| Author | Message | ||
     Jfburch |
Who does cable internet service around here? They are pulling the plug on Northpoint, so my DSL is in trouble. I am not sure I want to go through the hassle of trying to get set up again. | ||
| Ashear |
If you are in Maplewood its Comcast@Home. I have been fairly happy, though there are periodic outages. If you look around they are always offereing free installation and other deals. I think SO has different cable and I don't know if they offer internet. | ||
| Dave |
I recommned Speakeasy.net as a dsl provider. Been with them over a year and only one outage, which was due to a local wire going down in a storm. | ||
| Jfburch |
Isn't Speakeasy a Northpoint reseller? If so, they are in trouble too. I could go with a Covad reseller, but for various reasons I've had to set up DSL 4 times in less than a year. And the last set-up time was 2 months. And I can't afford more down-time like that. I won't touch Verizon again with a 900 foot pole, and I'm pretty far from my CO so I am getting at best about 400k, which is OK but not great. In the abstract I'd prefer DSL, but for now it's cable for me. When the dust settles a bit more I can always switch back. | ||
| Dave |
No, Speakeasy is a Covad reseller. They have a "catch" program to help those with distressed ISPs change over. | ||
| Jfburch |
I've heard good things about Speakeasy, but as a friend who runs an ISP says: " If you're looking for a safe, stable company for DSL, Covad ain't it. " So I'm gonna cut my losses for the time being and try cable. | ||
| Curmudgeon |
I currently use cable via comcast, but I've been thinking about getting a DSL connection as well. The consistently highest-rated DSL provider I've seen is Megapath - they are resellers for Rhythms and New Edge Networks. For lots of useful info about DSL, ISPs, and much more visit http://www.dslreports.com | ||
| Oots |
SEN TAN, OWNER OF TANMAX COMPUTER ON SPRINGFIELD AVE IS A COMCAST AUTHORIZED AGENT. GIVE HIM A CALL. | ||
| Dave |
I have Megapath at the office and just got notice about the AT&T acquisition. They use Northpoint, Covad and Rhythms. I think we have the latter. Regardless, most customers will be transferred over. I know several people who use Comcast and they get major lags on incoming email. | ||
| Eliz |
I've had Comcast since last October and I've been very happy. Having said that I don't use their mail server - I kept my mindspring account. Even the @home installer told me that the most unreliable part of the service is email. Anyway the combo works for me. | ||
| Lseltzer |
Absolutely, the most unreliable part of @Home is their mail servers and they know it. They're restructuring their mail servers now, but they've lost me. I still have my cable modem, but I have plenty of other options for mail. While I'm on this thread, I should mention that I'm a freelance writer, working on computer issues, and I'm gearing up for a story on cable vs. DSL for a new home computing publication. Normally I test products I write about, but that's kind of tough with DSL. If any of you DSL users out there would be willing to talk to me about your experiences with your provider, I'd appreciate it. I don't think I'd be mentioning any names or doing formal interviews, I just need to do research. If you're willing to talk to me about it, please e-mail larry@larryseltzer.com | ||
| Octofoil |
LSeltzer, A bit off the topic, but as a writer and product tester, you might (or might not!) find this interesting. I picked up a Logitech Cordless mouse today and so far, I really like it. It was quite easy and painless to install. I quite like having one less cord to clutter up the desk. It seems to perform quite well. It works on my desktop surface, doesn't need a mousepad. This is the first I've used a trackball-so far, I'm really pleased. A really nice innovation, IMHO! In fact, it makes me want to try out the cordless printer that HP is supposed to be coming out with! | ||
| Tomp |
I live here in South Orange and have had Earthlink/Covad DSL since it became available in this area last August. I've been very pleased with it and am surprised that no one else has mentioned it. It's been very reliable - I can only think of one or two times in the last half-year that the service has gone down when I was using it, and then not for more than a few minutes. I guess people's experiences vary, but I consider Covad to be very reliable and much easier to deal with than Northpoint (who supplied DSL to our office for a while before we dumped them for @Home) or Verizon (who a couple of my coworkers went with and still complain bitterly about). Also, I don't know how they can do it, but Earthlink/Covad offer much faster DSL service than Verizon at the standard $40-$50/mo entry-level price point. I routinely get 1300/380 kbaud download/upload speeds here; Verizon only offers up to 640/90. Another thing - with Earthlink you get free access to their national dial-up network (up to 20hours/mo), which is very convenient if you travel at all regularly. | ||
| Barleyrooty |
Very happy with Comcast @Home - now. The mail server is down very occasionally. The installation was awful. They sent a "cable guy" who would not comply with my requests (e.g. to install with MS Explorer option vs Netscape) and messed up my machine for a week. The NIC card they sent was dead too. Their tech support is just a hold-fest. Finally I did it myself with lots of help from their help files. Since then it's worked perfectly. Make sure you get a PC person to come and do the install - which I've heard they do sometimes. | ||
