[OT] Internet Service Provider
Hi All, I'm getting fed up with Verizon's inability to fix their DSL service - it's been incredibly slow for the last couple of months. Customer support has been no help. So, I'm curious what ISP people like (and don't like). I'd prefer a local one, but at this point, I'm not fussy. I'm looking for something reliable. We have Charter as the cable TV provider. I don't know if I want to go that route. I don't want to start a "religious war" - I'm just looking for information so I can make an informed decision. Thanks, -Chuck
I've had very good success with Charter over 9 or 10 years or service by them. When I lived at Newton Square it took some time (many moons) to convincve their techs that the draggy internet was because of a suspersaturated node, but they regularly gave me rebates for poor service & finally did get it fixed & working well. They finally split the node to relieve the traffic congestion in that neighborhood. I think a lot has changed with this Co. since they got the DOCSYS3 up & running here. It's been a couple of years here (in Worcester). I think that has made a big difference. Have the 25-down / 3-up here now. Service at this place (you guys were here for the BBQ) has generally been very smooth since June 2010 when we moved in. We had to get techs out here a couple of time just after they replaced the drops this past summer --they needed to tune (something), then we had torrential rain that seemed to be getting iinto something, somewhere nearby. They did note lots of packet loss "at the drop" which meant it was not in my house, my lines or my equipment, so the tech calls were all zero-cost. You might like to have your own modem & router, which I have, or maybe not. I can discuss what equipment I am running here if necessary, with which I am very satisfied. I buy my own router & modem so that I can run my own software on it & see my own diagnostics pages. We do not experience a slowdown in the evenings or on rainy-day weekends here. Speed is very good 99.9% of the time. The only Cons: A couple of times I had to call Cust. Service to explain that the service calls they charged me for were not "my fault". But they immediately dropped the charges that had billed me for. So this is not that much of a Con except it did cost me some phone-call time. Just keep an eye on your bill & don't auto-pay. Some percentage of their phone support people (including Tech) is outsourced to overseas locations. Some of the accents are a bit difficult to understand. These techs have a hard time disuccing anything that is not in their canned script, so if the call is something they can't handle, I just ask for a "Level 2 Tech" or a "soup Tech" (supervisor) & usually I end up being transferred to someone in the US. Again, this is not much of a Con. I'm generally very pleased with the service. You'd be welcome to drop by with a laptop, or & check out what the service is like here, or just test the service using my spare desktop (Debian Squeeze which might become Mint at any moment). Or just PM me if you would like a demo. HTH, Liz J On 23 November 2011 18:13, Chuck Noyes <vze284qe@verizon.net> wrote:
Hi All,
I'm getting fed up with Verizon's inability to fix their DSL service - it's been incredibly slow for the last couple of months. Customer support has been no help. So, I'm curious what ISP people like (and don't like). I'd prefer a local one, but at this point, I'm not fussy. I'm looking for something reliable. We have Charter as the cable TV provider. I don't know if I want to go that route.
I don't want to start a "religious war" - I'm just looking for information so I can make an informed decision.
Thanks, -Chuck
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PS - The landlady downstairs has Charter's lowest (slowest) tier of internet service, with a wireless modem/router (some kind of little white Netgear box) that they supply. It's usually okay on a wired connection, but I've tested the wireless on it, & while it serves webpages okay (usually), it's really, really slow downloading anything. Even sitting 4 feet away from the box, with nothing but air in between. Maybe she got a bad unit, but I'd recommend avoiding that setup. The other thing to watch out for if you rent a modem from the company (any company) is to make sure they give you a brand-new unit, and not some half-dead unit they just swapped out of someone else's house. EJ On 23 November 2011 19:15, E Johnson <iris.gates@gmail.com> wrote:
I've had very good success with Charter over 9 or 10 years or service by them. When I lived at Newton Square it took some time (many moons) to convincve their techs that the draggy internet was because of a suspersaturated node, but they regularly gave me rebates for poor service & finally did get it fixed & working well. They finally split the node to relieve the traffic congestion in that neighborhood.
I think a lot has changed with this Co. since they got the DOCSYS3 up & running here. It's been a couple of years here (in Worcester). I think that has made a big difference. Have the 25-down / 3-up here now. Service at this place (you guys were here for the BBQ) has generally been very smooth since June 2010 when we moved in. We had to get techs out here a couple of time just after they replaced the drops this past summer --they needed to tune (something), then we had torrential rain that seemed to be getting iinto something, somewhere nearby. They did note lots of packet loss "at the drop" which meant it was not in my house, my lines or my equipment, so the tech calls were all zero-cost.
You might like to have your own modem & router, which I have, or maybe not. I can discuss what equipment I am running here if necessary, with which I am very satisfied. I buy my own router & modem so that I can run my own software on it & see my own diagnostics pages.
