I'm having some problems with my internet as of late, and thought I'd put this question to the club. Who do you use for internet access, and would you recommend their service? I went from Qwest (up to 1.5mbps) that never went above 10kBps to Avvid, now getting ~300kBps but horrific ping times (which means I can't play Halo 3 without lagging like crazy).
Comcast is good if you like your torrents being capped, but in many areas (including mine) it's the only show in town. With that said, cable is much much better then DSL for the average home broadband user.
I hate comcast with a passion. They broke my house and when I was doing home automation installs we had to come and un-break at least half of the clients who used them systems. Their customer service is horrible and (most, not all because I met a few good ones) their tech's are worthless. BUT, their service is stupid fast. I've got the 8Mb service and on things like Amazon unbox I get sustained 8Mb download speeds. For burst speeds I've gotten some insane speed test results. Taken with a grain of salt because it only goes this fast for the first 15MB. This was a screen-cap taken about two months ago. (Chicago Server) Now we just need Verizon to get off their asses and bring FIOS up here.
Comacast FTW. Crazy fast. I get pings in the 40's and 10Mbs all day long. I can burst at 20Mbps for a minute or two straight. Tech's came out and happily worked on some VERY dubious cable running in our apt. bldg. They didn't seem to mind at all that we had spliced a cable running to one apt. and ran a length up to another apt. but then weren't able to get good signal. They came right out and crawled 25 feet up a ladder and fixed it.
I work for Comcast. You will want to go with comcast cable internet, there are some things coming that will make current customers very happy.
I wish I could get Comcast in my place, but Avvid did all the cabling work and therefore has all the rights to providing the internet for the building. It's fast then slow than fast again. This sucks for gaming a ton. I lose games because I lag so bad (*tear) I wish I could get Comcast
Hopefully you are talking about adding some bandwidth, and doing it without me having to call to get it. My download speed is still 2M, with uploads hovering around 250k.
I thought about switching up to the 50Mb service, but it's a tad expensive and w/o a self install option. Ever since they broke my house and refused to fix it (long story, but basically tech ****ed up, disconnected half the phone jacks in my house and lost the wire down inside the wall. Had to re-run a new line to the basement and splice into the phone line) I will not let any comcast tech do anything inside my house. They are free to test signal at the NID (or whatever Comcast calls theirs. I know Qwest used the term NID. The place where the Demarc hits the house) but that's all. I won't pay to have some schmuck who doesn't understand jack to come in and start tinkering.
I would assume the 6meg then. You really should not be seeing downloads in that range though. I would give a call if you haven't, that is probably something that should be looked at.
Switch to Business Class and that problem goes away as if by magic. The tech support is much better on the Business Class side, too. For instance, every call to support won't begin with the tech telling you to right-click My Computer and go into Properties. That alone was worth the price of admission. I think you get the best rates if you sign up for a 1 or 2 year contract, and if memory serves, those rates are only about $10 more than the cost of regular residential service. The d/l rates tend to be a little lower, but you get to take better advantage of the bandwidth you're paying for. Stuart.
Your modem might just blow. Go do a speed test at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and see what your burst speed is. Also +1 on calling and trying to get some help. If you can get them to say anything besides "I'm sorry sir but the problem must be your router. We do not support any routers" - It's their blanket excuse.
i have qwest and i HATE it, messed up billing system, the signal and speed sucks for the most expensive service, and they destroyed our ceiling during install.
It might be a provisioning issue, or you might just need a new modem. I would bring a modem into a service center and get a new one. That would take care of both issues and hopefully fix your connection speeds.
I would recommend using a Cable provider. While none of them will guarantee the speeds you pay for (say, 10M/1M), they will make it a policy to get you within 10% of it. That said, you will be forced to go with whichever cable provider has franchise rights in your area.
My comcast Last Result: Download Speed: 16225 kbps (2028.1 KB/sec transfer rate) Upload Speed: 2074 kbps (259.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
I still can't believe that one test that I got. I normally get burst speeds around 80,000 Kbps but breaking 100 was just nuts.
Comcast has 8Mbit service, but they allow you to "burst" for short periods up to 16Mbits. If you do a large download you won't get more than 8M excpet for the very first part. But it makes things snappier for middling-sized stuff. I love Comcast's internet service. I just hate Comcast. And how much they're charging me at this point.
