PC World's ISP Service Rankings, as of June 2005

Ant writes "Broadband Reports reports a PC World article on the best and worst Internet Service Providers (ISPs). More than 6,000 PC World readers rated major providers for its speed, technical support, and more. The article also reveals which broadband and dial-up services make the grade and which fall flat."

Comments

Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[CyricZ]

Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating instead. I think it'll be more accurate, because we don't have to worry about not saying negative things about our sponsors, unlike a magazine like PC World.

So state your ISP, and rank them out of 10, with 0 being the worst and 10 being the best. Explain why they're good, and any past experiences.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Scott Swezey]

Cox Communications (Southern California): 5 (Horrible support, could-be-faster speeds, and lame port filters)

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[TERdON]

Yeah, we could do practical tests too. Only ISPs withstanding a slashdotting would get positive ratings?

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[TheKidWho]

I hate you, I really really do

Anyways

9 RoadRunner. It's fast, they just doubled my download speed in the past year to 740KB/s! And it works without any problems.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[NetNifty]

Eclipse Internet (UK ADSL) - 8/10 (Outages fairly rare - and when they happen they're usually sorted out quickly (within 30 mins at very most, even during night time), good support (only called them 3 times, but all 3 times I didn't have to hold and contacted a technical knowledgable person straight away), no ports blocked, no download caps, low pings - only negatives is the cost which is relatively uncompetitive now with other ISPs although was only £1-3 higher than others when I subscribed).

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Speedfactory.net in Atlanta. They have great service. They will let you run a server and their tech support pople know what linux is. The only negative is they require a BellSouth dial tone and I have a strong dislike for BS. I will not use Comcast since they are far worse than BS. Overall I am very satisfied with Speedfactory for both their service and support and would highly recommend them.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[ptbarnett]

PC World doesn't even mention Speakeasy

I rate them a 9, only because I think the cost is a bit high. But, service is exceptional and reliable.

Why I like them:

• 6 megabit/sec downstream (effective rates peaks out at about 4.5 M/sec)
• 768K upstream (effective rate about 650K/sec)
• Techie-friendly TOS: I'm allowed to run servers: game, email, web, etc.
• Static IP (extra ones are inexpensive)
• Speakeasy will configure their DNS to return the FQDN of your choice when doing a reverse lookup on your IP.
• Unix shell account, if you want it.
• Share your connection with your neighbor, if you don't charge your neighbor anything.
• If you DO want to charge for sharing, Speakeasy will collect the amount that you specifiy from your neighbor, and credit part of it to your bill.

One thing I wish they would reconsider: they now offer VoIP service that uses their network. But, they will only assign a phone number from my area code. I'd switch from Vonage, if they would match Vonage's ability to assign me a number in my employer's city, rather than mine.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[netwiz]

I'll bite. Verizon DSL (recently got the promised 3Mbit upgrade), solid as a rock (even when the power's out!). I've never received any spam on my email, but I'm careful about who gets that address...

10 of 10. Service was live the day after my order, and has never been down. (not that I've noticed, anyway. Whenever I wanted to use it, it worked)

ha-haaa!
and the fiber contractor's already marked the dig lines in my alley!

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[ian rogers]

I'd say Charter isn't too good.

They messed up our cable, so in the winter, whenever the sun would go down, it would get cold and we would get no signal.

They finally cranked up the signal, but then in the early summer/late spring, the moment the sun would get up in the sky and it would get warm, the signal would cut out because it was too hot.

Also, every time we call in, they ask if we have a router. Of course we do, so we say we do. They tell us that it's the router's fault, before we even explain what's going on. This may be standard ISP practice, but it's still ridiculous.

If we need someone to come out for a service call, and call on a Monday, they'll tell us they'll have someone out here by Thursday. Only problem with that is, no one is home, with both parents working and both kids at school. They won't fix anything without talking to the people who called in, so they always show up when we're gone, and then tell us they'll come back again sometime, but don't tell us when.

I'd say they get around a 7. When it works, it works well, but when it doesn't work, it's a really ridiculous process to get it fixed.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Johnso]

Comcast digital cable of Northern Illinois: 7 Pretty good speed, reliable lately (although about a year ago, there would be frequent downtime). Pricier than some, but the best option available here.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blueyonder UK 10. Never had a problem in 2 years and have had 2 free speed increases, spot on!

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[droptone]

Adelphia (Northeastern North Carolina), 5. It seems that they've maxed out the current capacity of their systems/lines in the area but are indifferent about upgrading so, in my experience, there's been problems with connectivity (30m out here, 5h there), speeds (upload = horrible, download = tolerable only because DSL isn't exactly a viable option and there's no competition), and newsgroups (since they've outsourced their newsgroup service to Giganews you only get 5GB, come on...).

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Polymorph2000]

speakeasy, 9.5. Doubled my speed 2 years ago, there's no waiting time when you call tech support, 8 free email accounts, webspace/ssh access on one of their servers. The also contact their customers immediately if they notice a pc on their network infected with spyware (of the port scanning and/or pinging variety), and provide step by step instructions to get rid of it.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[(startx)]

Centurytel DSL, 2/10

It took over a month of constant hassling to get them to hook it up correctly (after my original installation date). It took another month to get it to the proper speed. Service frequently drops out. It uses PPPoE so my IP address changes every couple of days. 5MB webspace limit, 5GB/mo usenet limit. $50/mo for 1.5M/256k service. The only non-Charter provider in the area, but I'm not switching to charter because my wife's parents say it's even worse!

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[poor_boi]

8 Colorado Comcast
--
Fast and pretty reliable.
--
Support leaves something to be desired, but once it's fixed it has tended to stay fixed for a long time.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[satellite17]

NTL (UK) 7. fast and reliable. Phone tech support is OK but not great. To be fair 3 years ago I would have given them a big fat 0 as the support was terrible and I was calling them to get an engineer out at least once a month. I've spent hours on hold listening to the same god aweful guitar riff, but they seem to be getting their act together and I haven't needed to call them in a while.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[IANAAC]

You're not alone in rating Speakeasy high. I switched away from SBC to them early this year and have had nothing but positive experineces with them. Enough to switch my phone to their VoIP service too. So far it's been great.

Yeah, they're a bit more expensive, but truthfully, I have no problem paying a bit more for the superior tech support I've received from them.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[the real darkskye]

Force9/PlusNet (ADSL UK) 9/10
Quick support times, 4 static IPs with rDNS control (via support) all at the same cost of a basic account with DHCP IP.
Optional SMTP mail delivery for domains and the provided e-mail address host.
And with all that, its still one of the independently owned and operated ISPs in the UK

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[N3Roaster]

SBC -- 3

Lately they've been pretty reliable here, but about a year ago there were problems with "area outages" about once a week at work. Whenever somebody complained that the Internet was broken, I took a look at things, figured out that the problem wasn't on my end and said we just had to wait until SBC fixed things on their end. One day, somebody decided to call support. What could be the harm? Well, I warned him not to, but he wouldn't listen. He called and got someone calling himself Richard with a thick Indian accent who told my coworker to do a variety of things, some that I had already done and others that made absolutely no sense. About a half hour into this, he asked Richard if the problem could be on the SBC side of things. He said all his monitors showed green, whatever that means. After another two hours of trying things as stupid as pinging yahoo when there isn't an Internet connection (which of course didn't work, but he must've done it dozens of times), the call was escalated to the next tier of support. This person could be understood, she gave some basic instructions that had already been tried, but after a couple minutes said she had run some tests and thinks it's an SBC problem. The call was sent to maintenance which said immediately that it's an area outage and gave an estimate as to when the problem would be fixed and a number we could call to get back to maintenance. A couple hours later, the problem was indeed fixed, but Richard's instructions resulted in the network settings on the computer being completely screwed up (about 45 minutes wasted figuring out what had been changed and putting things right) and on top of that, Richard had changed the account password and not told us what the new one is so I had to call maintenance back and get the password reset.

More recently, they've started to block access to port 25 on servers not on a small whitelist that they won't add the mail server I use to. (I don't have access to it, so I can't just use another port. I understand the reasoning behind blocking port 25, but it's still evil.)

Reps were continually calling trying to upsell, sometimes to what I already had (yes, I already have that service. Shouldn't you know what I'm already buying from you before you call me?).

Two things are keeping the score above minimum. The price continues to go down (or rather, the speed keeps going up with no increase in price), but I'm keeping an eye on the bill just in case they try to jack up the rates without warning (or provide warning in tiny print) and lately the service has remained uninterrupted for quite some time.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[smittyoneeach]

Cox support in VA: could be more knowledgable. Knowing that you run dhcpcd to get an IP address under Linux ought not to be that hard, but I suspect they may have a massive shareholder who doesn't care to have that advertised.
As long as you know what you're about, their blend of cable, ISP, and phone services, while possibly not the cheapest way to go, are solid.
They rated competitively in TFA, and I think that's about right.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[KwKSilver]

ox is fairly decent here (Gulf Coast; with nothing else to caomape them with I'm inclined to guess 8.5. They're 2/3s or 1/2 the price of the local DSL.. My downloads may be over 510 Kbyte/sec; much depends on the distant server. Good spam filtering & what theirs doesn't get, SpamAssassin does. No one seems to know zip about Linux, although Netcraft indicates they are on Solaris. Thus far, haven't needed tech support. Knock on wood..twice...three times.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to mention the free webspace, 15 email accounts included, they supply my cable tv and phone line, never had an interruption of service, no stupid download caps and unlike BT they don't care how many networked devices you share the connection across.

let's just hope if the merger with NTL goes forward you don't turn crappy like them.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[LearnToSpell]

Cablevision (Optimum Offline) in NY I'd give a 6, maybe. The speeds are pretty awesome for residential access. I routinely get about 1100K (big K) down.

That's the pro. Cons are obvious and widespread.

• CV caps - if you upload for over an hour straight, there's a decent chance they'll limit your rate to 150k (small k) up. That kills your download rate naturally. Even better, they won't even tell you about it, so if you're wondering all of a sudden why your speeds suck, you have to phone customer support, and then they get an "engineer" to phone you back 24 hours later, re-read the ToS, make sure you agree to them, and remove the cap. It's a total pain in the ass.
• Email sucks. It's common to get errors trying to send mail. Incoming mail bounces frequently. Mail's disappeared completely before. There's a stupid virus scanner that you can't turn off, so if you subscribe to groups like Bugtraq, expect to only be able to read about 75% of posts.
• Newsgroup access sucks worse than email, although it's not quite as bad as it was. It's limited to ~120K download, and for years, the retention was about 2 days. Timeouts are common.
• They block ports. 80's blocked, as is 25, for the obvious ones.

Stability's not bad. My IP address changes once a year, maybe. But that's just network connection. Actually trying to do anything with it (see email/NG) can result in problems.

Pricewise, it's $50/month if you don't have cable TV through them, and $45 otherwise. Used to be cheaper, but it's crept up over the last few years.

Customer service is generally clueless. I emailed them when I was having intermittent trouble accessing sites. Figured out a couple minutes later that one of their nameservers had died. TWO WEEKS LATER, I got a reply telling me to unplug the modem and reboot my computer, which of course would have done nothing.

As soon as FIOS comes into my area (should be this year sometime), I'm bailing. I hate Verizon, but not as much as Cablevision.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[bryan8m]

Comcast (Chicago): 8 Positive: Fast, rare downtime Negative: Expensive (cost > $40/month)

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time Warner San Diego - 9 They sent a stupid tech once who knew less about running RG-6 than me, but otherwise everything's been great.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

America On-Line

Score : 10

its teh best povraider in teh wordl!!!1!!

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Reaperducer]

Verizon Avenue: 1 out of 10. Service goes down for several hours every couple of days. It can take over an hour to get through to someone on the phone. Once I asked them to install a second jack, and instead they disconnected my phone then argued with me about it until the state PUC stepped in. Also, not only do they not offer Usenet access, they don't know what it is.

I recently switched to...

A-Net: 10 out of 10 so far. I can get a tech at 3am on the first ring, and it's someone who knows what they're talking about and can fix my problems without going through a script. Also, the speed is five times faster than my old Verizon Avenue, even though both are DSL.

It's too bad I had to change buildings to change ISPs.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[ppz003]

I've had pretty service from Verizon DSL. The few times I did have trouble was caused by faulty lines outside of my apartment. Their service has been very reliable, although their tech support isn't the greatest.

Overall, I'd say 8.5 of 10.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[foxhound01]

i use cox because it is provided as part of my lease in my apartment, and because Bellsouth DSL is the only other alternative in my area. I'd give Cox a 4, and Bellsouth maybe a 3, but I had TimeWarner (now Brighthouse) RoadRunner in my former location, and i'd have to give them at least a 9, cuz the price was competitive, the service was rock solid, the speed was good, and i never actually dealt with the customer service after the installation. Also, I tried Verizon DSL there, and the price was higer for slower connections, and when any kind of rainstorm would hit (which happens every day in Florida), the connection would get reset. I give them a 3.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[blackcat77]

Insight BB in Indiana. I'd give it a solid 9. We have had almost no unscheduled downtimes though a scheduled software upgrade went badly awry and ended up with the system down for nearly 18 hours instead of the expected 1 or 2. Download speeds have gone from 2k to 3k to over 4k with no increase in cost though admittedly it's high to begin with at $49/mo. They have knowledgable 24 hour tech support and when necessary, they can get servicepeople to your house within a few hours of your reporting a problem. In short, they don't act like a monopoly even if they are one. I was the fifth person in town to be connected back in 1998 and am very satisfied with their service.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[FLEB]

I doubt it's as much a matter of a "Massive Shareholder" as the fact that it's just not worth it to support Linux for many consumer-level ISPs. Carve out the number of home Linux machines from the total market. From that, carve out the number of Linux users who AREN'T advanced enough to resolve their own issues. The handful of people you'd have left hardly justifies setting up a support infrastructure for Linux.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mediacom cable in Iowa (MCHSI - Cedar Rapids) - I'd give it an 8. Occasionally seems to lose the DNS, especially in the last month. Decent speed (3MB/256KB), good office staff, but service calls have long hold times (over 15 minutes). Free web access to email is nice. Occasional unannounced maintenance seems to be happening without notice to their telephone tech support.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[ScottyUK]

7 for Telewest Blueyonder Broadband - reliable, only had 2-3 hours down in the past 2 years, and faster than most in the UK (4mbps). Cons - Quite pricey in the lower-tier packages, believe they got onto some blacklist for not thwarthing zombie PCs. Occasionally idiotic tech support, although helpful when you get an actual engineer on the line.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[BAILOPAN]

Charter is the worst ISP, ever. I was a COX customer until I had to move. Charter gives you 3mbps/256kbps for the same price that COX gives you 5mbps/768mbps. On top of this, their service sucks. I signed up on-line through customer chat which took a week because they refused to even schedule an appointment until the previous tenants cancelled their account. They restrict your connection to only one mac address, so I couldn't even use their old connection.

Finally, the previous tenants called in to disconnect, and Charter scheduled an installation appointment for a week later (a long time on the Internet), but activated my cable modem's mac address for me in the interim. My connection worked for two days, until a mysterious chain of Charter vans circled around the neighborhood. One came to my apartment, fiddled around, and my cable signal to noise ratio dropped from 34db to 15db (minimum of 30 is needed for cable connection).

So, I called Charter, only to get an incredibly evil phone menu system which forces you through a voice-activated self-help system. So, after social engineering the computerized tech support, I got to a human, who scheduled a repair guy for the next day. He never showed up. The installation guy never showed up either.

I called back, and the rep said "no one was home or answered the phone". I asked him what number they had, and the person from the online chat had some how entered it into the system wrong (I guess copy and paste was above him). They scheduled another appointment for nine days later, and promised me a $20 discount.

The guy actually came on time, but with no discount. He fixed the cable problem, but said "I don't know what was wrong". And the actual Charter service, ironically, was down while he came. So, after three weeks, I finally have my 3mbps connection with a whopping 256kbps upload. Thanks, Charter.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[colinrichardday]

Yeah, a 9 is about right.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Smallpond]

With Verizon, I have to use a port redirector to run my own email, and their service sucks, but outages are rare.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Aside from DNS servers yo-yoing up and down for weeks, a central office screwup that destroyed any packets over a few hundred bytes, a string of chronic service outages, some incoming email blocks that don't correspond to any known spam blacklist, and tech support which is clueless, incompetent, deaf, rude and outright dishonest, I've been happy with Verizon DSL.

All the network problems were last year, to be fair.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Datasage]

I would go with 9 as well.

Though i do wish they would bump up thier upload cap abit and make static IPs an option on residental accounts.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

(euro-centric view warning)

Sounds like something incredibly sucky. I'd probably rate it at 2 or 3. Fast downstream doesn't make up for other faults. At least not at a fucking $50 a month.
I have a connection of a similar speed (8/1) at about the same price but without any of that crap (heh, they even give instructions on running servers) and I'd still rate it only at 8 or so.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[jdogg82]

Qwest DSL: 3/10

Bad:

-It took six months before the bill was correct (I called upon receiving each mangled bill).

-I never reach advertised speeds (1.5 Mbit, but I never top 1.0).

-Expensive. $55/month for naked DSL.

Good:

-Few outages.

The worst part of this is that my apartment complex has some sort of monopoly agreement with Qwest...nobody else is allowed on the premises, so I have no choice (I COULD steal any of my neighbors' wireless, but it'd still be Qwest service).

Everything I've read about this company, as well as my interaction with them, leads me to believe they are rotten to the core.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Zackbass]

The parent couldn't be more right, that's just about everything I would have said. One extra thing is that in my area (Rockaway, NJ) the connection is a bit flakey sometimes. Service can go out randomly for up to a couple hours.

As for FIOS, I can't wait. My area has been absolutely swarmed with verizon trucks stringing up fiber but they seem to have stopped about a mile down my road from my house. It's amazing the way they attack an area, last month on any given weekday I'd see five to ten Verizon vehicles on my 15 minute commute.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[FLEB]

TDS Metrocom, DSL, Grand Rapids, MI:

8.5 (Very satisfied)

What they lack in technical features, they greatly make up for in the human element. This is one of the few companies that I've actually raved over the tech support for, and have turned down cheaper competitors for.

For instance, I was having connection problems. For some reason, when I downloaded music from eMusic, over standard HTTP transactions, after about one or two albums, the site would just start timing out. I was new to broadband at the time, so I blindly did some research, and came to very few conclusions. It seemed like some sort of buffer overflow, but I couldn't find anything with my symptoms. I tried Actiontec, the maker of the DSL modem, whose moronic reply, "The site is sending too much data" told me nothing.

I called TDS, and told them what I thought might be the problem. Okay, tech support personnel, I'm one of those people you hate, I'm sure. I pre-diagnose a problem, and call in with a preconcieved expectation of what the answer might be. Anyhow, I'd only just gotten into broadband, so I was looking up the completely wrong transmission standard (PPPoE, not ATM), and completely botching at the whole research angle.

The tech on staff didn't just tell me "that's not it", but ended up getting into suprising depth about ATM, and the difference between PPPoE and ATM, etc, etc. They tried to procure me an older model of modem, to see if that would work. They ended up shipping me three replacements (the same model I had), which I returned for free, and I eventually did plug in one of the replacements, just for shits and giggles. It turns out, it was just a faulty modem.

Their sales team, as well, is commendable.

Every so often, the prices on different plans come down. Usually, they just bump it so that if you watch their sales fliers, you can upgrade to a much faster connection for the same price you had. I started with a 256/256 connection, and upgraded to a 720/720 synchronous when the prices shifted. Later, I called about an upgrade to a 2MBps/540kbps asynch connection at the same price.

The salesperson actually warned me against the upgrade, saying that I might be stuck with the asynch connection and the contract extension if I was too far from the CO to get 2Mb speeds. Not to mention that I was able to talk off-the-cuff about issues like the CO distance and local loops and such with someone in sales. It turned out that I was too far away (I'm close to the CO, but on the "back" part of the loop.), but I still have the 720 synchronous connection.

Downsides?

Since it's DSL, the speed/price might not be the best ratio. The current plan is 2Mbps at about $30, with a 2-year contract and requiring a landline plan as well.

They block port 25 (SMTP) outgoing. It's a PITA, but I deal with it.

The phone company and the ISP are somewhat separate. That means that if you look on the wrong site or get the wrong phone number, they kick you over to the counterpart, and you have to wait through hold music again.

There may be a couple technical shortfalls, but the service and support make TDSMetrocom a winner in my book.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Zackbass]

Your rating probably has more to do with using a nonstandard one-to-ten rating system. Around here it's customary not to give something under a five unless it presents a considerable health risk. :P

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to reinvent the wheel.
http://www.dslreports.com/

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

9 RoadRunner. It's fast, they just doubled my download speed in the past year to 740KB/s!

Umm, yeah. Whatever. I've got Comcast and my download speed is 4 megabits. I still wouldn't recommend Comcast, because they don't have dialup backup (for when I'm out of town).

More importantly, as someone who receives email from RoadRunner's IP addresses all the time, I have to say they suck. They are responsible for more spam zombies than most of the other domains, except possibly for Verizon. I finally had to shut them off, entirely.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Newbreedofnerd]

I have Verizon FIOS here. I'll have the give them a 7. Overall, I've had a good experience with them. However my internet has been randomly going out lately. Also, their techies seemed to be either untrained or just idiots.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rate Verizon DSL service but I can't as I do not have them. They have been telling me service will be in my area "soon" or "next month" for the last 5 YEARS. That is no joke. I have even got snail mail several times in the last few years stating it was in my area, called and verified, got install dates but still nothing. In those situations, they've either left me an automatted phone call stating my order was cancelled or they have done nothing at all and let the install date pass with no explanation until I call them and ask what happened. I'm tempted to cut down the two telephone poles that they are responsible for that I was forced to give up some of my property for and call it even.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[thedak]

My ISP is cogeco in Ontario, Canada. Out of 10.. I think I'd have to give them a 10.

They have great, helpful support (not mindless lackeys, they can actually help you with your problem, and quickly). I have had no downtime in.. since the major outage we had last year. And any brief downtime I've ever had lasts approximately 10 minutes. My ISP has a practically flawless uptime record, great service.

As for value, I pay $50 CDN a month for a 6Mbit/640Kbit line and get those speeds pretty much all the time, any lower speeds is due to server and not ISP side. They do give what they promise. I'd recommend cogeco as an ISP in the niagara region to anyone.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Charter in Southern CA
Overall - 2/10

Poor connection quality. No official "support" for this crazy thing called "home networking" (Although it appears that they now have a new service just for that). If you even mention that you're behind a router they refuse to help you unless it is removed. Repairs or service appointments are often scheduled for weeks after the problem is reported (if they ever come at all)

Down speed is decent at 3mbps but you only get 256kbps up (their attempt at keeping home servers in check). On the phone, they consider any p2p program (BT) to constitute a file server, so better not mention that.

My connection will drop every 15 minutes (it happened as I was writing this) requiring the modem to be reset (and sometimes the router). They claim this is do to "bad wiring" but it happens to several friends of mine all in various living conditions, even a house built less than 2 years ago. This is the worst thing about Charter (at least for me), I could deal with all their other BS, but not being able to hold a connection for longer than 15 minutes makes all the benefits of broadband go away.

If you have other options, definitely avoid charter for home broadband.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[TwoTailedFox]

I'll do Wanadoo, the European ISP. I was with Freeserve as soon as I got DSL. I'll rate them an 8 overall, here is why. Wanadoo, like a lot of companies, employ basic people for telephone-based Tech Support. It's twice been the case where I've phoned up, and been smarter than the guy on the other end. Scenario: USB ADSL Modem. Now, if the software ceases to connect on three machines, that had all been working 24 hours before, the last thing I expect is to be lead through the TCP/IP protocol properties to disable IP Header Compression. Joy. As luck would have it, I bought a cheapie Router to allow me to connect to the internet again. And since all three PC's could now use the internet Simultaniously, I gave up on the replacement after 4 weeks. Other than that, Great ISP. Just need some people in Tech Support who know what they're on about

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[jht]

I use them for home, and I'd use them at my office if I could get anything other than IDSL from them at my location (I have an office in a huge old industrial complex where only Verizon and ISPs with facilities in the building can offer DSL). I've sent several of my friends and customers to Speakeasy with high confidence, and though I also wish they'd charge a little less, it's nice to have a DSL ISP that's still in business. That's pretty rare.

(I should know, before Speakeasy I was a Flashcom customer and then a DirecTV DSL user)

I did have a lot of trouble with them in early 2003, when I first signed up after DirecTV DSL chomped. The first time was really Verizon's fault - they screwed up the line release. The second time, though, was in May '93 when Speakeasy started switching users away from Covad's backbone - I was down for nearly two weeks and nearly walked away then.

To their credit, service since then has been utterly impeccable. The longest unscheduled outage I've had has been about 5-10 minutes or so, and never during the day. Speeds to most locations is very good as well. The important thing to me at this point is that Speakeasy tries to take care of customers properly, and even if they goof once in a while the fact that they make an effort is way better than most of the giants will do.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[hendridm]

Umm, yeah. Whatever. I've got Comcast and my download speed is 4 megabits.

Um, neat, but RoadRunner is 5 Mbps downstream cap.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[TheHawke]

I'll bite charter too.. The company, ironically is a ISP that uses charter as a link to our central office up north in Illinois. Initially it was supposed to be sbc and their "vaunted" DSL service, but 3 days before the office was supposed to open up, the tech came out and declared "19,750 feet". Even though the sales jerk said that we qualified, even after I requested that he do the loop qualification testing. Talk about some loose programming for I did the loop qual on their website after I got the phone #s for the office.
I thanked the tech for he did everything in his powers, including discovering a bridge tap 100 feet out and killing it.
I fumed for 15 minutes and let their "customer suport" have it with a 5 minute tirade about "fraudulent advertising".
I gave the local charter office a ring to get their business account. The dopey-sounding lady on the other end of the line didn't seem to be very happy with me calling, promised me that a business accountant would get in touch with me if I left her a number. I stomped on her lil speech with "LOOK! Do YOU want my business or not?" That froze her train of thought and then gave me a phone # to their business accounts. After sweet-talking the sweet lil thing on the other end of the line up in Colorado and filling her in on the situation and the hell I just went thru with sbc. She proceeded bend a few rules and gave us a next day installation slot. The tech came out 10AM, snaked the cable in, I had the router cocked and ready (fixed IP, more on that later) and was up before 2 PM.
The office opened on schedule.

Unfortunately, I cannot give high marks to their administrative sector on managing their IP pools. They jumped the IP addressing on us (we use RADIUS for our clients.) and was not given any kind of notice or indication until the northern office called us and asked to see if our servers were up. Upon replying yes, I checked the router to see what gives and discovered the changed IP. Called their business tech support and found out the hard way that they were playing musical IPs, the goofs. I steamed and asked him "where should I send the bill for the work involved in adjusting our systems and notifying our providers?", the goof gave a shrug.
They never did that agian, I can assure you.
After playing yoyo several (4-5) times these last couple of months, they seemed to have stabilized.

I'll give charter a 7 on business tech support, a 8 on customer relations (the portland office closed shortly after that incident) and a 5 on stability. Nothing spectactular, but i've seen and rode on better.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[TheKidWho]

Umm I just did a test with dslreports and pcpitstop, and my d/l speed was 4-4.5megabits per second.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[SteveXE]

Comcast 6 Download speed is good, I get about 500 kb/s, it could be better but im not complaining.

Upload speed is horrible, at about 40 kb/s, I want and need more.

Comcast charges waaaaay too much for what they give and their customer support is shoddy at best, they try to tell you routers arent allowed unless you buy one from them, every problem is always yours and they wont come out to try to fix it. If it was maybe $15 a month less then the service would be a 10, but for the price we pay, and what we get compared to other people I know its just horrible. What sucks even more is every other ISP in my area offers less for the same price so im stuck.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Guppy06]

"because we don't have to worry about not saying negative things about our sponsors, unlike a magazine like PC World." ... he says below a Microsoft ad...

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[paulius_g]

ISP: Sympatico (DSL, I've got the 3mbps package) (In Canada, myself in Montreal)
Rating: 8

Pros:
o Great Speeds
o Great Pings (despite their change of backbones, recently)
o Good hardware
o Better than Videotron (the other ISP in Montreal... which is based on Cable)

Cons:
o Bad tech support (generic office employees not caring about custommer situations and problems)
o Some problems with their billing

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[netwiz]

I bet you're using the 4.x.x.x DNS... avoid those like the plague. There's two old-school caching farms at 206.124.64.253 and 206.124.65.253 (from the GTE.net company) that are fast, fast, fast, and never down.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[miyako]

You've had better experience with comcast than I have. I'd give them a 5.
Their speeds tend to be pretty crappy overall 'round here. I tend to be on the computer mostly during off-peak hours, and I still only get about 200K down. Their upload speed is horrible as well, which really kills me since I usually have to upload several 30 to 100 meg files a week. Last time I check on getting a static ip, the only plan they had to offer a static ip required you to buy 5 static ip's and a "business class" connection, which I would pay for if it came with a faster upload, but it doesn't.
Their reliability is also very spotty in my experience. I went through 4 months of very intermittent service, 3 replacement cable modems, and way too many service calls before they figgured out that there were some problems with the lines in my neighborhood. They also seem to go out between 11pm and 3am every night for a week about once every other month.
One of the many times the tech came out to my house, he went to check the connection, saw that the computer was running Linux, and left right there, Comcast refused to do any more work on my connection (even though, as I mentioned before it was the lines, and the only reason they even wanted to use the computer was to run traceroute) until I installed a supported Windows operating system. I never did, instead I just installed a theme that cloaned Windows XP onto KDE, and aliased traceroute to tracert, the tech never noticed the difference.
I would have switched away long ago, except I can't get DSL and there are no other companies offering broadband in my area.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[ArcticFlood]

Illinois Area, Charter:
8/10

Pretty good speeds and decent service. Some odd downtime quirks. Limited upload at 128kb/s.

The only complaint I have is the local dialup ISP uses Charter for their service, so if Charter's down, my town is basically down.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, I'm only laughing because I'm happy to be rid of Charter Communications. When I lived in Western Wisconsin, Charter was the cable provider.

Our connection was down constantly, and when I called their crappy tech support it was always my fault ("must be the cable lines in your building"). Having had enough, I gave SBC DSL a try. Although their upload speed was poor, their download was excellent and it never went down once. Funny how Charter always made excuses as to why it was MY fault, but SBC's DSL just worked without question (I feel so dirty).

Charter was plagued with problems. I'm so happy I can choose between SBC and RoadRunner in my current location. Charter was the worst ISP I've ever been with. I'm currently with RoadRunner, and although expensive, the quality of service has been phenomenal.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[lordvdr]

The Door
Careful, not door.com ;)

I'd give it them an 8. Their local, but they cover a pretty decent chunk of Texas and New Mexico.
Upsides:
1. $50/mo gets me 5mbit up AND DOWN via 802.11a.
2. Decent reliability (only 1 significant outage I can remember and it was core router).
3. Pretty low latency (20-70ms to the internet at large).
4. Weather doesn't effect my connection (even the tornado filled storms we get).

Downsides:
1. Tech support. Decent hours, but not 24/7. Relatively useless as well.
2. Owner's a PITA.
3. Install fees were pretty steep when I signed my contract, but they aren't too bad now. Still shows 1mbt/$50 but I'm pretty sure it's 5mbt all around.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[cbiltcliffe]

Hey! Look at that! It's an idiot!! Talking crap about something he knows jack about!

740KB/s is KiloByte per second, not Kilobit. KB/s...Kb/s. See the difference?
Your 4Mb/s link has a theoretical maximum of 500 KB/s download. For all practical purposes, you might as well make that 400KB/s.

740KB/s is almost 6Mb/s. Kinda smokes yours....

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Tokah]

I also use Optimum Online. I'd rate them a 6/10. In general, its speed is good and consistent. The eventual upload cap makes sharing a house hard though, as your housemates can easily screw up your connection. The price isn't bad. The only complaint about their service I have is that its difficult to transfer accounts. Unfortunately, OO payed off the DSL providers not to provide to my neighborhood for a few years, so I don't actually have any other useful choices.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[bfields]

PC World doesn't even mention Speakeasy

I rate them a 9, only because I think the cost is a bit high. But, service is exceptional and reliable.

Just a "me too" on everything but the cost, which seems pretty reasonable to me. I've had them a few years now. It's been completely reliable, and the rare times that I've asked for any customer service they seemed efficient and knowledgeable.

All my mail is delivered directly to my home machine (and I also run low-traffic personal web service and stuff), and it's never caused me any problems.

--Bruce Fields

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[MsGeek]

DSL Extreme.

Unequivocal 10 out of 10. I am getting better speeds now than was initially provisioned, the customer service rocks, and the people there are 100% computer enthusiasts. They are friendly enough for your grandma but geek-friendly for anyone who is a regular here. And yes, you get static IPs! 3 on a basic static IP package, 5 on the high-speed high-performance tiers.

They serve 100% of SBC Last Mile customers in the US, and Verizon Last Mile customers in California. They also use Covad as a provider. They will support FIOS and DSL2 when they are rolled out by VZ and SBC respectively.

http://www.dslextreme.com/

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[proxima]

I wish my experience with speakeasy was as good.

A while back I went to their site to see if they offered DSL in my future hometown (using the address of one of the potential apartments I was looking at). No problem, a little contact info provided and I had my answer - they did. I actually got followup e-mails from a salesperson, asking if I was still interested.

Eventually, with my apartment picked out, I was. I contacted him and received quality responses - he responded to my questions quickly and accurately. My only complaint through this process was that one couldn't go through the order process online; for such a tech-friendly ISP, you have to provide credit card info (to get the order started) over the phone (toll-free number, no big deal).

A week or so later I receive a response; though my address was cleared for DSL service by the automated system, and though the sales rep had my address for a while, it turns out that my new address is more than 16,000 ft away from their location (presumably the company they're reselling from). I'm assuming that the program that initially checks for availability only uses zip codes, and my zip code is probably mostly covered. So after all this back and forth with the sales rep, I can't even get DSL service to the apartment (ISDN/T1 are available, but the rep acknowledged how those just aren't practical).

I ended up ordering SBC, but I'm anticipating issues. I don't get a static IP (those were much more expensive than through Speakeasy), but I do get fast DSL + phone line for about $40/mo + taxes. Since I wasn't planning on getting a phone line (it only saved about $6/mo w/ Speakeasy), it will at least provide a dialup backup when I inevitably have problems with SBC...

I hope I'm wrong about SBC, I really am. I also really wanted to get Speakeasy and really wanted to like them, but I'm pretty disappointed with their order process. Maybe at my next location, or *crosses fingers* they'll have service available in a year or two.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[bdcrazy]

Same experience as the parent It is a tad expensive, ~$45 a month for 6mbps/1mbps with basic cable (~$15). Otherwise its ~$60. Kinda fishy to me, but its the only thing available in my area besides dial up (middle of 3 suburbs, considered unincorporated but thats another story).

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[drsquare]

It's called 'Firefly'. I'd give it 1 out of 10. Hideously expensive (£20/month), constant cut-offs, low speed (Currently connected at 31.2kbps), and they bitch about using it for too many hours. I suppose it's my own fault for living somewhere with no broadband.

All my other ISPs have cut me off for using them too much. Apparently not content with giving me a shitty dialup service for a price approaching broadband, they want me to use it for barely a few minutes a day.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[grahamm]

Could you not have asked them to measure the actual line characteristics from your new address? While many ISPs quote a distance restriction, what are actually important are the attenuation and signal/noise ratio. When quoting distance limits, they use 'standard' line characteristics. So it is possible that your line may work even if initial (paper) checks show that it is too far from the switch. So it is always a good idea to get someone to actually test your line for suitability.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[zebs]

Yep, PlusNet are pretty good with good prices too. Cheapest service is £14.99 (approx $30) for 2Mb down, 256up (best you can get in the UK without using cable or a LLU provider. Support is generally pretty good, and I can only remember one outage about 2 years ago.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Cardcaptor_RLH85]

For Comcast Cablevision's Internet Service: I rate it at an 8 overall. My tested speed is always close to the stated rates of 4 mbps upstream 384 kbps downstream. I haven't had any provider related downtime in about 4 years except for storms/trees taking out wires or stations and even those were fixed quickly. My only problem with them is that their customer service telephone wait time is VERY long. The last time I called (I was installing a new cable modem and had to get it activated) I waited for 45 minutes before I got connected to a person. However, besides the wait time the service is pretty good.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[CmdrGravy]

Agreed, Blueyonder just offer a good service with no messing about. Although they don't officially support Linux it appears most of the technicians use it themselves anyway and there are some good newsgroups for troubleshooting.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[DJCF]

Seconded. Like the parent, I was with Freeserve before they became Wannadoo. The tech support, while slightly clueless, are at least helpful and polite and, after being stuck for a week when the free USB modem broke, the tech even bended over backwards to get me a new one even though I was technically out of the warranty period.

Technical stuff: dynamic IP (though I have a dyndns account so I'm not bothered), no blocked ports, and as far as I can tell, no blocked websites or blacklists either. The prices are competive, although their speeds could be higher and they have an annoying monthly limit on all their pricing plans. I'm on 30gig, which apparently I've been exceeding for the past three months. I don't use their POP3 servers though on the rare occaisions I have I've had issues. There has also been some unexpected downtime more than once in the past year, though from what I can tell this has been BT's problem at the local exchange. I'm using the free USB modem under Linux, works fine.

All in all, they're a good ISP. Like the parent, I'd rate them 8 out 10. I can only talk about the British branch of Wannadoo, though, and European slashdotter's mileage may vary.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[TwoTailedFox]

If you're on a 30GB Cap, you've gotten the 1MB Line. I'm still on 512KB, with no cap (as per the original Freeserve terms), as I actually read the small print before sending off £20 to change the bandwidth ;)

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Azzhole]

In Fla., Netrox is the best I've ever seen. I live in the boonies ( edge of Da Swamp) and Bell South SUCKED. Netrox has had me up and running literally 100% for 3 years. The only time they ever went down was when it was a bell South tele line issue... maybe 2 hours in 3 years. Did I mention that Dubya is a dickhead ?

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[smittyoneeach]

A FAQ?

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Dead Chicken]

I have been a Speakeasy customer for about 3 years, and if you are a loyal customer, call them and ask for a loyal customer discount. They will knock $5 off per month. Not alot but still something to balance out the cost.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Patchw0rk F0g]

Rogers Cable (Canada, Toronto area) has not has an outage in over 1 year now, in my contact area. I'm only pissed at their partnering with Yahoo to off-load the services they didn't want to deal with; ie. web-hosting, email etc. Try pimping yourself as a web-site designer/graphic designer when your web-space just switched to fucking Geo-cities, sandwiched between "I Love Astrology.com" and the newest Lindasy Lohan fan sight!

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Khelder]

Another vote for Speakeasy. I had DSL from them at home and it was great. Static IP, support for Linux, good connectivity.

Now I can't get DSL (In the middle of the Northern VA burbs, too. What's up with that??), so I had to go with Comcast cable. It's more expensive than it ought to be (~$55/mo), but it has been totally reliable so far.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[evilviper]

I'll say Charter is the worse ISP I've ever used... Broadband, Dialup, wireless, whatever. Your experience wasn't nearly as horrible as mine.

They had rather high prices, charging about $40/month for 256k, while 1+MBps DSL was under $50. Besides that, only once, after I complained quite loudly, did they give me a partial deduction on my monthly bill, because of the service being completely useless 99% of the time. How about a 4 on price/value.

Their tech support was bad (but far, far better than I would later get with Verizon). I'd give Charter a 3 on support.

I had nothing but problems with the connection. At first, it would just be offline during peak hours during the day, so I didn't mind very much. But it got very bad very quickly. For about the last 3 months of the service, I could get a signal about 5% of the time, and it wouldn't last long. It's really unbelievable how torrible it was. I only stayed with them that long because they kept sending technicians out, who made some trivially minor adjustment, (like replacing the brand-new connectors on the coax) and then claim it would work perfectly now. Of course it was down again a few minutes after they left. Call them up again, go through their mind numbing Windows procudures, and get told to call back 75% of the time... I had someone comming out every week, and never once did any one of them say anything about really fixing the problem, or that they couldn't fix it. Replace a connector, replace a small segment of coax, reset the modem, repeat. Charter gets an absolute 0 for the connection quality in my experience with them.

So, overall, I'd give them a 1. Sure, it could have been worse, but not without widespread criminal fraud involved...

Verizon has the absolute worst tech support I've ever seen. They get a big 0. No matter what your problem, either they have some reassuring answer that it'll all be fixed by tomorrow (so call back then, and bother somebody else) that is ridiculous and never happens, or they are just completely wrong, and bullshiting their way through the call. Crap like your cable modem isn't getting a signal because you haven't signed up for an e-mail address yet.

Verizon is pretty good in every other respect though. Very fast connection, reliable, no PPPoE crap, slightly lower cost than the competition, etc. Of course it's entirely possible that they have been sabotaging the competition in all those respects.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[DJCF]

I started off with the 512/no cap like you but switched to the faster line because I though the extra speed outweighed the usage cap. I'm not that inconvenianced, though I am looking for a new ISP for even more speed :-D

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[J3M]

I'll also give Insight BB a 9. Very pleased with the service and connection. We (Southern Indiana) get Insight BB for $40 a month though. May be because there are other options here (although all of the options suck).

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[rvega]

For what it's worth, I've had exactly the opposite experience. I pay $45 (plus tax, I'm sure) for 1.5 Mbit Qwest DSL + ISP service. I never had any billing problem. The service was available precisely when Qwest said it would be, and I've never had an outage or noticable degradation of service quality. I had a few questions for their tech support people early on and found them well-informed, professional and responsive. I'm a fairly harsh judge on this sort of thing, as I've regularly dealt with networking providers as part of my work and I don't suffer tech-support fools happily, so this is saying a lot.

My only complaint is that Qwest offers MSN as their primary ISP and MSN is fairly evil. No POP/IMAP or SMTP is available (Hotmail only!), nor NNTP. They do provide McAffee antivirus (alas, I'm running Windows on my laptop), which is good. For the record, Qwest does offer their own ISP service, Qwest.net, with all the stuff MSN lacks, but it costs a bit more.

Can you not get cable broadband at your apartment? At mine, the broadband choice is between the phone company (Qwest), or the cable company (Comcast). Someone might want to correct me on this if I'm mistaken, but since the Federal government has refused to enforce the open-access regulations on the regional telcos, these may be the only two choices a lot of people have. By which I mean, it might not be a shady deal between your apartment complex and Qwest (which seems unlikely anyway, on the face of it) but just the state of the market at the moment. From a technical perspective, the only way you'd have more options would be if a) Qwest allowed other companies to do business on their copper, and why would they do that? or b) your landlord allows you to pay a competitor to pull new copper/cable/fiber/whatever onto their property to offer competing service, and why would they do that?

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK... I must be the luckiest bastard on the planet. I get 6Mbs down and 768K back from speakeasy and a static IP for $32 a month AFTER taxes. After you're with them for a year, I told them I was switching because Comcast had a great deal and they refused to let me leave.

Anyways, they have the best customer service and their network is top notch. I average 15-20 pings (CS Source) all over the country.

Posting anomnimously because I want to stay on their good side.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

BellSouth Xtreme DSL

Service : 10

Support: 5

It works great, but in the rare event you actually do have a problem that involves more than rebooting your computer, you are pretty much SOL with their tech support.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[WeblionX]

I've never had an incoming speed greater than 400KB/s except on very rare occasions. The modem says it's capped at 11Mbps (I forget the IP number to look at it, but it's probably limited elsewhere, too), but I figure it's either the firewall or my router that's slowing down traffic. Either that or the lines out here are of poorer quality than I thought.

I've never had to use tech support, and I don't use their email servers so I can't comment on those. The port 80 block is rather annoying, though.

I just recently discovered they had newsgroups, but I haven't tried many groups.

I never knew about the upload caps, but I bet I've experienced it. That really stinks, and combined with the port 80 block, I'm thinking about switching.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[default luser]

You complain about price, but with the exception of key highly-competitive markets, and bundle discounts, the average price of broadband in the US is in the $40-50 range.

I have Comcast in Maryland, and I'd give them a 7. When it works, the speed is as-advertised, and pings are excellent. The system has only gone down occasionally over the last 2 years, and we've never had to call out for a tech. The original install was on-time, within their 3-hour window, and took about 20 minutes.

My only complaint: for about 2-3 months about a year ago when the blaster worm was making the rounds, Comcast was pathetically slow at filtering out the effects on their internal network, making service spotty. Once that passed, service was excellent.

Given the fact that Comcast is the only game in town in this neighborhood (more than 20k feet away, and they have a DLC preventing DSL), I'm impressed the quality of service is so high.

Two years ago I used Speakeasy in Baltimore, and I'd give them an 8. The price was a bit high at the time ($50 for 608Kb/s down, 128Kb/s up, $10 more for static IP).

The service also didn't deliver the advertised download speeds (typically 400Kb/s. even with TCP/IP overhead, this is too low), however ping times and gaming were excellent.

The customer service was top-notch.

Sure, they're both expensive, but they're hardly the exception. The only way you'd get under the $40 mark around here would be to go with Verizon, and that's just insane. They have no concept of how to run a solid broadband ISP. In addition, you'd have to have local phone service, which I do not, making the price less competitive.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[cayenne8]

Cox Cable in New Orleans, I give them a 10. Business account, for about $70/mo. Fast speeds, at least a minimal SLA, and they call YOU back on problem calls, rather than you having to wait online. No ports blocked...you can run all the servers you wish, and no stated bandwith limitations....and static IP address.

I've been very happy with them...left Mindspring/Earthlink DSL...got run around from them for over 2 months...when someone finally said they didn't have any static ip's to give out in my area...crappy service..went out all the time...and the Cox service listed above..is only $10/mo more than the crap Earthlink tried to sell me.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[ptbarnett]

They block port 25 (SMTP) outgoing. It's a PITA, but I deal with it.

A few years ago, I was being spammed by an email worm. I was getting hit several times an hour, from different email addresses. But, they all originated from the same IP: a TDS broadband customer. I tried changing sendmail to deny that IP address, but the worm simply switched to my backup SMTP server, which dutifully forwarded it to me (I don't have access to that server).

I sent several emails to TDS customer support, identifying the client IP address and including the complete text of the email with headers -- even before TDS's auto-reply told me to send it. But, I never got any human reply from TDS.

The spam went on for weeks and finally stopped -- perhaps that's how TDS did so: by blocking outgoing port 25 altogether.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[not_hylas( )]

LMI
Rating 8

http://www.lmi.net/support/index.php

Really good experience, run by white hat geeks in Berkley.
If you call them with a problem they will help you.
WOW, WHAT A CONCEPT!
Cool Colocation Services (whatever HW you want) they speak fluent FreeBSD.
You can walk in and Security won't decend on you like a pack of locust.
Did I mention they acually know what their doing?
Wonders never cease.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is falling over themselves to praise Speakeasy, so I went over to take a look.

For starters, you can't even find out if you can even get their service without giving up your name, phone number, complete address, and email address ! If they are so with it, and get our geek needs, why do they require so much superfluous information? They only need your phone number! I'm not gonna give them all that information, I get enough spam, thank you very much! (Privacy Policies aren't worth diddly -- just wait till Speakeasy gets bought out by Verizon or SBC, or whomever.)