We do not experience a slowdown in the evenings or on rainy-day weekends here. Speed is very good 99.9% of the time.
The only Cons: A couple of times I had to call Cust. Service to explain that the service calls they charged me for were not "my fault". But they immediately dropped the charges that had billed me for. So this is not that much of a Con except it did cost me some phone-call time. Just keep an eye on your bill & don't auto-pay.
Some percentage of their phone support people (including Tech) is outsourced to overseas locations. Some of the accents are a bit difficult to understand. These techs have a hard time disuccing anything that is not in their canned script, so if the call is something they can't handle, I just ask for a "Level 2 Tech" or a "soup Tech" (supervisor) & usually I end up being transferred to someone in the US. Again, this is not much of a Con.
I'm generally very pleased with the service.
You'd be welcome to drop by with a laptop, or & check out what the service is like here, or just test the service using my spare desktop (Debian Squeeze which might become Mint at any moment). Or just PM me if you would like a demo.
HTH, Liz J
On 23 November 2011 18:13, Chuck Noyes <vze284qe@verizon.net> wrote:
Hi All,
I'm getting fed up with Verizon's inability to fix their DSL service - it's been incredibly slow for the last couple of months. Customer support has been no help. So, I'm curious what ISP people like (and don't like). I'd prefer a local one, but at this point, I'm not fussy. I'm looking for something reliable. We have Charter as the cable TV provider. I don't know if I want to go that route.
I don't want to start a "religious war" - I'm just looking for information so I can make an informed decision.
Thanks, -Chuck
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Chuck Noyes wrote, on Nov 23, 2011 at 18:13 EST:
Hi All,
I'm getting fed up with Verizon's inability to fix their DSL service - it's been incredibly slow for the last couple of months. Customer support has been no help. So, I'm curious what ISP people like (and don't like). I'd prefer a local one, but at this point, I'm not fussy. I'm looking for something reliable. We have Charter as the cable TV provider. I don't know if I want to go that route.
I cannot get DSL where I live (too rural), and my town is contracted with Charter for Cable, so my options are limited here, but when I lived in Somerville a few years back, I had service from Cyberonic. I liked them mostly because they were local. They're in Worcester, and I actually signed up with them in-person. Got a free mug. But that was years ago... Where I live now has had Charter for about 9 years now, and we've even had the same (rented) SB4100 cable modem the whole time. It's only DOCSYS 1.1, but we get the speeds we're paying for, and the old hardware works fine, so we don't complain (nor have we had to). I haven't had to deal with Support in years. -- Aaron Haviland
If you do decide to get charter make sure you get one of the Motorola surfboards. I've had alot of problems with their other modems. If a tech is installing it just ask for it and he'll go to his truck and grab one. On Nov 23, 2011 9:52 PM, "Aaron Haviland" <orion@parsed.net> wrote:
Chuck Noyes wrote, on Nov 23, 2011 at 18:13 EST:
Hi All,
I'm getting fed up with Verizon's inability to fix their DSL service -
it's been
incredibly slow for the last couple of months. Customer support has been no help. So, I'm curious what ISP people like (and don't like). I'd prefer a local one, but at this point, I'm not fussy. I'm looking for something reliable. We have Charter as the cable TV provider. I don't know if I want to go that route.
I cannot get DSL where I live (too rural), and my town is contracted with Charter for Cable, so my options are limited here, but when I lived in Somerville a few years back, I had service from Cyberonic. I liked them mostly because they were local. They're in Worcester, and I actually signed up with them in-person. Got a free mug. But that was years ago...
Where I live now has had Charter for about 9 years now, and we've even had the same (rented) SB4100 cable modem the whole time. It's only DOCSYS 1.1, but we get the speeds we're paying for, and the old hardware works fine, so we don't complain (nor have we had to). I haven't had to deal with Support in years.
-- Aaron Haviland
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Chuck> I'm getting fed up with Verizon's inability to fix their DSL Chuck> service - it's been incredibly slow for the last couple of Chuck> months. Customer support has been no help. So, I'm curious what Chuck> ISP people like (and don't like). I'd prefer a local one, but Chuck> at this point, I'm not fussy. I'm looking for something Chuck> reliable. We have Charter as the cable TV provider. I don't Chuck> know if I want to go that route. I've had Charter at home in Boylston for about 12 years now, and it's been rock solid. We've now got Phone on there as well and it's better than our old verizon setup, except when the power goes out, but that's my fault for not putting a land line phone onto the system where it's easily found. Not a biggee overall since the wife and I both have Cells. I do wish I could play off Charter vs. Verizon FioS but it's not *quite* near enough to my house to get FiOS. Bummers. In general, I recommend that you buy your own cable router, just the cost per-month they charge pays foritself failry quickly. But honestly, Charter has been just fine for us. John
Hi Again, Thanks for all the replies! It's a big help to get other people's views about this. It looks like people are generally happy with Charter. In the past, I've heard horror stories about them, but it appears they've improved their product. One more question; We have an Asus RT-N16 wireless router (that's connected to the Verizon modem) that I DD-WRT'd a couple of years ago, and I like it. If I go with Charter, can I continue to use this or do I have to get something else? Thanks again for all the replies, -Chuck On Nov 23, 2011, at 6:13 PM, Chuck Noyes wrote:
Hi All,
I'm getting fed up with Verizon's inability to fix their DSL service - it's been incredibly slow for the last couple of months. Customer support has been no help. So, I'm curious what ISP people like (and don't like). I'd prefer a local one, but at this point, I'm not fussy. I'm looking for something reliable. We have Charter as the cable TV provider. I don't know if I want to go that route.
