[techsupporter]

> Where I am, we used to have a different, "nerdy" ISP [Xs4all]

I remember Xs4all, sorry to hear they went under.

I also miss the brief moment when we had line sharing on copper telco networks in the United States. Most people were perfectly happy with the standard offerings from their local telco, but those of us who wanted more could connect with an ISP who offered service via a dry pair DSL connection. I loved my time on Speakeasy, for example.

I remember all of the flaws with the line sharing system, too, but it actually worked for the short time we had it, in spite of the problems. Asking a niche ISP to build its own facilities-based network is an exercise in futility for many deployments. Of course, cities or counties or public utility districts could do it but the incumbent providers don't like that.

[voidwtf]

We had a similar type of “tech” ISP in the USA with a lot of similar features called Speakeasy back in the early 2000s. You could get static ips easily, delegated control of your reverse dns upon request, they encouraged connection sharing by offering an additional email account and IP address for $6/mo and even had guides how to setup different SNAT and masquerading scenarios on Linux.

They were so cool compared to the options from AT&T and Roadrunner. It was like an ISP run by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts. They ended up getting bought by Mindspring IIRC.

[techsupporter]

Yep, I think we're talking about the same Speakeasy ("I loved my time on Speakeasy, for example."). I remember they used to assign IPs almost at random; you wouldn't get a larger subnet, you'd just get more IPs sent down your connection and it was up to you to have the routing equipment to handle them.

This was also the rise of the OpenWRT software on the WRT54G (and GS!) because no consumer-level hardware coult do it. So many Linksys devices bricked from failing tftp sessions, but it worked so well if you could incant it onto the device.