Also, most of their home packages have dynamic IPs (some of them listing this as a PLUS feature). The deal package seems to be the Tech+ package, where for 60 bucks a month you get 1.5 Mb down and 384 Kb up, 2 static IP addresses, Unix shell account... That's about 20 bucks more than I currently pay for fair to middling service from Verizon, and about twice the speed. Definately tempting. But I don't think I can get Speakeasy in my area, and with their stupid site, I guess I'll never know... (and I'm not that eager to drop an extra $20 a month just for more speed and a static IP -- can't really justify needing it other than geekiness: wow! look at how fast I can load Slashdot now!)

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[foxhound01]

oh yeah, i forgot to mention the blocked ports on the private account, can't use http or ftp servers "for my own safety" according to the FAQ.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[croydon]

Time Warner's Road Runner: 9

They have increased there download speeds from ~250kB/s a few years ago to ~550kB/s recently. It very rarely goes out. You can count the number of times I've used tech support on one hand in the 5 years I've had it mainly because it's a last resort. They basically beat your computer into submission to get you online and you have fix your network settings.
One particular instance was a bad outside cable. They replaced the modem, which didn't fix the problem, and eventually replaced the cable. What they failed to tell us was the account should have reflected the new modem serial number prior to installing it. We didn't realize a problem until no one could access there email. We had to create a new primary account and new email accounts which could have been prevented.

Having high download speeds and high availability, which are my priorities, is why I rated it high.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[SteveXE]

Well I went from $30/month DSL at 2mbps/2mbps to cable which is currently 5mbps/768kbps, at the time of the switch Comcast was 1.5mbps/128kbps I pay $20 more a month for Comcast then I did DSL but because of outside line problems the phone company refused to fix, although they confirmed they existed I had to switch. I know quite a few people in other countries that pay far less for access and get far better speeds then we do in this country, the country that invented the Internet, now how the hell does that make sense?

nth post

[Anonymous Coward]

not frost piss

Make the "Grade?"

[Scott Swezey]

Last time I called my ISP for tech support, they left me on the line with some automated POS for 20 minutes. Then, after I followed all of its crap instructions, it made me wait for 20 more minutes while it was "waiting for my modem to respond." If the modem would connect to their network, do you think I would have been calling them?! As far as I am concerned, most everywhere with a "Tech support" department fails.

Re:Make the "Grade?"

[droptone]

While I understand your angst, but you do have to realize the type of calls an ISP's tech support gets. They don't have systems to tell whether you have half a clue about computers/networks/etc, so they go through procedure. A pain in the ass, yet acceptable to me.

Re:Make the "Grade?"

[IANAAC]

They don't have systems to tell whether you have half a clue about computers/networks/etc, so they go through procedure.

Perhaps not, but when you explicitly tell them you've already tried what they're script-reading to you, yet continue to ask you to rep4eat ad nauseum the same test(s), that's a pretty good clue that they're not listening to anything you have to say. A pain in the ass, and unacceptable to me.

I'm fortunate enough that I had a choice of other, more qualified providers.

Re:Make the "Grade?"

[Scott Swezey]

Perhaps not, but when you explicitly tell them you've already tried what they're script-reading to you, yet continue to ask you to rep4eat ad nauseum the same test(s), that's a pretty good clue that they're not listening to anything you have to say. A pain in the ass, and unacceptable to me.

Amen

Re:Make the "Grade?"

[Firehawke]

I used to work for an unnamed service provider that I'm still under assorted NDAs with (propreitary documents up the wazoo) and I can tell you one thing about how these guys have their policy.

It's not that the reps aren't listening, it's that they're not allowed to. If they deviate from the routine questions, they'll be back on the unemployment line in a week at most with a permanent 'unsatisfactory' on their record keeping them from being employable again.

Sure, there are incompetent techs, but you get that everywhere. It's just that the competent ones have to stick to the same rules.

"Best of" chart seems limited

[knifeyspooney]

Only the biggest, corporate ISP's are considered. Where are the independent national ISP's that frequently outrank the big ones in other surveys, such as bway.net and Speakeasy?

Re:"Best of" chart seems limited

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA, bozo.

There's like a whole page dedicated to local ISPs. And the chart graphics state that fewer than 50 responses for any single ISP disqualified its inclusion.

I also find it laughable that they were asking dialup users if they were "extremely happy" with upload/download speeds. Talk about skewed! Of course cable and DSL will score higher. That has nothing to do with how an ISP is performing -- how they are servicing their customers -- and it's ludicrous that this was not taken into account.

Great article, but the non-weighted scored skew in favor of broadband providers. I'd like to see a comparison of dialup-only providers for a proper head-to-head.

Re:"Best of" chart seems limited

[Reaperducer]

Sorry to break it to you, but Speakeasy and Bway are both corporation, too.

Verizon is 3rd

[Anonymous Coward]

...but beware. I was promised incredible speeds, only to find out that getting 40kb/sec is pretty much my max.

Earthlink (via TW Cable) - 10+

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when I moved I was looking for a new broadband provider. SBC DSL had served me very well in my previous location, but the low upspead was troublesome (particularly when my S.O. would do video chat - connection would come to a halt). So I decided I would try cable modem again (ditching our land line also helped this decision).

Time Warner (RoadRunner) is the cable operator in my area. At the time there were a choice of three resellers - RoadRunner ($44.95), Earthlink ($41.95), and a local ISP reseller ($42.95). EarthLink was the cheapest, so I decided to give them a try.

The connection has been great (no big surprise, since it's TW cable), but more impressive was the customer service. I have had very few reasons to contact Earthlink, but the couple times I did they answered my question in a very timely manner. They also have online chat with a technician, and they actually answer it!

In the end, I'm saving $3/month and getting fantastic customer service to boot (plus some other features the RoadRunner service doesn't have).

Score: 10+

Re:Earthlink (via TW Cable) - 10+

[MyLongNickName]

In the end, I'm saving $3/month and getting fantastic customer service to boot (plus some other features the RoadRunner service doesn't have).

Such as? I'm curious... might make me switch..

Re:Earthlink (via TW Cable) - 10+

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing a savvy user might necessarily care about, but features a novice could certainly benefit from. First of all, they give you web space. Although it's small and featureless, it's served me well for posting those Fark Photoshops that get heavy transfer that I don't want messing up my own web site's stats.

Their spywayre and phishing blocker is decent too. Although I personally don't use them, I installed them on my parents' machine.

In the end, the best reason to switch is the customer service, IMO. Saving $3/month is only icing on the cake. YMMV, but it can't be any worse than big cable I figure.

typical PC world crap

[netwiz]

they can't even get the fiber-to-the-premesis description right. Verizon's Fios product runs singlemode right up into the breakout box in the home. What did they think "customer premesis" meant, anyway?

Additionally, I'm kinda surprised the cable services are doing as well as they are, given their history of service outages.

Re:typical PC world crap

[kesuki]

The problem with cable internet is two fold, a. crappy modems that overheat in any room that ever goes above 60 degrees F. and b. crappy deployments where too many subscribers are branched off one network, and when one opens a torrent they all get hosed down to dial up speed. To deal with A. I have a mini fridge my cable modem, and router/firewall are both sitting happily at 40 degrees F, and I can download/game/whatever to my hearts content. to deal with B. well, frankly that hasn't happend to me in a while, A. has happend with 2 of 3 cable companies (one was a motorola modem, the other was cheap no-name rebranded motorola chip based modem from china) so if I wasn't smarter than my isp, I'd be pissed as hell..

Reporters report reporting on the report.

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Is this some sort of pyramid scheme? Does Microsoft donate to charity if I report that Slashdot reports that Broadband Reports reports a PC World article on the best and worst Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to someone else?

Re:Reporters report reporting on the report.

[mccalli]

Depends. Are you a reporter?

Cheers,
Ian

comcast cable

[shop S Mart]

I'm happy with my comcast cable connection. The speed is good and it's only gone down once in the past year and that was at 2am when i was just browsing the web so it wasn't that big a deal. The only encounter with tech support was when my fiancee broke the modem when the coax got caught on something and it snapped the jack off the modem. I called, wasn't on hold for long, and told them the modem was broken and needed to be replaced. The tech had someone come out with a new modem asap which left me without internet for only about 1.5 days. He even hooked it up to my router for me, which he didn't need to do. ps i'm in Roseville Ca

Re:comcast cable

[Anonymous Coward]

>>at 2am when i was just browsing the web s
>>the coax got caught on something and it snapped the jack off the modem

ok... browsing at 2am and using the phrase "jack off"...
so YOU'RE where all of MY 2am browsing bandwidth is going!

Re:comcast cable

[Anonymous Coward]

hah, you got lucky punk! my commiecast goes out at least 3 times a day, i call tech support, 30 minutes MINIMUM, and its the standard reboot the modem shit over and over. its annoying as all hell....stupid contracts too. not to mention i NEVER get full speed.

Re:comcast cable

[vertinox]

Yeah, Comcast is like the ISP that isn't bad, but isn't spectacular, but you usually don't have to worry about it being out most of time or have intermittent connections. I think that has to do with the fact that Coax connections are a bit more stable than DSL in worse case scenarios. DSL may get faster speeds, but allot more can go wrong since it's on phone lines and goes through more networks than a cable one does (trust me I was a DSL tech for a year). With Cable you usually turn it on and it works. If it doesn't... Then well it usually doesn't work at all where as DSL might work fine most of the day but when the street lights come on it might go off or if the neighbors phone line is crossed with yours and he makes a phone call. Either way Comcast is mostly transparent. I don't mind them even though if I could justify the costs I'm sure I would go with SpeakEasy or Covad DSL for the higher speeds and more IPs.

I have only one provider

[geekp0wer]

I can only get broadband from my cable provider. No DSL in my hood. If I can only get one provider are they the worst or the best?

So, in the UK...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you still cut the tincan off and tie the string directly to your 386 like you used to, or do you now have a shoebox with the word "router" scrawled on it in crayon?

Re:So, in the UK...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess... you're one of the Americans that think that the UK is in the middle east ?

broadbandreports.com

[ben1440]

broadbandreports.com goes pretty indepth with reviewing isp's

ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

What a horrible way to organize information...like seriously, it's obvious that the website was designed with getting ad revenue as the first order of business. I can barely read through it to get to the content that I want. Ugh.
--
The Cryptography Center

Customer service

[xstonedogx]

Don't forget excellent customer service.

I've never had anything but top-notch customer service from them. It's their number one selling point as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Customer service

[Anonymous Coward]

ugh. speakeasy for me was a vomitous mass. the entire time i subscribed to it i experienced dropoffs, billing problems, and slowdowns in service, and pretty much every other thing that could go wrong, did. three years after moving out of the apartment where i had speakeasy's service, i received a letter from a collection agency stating that i had a late payment, and speakeasy had contacted the collection agency to get what amounted to $40.

the only problem was that i had transferred ownership of the bill to the new tenant when i moved, and the bill they were talking about was HIS last bill, not mine. that didn't stop them from sending me periodic e-mails stating that a bill was overdue, or notifications of service outages. no matter what we did, or who we called, speakeasy could not keep our information straight.

i can't even write anymore on this, it gets me that angry. arhhrhhaghahsdfkjasldf

not all gravy

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of reviews like yours, I waited four months for a Speakeasy line in Orange County, CA. The service has been okay (not great) since then, but seriously, four months?

and in canada?

[gsergiu]

well?

Re:and in canada?

[cryptoz]

Isn't it funny how "PC World" only reports on US stuff? Hehe..

Re:and in canada?

[rzebram]

"PC World, Canada reports that the combination of log and barbed wire still provides the best Canadian internet connection. The IP-over-telegraph-over-mountie protocol sponsored by local Canadian ISP, 'Inernet, eh?' came in a close second, sporting excellent connectivity considering the region, however tech support was lacking."

Yeah, that's the best I can come up with for today *ducks out*.

Re:and in canada?

[Vrejakti]

The real joke is that Canada is far ahead of the US when it comes to broadband speeds and availability...

Re:and in canada?

[Kwirl]

canadians don't say "well?" - we all know they say "eh?"

Re:and in canada?

[Silvrmane]

Generally Canada has lead in broadband services over our neigbours to the south. You might think its funny to think that we are more backwards than the US, but technically speaking, its the other way around. A higher percentage of Canadians than Americans have access to broadband services, and a higher percentage of us use them.

I've had experience with Sympatico and Shaw. Sympatico DSL speeds were pretty good, their service was so, so. We parted ways several years ago over a dispute they and I had about what kind of mail service they were going to offer with a higher speed package - I said no to webmail. 5/10

Since that time I've been using Shaw's cable service. DSLReports shows my download speed to be in excess of 3200 kbps down and over 780 kbps up. I'm happy with that. My IPs are not static, but they don't change as long as my systems stay connected. I run a server and am a heavy sharing user. Technical support has been 24/7 and always finds the problem, even though they may need a little coaching from me from time to time (they needed convincing that there was water in the tap box out on the line once). 9/10

Re:and in canada?

[phizman]

The article really only highlights growth. Pretty useless stat for Canada since the broadband penetration is already very high.

DSL isn't all that great...

[internetjunkiegeorge]

Depending on where you live and everything, DSL isn't as good as cable. In my neighborhood, all the gamers are on the DSL 29 hours a day so when I used to have it I couldn't do what I wanted fast enough. Cable works a lot better. I use Cox, I'd rate their customer service around a -43819703471085, but their service is pretty reliable, around a 7-8.

Re:DSL isn't all that great...

[Brandybuck]

Get a different DSL provider than, because my experience has been the opposite. My DSL circuit is considered "telecommute/soho" class, and doesn't have any gamers on it. The rate isn't limited and they aren't crowding the dslam. On the other hand, my friends with cable have moderately faster download speeds, but truly nasty latencies.

Re:DSL isn't all that great...

[Khyber]

Umm. DSL isn't shared, so your friends and peepz in the hood that are using DSL to game 24/7 AREN'T AFFECTING YOUR BANDWIDTH. Cable modem is shared bandwidth. DSL is dedicated.

Re:DSL isn't all that great...

[Alioth]

It's not the gamers that soak up your bandwidth, it's people using P2P software. Games still use relatively little bandwidth per user (especially compared to P2P).

Sad memories

[Leroy_Brown242]

This makes me miss the Pacific NW ISP, Transport Logic.

I loved it so much, I worked there. Until First World bought them and drove themselves out of business.

New Lepers

[Moiche]

This just confirms what we already suspected: dial-up users are the new lepers in our wired heirarchical society, and they're dissatisfied about it. Moiche

Re:New Lepers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, aren't you an insensitive clod?

I am one of those "dial-up lepers" that you
refer to. It isn't as if I couldn't get
broadband where I live - it's just too bloody
expensive (called DirectPC). I live on the
side of a mountain in West Virginia with my
sister and our two wonderful childern. The
nearest town is 20 miles away, as the crow flies.
The actual POTS wiring distance to the CO is
closer to 30 miles away. On a clear dry night,
my 56K modem can squeeze out a paltry 30kbps.
This distance is far too far away for DSL or
ADSL service. And the last time we ever saw a
cable company truck in our neighborhood was 3
years ago when one was stolen and the bucket
used for a makeshift tree stand. Just 'cause
we don't have broadband internet service doesn't
mean that we're backward, just under served.

Yeah, but was that a SpeakEasy issue?

[SuperKendall]

I waited four months for a Speakeasy line in Orange County, CA

SpeakEasy is at the mercy of the local phone company to do some parts of the install - so I would say that's more an issue with your local phone co (PacBel??) than SpeakEasy.

I don't have SpeakEasy myself, as when I tried a few years ago it seemed there was a residential splitter which pretty much blocked DSL from reaching me - but I think that's since be rectified so I'm going to try them again.

Re:Yeah, but was that a SpeakEasy issue?

