I'm using AOL now and am tired of them logging me off every 1/2 hour. Which ISP's would you recommend to replace them for under $20 per month.

Earthlink is pretty good, but I have always found it better to go with someone local to your area for a good ISP.

Earthlink was OK. They had 5 different dialup wholesalers for my local area, and only 1 of them gave me a reasonable connection.

Earthlink blocks port 25 traffic, except to their flaky SMTP outbound servers.

I had a lot of trouble with Earthlink's news servers as well.

I called up their tech support once because their modem was not answering the phone, and the rep told me I would have to reinstall windows.

Try a local ISP, you may be far better off than with Earthlink.

For dialup I recommend Earthlink. If you're in the L.A. area I recommend http://1stnetusa.com, their site is cheesy, but their connection is good.

If you want broadband, I’d recommend PacBell/SW Bell/Nevada Bell.

I just wanted to add that, anything besides AOL is probably better, faster, and more reliable.
When you call to cancel AOL, don't get sucked in, letting them give you another 3 months free.

I would say just about anything is better than AOL.. But personally I suggest Netzero.net.. Only 9.95 a months.. About at cheap as it gets I use it just for a backup and cell phone dial-ups..

Any ISP is better than AOL.. Try a local ISP. Look in your local yellow pages for providers. You may be suprised at the quality of a small local company.

Yes, I agree, time to loose AOL. I recommend AlphaBreeze (http://www.alphabreeze.com/) as an excellent alternative. They've got 3000 access numbers to choose from. You can check for local availability on their web site.

Providers we use when traveling:


Pacific Bell Internet Services (http://www.pacbell.net)
DirecTV DSL (http://www.directvdsl.com)


These providers are excellent because of the vast array of access numbers and toll free numbers (perfect for hotel suites or at the airport)

Hope this helps!

I remember a while back being logged onto Earthlink's dailup just south of Seattle for 22 hours straight before logging off myself so as far as being online goes they're hard to beat. (I was averaging 14-18 hours most times) Sadly, while I was online I was averaging 16 to 22k connections (on a 56k modem).

Good connection time - poor speeds. They've been getting slowly worse too.

Greg Moore

Jim777, where are you located? I do have a recommendation for you, however it depends on where you live. Also, due to some recent events here, I'm not sure people would take it the wrong way. *sigh*... well... anywhooo... where are you?

Thanks for everyones info.
I'm in the Chicagoland area.

Which ISP would I recommend to replace AOL? ANY! I've been really lucky and never had to pay for dialup. I worked for a local ISP doing technical support (ugh!) so I had a free account there, but they were too slow for me (lots of lag bursts) so I tried some of those free ISPs. I'd check the PPP logs to figure out the real user name and password, and used Dial-Up Networking to dial in, thus bypassing the ad software. All the free ISPs were basically resellers of major ISPs. I found UUNet to have the best dialup connectivity, and Earthlink uses them, so I'd have to recommend Earthlink. If you can afford it though, I'd highly recommend cable: 25-75 times the speed for only twice the price.

Originally posted by Jim777
Thanks for everyones info.
I'm in the Chicagoland area.

so am I!

if you are in the burbs, I would definitely recommend broadband (stay away from ameritech though)

if you are in the west or nwest burbs, go with at&t broad band

they've got a few specials going around, just give'm a call and see what they can do for you ....