[Tfug] ISP for Qwest DSL

[Sam Hart]

You know... I'm not sure if you can do this with Qwest DSL as easily as I 
can with Cox Cable, but if you're a *nix person with reasonable experience 
in various *nix things then you may want to avoid the whole ISP hassle 
altogether.

If Qwest DSL simply can give you an internet connection, and you don't 
have to run with an ISP, an alternative is to just get yourself a website 
and host your own mail and things there.

For spam filtration, on your local machine you can do something like I 
have (fetchmail gets my mail from pop3 accounts on my site, procmail 
passes the mail through SpamAssassin for spam filtration and then delivers 
it to my local Postfix mail server), or (if your webhoster allows it) 
install spam filters (SpamAssassin, Bogofilter, etc) on your web-server 
and go that route. (I know there's also lots of alternatives to these two 
as well, these are just suggestions).

With some hosters, you can pay /very/ little per month 
(http://www.powweb.com/ charges $7.77 per month for 500Mb of webspace, 
30Gb monthly transfer limits, and 250 POP3 mail accounts [it's actually a 
better deal than what I'm currently getting for geekcomix.com ;-) ]) and 
yet get everything that an ISP would provide you (and more) for only a 
little bit of extra work on your part.

Anyway, this isn't for everyone, and is more hands on than, say, MSN or 
AOL. And there have been several other good suggestions on this list. I 
just wanted to throw this DIY one as an option since it has worked so well 
for me ;-)

> This question has probably been answered several times, but could I get
> suggestions for an ISP to use with Qwest DSL that will work for linux and
> with little spam?
> 
> I currently have Qwest DSL through MSN and I'm fed up with the overwhelming
> spam through MSN.  I also haven't figured out how not to use Outlook (MSN's
> authentication seems to exclusively require Output).  I understand that to
> effectively change ISP's, however, I'll have to get MSN to completely stop
> my service (MSN controls both the ISP and DSL service), then get Qwest to
> set up their DSL service again (with a $50 Qwest connection fee) with my
> choice of ISP.  If $50 is it, I'll make the change.

-- 
Sam Hart
University/Work addr. <hart@physics.arizona.edu>
Personal addr. <criswell@geekcomix.com>
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