[sk999]

I also waited 4 months, and yes, it was a Speakeasy issue [i.e., they created the problem. they told me that I needed to take steps to fix it, in the end they were the only ones who could fix it, which they did, but jeez, 4 months wasted.] Since then, however, the service has been impeccable. SBC, of course, was more than willing to step in and sell me service, but they couldn't figure out how far I was from the central office, even telling me that I couldn't qualify for more than their lowest level of service, in spite of the fact that a good golf shot from my front yard would hit the side of their building!

Eastlink.ca rocks! :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Eastlink in Canada.

Ranked #3 at DSLReport's fastest ISPs, but it's actually faster than what those tests reports.

We just upgraded to 10mbit down / 1.5 mbit up and the speed is actually that fast.

55$cdn a month (~45USD).

It's not a perfect ISP, but it's fast, reliable, they don't mind routers (for multiple PCs - which is against the TOS of every other ISP 'round here). By the TOS you can't run servers, but if you don't do anything stupid (open relays or whatever) or run commercial sites on your line they'll leave you alone.

It was also the first ISP in Canada to offer local telephone service (it's VoIP-based), and the prices (bundled with internet; best LD rates around; cable tv also avail, and rebates on cellular plans).

Best ISP in Canada. Can't complain! :)

ISP

[Robotron23]

On the whole, over the past 5 years Blueyonder has served myself and my family pretty well. The transition from dial-up to broadband was smooth, heck even the guy who came to fit the cable was polite. Downtime has been 0.01%, perhaps less and usually very late at night. That and the two free upgrades from 512k -> 768k -> 1024k being a bonus, though the upload speed for 1 meg customers remains at a low 128k with no sign of budging.

The only ISP I've heard really bad things about is AOL, for their downtime and awful customer service mainly. Also, BT is pretty strict when it comes to download limit, you can only dl a couple of films over their lines per month, then they've always been a shrewd ass company IMO.

Whats interesting is the pricing system, pay per minute isn't an option for Broadband technology. Some ISP's are offering 512k for £15 a month now, which is uber-low...the bare minimum one could get that for back in 2003 was £25. By 2010 the price will be down to 10 pounds or less...Blueyonder were pretty wise to simply upgrade their servers in favour of decreasing price. Though they still keep a 256k connection offer for the budget trade.

Re:ISP

[nogginthenog]

Unlike BlueYonder (which I use too) the cheaper ISPs generally have a download cap. Plus, if they are ADSL based you need to add the cost of BT line rental.

Now what happens when/if Telewest merge with NTL will be interesting. IIRC NTL currently has a 1GB per day cap.

For UK ISPs...

[Insipid Trunculance]

Go to ADSLguide.

Re:For UK ISPs...

[Lord of Ironhand]

And as for Dutch ISP's, XS4ALL is the ultimate geek ISP. Excellent services (bsd shell, static IP, *encourages* running servers, large experimental binary usenet server), very reliable. And they even sponsor Debian (*points at XS4ALL logo in lower left of Debian site*).

The cable ratings are truly bizarre.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what magic powder Earthlink's slipping into their monthly bills, but their customers must be high.

Earthlink scored an 87 in the download speed category, significantly higher than Road Runner's 81, and Cox's 76. Which is a little bit funny, because Earthlink doesn't actually provide network services to their cable customers -- Earthlink customers with Cox or Time Warner cable coming into their home get the exact same data service as Cox and Road Runner subscribers. (Earthlink does set their own price, and offers their own "extra features" -- but those don't affect upload speeds.)

The results here have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Re:The cable ratings are truly bizarre.

[Guppy06]

Personally, I'm using EarthLink on top of bright house.

At any rate, we don't know what the contract terms EarthLink has in place with the to-the-curb providers and how they may differ from the terms individual users get. It very well may be that cable providers give EarthLink customers some sort of preferential treatment.

We also don't know about any differences there might be in the networks above the physical layer to the end-user.

I can rank a couple

[theantipop]

When I used to live with my parents in Cincinnati, the local phone company Cincinnati Bell ran a DSL service called Zoomtown. It's now at 3mbps down / 768kbps up and I almost always get ABOVE rated transfers. Also the price is pretty low at $45/month and can be enveloped into a phone package to cost as low as $30/month. 4 dynamic IPs and 5 email accounts. I know they they give web space. Now I live in an apartment for an internship and I get Comcast Digital Cable (paid for). The rated speeds are the same but the service is terrible. 1 dynamic IP so a router is required. I rarely get close to rated speeds and if we do manage it latency starts to suffer dramatically. I've always advocated DSL over Cable and this experience only reaffirms my belief. Not only that but their cable tv quality is shitty too.

Verizon DSL - 5

[mtrisk]

The speed is good, but ever since they switched to a 71.x.x.x pool and 15-minute DHCP times, my connection goes down every 12-15 minutes. It really is intolerable, and I'm not the only experiencing it. There's a rather large Broadband Reports thread here documenting the problem. It's terrible. You can pretty much throw online gaming and IRC out the window, and it's frustrating to have to wait for your connection to pick up again when you're on the net.

Comcast is way to high at 61%

[WindBourne]

They have more outages than anybody here in COlorado.

Back when it was ATT/TCI, there was an outage about once a year. It lasted at most for several hours. Now, we have outages about once every 1-2 weeks. And they can last 2 days.

Interesting that their own internal network has been a major source of Virus. Try talking to their to customer support and that is a waste. Only once have I met anybody with any tech. knowledge, since they took over TCI .

They really should be rated much lower.

Comcast - 6 - OK if you can't get speakeasy

[beacher]

Comcast gets a 6 - I'd give them a 5 but their speeds help me forget the fact that they had a nationawide DNS outage, their DHCP servers go down almost 1 weekend a month, their web interface is too heavy on shockwave, and their tech support is asinine.
-B

Re:Comcast - 6 - OK if you can't get speakeasy

[torgosan]

OT...

Comcast spews spam in whopping amounts as well. More tripe arrives in my mailbox from them than any other system. ...just sayin'.

Re:Comcast - 6 - OK if you can't get speakeasy

[TheStonepedo]

I know nothing of speakeasy, but Comcast's on-site support is horrendous. Comcast process: 1)After multiple complaints dispatch technician 2)Pretend work has actually been done 3)??? 4)Fail!... and profit :(

Telenor ADSL (Norway)

[Orgazmus]

+ Good speed (2048/256 (soon to be 4000/400))
+ Decent price (550kr/month, about $80)

- Low upstream
- Many outages
- Bad support

Overall a 5, but only because they are practically everywhere

Re:SBC

[benjamindees]

I'll agree, 3 seems fair.

Pricing is awful; if they didn't have to compete with Cox here, they would probably still have only one slow speed plan for $60/mo. You still have to have a dial tone, from them, before you can get DSL. They've done the "jack up your bill" thing here as well, trying to charge us for two lines. Watch your bills.

Tech support is awful; they insist the problem is on your end, even when it's obvious that one of their DNS servers has gone down, again. Their techs don't seem to understand "I can't ping the router on the other end of the P-t-P link" as being a problem.

Reliability is awful. We've had "area outages" in the past year as well. They started blocking port 25 here without notice, although there is a form hidden on their webpage to "opt out".

I agree that the only thing keeping their score from being lower is that things have gotten better lately. Though I'm afraid the higher speeds I'm noticing have more to do with indiscriminate port blocking than anything else.

Bandwidth is kinda useless as a way....

[TwoTailedFox]

So, what does someone automatically think when they see a 1MB vs. 8MB service? They assume that 8MB, because it's a higher number is better. They will probably not take into consideration latencies, or services (or lack thereof). In fact, 8MB Broadband/DSL is a lot like having an 18" Dick. It's bloody impressive to look at, but since when will you ever get to use it all?

Re:Bandwidth is kinda useless as a way....

[EvilStein]

With all the pornography that I download, the more bandwidth, the better. :)

Also, I rsync stuff from boxes at my colo to boxes at home (ghetto backup) so for me, bandwidth is great.

Re:SBC

[N3Roaster]

Can you provide a link to this opt out form page or is it something I'll be able to find myself by looking a little harder?

Not Much Is New

[value_added]

Karl Bode, editor of the ISP ratings Web site BroadbandReports.com (formerly known as DSLreports.com), says that even with improvements in equipment and technology, broadband installation remains problematic. ...

Gail Cafferty has first-hand experience with the problem. ... "One week after Cox sent a technician to install our service, everything died," she says. "I was sure the installation wasn't the problem. I called the tech support line and had to deal with someone who didn't understand what I was talking about, and who made me walk through everything I'd already done before getting to the next level of support," Cafferty says.

Cafferty persisted until Cox agreed to send a technician to her home, who ultimately diagnosed and corrected the problem, which turned out to be Cox's fault. A month later, Cafferty noted an $80 service charge for the house call on her bill.

I don't think this qualifies as an "installation problem" but a typical example of how any and all problems are handled. Namely, tech support isn't tech support. It's clueless computer user support.

I use SBC (only local provider) and went through a few dozen or so "Support Tickets" over the course of the first year. With each call, the voice on the other end forced you through through an identical checklist -- running Windows, running their PPPoE client, directly connnected (no NAT, firewall, proxy, etc.), resetting the modem and rebooting at every stage, etc.. If you didn't lose your temper and get to a higher level support, you'd discover that those folks weren't any more knowledgable, but were at least willing to have somebody investigate the problem (as opposed to having someone investigate me).

One day after having a line problem corrected (their fault), the technician who showed up left me with *his* card with a home 24-hour contact number, explaining to me that it's entirely possible for anyone to call the same office ("Network Operations") and talk to the same people that the field techs deal with, instead of customer service drones. Yeah, so why wasn't I told a year before?

Since then, I've upgraded to a fixed IP service (for more money, of course), and all my intermittent problems seem to have disappeared. I still have the tech's card, of course.

In Canada

[Vrejakti]

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada... over the past 5 years I have tried all 3 broadband ISP's available.

Videon (now Shaw) is a cable ISP: Speeds of 600KB/sec (kilobytes) are common on their ~5mbit (megabit) connection for roughly $40 a month. Reliability remains poor. At best you'll have 90% uptime each month. At worst 2 weeks no internet 1 week with internet. (At which point I canceled my account and never looked back). Shaw offers a free static IP based on current MAC address, however they limit monthly transfers to 50GB, anything downloaded over 50GB you may be subject to fees. Their TOS is very anti sharing.

Skyweb is a Satellite internet ISP. Uptime is poor, speeds are marginal. I stuck with them roughly one month, due to a rain storm causing massive downtime.

Finally, MTS is a DSL based ISP. Their speeds are competitive. Price is fair, roughly $45 a month. Uptime is 100% every month, unless they are doing maintenance which will lower uptime to 99.9% reliability. Speeds currently are 3mbit down. They are friendly with server hosting, however IP's are dynamic.

Because reliability is the only thing that matters to me:

Shaw receives 0/10
Skyweb 1/10
MTS 10/10

Re:In Canada

[jonom]

I've never had any trouble with Shaw, I've been with them since cable access was first offered in my city. Great speed and uptime.

Maybe it's different in different parts of the country. I'm in Victoria.

The only other choice we have out here is DSL with Telus which I have not tried.

I'm happy on cable

[suitepotato]

Cox gives me 5Mbps x 512Kbps for an acceptable $60 or so a month and is rarely down. I've found that although you can technically get up to 7Mbps x 1Mbps ADSL at my short distance, it is also a matter of anyone being at the central office who offers it. Covad is pretty much the only other DSL presence in my central office after the telecom collapse and they don't even offer their 3Mbps service there.

Before the collapse, Covad and several carriers offered up to the 7x1 speed but they wanted as much as $750/month for it. You're not going to get that when you have total coverage by a cable company whose business class 5Mbps x 768Kbps service is not even $150/month.

Besides that, most of the problems with cable modems are with customer premises wiring and that is easily dealt with by customers who know how to RTFM on cable. With DSL, the majority of issues are loop issues where you're at the mercy of the phone company getting off their backsides to fix.

Speakeasy

[courtarro]

It's unfortunate to see that Speakeasy, an ISP known for its flexible usage policies, is not specifically represented in that review. From the TOS: "Speakeasy believes in the right of the individual to publish information they feel is important to the world via the Internet." This includes allowing servers and sharing connections, as long one's activities don't disrupt others' use. As a DSL customer that is outside SE's range, I am curious how SE compares to the more restrictive services of the companies represented in the review.

Re: Cox Communications

[benjamindees]

Here (midwest) I'd give Cox about a 7.

Their speeds quite possibly couldn't be faster. They have an array of services to choose from, including a $25/mo "value" plan that's 512/128. They don't require you to have cable in order to get internet. I haven't ever needed support, though I've heard similarly bad opinions before. Unlike pppoe, Cox dhcp "just works" in Linux. I agree though, the port filters are lame.

Misleading results..

[papasui]

Disclaimer: I'm a network engineer for one of the major cable companies.

I think these types of surveys are really misleading, because the major players are all HUGE companies that typically have completely different management in each area. The major part of the problem is how these companies were formed, by buying out existing companies. Obviously someone needs to still run the business for that area so most/all the employees come with the purchase. What you end up with is a division that doesn't always fit in with the rest of the company and continue to run things the old way. Even if their performance is better than the rest of the purchasing company on average standardization is necessary to ensure quality.
Along these same lines I work in a division that is typically 1st or 2nd in the entire company on many measurements. Our customer satisfaction measurements are very high. But I could point to areas in the company that typically very low in general. The opinion of the company by the customer is drastically different in those areas.
So I guess what I'm getting at is take these results with a grain of salt. I work very very hard to make sure that every customer is taken care of and just because someone in Kentucky had a bad experience doesn't mean someone in Florida won't have a terrific one with the same company.

Re:Misleading results..

[chawly]

I've seen the same thing in France - but on a smaller scale, of course. There used to be small, local ISP's around here. They were all bought over or just run out of the business by nation-wide or european companies. The "personal touch" with real, knowlegeable people on the telephone disappeared with the local ISP's. Now, for the same big company, the service you get depends on where you are in the country. We seem to be into technical support ignorance with really heavy Indian accents too.

Cybernet rocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

For those in Switzerland, Cybernet is a really good ISP.
They've upgraded my connection twice, for free, from 512/128 to 768/128 to 1.5/256. They offered static IPs years ago, when it was almost impossible to get them from other Swiss ISPs. Their tech support is intelligent, helpful, and nice; a live person answers the phone right away. They don't appear to try to pull any of the silly things some American ISPs frequently do, like kicking off heavy users, or disallowing servers.

my list

[psycobrat]

qwest, 5ish, support sux. if you know what you are doing, get you IPs and leave them out of the loop. pricing is good. if you have ANY problems it is always "not thier fault". speakeasy, 4ish, was good, but still rode over covad who SUX. and they lied to me about my service for when i moved and still socked me with a 300USD diconnect fee (which i refuse to pay and they have not billed me for since) onvoy, 4ish, was great while i worked there cuz was FREE, but the politics and bullsh1t sux. i hope they get thier act together and stop the internal crap to thier employees (like 3 sets of lay-offs in 2 yrs and sucking up to soros) goldenwest, 1 ... no 0! they suck. over priced, never thier problem if you have problems, they do not even publish the nuber to call them to get service! you have to find someone who has a phone and call the "magic" 3 digit number. pure monopoly bullsh1t. sioux vally wireless, not bad... 7.5, price is a tad high.. 256k Wdsl. staff is nice and works with ya. i think all the others i used are now part of speakeasy. i know pipeline is...

Worthless for the /. Reader

[eno2001]

This is a rating of the biggest ISPs and it's based on normal consumer needs, not geek needs. You'll notice that Speakeasy (the BEST DSL ISP out there) is not on the list. That's because most consumers don't need static IP. How many of you hear actually use dynamic IP? I don't. Even with dialup I only used ISPs that allowed me to have a static IP and run servers. That would probably speak for 90% of the Slashdot population.