| Tupperjo |
Question for Comcast@Home subscribers. If the cable system (TV) goes out due to bad weather, does the same thing happen to the computer? Also, can you explain the difference between a DSL and Cable? | ||
| Lseltzer |
The cable system doesn't ever really go out because of bad weather. If the wind blows off a tree branch and breaks a cable, yes, the cable and cable modems will go down. If the phone lines are on the same poles they will likely go down too. There are situations where the cable TV will go out but not cable modem service, and vice-versa. But usually when one goes out the other does too. In my experience, both cable TV and cable modem service in Maplewood are very reliable. (This does not include @Home's mail servers, which are much less reliable than the rest of the service.) DSL runs over phone lines, cable modem service runs over cable TV cable. Cable modem is a pure monopoly; you can only get it if you have cable and the cable company offers cable modem service, and they will only offer one internet service provider over that connection (Comcast @Home is the ISP). With DSL, the internet connection runs over the same phone lines as your phone service; in fact, you can probably use an existing phone line without disrupting your voice service (phone lines typically have 4 wires and voice service only uses 2 of the wires). But the phone lines from your house to the central office (CO - for most of Maplewood this is the Verizon building at 125 W. South Orange Ave) belong to Verizon, the local telco. At that CO, in a separate fenced-off area, other DSL providers (called Competitive Local Exchange Carriers or CLECs, as opposed to Verizon which is the local Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier or ILEC) have equipment to connect your local phone service to their networks. You can only get DSL service through the ILEC or CLECs who have equipment in your local CO. Furthermore, because of the way DSL works, you must be less than some maximum distance (something like 15000 feet) from the CO. You don't actually order DSL service from the CLEC; instead you order from an ISP that resells the CLEC's bandwidth. For instance, I'm currently thinking of ordering service from Speakeasy.net which resells Covad DSL service. DSL ISPs will have many packages of DSL service with different speeds and other features, like numbers of e-mail addresses. Ordering DSL service can be long and cumbersome: You have to deal with the 3 companies I've listed (unless you deal with the ILEC, Verizon in this case, in which case things are somewhat simpler). The local telco may have to do work on the local wiring. You will need to have a visit from a tech from the CLEC or ILEC to come and "provision" the line from your house to the CO, which is the point at which they actually know whether you can get DSL service and what speed they can offer you. Any numbers you hear before that are estimates. At the CO, someone has to literally connect wires from the local service to the DSL network. All typically takes weeks. The complication, plus the financial instability of many DSL companies (one of the largest CLECs, NorthPoint, just went out of business, stranding over 100,000 customers), is the major downside of DSL. The upsides are that if you eventually want faster service you can get it; you have a choice of providers, even if you always have to deal with Verizon; the providers' rules for what you can do with your systems are typically much more liberal than Comcast's (for example, you can get multiple static IP addresses and run servers). There are two major types of DSL service: ADSL (Asynchronous DSL) and SDSL (Synchronous DSL). SDSL has the same speeds for data traveling from your computer to the net as for incoming data; ADSL speeds vary and upstream data moves much slower than downstream data. SDSL is more expensive than ADSL, but for most individual users ADSL is perfectly adequate, as most typical Internet use involves much more data coming to you than from you. Incidentally, Comcast @Home cable modem service is asynchronous and Verizon only offers ADSL. | ||
| Wendy |
Lseltzer, Although I wasn't the one who asked the question, thank you for the most informative lesson I've ever read/heard about cable versus DSL. Would you happen to know the approximate cost of ADSL services. Also what happened to those stranded customers. Did they need to be rewired? Also if you use the same line does that mean your phone line is tied up while you're on line? | ||
| Lseltzer |
ADSL service tends to start out at least at the price of cable modem service, so if you have a choice you're better off with cable modem. You can use the phone for voice while your DSL service is running. No problem there. NorthPoint announced yesterday that they will start pulling the switches on service immediately. I'm pretty sure those customers essentially have to start all over again with the whole process. | ||
| Dave |
I'm typing this on (I think) a Northpoint circuit through ISP MegaPath. I had thought we were already on Rhythms but recent correspondence says we are being migrated to Rhythms. In densely populated markets I don't think there will be too much worry about being left in the lurch. The only hassle is that a tech may need to come out to do something with the wires again. |
