Moving, new cable Co, offers Earthlink OR RoadRunner broadband

Call Earthlink directly, not the cable company, and ask them about their broadband service in your area.

If you do that, you'll probably get the cheaper price. Deal only with Earthlink; they'll do whatever they need to do to make their service happen over your cable lines.

Once you're an Earthlink subscriber, you continue to deal only with Earthlink. If they need to make a service call, they will. They are an independent ISP who happens to contract to use the cable lines, but just because they use the cable lines doesn't mean you should call the cable company for any part of it. All of that is Earthlink's business.

Like I said, you'll get a cheaper rate (41.95)--and you'll have the strong benefit of being an Earthlink customer.

I was a RoadRunner customer for many years, then when Earthlink came along over the same lines I made the switch. I got a few bucks cheaper, and it turned out I had incredibly better tech support. Twice I experienced a problem hitting web pages; it was a problem with a remote AT&T router in Chicago that was causing problems. Both times Earthlink was able to track it down and, even though it wasn't their problem, they were able to get hold of the right people and fix it.

RoadRunner has no clue how the Internet works, other than they hook up cables and people send them money. If anything goes wrong, they are stuck. Piss-poor service, believe me.

With your Earthlink broadband account (like I said, call Earthlink directly), you get unlimited dialup. Or you did, anyway.

Both will allow this.

(rest of good advice snipped)

Thanks. Great response. I appreciate it.

The Earthlink and Roadrunner broadband both operate on the exact same physical network -- right down to the nodes, CMTS, and physical drops. Evaluate the pricing, support, speed, terms, offers, etc. of both services and service levels and select the best option. The networks are the same.

X-No-Archive: Yes

Well, you can mask what you are doing using an open Socks 5 proxy server, there are a few of them on the net. You will need to use a program called SocksCap, and then you need to find an open Socks proxy server, the most updated list is at

RoadRunner or EarthLink will know you went to the proxy, but wont know where you went beyond the proxy.

I'm the original poster. I went with Earthlink. They upgraded my dial-up account to be a cable modem account, still with free dialup (20 hours per month I think; I'll never use it that much since wireless is available most places I go).

VPN working fine.

Marc