Many of the ISPs listed in the report don't allow you to run servers either. What good is that? We've got services to provide dammit! I, for one, don't trust anyone with my e-mail but myself. I have 500 GB of space for mail with mail archived back to 1990 (from the old Cleveland Freenet days). Why on earth would I want an ISP that wouldn't let me run my own secure and reliable mail server? Same goes for DNS. When I had a static dialup account (Stratos Internet Services in Cleveland who got bought out and all customers fucked over by the shitty ISP Corecomm), I didn't run my own DNS. When Corecomm took over, I needed a DNS change made ASAP for mail. They screwed up the DNS change even though I was completely clear about what needed to be done. It also took a week for them to make the change. After that it took another week to fix the error THEY made. So I had two weeks without mail because I didn't run DNS. Never again. Now I do it all: mail, DNS, web, it's all on my systems and nothing on my ISPs systems. That way *if* I have to switch ISPs, I can carry all my data with me and just change DNS myself.

I'm sure most of you can relate and run all those services yourself for the same reason; most ISPs IT departments provide pretty poor service for the advanced user. I'm happy running everything myself. I've been doing it for seven years now and have only mysefl to blame if something stops working. Nothing better than that for incentive to keep your systems secure and up to date! This report from PC World does not address those kinds of needs because it's a consumer rag. Slashdot should do it's own survey.

Oh yeah this is OT: I *HATE* Corecom. They fucked me over in so many ways, I can't wait to tell people to NOT buy service from them. Stratos was a decent company that provided unlimited dialup for the reasonable price of $9.95. For static IP, it was $21.95. When Corecom took over, they did the following to me:

1. Stole my e-mail address that I'd had for five years at that point (used to be eno@stratos.net). They told me that when they merged the accounts from Corecom and Stratos that the user at Corecom who was eno@core.com already had the address eno@stratos.net. Talk about lazy admins!!! They fucked me over with mail and I've never forgiven them for that!
2. They took away my static IP. I was trying to hit my system from work one afternoon and wasn't getting any response. I assumed that maybe my dialup connection got futzed or something. When I got home, I found that I couldn't log in, so I called support. They told me that due to the merge I now had to use 'eno@stratos.net' as my login (even after they stole my e-mail address!). So I changed that and they reset my password. After a few tries, I was able to log in. But... lo and behold I had a different IP than the one I normally had! I called them back and asked where my static IP was. They said, "Oh. You have a standard account. You need to talk to sales to get static IP". !!!WTF???!!!! I said that I'd had a static IP for five years and they said that it's something to talk to sales about. So I did. And sales said, "You have a standard dialup account without static IP." I said, "But I'm paying $21.95 a month"! And they said, "Yeah, that's just standard unlimited dialup". Me, "What about the $9.95 rate!!!?" Them, "Huh? We've never offered that. Oh wait. You must be a Stratos customer. Yeah, those rates are gone". !!!????WTF????!!!! Them, "If you want static, you have to pay by the year and it's $360 a year. By the way, it looks like you owe us money for st

Re:Worthless for the /. Reader

[DJCF]

Eh? I'd have gone all the way the court after that treatment.

Re:Worthless for the /. Reader

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like the whiny bitch any ISP would be glad to get rid of; you certainly did them a favor.

Re:Worthless for the /. Reader

[eno2001]

So you'd be happy to get a bill for supposed back services after a merger? Who's the idiot here?

Re:Worthless for the /. Reader

[Big_Al_B]

A fellow network engineer ,at an ISP I used to work for, once decreed that in addition to our "Customer Care" department (which advocated internally for customers), we should have a "Customer Don't-Care" department to advocate for the business.

The theory was this: some customers cost more to serve than the revenue generated by their accounts. Hence, they should get a call from a CDC rep saying, "Go away. And don't let the door bruise yer backside going out."

Sounds like you got a CDC call--and probably deserved it--to me.

Re:Worthless for the /. Reader

[eno2001]

Hey, if you're happy being just a user instead of actually running your own services that's fine. But the previous company (Stratos) actually addressed the needs of people like me. Corecomm was only interested in the money to be gained from more customers. On the other hand, Speakeasy has been excellent. I've only had to deal with customer support four times in five years and each experience was handled flawlessly. I'm not the average consumer and don't expect to be treated like one. Corecomm should have known what kind of customers the Stratos user base were when they bought the company.

Re:Worthless for the /. Reader

[Big_Al_B]

Hey, if you're happy being just a user instead of actually running your own services that's fine.

And if you're happy and get value from running your own services that's fine too. I have nothing against server-geeks...I was one myself before wife and kid took priority over Linux, Bind, Sendmail and Apache. :^)

But the previous company (Stratos) actually addressed the needs of people like me. Corecomm was only interested in the money to be gained from more customers.

Prior to the dot.com boom (and bust) ISPs were for geeks and Joe Consumer used AOL|Compuserve|Prodigy et al. When the boom happened, many excellent small and medium-sized ISPs struggled to stay solvent while maintaining explosive growth in customers, network, staff, and capital expense. Some didn't, such as Stratos. Equipment, bandwidth and staff costs a lot of money--and internet service prices were low and getting lower.

OTOH, many ISPs that commoditized customers, such as Corecomm, survived. They cared (and likely still care) more about positive cash flow than about serving corner case (server-geek) customers. Hence, the cookie-cutter service and crappy techsupport. Still, I can't fault them for acting in their own interest.

On the other hand, Speakeasy has been excellent.

Speakeasy, from what I've heard, is a great geek ISP. And that's a fine thing!

I've only had to deal with customer support four times in five years and each experience was handled flawlessly.

Okay. However, there are other ways server-geek customers eat into a commodity ISP's revenue, such as anomalous bandwidth (over)consumption. ISPs may market "Unlimited" this-or-that, but oversubscription is an essential revenue strategy for any ISP.

I'm not the average consumer and don't expect to be treated like one.

Clearly. And it's good that you've found a provider that serves your needs. But you should not assume that your niche is so large that every ISP should happily accommodate it. It's not.

Corecomm should have known what kind of customers the Stratos user base were when they bought the company.

They probably knew perfectly well. And they probably decided to handle the outliers, customers like you, on a case-by-case basis. They knew that some would sigh and stay, some would cuss and walk. Regardless, they also knew that the bulk of customers wouldn't even know--or care--that anything had changed except maybe their email address.

Re:Worthless for the /. Reader

[eno2001]

And if you're happy and get value from running your own services that's fine too. I have nothing against server-geeks...I was one myself before wife and kid took priority over Linux, Bind, Sendmail and Apache. :^)

Being a new father (my kid's eight months old now) I can say that it's completely possible to deal with the wife, the kid, BIND, Courier, OpenSSH, etc... and still have a life. Of course, I only sleep 4-6 hours a night so everyone is asleep while I'm working on my stuff. The lack of sleep thing is inherent to me since I'm primarily a musician and secondarily a geek. But... thanks for the good response. You made your point and I can't fault it. :)

Re:SBC opt-out port 25 blocking

[benjamindees]

It's here, but, no, I wouldn't expect a person to just stumble upon it. I had to go through two levels of tech support people (yelling all the way) before one finally admitted they were blocking port 25 at all.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating- Cincinnati Bell

[Coolnat2004]

Cincinnati Bell. 3 out of 10. Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap. I get approximately 5% of the advertised speed, while a person up the street with the same plan gets nearly 98% the advertised speed. I am supposed to receive a downlink of about 3mbps, and I get a downlink of 150kbps on a good day. Not impressed. It used to get up to 650kbps, but not anymore.. My upload speed is about twice as fast as my download speed.. I get around 256kbps upload.. Their tech support is horrible. they know nothing. They only support Windows. If you're not using Windows and IE, they assume that it is your fault that the speed is horrible, and it's a problem with your software.. Bullshit. They won't fix it, they won't attempt to fix it. They just have you go through all the crap that you've already done. They might reset your connection after about an hour, but that's all. If you e-mail them with a problem, they tell you to call them. On-site service is expensive, especially when it is their fault. I wish I could switch to InsightBB cable, but the rest of my family refuses. I also have too many things tied to my ISP email address.. those bastards.. Grr..

roadrunner

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm near Akron, OH and have Time Warner's RoadRunner cable. Never really had to use customer service and very few outages, normally only concurrent with power outages. Also got a free upgrade about a year ago from 3Mbps downstream to 6Mbps. I think up is 384.

Spiretech.com --Portland, Oregon

[PotatoHead]

Highly Recommended.

DSL, ssh access, good customer service, 6 month billing, great staff, low downtime and security aware.

Nice folks, give them a call.

Nah.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an Aussie who knows from experience that the UK is technologically backward.

Re:Nah.

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to what - advanced Australian technology?

Re:Nah.

[ozmanjusri]

As opposed to what - advanced Australian technology?

Well, yeah. I'm on iiNet's ADSL2 connection which gets 12 Mbit/s. Their support people not only know about Linux, they run Debian themselves and support it. So what's your problem with Aussie tech?

If you need to find out about the state of broadband over here, try http://www.whirlpool.net.au/. You might be surprised.

Re:Nah.

[NetNifty]

In broadband uptake, yes the UK is probably more technologicaly backwards than a lot of western countries (fastest connection I can get here is 512kbps down/256kbps up due to distance from exchange and lack of cable internet), but computer hardware is not a problem - I'm writing this on a machine with a AMD64 3500 CPU, GeForce6600GT Graphics card, A8N-SLI DELUXE motherboard, total 520GB HD storage and 1GB PC4000 RAM.

Re:Nah.

[rendler]

Those sorts of speed are kinda nice on paper but what happens when you go over that quota. That whopping 12Mbit/s becomes no faster than a dial-up, which kinda sucks. All the people I know who use broadband care more about how much they can download than the actual speed. And in that department Australia is extremely lacking I feel. The only ISP truly offers a genuine and realiable all-you-can-download service on broadband is Internode with maybe one or two others. But the price for such an offering is very expensive: $100 for 512 and $150 for 1500, which to me shows that broadband in Australia still has a long way to go.

Re:Nah.

[ozmanjusri]

but what happens when you go over that quota. That whopping 12Mbit/s becomes no faster than a dial-up, which kinda sucks.

It would if I could download enough to get over quota. Currently I can download 80Gb in any thirty day period before I get shaped. I've never got close.

SBC/Yahoo

[p51d007]

I'd have to give it 10 out of 10. I've had SBC/Yahoo DSL for about 3 1/2 years. I might of had an hour of downtime the entire time! Re-uping at the end of the contract period is simple. I've had good speeds up and down, low ping's (although I don't play online games).

You get what you pay for.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they're a bit more expensive, but truthfully, I have no problem paying a bit more for the superior tech support I've received from them.

The expression "You get what you pay for." comes to mind. I would love if my ISP (Rogers) had competent people at their tech support. As a matter of fact, one of my current coworkers is a former Rogers first line support person... and she doesn't know much about computers. She told me that they're reading these troubleshooting scripts, and very few know anything outside of what's said there. Bottom line... if Speakeasy offered their service in Canada, I would be more than willing to pay for getting a good service.

Verizon FIOS // Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[Wespionage]

I guess it's still a relatively small group of subscribers, but I've been with Verizon's FIOS service now for about three months, and I'd actually rate it a 10, which surprises me (or probably surprises anyone who has had to work with Verizon when it comes to business support).

Positives...

• The speed is great -- 2 Mbps upstream, 5 or 15 Mbps downstream. I started with the 5 Mbps down and bumped up to the 15 Mbps down. (They also offer a 30 Mbps down/5 Mbps up, but the cost skyrockets.)
• The cost is competitive for what you get. I was previously a Comcast subscriber, so I was paying just over $40/month for my service (which was somewhere around 4 Mbps down, 256 Kbps up when I canceled). The FIOS service is something like $40/month for the 5/2 service and $50/month for the 15/2 service. I think they throw in a $5/month discount as long as you have a Verizon phone package that qualifies.
• The support couldn't be better. I did have Speakeasy DSL when I first moved to my current location, but there were tons of problems due to what turned out to be water in the Verizon lines on the street. After Verizon's solution was to reroute to me, increasing my distance to the CO to over 20K feet, I had to drop DSL, but Speakeasy was superb at working with Verizon and troubleshooting the problems to try to get my service working. So even having experienced Speakeasy support, I can say that dealing with Verizon as an early-adopting FIOS customer is tremendous. They are really prioritizing FIOS customers. I have had to call tech support several times over the first three months (I had an existing router I was trying to use that turned out to be problematic and I upgraded from 5 Mbps to 15 Mbps service, which turned into a problem due to the way the order was entered into the system). I have received terrific support with near-immediate escalation from the general support to a network tech. When my upgrade request got botched in the system, the network tech worked with me for several days while working with the system developers as well to get the problem corrected.

As for the negatives...

• The biggest downside is being a new subscriber. Plus, the installers and general tech support is typical in that it's a Windows world. I'm using OS X for my main machine, but luckily I had an XP laptop around just to satisfy the general support or installer that the problem wasn't my Mac. However, once you get escalated to a network tech the Windows bias drops away. Otherwise, the problems have all just been a lack of experience with the installers or general support and a fairly limited support site for now (just very general questions, still more DSL focused rather than fiber). My only real problems have been with a processing system they used to handle order requests and with trying to use an older Linksys router instead of the recommended D-Link router.
• Otherwise, the usage isn't as wonderful as with Speakeasy. You're still limited to not running your own web server, and I'm not yet sure what they block -- from a quick check it seemed that they were blocking port 80, which kind of sucks. You get a really fast service and you're still limited to not being able to do basic file sharing via a locally hosted site -- Windows and Mac support this one-click web sharing but it's not even useful.

Comcast in TX

[BigGerman]

speed is awesome, DNS outages almost weekly, "big" outages twice in two years, support ok - "Bill" and "Joe" with nice southwestern Mombai accents, I 'd say 6 out of 10.

Other than when...

[MAdMaxOr]

I use BT to download the Fedora ISOs that are currently taking forever on my 2-bit DSL connection? Nah, what am I talking about? Bandwidth wouldn't help.

Re:Other than when...

[TwoTailedFox]

I meant latencies for online games are very often quite high on high-bdnawidth services. Good for file transfers, but not for applications that required a high degree of responsiveness

Re:Other than when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant latencies for online games are very often quite high on high-bdnawidth services.

Can you quantify "often"?

Because I'll put money on dialup having *much* higher latency than

Latency is a combination of three factors: link speed, router delay, and distance (in hops) to destination. All things being equal, higher link speed decreases your latency, and is something you can actually *do* something about (changing your distance typically means changing carriers, and is a crap shoot.. and good luck about convincing your ISP to change it's routing hardware.)

And it *DOES* help (tremendously) for people who do file transfers.

I'd recommend...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Kattare (http://www.kattare.com/ been with them about 3 years, they are Java specialists, get your own Java process, good bandwidth, good disk quota, excellent uptime, very good techie support... good price, low users per box... Only downsides, I wish I had more MySQL connections available, it's either 10 or "rent-a-box" (nothing in the middle)... And I want to have better firewall/Apache filtering of annoying bots...

No I don't work for them... a website I've got with them is www.pygmypossum.com.au.

9.5/10 overall...

Re: Cox Communications

[orangesquid]

I still maintain that having a dynamic IP and port filters is like having a phone which can't receive most incoming calls and whose number changes every day. It's next to useless. Sure, people can leave messages for you elsewhere (via your ISP's email), but if you want to have your own answering machine (maybe your ISP blocks large attached files), you can't. Perhaps you don't need all of your ISP's services (webspace that doesn't have PHP, unreliable e-mail, whatever) and just want a network connection so you can manage your communication as you see fit---what good is a major broadband ISP then?

The server-client infrastructure relies on some VERY powerful servers that can handle tons of connections. If there are six billion humans online sometime down the road, they aren't all going to be able to be on AIM at the same time. Duh. The ARPANET was more of a redundant network with a handful of nodes (which were all servers with local access) on equal footing. We moved away from that. Now, we're moving into an age of P2P communications. ISPs need to realize that although a lot of people surf the web, the Internet is more than just a giant TV. It's not just about centralized content.

