What do you think of your ISP?

[Spritel]

What do you think of your ISP?
ease of connection
annoyance factor
tech support
speed connected at

[NavyDood_ F/A18_Mech]

All depends on what you use.
56k dialup?
Cable modem?
DSL?
Or T lines?

Me? I have a 56K. I use Mindspring. I don't use their software. I Just set it up through Dial Up Network. Their Tech support has always been great. They even have online chat Tech Support. Connections are normally 44,000 bps here in TX. In CA i was getting 52,000 average. I live in a 15 year old Apt complex here in TX. And their phone lines are terrible.

I Haven't found a ISP that I like better. I've tried PacBell, Prodigy, MSN, and AT&T.

Of all the free ISP's out there now, FreeiNet is the best.

Of coure these are my opinions. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Jim



[This message has been edited by NavyDood_ F/A18_Mech (edited 01-22-2000).]

[Serge]

http://thelist.internet.com/ http://www.ispcheck.com/ http://terabit.net/

[OuTpaTienT]

When I was on a 56k line, I loved my ISP. There are small, local, great service, only had to deal with one guy for tech help, signed up online and activated my account within hours, got a great connection and great pings, 30mb of web space, etc.

I almost didn't wanna go to cable, hehe. But I got over it. I'd highly recommend them for anyone in my area (510 area code). http://www.norcov.com

[Wiz]

Mindspring is a good ISP, i had them before i switched to cable.
comcast@home is excellent in the tech support department, and i cant really complain about my connection, hehehe.

[socalgal]

Can't say I have tried alot of ISPs, but I have used ELN (Earthlink) as a dial-up and now they are my DSL. Both ways, I find ELN's Tech Support to be outstanding 24/7 with usually low wait times. No spam whatsoever through their email. Occasional bugaboos with online connectivity/thoughput, but I believe that happens with any ISP.

I did not use ELN's dial-up soft with the 56k, just set it up manually thru ELN Tech Support.

When my DSL was down for approx. one day, I simply switched the phone jacks and got back up on my ELN dial-up (they give you 30 hours - I believe..) since I kept my 56k modem in place. No online downtime due to this switch.

ELN has merged with Mindspring, but so far I have noticed no degradation of support/service.

With ELN dial-up my connection was most always at 49,333 and with DSL it's always 10,000,000.



[This message has been edited by socalgal (edited 01-22-2000).]

[Ed_S]

I've been using Freewwweb for over three years now with exccellent results.
Back then you paid a startup fee of around $100, and no monthly fee. Sounded too good to be true, but I tried it & it works well.
Good service, good connection, few busy signals or disconnects.
Only once has there been an unscheduled outage, and it turned out to be MCI's fault!

Was actually sorry to see them go to free format at first last year, but they geared up for it & service has remained good.

I'll admit I have little basis for comparison, haven't felt the need to try others! That alone is probably the best review I could give them... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif

[jad1097]

@home is ok I guess. Once you get past them being down. I am supprised to see it working this morning with the snow on the ground. Always connected, Tech support sucks. And the speed is awesome!
http://www.geocities.com/jad1097/images/speedtest.gif

This is what it is right now
estimated line speed (K bits per second): 4080
estimated line speed (K bytes per second): 500


UPDATE!!
They were down for 14 hours last night!

[This message has been edited by jad1097 (edited 01-24-2000).]

[Ceeffa]

Well in England i use a free service called Screaming.net and i get FREE phone calls to it all weekend and after 6pm week days http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
As for here, i am forced to use AOL http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif and it's been a soooo bad!! Sometimes it takes 20 - 30 attempts to get connected!!

Chris

[Joel Kleppinger]

Earthlink is very good - I've used about 5 different ISPs (including NetZero for 4 months), and I'd have to say Earthlink is the best of them all.

[chipbgt]

he he....I had the same problem at Georgia Tech...now I am use prestige.net, a cable service here in GA....its wonderful, even though the setup was a complete hassle. but I will take it over AOL, Bellsouth, Netzero...all the other ones i ahve tried on a modem anyday.

[JW310]

My ISP, BuffNet, has been great. I only get a busy signal once in a while, I constantly connnect at 50666, and transfer rates are pretty good. I also use freewwweb, and it's just as good. I highly recommend BuffNet (http://www.buffnet.net) to anyone in the Western New York area.

JW

[hd581]

My "provider" supplies me with T3 connection, but it costs $9000 (includes room and board) a year, and I have to go to all these goofy classes and do all this homework.....

[Magnum]

I had Erols 56k for three years. Erols has always had way to many problems for me. But for some reason, I stuck with them. Not to mention that Erols- Starpower has raised their rates to $179.00 per year. When I signed up with Erols it was $340.00 for three years.

