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Alternative Cable ISPs

Posted by Cliff on from the volatile-markets dept.

Mud Husky asks: " I've held out getting high speed access because Comcast had been the only option in my area. Now, Knology is about to start offering cable internet access in my area. Comcast has been the subjects of many Slashdot stories like this and this and so on... I'd like to know if Slashdot users would be willing to share their experiences with Knology (good and bad) and other smaller ISPs. "

16 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. Knology by cchoffme · · Score: 1

    They have a fast website. That says something for the company.

    1. Re:Knology by dimator · · Score: 1

      Well, they have a stupid name, so that sort of negates fast websityness?

      --
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  2. Google Groups by spt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Knology.

    The 1st hit is entitled "Beware of Knology"

    1. Re:Google Groups by psychosis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't have any experience with Knology (or any other cable provider, for that matter), but in shopping for DSL service in DC, I've found that the folks who have bad experiences are a lot more likely to share their stories with the world than those who have great ones. I'm a perfect example - although I have had nothing but GREAT service from my provider (toad.net), I haven't gotten off my ass to post the rave reviews they deserve on sites like dslreports or whatnot. (Except, of course, noting that they kick ass several times here on slashdot!)

    2. Re:Google Groups by Mud+Husky · · Score: 1

      The reason I posted this question here was so I could get both good and bad comments. I have found that people with bad experiences about a product or service are more likely to put up web pages. I have come to trust the opinions of most of the /. community.

    3. Re:Google Groups by hamjudo · · Score: 2
      Because on slashdot, if I say something bogus like:

      For a month every time I tried to call Comcast tech support, I got an "all circuits busy"

      Someone else would quickly correct it with:

      You are exagerating, it was only like that for about a week.

  3. As a Comcast customer... by PoiBoy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The ISP can be no worse than Comcast. Between the web tracking fiasco of a few weeks ago and the absolutely terrible speed of the new network they have constructed, I would be willing to switch to any other broadband service available and take my chances. If I weren't planning to move in a few months, I would make the switch in a heartbeat.

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  4. who? by BenTheDewpendent · · Score: 1

    ive herd of att, roadrunner, comcast, time warner... but not this one.

    could be a good thing that i havent heard of them.

  5. Hartford, Connecticut by Phaid · · Score: 2

    Don't know anything about Konology, but in Hartford, CT, there is an ISP called Netplex which is offering ISP services over cable. They're a local company which offers dialup, DSL, and frame relay services. I currently use them as my DSL ISP, and their services are absolutely top-notch. I would consider getting them for cable, since the bandwidth is the same but the price is about half, but I live outside the area where their cable service is offered.

  6. Knology bad! by John+Wilson · · Score: 2, Informative
    My friends down in Huntsville AL had horrible experiences with Knology about a year or two ago: A quote from one of their websites:


    First, to Knology, our cable provider. Due to shoddy service and a general run-around over the past few days, we're on the verge of 1) switching cable modem providers 2) demanding a refund for all the service we didn't get this month. Our service has been out for part of every day for the past week. My apologies to those of you who attempted to access domesticat on Friday afternoon. I was halfway through major changes on the site, and had uploaded files but not rebuilt them with greymatter - and then our connection conked out for about five hours.


    They (and all their friends) eventually switched because the service was so bad. Now, that was a year ago, and maybe they've changed, but then, maybe not. It took BresnanLink (later bought out by Charter) 5 years to get cable modem access right up here, and it *still* occationally screws up.
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  7. Two cable companies. by KittyTheCat · · Score: 1

    The city I am from has two cable companies:
    http://www.hbci.com/
    http://www.charter.com/

    When HBCI came, charter became a much nicer company to deal with and their prices dropped a lot.

  8. I have knology by gi-tux · · Score: 1

    I have knology and they are OK. I have had problems at times, but they usually get to them quickly. And they have given me free access when it took more than a few hours to fix problems or if problems continued over a period of time.
    They are associated with ITC DeltaCom and have relatively quick connections, depending upon your neighborhood.
    They don't seem to care about what you do, they support NetGear and LinkSys routers without question. They don't block ports, or watch what you do with few exceptions. I do have a friend that got a call from them for doing a port scan against his work network from home, but I know of no other problems.
    On the negative side, I was getting probed heavily on PC Anywhere ports and they provided no help in getting it stopped. They didn't even issue warnings during Code-Red or Nimda, that I know of.
    Would I recommend them? I have to several friends in the Huntsville, AL area.

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  9. Along the same lines... by hound3000 · · Score: 1

    Now that Cox@Home has switched over to their own internet service, the news service sucks. I still don't want to switch over to DSL, the only other high-speed connection in the area, so what should I do? What other news services could I tap where the operators don't mind my sucking out their bandwidth?

    1. Re:Along the same lines... by jmenezes · · Score: 2

      This is actually a good question.
      Up until last week (havent tried since then) @home's news servers were EXTREMELY faster then cox's own servers. (san diego area)
      while doing my "research" on redheaded females, it would take up to 50 seconds to display a pic, whereas on cox's servers it would take no more then 4 seconds...
      and thats not on the binary groups, its on all of them.
      However, what cox's servers severely lack in speed, they make up for in breadth of newsgroups.
      granted, some are empty, and/or useless (misslpelled variations of diff ones) they have a wide variety of groups that @home either never carried or blocked. if only they could speed things up with those servers, it would definately be well received...

      --
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  10. Re:You may call me Commie by bluelip · · Score: 1

    I'm using comcast in NJ. Why must I have a dynamic IP? Why did I receive the answer "If you aren't using our DNS servers, it's impossible to use our internet service?", when I asked why i coudn't run my own DNS? Why are uploads capped? Not everyone just browses all day. Who on the service is getting donwload speeds of 1.5Mb/s? Never see it around here, or from anyone else who i talk to. With all of the "superior cacheing technology" that Comcast controls, why is it that I can frequently make web browsing faster, by using a proxy server outside of you network? I know that if the site I was visiting was close to the proxy network-wise, it could account for some of the speed difference, but it wasn't just a few sites that were faster. Why can I only only have 4-5 concurrent connections to the news server? Why can't use my connection for a server? You keep showing these commercials where families are using a comcast connection to educate themselves. What better way is there for a IT enthusiast to learn about networking than having their own server to experiment with?

    I'd also like to see this building where customer satifaction os a priority. It'd be nice f the techs there knew if I can ping by hostname, I shouldn't have to go back and ping again by IP address.

    If there are enough complaints, you'll do something? You just said that customers came first. So what you are saying is that, customers are only first if they are in sufficient numbers?

    Where'd you get that $40 figure? After comcast started their own network, my rates went up.

    --

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    More incorrect spellings can be found he
  11. Re:The Commie is back. by owl_luvr · · Score: 1

    Currently, I have Earthlink 56K dial-up. I'm in Bedford, NH, and the Central Office for DSL is about 10 miles from me. This leaves me with one option only: Cable Internet access. I don't mean for that to sound like a 'bad thing,' but our cable TV company is AT&T, and I've heard nothing but 'DON'T DO IT' when mentioning I might go with them for cable Internet access. Now, Comcast & AT&T Broadband are 'merging,' or whateher word the two companies use to describe the transaction. Therefore, my question is this: Should I get the (expensive initial start-up cost) AT&T Broadband now or wait for the transaction to be completed before getting cable Internet? Thank you.