> will surely provide. Im all for possibly co-locating a machine
> with an ISP if the price is right. What I'd want to know is
> what sort of bandwidth they would provide, are they gonna
> charge me based on bandwidth or is it unlimited. Somehow I
> gotta think that unlimited bandwidth is not gonna be cheap.

It's not -- certainly not anywhere I've checked.  The choices are
universally limited to charges on a bandwidth basis; Some will put you in
a bracket with a certain range of "average" and burstable bandwidth, and
you will be capped to not exceed that.  Others measure your actual usage
with a little more resolution, and charge you somehow on a per-gig/month
basis. Sometimes it's a combination of the two, from a formula based on
some bizarre accounting model. 

Then there's the actual way of counting usage rates. Most use an MRTG-like
method of smoothing by averaging over 5 min periods, and then checking
that against some criteria

Regardless of bandwidth charges, you're also into the actual colocation
charge itself -- space and utility rental. Some of the big data centers
will charge you $1000/month to rent a cabinet, and most won't let you take
anything smaller than 1/2 cabinet at $500/month. Then the bandwidth
charges are added on top of that. 

Smaller ISPs are certainly cheaper, and may have less rigid pricing
schemes. But then you may be back to worrying about one path out, or
whether someone's gonna decide to move the rack and not tell you that they
cut the power to your box. So, even if it's a small ISP, make sure they
have a real colocation facility set up, with established procedures on how
they handle its customers.

There are a bunch of companies who are selling rackmount systems and
colocation packages. Linux Labs is one of these -- not that I recommend
them, since I've never used them. It seems like a cheaper option than the
standard hosting centers, but since you really do pay on a per-k/s basis,
you have to worry about how they're computing it, and you have to know how
much you use.

> A subnet of 8 IP's and 640Kb runs me $90/month from Qwaste,
> is an ISP gonna be that competitive for unmetered usage?

Probably not. There are other advantages, but those are not necessarily so
clearly defined for small operations.  Colocation presumably is situated
in a facility that is closely monitored, so that you have reliability. 

If DSL works for you, even with a reasonable amount of trouble, I have yet
to see a compelling argument to change from it. In fact, I have only ISDN,
and while I complain a lot about my connection, I'm not ready to lay out
all that extra cash.

Andy