I am now with Coollink. So far Coollink has been great. I have not experienced any of the problems that I had with Erols. Plus, I paid only $129.83 for two years of Coollink through Tigerdirect. It was a special of $159.00 for two years and the salesperson at Tiger said he could do it for $129.83, that comes to $5.40 a month. What a deal!!!

Magnum

[This message has been edited by Magnum (edited 01-23-2000).]

[Andy_L]

Here in the Netherlands, I use Cubic Circle, I have not been able to connect maybe 3 times in 6 months, and connect at 50000, no more or less. Cost is OK, but here have to pay for phone time. No spam ever, yet, but they won't let you connect network without extra charges, can't wait to get back to the states and jump on the high bandwidth wagon.

[netsurfer]

I use MediaOne RoadRunner here in Los Angeles, California. I've been a member for a little over two months and I love it. The fastest sustained rate I've gotten was 180kb/sec when downloading RedHat Linux 6.1 ISO off ftp.cybertrails.com (yes, it's legal and it took me 1 hour to download the 650+ meg file :P). Though I've been able to peak much higher. I've never had to call or email them for support, though I've asked two questions via their support/comment/question form and all were answered in less than a day. They're help.rr.com website is great. Lots of detailed information that I did not expect an ISP to provide... the kind of information I usually have to go elsewhere to find.

When I used DialUp, I used IDT for about 1.5 years, Epoch for about a year, and AT&T for 6 months, all of which are pretty good.

IDT had great consistency and relatively no busy signals. Epoch was great in the beginning, but eventually I came across some issues with connecting at higher transfer rates... It was an "all of a sudden" ordeal that seemed to be a conflict between my lucent k56flex/v.90 and their rockwells... well, it never got resolved so I switched over to AT&T. AT&T occasionally gave me busy signals (I only had 1 access number) but the downloads were averaging 5kb/sec @ 45333 connection speed and ping times generally under 200ms all throughout the country assuming they had great NAP connections.

[bkehoe]

Your line speed:

5790 Kbps

710 K bytes/sec

Got that from the MSN computing central site.

Running Europe Online satellite internet. www.europeonline.net (http://www.europeonline.net)

That figure seems exagerated, as the max sustained download speed I have got is 75kb/sec.

Brendan

[hd581]

Chipbgt, you're a YellowJacket, too, eh? Prob a whole bunch of us on this newsgroup. Kinda hard leaving that connx speed behind when you graduate, isn't it? Only have 2 more semesters to go....


[This message has been edited by hd581 (edited 01-24-2000).]

[Algee7]

That MSN Bandwidth Speed Test is a crock.

The other night I tried it, got 130kbps; tried again and got 845kbps/227.
Just now I got 115kbps/14.7. Retried and got:

Your line speed:
6800 Kbps
833.3 K bytes/sec

Real accurate, eh!


[This message has been edited by Algee7 (edited 01-24-2000).]

[Roraycr]

For the last 3 years, I've used Internet America here DFW Metroplex. I've probably received busy signal no more than 4 times during that time. Their excellent tech support is always courteous (and I've pulled a few really stupid blunders). I am very satisfied with their service.

[JW310]

I'm not sure if I like my ISP anymore. Went to connect this afternoon, and I connected fine. Went to check my e-mail, got an 'invalid password, please try again' message. I was putting in the right password. Go to log into the 'My Account' portion of my ISP's webpage, there's no account expiration date, and it appears that all of my pages in my web directory are deleted. Sure enough, I get a 404 when trying to go to my webpage. ALL of my work is gone! Gotta give their tech support/CSR a call and find out why they essentially deleted my account.

JW

~edit: As of 2:30 pm EST, the problem has been taken care of. Only a downed server.

[This message has been edited by JW310 (edited 01-25-2000).]

[Toadman]

Major probs with @home! The "cable" lite on the modem goes out on the motorola cybersurfer. Had a tech swap it out, who said it was overheating. Now new one pops off also. Tech support says to unplug it and let it cool for 3-4 hours and call back. Still no connect after unplug and modem reset button push over and over. Then it will work for 1/2 day, out of the blue.. Line to house verified hot and no network probs in area, but @home cant ping me. Service call with 1-week leadtime. Getting sick of this.... 3 on-site service calls this month! NIC is fine. Now they say my PC is "incompatible" with @home and suggested I go DSL!! Hint for you..ALWAYS,ALWAYS ask for Level 2 support! A completely inept Help Desk, at least in California.

[Wiz]

Toadman,
sorry to hear of your problems, but you probably have a bad modem. Ask them to ship you another so you can try it.

[medo]

Hello,

In my home country I had a local provider with 28 and it was really unreable. Here in Australia I use Iprimus (relatively cheep) and the speed is 56 but I have difficulties during the peak hours to log myself on- especially on weekend nights.

Medo

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif