The problem here is that in our city, we have four ISP's. My parents live in a suburb close to the edge of the city. AT&T, Comcast, and the others don't really provide any services out there.

I say "not really" because ATT provides phone service, but not DSL or U-Verse.

And when they all do it, or no other ISP will service your area?

`ssh -D 8080 micro-ec2` and proxy through localhost:8080 till it's sorted out.

Exactly! No need to switch ISPs after all. (Though personally I add the -N flag so that the tunnel is clearly separated from the remote shell.)

Lots of websites block requests from ec2, though. A notable one is Stackoverflow.

Then it's back to Fidonet, eh?