You are really hard pressed to find better speeds for cheaper. Qwests 20mb is like 70 a month, and with the changes coming from Comcast...we will have it beat in all aspects.
DSL with VISI 7/1 for ~$50 It's not the cheapest, but they have no filtering, all open ports, and they don't give a crap what I use it for and actively encourage hosting. I'd like a bit more up, but that's about it. Uptime is well above 99%. The best company I've ever used. Low pings, and honestly unless you're using your connection for things comcast will cut you off for, the speed difference doesn't matter (and honestly after a ethernet link to the University of London's dedicated sourceforge server, everything else seem slow. Download something so fast computer speed matters FTW). No offense to the employees of comcast, but I wouldn't use them for internet. Too much stupid stuff. I want all my ports dammit. And no, I'm not paying for commercial service to my house. (Also, my cable isn't what they call reliable anyhow)
I used them in California. They're very very good. All the same points as VISI. But expensive as ****.
we used to be with quest for along while till a year or 2 ago, we switched to comcast and i have to say the speed is majorly better now.. xbox live is better then ever, downloads faster then ever and best of all.. any problems from them is minimal compared to quest.. for example i remember atleast once a month we wont receive internet due to maintenance from them.. now one every 3-6 months they would do a maintenance day or w/e
AFAIK (I know for sure Speakeasy is) these and others are just Qwest DSL being re-sold. Some monopoly law or something says that they've got to allow others to re-sell their service
Not sure about that, I would assume that providers like VISI rent quite a bit of fiber from places like Level 3 and what not and just run their own service. DSL in this country is a joke right now anyways, the technology just isn't there atm. I also get a kick out of these providers advertising "No Cap" or "Usage Limits"...the current system for internet pricing is broken. It is why Comcast went to a bandwidth cap, you can't have "All you can eat" bandwidth and just pay a flat rate, with no other utility do you get to do that. The majority of the Comcast users were paying for the minority to kill their connections, and it seems that the minority are the most vocal cry babies when you cap their bandwidth. Sorry for the off-topic rant, but it seems this issue was hinted at a couple of times when mentioning Comcast.
Comcast FTL!! One day I might be able to go to google and get something other than Google Japan, or spanish, or BF someplace in Europe. I try speed test and it usually links me to some place in arizona or s. carolina. Then they want to roll out a truck to fix something on thier end. Then the tech surfs my internet for a hour and they decide that it is something on their end. Then you get the standard "We will look into it", and I deal with google Japan. F-U comcast. Of course, my speeds are good for the internet. My HD quality is about as good as a VHS tape that has been played 15000 times, but what do you expect when they KILL the bandwidth. Any time they jame 3+ HD channels into a space that should be 2 or less, quality will suffer and my cost will go up. F-U Comcast. Russ
Tell them you want a new drop ran to the house, and then have them check every fitting from the ground block to the modem. A good way to get a new drop with no questions asked (it's no charge either way to you) is go take a little chunk out of the cable with a pocket knife right where it connects to your house. Then they have to replace it I use Qwest, I hate them, I hate their billing system, but they don't block anything service/port wise. Not sure if Comcrap blocks port 80 or not anymore.
They use the same line for the last mile, but that's it. Visi uses it's own connections to the tier 1s.
If it is infact something on Comcast's end...there is not a damn thing a field tech can do. That is an odd problem though. Has it been fixed yet?
mehhh i dunno. i had fios down in DC and my internet was insanely fast - i did a speed test and had a faster internet connection than 95% of people in the US and 99% of people worldwide. cool, huh? but their customer service is EPIC FAIL. they still owe me about $150 from last november where they overcharged me because i called them to cancel my phone line and they said "oh yeah we see where you called and requested to cancel, we just didn't do it." then when i moved and canceled my internet and tv in june, they STILL charged me for it. so now we're up to about $250 i think which i will probably never see back, despite spending about 7-8 hours on the phone with them. (i watched the timer on my phone at work. that's no BS.) so, the actual service is great, but if you have a problem, BEWARE. phone, internet, and FIOS are all separate groups so if you have a general problem, good luck getting the right person on the phone. between that and because i have a MA cell number i would generally get bounced back and forth an average of 6 times every time i called before i got anyone on the phone who even had the vaguest clue how to get their thumb out of their ass.
