This is why you will get different results using various methods of
connecting in different areas.
Carrol, is it possible that by changing the type of authentication(specifically since
CHAP is a more secure protocol than PAP) that you were sent to a different auth
server, one that supported CHAP, and from there to a faster bank? This is pure
speculation, does anybody have any ideas on this subject?
I'm afraid that I do agree with Tom, in the sense that my pioneer side tends to be
drawn away from large corperations like that which Earthlink has turned into. However,
they do provide a good service for people graduating from AOL. Their technical
support, in most cases I have dealt with them, is excellent. While they have their
share of "Tier 1" techs, the general work bank is very good.
I apologize again for my drift from the subject and for my painfuly long post. Once
again, Mr. Tharp, if you would like to contact me I can arrange a good time for one of
the help desk's linux savvy techs to call you. You might also want to peruse through
http://help.earthlink.net which is an outstanding knowledge base. You can check
network status, the load on your local pop number(I believe) and a list of other
things.
- Ben Sauls
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"We give up our dreams for what we call 'wisdom.' I often wonder, is it a good
exchange?"
- Charles Dickens
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