I'm on Speakeasy. It may be a bit more costly, but, if I add up the cost of cheap broadband and PHP webhosting with tons of disk space, I'm saving buttloads of money. Hell, they even give me whatever reverse-DNS entry I want for my IP address for free.

This just in!!

[Mr.Progressive]

Slashdot reports on a submission by Ant who informed us of a Broadband Reports report about a PC World article based on the opinions of 6,000 PC World readers! Purple monkey dishwasher.

These Ratings have nothing to do with reality

[Prien715]

And everything to do with marketing. Anyone who's seen earthlink's recent commercials know they're promoting the wazoo out of spam blocking. How do you know how good spam blocking is? I'd assume everyone gets some. Why not sign up for a bunch of junkmail lists with each ISP and see which one clobbers the most?

This survey means very little to me other than if I was in marketing for one of these groups. Then I'd care.

Re:These Ratings have nothing to do with reality

[St. Arbirix]

I think it's worth mentioning that these numbers are overwhelmingly bad. 81% satisfaction is the best out of any of them? Imagine the commercial: "Only 1 in 5 of our customers hate us." Free markets aren't supposed to work like this.

Re:These Ratings have nothing to do with reality

[nolife]

Why not sign up for a bunch of junkmail lists with each ISP and see which one clobbers the most?

I would think that would give very unreliable results for a spam blocking test. You signed up and those list maintainers that support legitimate opt-in lists may actually send real unmodified header information, use real and acknowledged or non blacklisted mail servers, use less junk or mime tricks, and the mail may actually be addressed to you (not cc'd or bcc'd). I would hope that something I signed up for would actually get through.

Irish Broadband

[todd10k]

7 out of 10.

The good: No download/upload caps, Extremly low latency, Radio (thus no line rental), and Superb bandwidth (Very recent upgrade from 1meg/1meg to 2meg/2meg, for free.).

The bad: Frequent latency problems, weather disruption of signal, Horrible customer support.

The ugly: i think one of the technicans robbed one of my dining forks. that scoundrel.

http://www.irishbroadband.ie/

Many similarly bad providers

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really need to mention what ISP I use, as their habits are fairly common ...
Like many other cable providers, they block off vital TCP/IP ports. No incoming port 80 for my web server - no way do the corporations want us to turn into producers on the internet, the corporations only want us to be consumers of their own content. Blocked outgoing port 25, crippling my mail server - naturally, only corporations should be allowed to send e-mail ... we can't be trusted to communicate, and should place our trust in the corporations to "help" (read: censor) with our e-mail.

Re:Many similarly bad providers

[Anonymous Coward]

The corporate conspiracy theory is quite interesting, but as a wild guess I would rather say that the ISP block these ports in order not to be sued for hosting kiddie p0rn or spammers.

Bellsouth dialup

[Donniedarkness]

Reading all this about Broadband makes me sad...I'm stuck on a dial-up connection w/ Bellsouth. on the bright side, it's about as fast as 56k can be, and it is only $10. Also, there is no icky software that you are required to install or anything, which makes me VERY happy...just click the start menu, go over to "connect to", and choose the bellsouth connection. On the downside, it is 56k. Gotta love the country, right guys? ...I don't, either. But as far as 56k goes, I give them an 8 (very few problems, but you can't understand their customer support people because they seem to all have VERY heavy Indian accents).

I have Earthlink Cable

[Penguin Follower]

And I have been pleased with the service. I previously had Time Warner's Road Runner service but switched to Earthlink because Road Runner kept adding "free services" onto our monthly service (like free access to Nascar's site) yet the monthly rate went up once they added a few more "freebies". Right. If I had cared about the "freebies" I might have stayed and justified the monthly price, but I just don't care about the extras they are providing. I just want internet access! So, I am down to paying $41.95/month for Earthlink vs. Road Runner's $54.95/month! That's a savings of $13/month and $156/year! The quality of service hasn't gone down and I'm paying less! Satisfied Earthlink customer.

/AOL too

[elronxenu]

I notice the chart authors kept listing ISPs until they got down to AOL, and then they stopped.

Based on the dslreports.com reports..

[EvilStein]

I'm the only guy in the state of California that's actually happy with Comcast.

Yeah, there was a pseudo-outage (2000ms ping times, issue went on for about 2 days) and tech support was less than useless, but otherwise everything has been fine.

4mbit down/384kbps up. $45/mo if you're a cable tv subscriber. When I move to a different apartment and go back to Dish Network, Comcast will try and rape me, though. ($70/mo for non-cable subscribers)

Australian readers

[OneArmedMan]

Might do well to check this page

http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/results2004.htm

not sure if its the latest tho

Cox - Northern Virginia

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd recommend Cox here as a 9, edging into 10.

Very helpful support at resolving issues on their end. I would stay closer to 9 than 10 just because of the restrictive TOS, but it's not bad for most uses. If you want to host a server, just get hosting space elsewhere.

Speeds here are now:
15 Mbit/s down
2 Mbit/s up ...that freakin' ROCKS.

Roadrunner: 8/10

[Mechcozmo]

Very happy with Roadrunner here. 5 Mbps down, but only 400Kbps up. Sucks, but it isn't too bad. Plus we were bumped up for free from (I think) 4 or 3 Mbps down and something else up.

Downsides? Cost and upload.
Upsides? Very nice tech people. Often out within a few hours, and very informative. Most recently (last year) the guy replaced all the connections in our office to a higher-quality coax connection. The T.V. looked better, and our internet speeds were better too. Nice guy.

Haven't had an outage of their doing for a looooong time. But I've been known to send routers to untimely deaths...

International ISPs ?

[clokwise]

How depressing it is to read about Speakeasy... I live in Thailand where my ADSL provider, http://www.truecorp.co.th/, offers a maximum of 4096/512, yet I on average get only 20Kbps ftp downloads!!! Plus they block Bittorrent traffic. Plus they force filter all web traffic through a proxy server (for my protection from nasty sites) which is of course overloaded and often stops altogether. All this for only $50 per month. Well at least I don't live in Australia anymore where ADSL is 3 to 4 times that price.

Is this the evening news now?!

[tweedlebait]

"The article also reveals which broadband and dial-up services make the grade and which fall flat."

"Something MAY kill your Childrun soon! find out after this break!"

" Will you need tire chains tomorrow? Stay tuned!"

"Find out at 10 which email may make your penis bigger! and which could make it turn inside out!"

Eds, please don't allow crap teaser intro's like this anymore.

*sigh*

Earthlink rated as #1

[Sivar]

Not everyone agrees with PC World that Earthlink is the best, even for the average joe (but then, what's new?).

Other problems

[www.sorehands.com]

Comcast has a problem (or at least in LA) where the connectivity is lost, and can only be regained by powercycling the cable modem. Their solution is to power cycle the modem. Of course when I mention Linux, they say "we don't support Linux." My response is, "Did I ask for a linux command or how to configure linux?" Then I ask for their manager or anyone with an IP over room temperature.

Re:Other problems

[Khyber]

Then I ask for their manager or anyone with an IP over room temperature.

Now that's an idea. An internet connection over the temperature. rm, the hotter it gets, the faster it goes?

Re:Other problems

[ssimontis]

Same here near Atlanta. It takes them a while to solve such a basic problem too. It bothers me when I have to get up from playing CounterStrike because it won't work and is bugging everyone in my house. On average, it takes me 30 minutes with a tech before my connection gets restored.

So, I RTFA, and...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten, nicely broken up pages. Banner ads on every page. Lovely, this is a really high quality thing they have going. Now, I go to the second page, it's supposed to be on how cable and DSL customers are happier than dial-up. Gee, fancy that. And what exactly is the chart on spam doing there anyway? Does anyone use their ISP's e-mail services?

Keep going, and I see, on "dial-up blues," a whole paragraph from a satisfied AOL customer. Good for him, I guess.

The fourth page goes on to talk about tech support. Here, we learn that this is really quite a stellar piece of journalism, they actually managed to talk to someone who has had first-hand experience with tech support! So there really is a chance of talking to real people!

Now, on "get your money's worth," the article strays from the topic, offering helpful hints on how to choose which ISP to switch to, and what you might expect (a new e-mail address! As if people haven't changed ISPs before.). They also manage to work in some more wonderful research from Yankee Group.

Going on, I'm really starting to wonder if there is any real data from these aforementioned thousands of subscribers who were supposedly surveyed, but all that I see on the sixth page is the shocking bit of information that high speed internet is expected to get faster. Wow.

On to page seven, there is another blinding flash of the obvious, although this time slightly better. Apparently, people use local ISPs because the tech support's better and they can provide staff that is "closer to the customer."

And while we're talking about local ISPs, let's go to page eight and talk about a couple of local wireless ISPs. Now here's the scoop, guys: They exist! And if you pay them a little bit of money you can get this internet access thing! And sometimes you can get it where you can't get that internet thing through that there wire! This page does make a cursory mention of government-subsidized wireless, but it somehow neglects to give any feedback on how good the one cited ISP is.

And, on page nine, we finally discover the beginning of the charts! Splendid! Except that the banner ad immediately to the chart's right is much clearer and easier to read than the chart itself. Also, after squinting at the chart for a moment, I was able to understand most of it, but I fail to see the brilliant logic of "satisfied"/"dissatisfied" with upload and download rates. Being a geek, I'd be unhappy if I were getting anything less than I were paying for, whereas our bright spark AOLer on page three would no doubt be thrilled if he could sign on and check his AOL mail. Maybe if they used a slightly less subjective metric, say, percent of customers receiving 90% of promised speed or something.

Page ten's chart has the same criticism as page nine's, once deciphered, I discovered the column "web hosting" listed as a simple satisfaction percentage again, which really does't come close to explaining what I'd like to know about the web hosting itself.

I never much liked PC World to begin with, and this article is simply amateur (sponsored?) journalism.

If I did want to change ISPs or look at rankings anyway, I'd personally get on over to BroadbandReports itself, which has many, many more reviews, goes much more in depth, uses nice hard factual numbers for price and speeds, and isn't quite as filled with advertising.

Mine for both BellSouth DSL and RR

[Khyber]

BellSouth DSL. 9.5

Service stable, solid, NAT on the modem works, I don't need a router, and so I save money on using a hub to connect other computers to the network.Also, 3 mbit solid. Only downside, they frown upon running even a simple game server for multiplayer. And of course, On DSL, upload is tied to download.

Midsouth RR service. 5.5

Tech came in, installed modem fine, however, somehow the modem ended up being bound to the MAC address of the computer used to get it up and running. (Only figured that out after spoofing the MAC address on my own machine and plugging in the cable modem, and then it worked. Had to reset modem to fix problem.) Tech support sucks. I usually just ask immediately to speak with a level 2 technician. Speed, while advertised at 5 mbit, is generally around 1.4-2.7 mbit. Upoad sucks as well. And it's shared bandwidth, not a dedicated pipeline, which is annoying when neighbors start downloding porn, as it interferes with my Enemy Territory ping times. Oh, let's not mention the price of their modems... 400 bucks when I can get an equivalent one for like.. 120 dollars at RadioShack or Best Buy (and internal at that?)

Overall, I find DSL to be better. Until they can start giving me dedicated lines that have the same up and down bandwidth, at a reasonable price, I'll stick with DSL.

Shaw Edmonton rocks!

[schon]

I've had only minimal issues with Shaw - I think a total of 36 hours downtime in the 7 years I've been with them. Their tech support is great too - they don't treat me like an idiot, or believe that the problem is with my equipment until (and even sometimes even if) I prove otherwise.

Telus which I have not tried.

Don't. We have a couple of dozen customers with Telus, and they *suck*. Their DHCP addresses change every couple of days, even when the client is still using it (so you lose your connection - release/renew the DHCP lease gives you a new address, they *refuse* to acknowledge that it's caused by their equipment - one customer switched from Shaw to Telus - they'd run for 3 years with zero downtime, now they lose their IP address every 2 days.)

No static IP addresses, even if you pay extra for it. Yes, they'll make you pay extra, then force you to use DHCP - although the IP address will only change once a year or so, instead of once every couple of days.

A couple of years ago, their DHCP servers for the northern half of the provice died. It took almost 10 days (yes, *DAYS*) for them to fix it, meanwhile all of their customers had no internet (even the ones with 'static' addresses.)

If you call them for support, be prepared to wait for a *LONG* time (20 minutes to several hours) before you can talk to someone, and their script assumes that it's your problem, not theirs. They will refuse to do anything outside the script, even if you tell them you've already done it all. I have a sneaking suspicion that their "support" people have no way of even looking at any technical information. My sister got Telus ADSL, and I went there to hook it up for her. It didn't work (no ADSL link), and after calling support, walking through each step in their troubleshooting guide (even though I told them I'd done each step already - and him telling me to "release and renw the IP address", yes, he knew there was no ADSL link, and yet he insisted we try it anyway), it turned out that the morons *hadn't even connected it at their end* - yup, we wasted 20 minutes with their "technician", when not only did he not have the power to fix the problem, but he didn't even have the power to see if the damn modem was online. (Contrast with Shaw; the very first thing they do is check to see if they can talk to your modem.)

Stay as far away from Telus as you can.

Cable vs. DSL

[suzerain]

The opening sentence of the cable/DSL section was written with some kind of weird cable bias. The sentence is phrased as follows:

Not only did cable customers make up the largest proportion of our survey respondents--nearly 44 percent--they were also the most satisfied (along with their DSL counterparts; see "For Overall Satisfaction, Broadband Is King" below).

Then, in the referenced chart, it says that DSL customers were 68% satisfied, and that cable customers were 66% satisfied. So...who was "the most" satisfied? Cable customers, along with their DSL counterparts....or....DSL customers, along with their cable counterparts?

I know this is minor, but it struck me as odd that they would downplay DSL in the opening sentence and push cable in that way.

Re:Cable vs. DSL

[suzerain]

I see my mistake: apparently cable customers could have been the "most satisfied", whatever that means, but DSL customers had the highest percentage of people who were "highly satisfied".

Rogers Canada Ontario

[Deliveranc3]

6 out of 10...

Several problems won't support use of routers, and try and force garbage only windows software.

Send out modems where more than 50-60 simultanious connections shut down modem and it has to be manually restarted.

Technical support assumes you're a moron and blames everything on you.

Re:Rogers Canada Ontario

[Anonymous Coward]

Not totally true.

Routers work just fine with Roger's connection. Why should they be resposible for hooking it up for you? Ohhh you must believe that they are responsible for the actions of your children too....

Only support Windows? Then explain why I am running 2 Slackware boxes, and an AIX box.

These new Motorola modems are great, I haven't had to reset it once since I got it.

I do agree that their tech support sucks, but do remember that they are only responsible for getting the signal from their infrestructure to your computer.

They are also pretty leanient with their TOS as long as your bandwidth usage isn't astronomical.

CSInet (www.csinet.net)

[bleaknik]

This place is the suck. DO NOT USE CSInet AT ALL COSTS.

I used to work there, so take my word up on this. In fact... I wouldn't mind it if they got /.ed...

Again, that URL was http://www.csinet.net....

EarthLink DSL (Triangle, NC)

[digitect]

We've had a basic MindSpring (now EarthLink) DSL account for years in the Triangle, NC.

