Been running into this lately, so I thought I would ask the collective knowledge of the LUG this question: How do you explain to people the difference between a Telco and an ISP? The people are totally newbies and very, very non-techincal. The situation I am in is a client lost their DSL service from USWest. After days of calling and hours on the phone with Qwest I was told that they are beyond the 19,000 foot mark. Qwest says they should have never gotten DSL in the first place. Qwest will not, no matter what put DSL down that circuit. Qwest has not explaination on how they got DSL in the first place. Anyways, this client is very upset. They keep calling us and asking us to "fix the problem". I have tried (very patiently) to explain Real Time is an ISP, we provide Internet access. Qwest is a telco, they provide the physical connectivity. It just doesn't sink in. I have tried this analogy. Real Time is an automotive dealer, we sell cars. Qwest is like MNDOT, they build roads. You (the client) have bought a speedy but very safe car (linux). It comes with an airbag (ipchains) for safety, etc.. You got the car, but there is no roads to drive on. It didn't sink in. So, how can you explain to the client that when the physical link is down, no matter how bad you want to fix it from them, Qwest must be involved and they must do the fix? -- Bob Tanner <tanner at real-time.com> | Phone : (612)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org | Fax : (612)943-8500 Key fingerprint = 6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9