I don't want to start a "religious war" - I'm just looking for information so I can make an informed decision.
Thanks, -Chuck
_______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
I don't see why you couldn't use the same router with a different modem. Once the modem is provisioned it should see the router, and vice-versa. I do recommend getting your own modem, though. I like the Motorola SB6120. There's a newer, smaller one (the SB6125, I think) but people have been complaining about it getting hot, and about a lot of dropouts. This one (the SB6125) has been very solid since Charter took care of their line-tuning issue out beyond our pole. It's really nice to be able to see your own diagnostics pages in the modem, as well as having control of the router. My router's MAC address shows up on one of the diagnostics pages of this modem. One issue on the SB6120 --the light that was supposed to blink when data is being served is not correctly functional under the firmware that the ISPs have been serving in the last year or so. The ISPs blame Motorola, and Motorola blames the ISPs. The bug is, this data light blinks about 3x/second, instead of just blinking while data is actually moving. The blue lights are a llittle bright. One of the lights on this thing is amber, if a slower internet speed is being served, but it's blue if you're working with the DOCSYS3 speeds. This can be a handy little indicator. This unit is now less than $80.00 online, which pays for itself in 14 months, by not having to pay Charter $5/mo. for rental of one of their units. When I ordered new service at this address 18 months ago, the Charter sales rep promised me a SB6120, but when the tech came out, he said he didn't have any, & gave me one of their Ubees. I ordered that Surfboard the same day. Another thing about Charter -- when you order new service, it is possible (easy) to get the sales rep. to waive the installation fee. Just ask --they always NEED new customers. Get his/her employee number in case Billing "forgets" & adds an installation charge to the 1st month's bill. Billing has been very good about making adjustments. They rebate us per diem for down time or partial-mlfunction time (which is rare these days) and if they "accidently" charge us for a tech call which was due to a problem not our fault, they remove it immediately from the bill. Just carefully read the bill & don't hesitate to call Billing if there's any question. Pretty happy, generally. Good luck, Liz J On 24 November 2011 15:36, Chuck Noyes <vze284qe@verizon.net> wrote:
Hi Again,
Thanks for all the replies! It's a big help to get other people's views about this. It looks like people are generally happy with Charter. In the past, I've heard horror stories about them, but it appears they've improved their product.
One more question; We have an Asus RT-N16 wireless router (that's connected to the Verizon modem) that I DD-WRT'd a couple of years ago, and I like it. If I go with Charter, can I continue to use this or do I have to get something else?
Thanks again for all the replies, -Chuck
On Nov 23, 2011, at 6:13 PM, Chuck Noyes wrote:
Hi All,
I'm getting fed up with Verizon's inability to fix their DSL service -
it's been incredibly slow for the last couple of months. Customer support
has been no help. So, I'm curious what ISP people like (and don't like). I'd prefer a local one, but at this point, I'm not fussy. I'm looking for something reliable. We have Charter as the cable TV provider. I don't know if I want to go that route.
I don't want to start a "religious war" - I'm just looking for information so I can make an informed decision.
Thanks, -Chuck
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_______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
One more question; We have an Asus RT-N16 wireless router (that's connected to the Verizon modem) that I DD-WRT'd a couple of years ago, and I like it. If I go with Charter, can I continue to use this or do I have to get something else?
I have a DD-WRT'd router on a charter line and it works great. In the past we had line issues on hot days, and it took several service calls to resolve, but it's been stable going on 3 yrs now. It's a Netgear WNR3500U - got it for $30 on ebay - not bad for a gigabit N router and now SNMP for stats and scheduled outages for my kid's devices. Its wireless reception/output is so-so, though, but we live in a small house. We still have our original Surfboard - it could be 8 years old. Download: ~15Mbps; Upload ~2Mbps Mike
participants (6)
-
Aaron Haviland -
Chuck Noyes -
E Johnson -
Jason Couture -
John Stoffel -
Mike Peckar