Dealing with Verizon
So I reconfigured the firewall machine, and just for a laugh, started it up. Hmm, can I ping the router at the other end. Yes! The ping is answered. Hmm, does it go anywhere else? Well, as it turned out, yes. I was fully connected. Nice. A bit of tweaking with DNS records, and off we go. Ran some traceroutes, and it seems to be better connected to Monterey than before. Also watched a couple of Real Video clips from Australia, just to verify that all was well. And indeed it's working nicely.
The DNS records will migrate at some stage, but who knows when. I have arranged an alternative email address for now; the mail from there is immediately forwarded to here.
I emailed the relevant person at Winstar (one of a few left in the local office) and after several email exchanges, there is much to report. It appears that the local office is still sort of NW Nexus, and that they will happily host DNS records for free! How nice. SO, they very nicely changed the records to point to my new IP address, and all's well with the world. Several things have now happened! Firstly, all bluegum.com addresses resolve correctly (though I suspect the reverse may not be the case) so my old email and web addresses are now just fine. Secondly, I can initiate DNS record transfers to Verizon should I choose to do so. Still thinking about that one, though the reverse DNS lookup issue may force the change.
Meanwhile, Winstar appears happy to find somebody to buy the remaining part of NW Nexus. If you know somebody...
First is billing. My Verizon phone bill is paid by automatic bank transfer. Naive as I am, my expectation was that my Verizon ISP bill would just be added to the phone bill each month. But no, simple minded me is once again proven wrong when a bill arrives. I called the number on the bill to ask about setting up an automatic payment operation. Verizon the ISP, it appears, is totally unable to arrange any sort of automatic monthly payment! I do find this quite amazing. The same company which has the ability to automatically pay my phone bill, which is a different amount each month, is unable to have this other part of the company do the same thing for a bill which is the same each month. I can call them up, and pay by credit card when the statement arrives. I might even be able to do it via the web, though if it involves the same "navigation" scheme used for the phone system, the bill might be overdue before I could figure out how to pay it. Wonders may never cease.
But one thing I have to say about Verizon the ISP. They obviously have BIG expansion plans. My account number has 17 - count 'em SEVENTEEN - digits. Given that the world's population has ONLY 10 digits, clearly there is room for expansion - every living body on earth can have 10,000,000 (that's 10 million) accounts with Verizon! Ah, this is just breathtaking in its future thinking! (OK, there might be as many as two check digits in here, so that's only 100,000 accounts per person - still impressive.)
As for the DNS switch, I have decided to take the chance and see what I can get to happen. I have sent email to the address corresponding to the NIC handle who is supposed to coordinate the transfer. I have not heard back, after about a day, but that's not too unreasonable. Getting Verizon to give me the same DNS records as Winstar might be quite a challenge. Check back every couple of months for a progress report! If it wasn't for the reverse DNS records, I'd bypass Verizon altogether.