7/10

• $40/month, (continued at this price requires 1 year committment)
• 150 KBs down, 15 KBs up. Throughput seems consistent, these speeds don't vary.
• WebMail access to POP mail accounts. Most ISPs have this now, but MindSpring was one of the first. Very solid application, better than Gmail's IMO.
• Outages are rare, I think I've had two legitimate in the last year and a half.
• Flakey VisionNet modem behavior is more frequent, although a re-start (sometimes reset) always fixes it. Maybe 3 times a week, after several hours of non-use the PPPoE connection will drop. This is our second unit at this address, the first died and it took three calls to figure it out. The previous Linksys model at the previous address a few miles away was rock solid for several years, but they said it wouldn't work on the new line.
• MindSpring tech support used to be terrific, I would get techs who used Linux, spoke without accent, and let me get to the point without a lot of scripted questions. The last year or two however, my calls are usually picked up somewhere offshore. Between the accents and the question reading it takes 10 minutes to find out if it's my end or their's after the 10 minute max wait get picked up. Now that I've figured out this modem is almost always the problem, I get by resetting it (the little paper clip hole on the bottom followed by re-config username/password via browser) most times without a call.
• Spam Blocking seems decent, although many still get through. My email is posted all over the web, though so I sort of expect it.
• Huge amount of email storage space, 500Mb or something.

I sometimes look around and compare. Cable would be faster, but we don't buy cable TV so it would cost more. Other carriers appear price competitive, but no better. Earthlink is bit, their infrastructure is solid. I'm sticking with what works, but feel like I pay $10 too much and get 100KB/s too slow. (But don't we all. :)

If we're talking regional ISPs too....

[King_TJ]

I'd have to say I recommend (with reservations) Charter, here in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm using them myself, and my biggest gripe is the cost. (I don't even have cable TV... only using them for the broadband net access, and it costs me $49.95 per month for 3mbit download rates, and about 768K up.)

On the other hand, I convinced my parents to switch to them not too long ago, and my mom is pretty computer illiterate. (She can check and write email after almost a year of coaching her through using Outlook Express, while my semi computer-literate brother uses their machine quite a bit for research on the web.) She had some intermittent connection issues at first, and the Charter rep spent over 2 hours on the phone with her, trying to help out! They ended up having to send out a tech who determined the fault was in the cabling between her house and their junction box on a pole - but my mom was very happy with the customer service she was given.

In this area, you can get a better price for what's basically the same bandwidth up and down by going DSL with SBC/Yahoo - but the customer service and support will definitely be a few steps below Charter's. With SBC, you're also committing to a service contract, unlike Charter who lets you just pay month-to-month with no penalties. So as much as anything, I think it comes down to how much "hand-holding" you think you might need, and how long you plan to keep your broadband.

Comcast Atlanta

[Molochi]

I give it a 5. Download/Upload is 4Mb/512Mb with actual download speeds rarely exceeding 2.5Mb (the most Ive measured is ~ 350KBPS). Price is OK, but the service goes out once or twice per month an requires the cable modem to be reset manualy to reestablish connectivity. Plus it's the usual dynamic DHCP crap, with a "no server" TOS. Lastly, their support people just don't have a clue. I think they are actually paid to get people to turn off their fire walls. I mean god knows we don't have enough worm infested systems on the intarweb, right? The sweet light of jebus would shine on me if I could get speakeasy. Unfortunately, Speakeasy only offers me 384Kb SDSL and wants 3x as much for it. Sure I understand why they can't do better (BELLSOUTH) but if I lived a mile closer to Country Club of the South, they could get me static IP, no TOS BS and 1.5DL/384UL for what I pay Comcast. That would earn a 10.

Sonic.net

[rossz]

Sonic.net all the way. They've been rated the best regional ISP in the country. They are geek friendly, their terms of use are agreeble, and their customer support is outstanding.

I get 5meg/500k (service is rated up to 6m/600k, but distance will affect actual speeds).

I have a static IP.

I can run a server.

You don't get put on "hold hell" when you call them (Unlike SBC which guarantees a minimum of 30 minutes hold time).

They have excellent spam filtering that is highly configurable.

The owner isn't too proud to provide tech support.

The downside, I pay more because of the "SBC Tax". It's worth it however, because I don't have to deal with SBC.

Re:Sonic.net

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks!

-Dane (at Sonic.net)!

chinanet - isp

[nihaopaul]

quality: 7 support: 9 stability: 9 international connectivity: 1

More importantly...

[iamlucky13]

They say that cable users have the highest percent saying they are satisfied overall, followed closely by DSL, but the table a few lines down the page shows DSL with 68% of customers satisfied, while cable has 66%. I know I'm bad at math, but I figured my troubles were limited to trying to figure out how 20 kbits/s = 256 kbytes/s.

Anyway, between that and the parent's point, I gave up reading the article and accept the fact that it doesn't matter anyways, since the options in my area are qwest and comcast.

Re:Verizon FIOS // Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rati

[nedaf7]

I'm in a similar situation as you; I switched from Comcast to FiOS just over 2 months ago, and other than the fact that port 80 is blocked (I just had to switch Apache to run on port 81), I have nothing but praise for Verizon on the service.

I, too, use OS X for my main machine, so the installer just wrote out a note with the router info and a URL for the Mac software I needed to install to get the advertised speeds (found here), and let me setup the internal networking. Not only am I getting the advertised 15/2, but I get it all day, every day. For instance, I can download an HD movie trailer from Apple.com at 1.8 megabytes/second!

Considering the great speed, great price, and knowledgeable techs, I wouldn't give them anything lower than a 10, even with port 80 blocked.

Happy with Sonic.net here, too...

[MoggyMania]

Complete agreement -- I've been a Sonic.net customer since early 1996, got DSL through them back in 2002, and would never go with another ISP. Another few nice points to add to yours:

-- they offer web-chat based help (great if you have a speech/hearing disability, or if you're away from home)

-- nationwide dialup for just $5/month for traveling

-- almost never down (I think maybe 1 - 2 downtimes max in three years of DSL)

-- great Message Of The Day updates with whatever tiny hardware/software changes they're making, problems they're having, etc.

I liked them enough that even for the short time I temporarily had @Home (now Comcast) before DSL was available, I chose to keep paying my monthly Sonic.net membership just to help ensure they'd stay in business. Good choice, as it turned out I'd been so spoiled by Sonic.net that @Home's crappy service was intolerable, so I dumped them to wait on dialup for DSL to be available.

usenet?

[pintomp3]

i wonder how important usenet access is to most ppl. i used to use road runner in nyc, but thier news server sucked big time. after i switched to vz dsl, i found the news servers good enough that i don't need a commercial account. i may be lucky, cuz i get very close to the advertized speeds round the clock. i've had maybe 1hr worth of outage in the past 2 years. 3mb/768 is fast enough for almost anything i need to do from home.

Tiscali UK

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst ISP that has ever existed. They have no idea about billing. Each month they send me an invoice atleast double what i'm meant to pay, then the direct debit only takes out some weird figure, usually less than the monthly cost. Then their debt collection agency send me a nice red letter which i promptly rip up and ignore. Repeat.

Their customer service representitives like to tell you it isnt their department, and transfer you to an appropriate department. Repeat.

Their speed is ok - that is - once you can stay connected between the frequent disconnections which they tell you over and over that its a problem your end. They even reccommended i use the USB modem they sent me instead of my ADSL Router.

I've placed an order for an upgrade in speed and they charge you for it straight away, but i waited 2 weeks to actually receive that speed, although they told me I am receiving it. I clearly was not.

When you get just about fed up with them, you decide you want to leave and switch to another ISP, they don't give out the MAC you have to give to your new ISP. Though they don't HAVE to give this out. (It's all BT's fault.)

So you sit it out for your 12 month contract, be screwed over more times than the local hooker, terminate your account with a months notice. Then after the month is up, wait up to 2 weeks for your line to be cleared of Tiscali and then pay £60 for the privilige of having your line activated for ADSL again.

I'd give them 0/10 for Customer Service, 1/10 for service. And BT can just go straight to tell with -10/10

UK DSL providers

[Peter_JS_Blue]

I have tried two UK providers, Demon and Freedom2Surf (F2S).

Demon: ADSL - £23.49/month, Dynamic IP, 2048K+256K, No cap. WEB - 50MB, NO Stats, database or Scripting. Even on dialup Demon was quite fast often getting 45~50KBits/Sec on good days.

F2S: ADSL - £14.99/month, Static IP, 2048K+256K, 2GB Cap. WEB - 50MB, PHP4, 5MB MySQL and stats.

Both are quite reliable and tech support was quite helpful but it seems to me that Demon are still stuck in the 1990s web site wise.

I connect via an ADSL router+modem mainly with Linux, FreeBSD and (on a tight leash) Windows.

Re:UK DSL providers

[BenjyD]

Demon were very good in the 'old days', but since the Thus takeover I (and two other people I know who have used them) have found their customer service and ADSL service to be much worse.

Personally, I use Plus.net in the UK: £22/month, 2048k/256K, no cap, static IP, no blocked ports. I think the website hosting is good, but they have no problem with users running their own servers anyway.

Re:UK DSL providers

[TractorBarry]

I couldn't agree more.

I've been with Demon for years (since 1996 ?) but I've had enough and will be moving to Pipex next month. The reason ? Since Demon were taken over by Thus their tech support is absolutely pathetic (and the retention on their news servers is bloody awful too)

Now in the "good old days" when they were run by management who understood what they were doing and CARED about the customer you could ask them a technical question and you'd receive a very good detailed answer from an obviously knowledgable technician.

However this year I've emailed them three sets of questions which they've "answered" by copying and pasting stuff from either their online FAQ or from some obvious marketing bumf. And this is despite me starting my last two emails with "I have already read your FAQ and these questions are not covered by them...". In fact my last email specifically stated that if they didn't answer my question I was going to Pipex. Guess what ? They didn't answer my question and replied with a press release about their upcoming "free upgrade to 2mb".

So Demon used to be excellent but I've simply had enough of their awful, ignorant tech support. Worst thing is if I stuck with them I'd shortly be getting a free upgrade from 512Kbs to 2mbs. But who cares ? Their news servers are useless and they don't care enough to answer my questions so what's the point ?

In contrast my mates at work who use Pipex rave about the quality of their service. 10Gb a month access to GigaNews news servers (with excellent retention), no service interruptions, consistent high speed, 50Mb web space. In preparation for my switch I've also emailed Pipexs tech support to ask about running my own servers, service limitations etc. and all my questions have been answered promptly, intelligently and to my liking ("yes to servers, no blocked ports" etc. etc.

Poor old Demon... They used to be ace when Cliff Stanford was in charge :(

Good news, bad news ISP

[Ancient_Hacker]

My experiences with comcast have been very mixed. In 4 years of use it never seems to go down! Speeds are really good. Technically they seem really good. But their customer support is just awful. I've been trying on anf off for years to hookup to their news server. The info page first suggests you use their plain NS. But it's slow and doesnt carry many oddball goups I'd like to receive. If you call them up, they'll point you to their enhanced "giganews" server. Well no, they always give you the wrong ip name for the server the first time. The giganews info page also lists the wrong name. If you call enough times, they will find the right name and tell you. But they don't fix their info page even when you call multiple times. Not for 3 years at least. And then the server seems configured funny, as neither Outlook Expres or Firefox works with it without setting a bunch of strange options. It shouldnt be this hard! Also they change their home page look about every week, so you have to go and hunt for the "email" button weekly. Sigh.

Really cool survey..

[1.000.000]

..because AOL is in last place, the truth is finally revealed!

ItsJust That the Point of Sharing is Different

[Nit Picker]

Cable internet access is shared on the cable running along the street. DSL is separate until it gets back to the DSLAM, either at the Central Office or at a box between you and the Central Office. If the DSLAM has too many heavy users, performance can degrade. The ISP can control this by providing adequate bandwidth from the DSLAM to the internet backbone, just as the cable can limit the number of subscribers on a given section of cable.

Does Your DSL Provider Have a Name?

[Nit Picker]

Sharing that name with us would reward the ISP with more business and perhaps help us select a good provider. (Also, how much does "telecommute/soho class" cost?)

Re:Does Your DSL Provider Have a Name?

[Brandybuck]

My circuit was first purchased under Best, which is no longer in business. The actual circuit belongs to Covad. But I was transferred, along with the circuit, to Verio, and then subsequently to Earthlink. Don't expect to get the same class of service from Earthlink today. They just don't care about people like you and me.

But you CAN get similar service from Speakeasy, and smaller local providers like Meer.net. I've been thinking of switching away from Earthlink (because they shit on you if you're not a Windows user) and have priced out similar service from $60 to $90.

Cableone

[Nimey]

Cableone in southwestern Missouri -- expensive ($50/month w/o cable TV), but not bad. Their basic consumer (1.5 Mbps down/200k up, dynamic IP) service has been reliable and they don't block any ports I've tried using. I can't rate their tech support because I've had no need of it so far. They have good spam and virus filtering for email, and their Usenet service (provided by Supernews) is also good.

Re:Being a former ELNK employee.

[vertinox]

Actually, when I took those Time Warner/COX/RR (I don't think we had Comcast before I quit) it was fun since all I had to do was have them power cycle the modem, reboot, and if that didn't work I would then transfer them to Time Warner/Cox/RR or whoever owned the cable system and tell them to take care of it. So you're right, anyone who uses ELNK cable is actually on another persons network. The main reason for this is because of the Eearthlink Email servers since if Time Warner outsources the front line tech and emails servers (from what I've heard running email server for thousands of people costs more than a cable connection for thousands of people so it benefits Timewarner more to do this with ELNK but I could be wrong about that) Also with Earthlink DSL you are mearly either with Covad or whoever your local telco happens to be (SBC, Verizon, Bellsouth) and your quality of service will be the same as either of those since most of the providers use the same equipment at least on the phone side. One you get to the ATM networks they are a bit different, but before I quit Earthlink, it was moving to a styem much like cable where they only provided support and emails servers and the entire network was owned and operated by someone else (Covad ver 2? I think they were calling it). Actually Earthlink does have their own "branded" DSL modems, but I really never knew what the deal was with them except the original non PPPoE client had some issues.

Midcontinent Communications [midco.net]

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone here use Midco cable Internet? I have it in Crookston, MN and I get an effective 9 mbps downstream (Yes, I did say 9 mbps) and 512 kbps upstream for $49 a month. $35 a month gets you the same downstream but only 256 kbps up. I'm very pleased with the company and I didn't see them listed anywhere.

Pipex (UK)

[PunkeyFunky]

8 outta 10. By no means the cheapest, but then, I go for a business package, to support from working-from-home habit.

• Connectivity is pretty much bullet proof
• Speed is excellent & stable
• Static IP's
• no silly filters on what traffic I can/can't use/send
• A real 'fire and forget' solution

I'd mark them higher but for their customer support; it's OK, but not first class. Having said that, it's getting slowly better, and they've always been pretty up-front by saying that their support dept needs improvement.

Been with them for four years now, so I guess that says something...
-L

Re: Cox Communications

[Alioth]

Dynamic IP addresses simply don't make sense for broadband (they did for dialup when there were 12 users per IP, but for broadband you need one IP per user because it's now always on).

In fact, they make it worse for the internet community as a whole. If ISPs only gave static IPs for broadband, it'd be a lot easier to ban trolls and we woudln't have Slashdot banning entire IP blocks from posting. It'd also be easier to maintain things like the XBL.

Charter vs. SBC/Yahoo

[MirrororriM]

I'm from the Midland, Michigan area and was with Charter for several years before I moved to a new house. I then had a chance to switch to DSL and never looked back. Here are the pros and cons of each service:

Charter:
Pros:

News service - a full list of all your favorite binary newsgroups. This was great, of course, until I downloaded at the full 1.5mb for a week straight. Then they capped my download rate for newsgroups down to 256kb. Nice.

IP address - they considered it DHCP, but my IP address changed four times in three years. I call that pretty damn static.

Cons:

Downtime - about 5 full days per year.

Espensive - for the "best" service 256kb/1.5mb, $70.00 per month (about a year ago).

Speed - slower than the best DSL service - SBC is 512kb/3.0mb.

Port-blocking - want to run a Web server? Mail server? FTP server? Sorry, those ports are blocked. Non-standard ports for you, pal.

Multiple PCs - they stressed (at the time) that they didn't want you having multiple PCs behind a router (this cut into being able to sell multiple IP addresses). I was told it was against the TOS and my service could be cut off. My reply: "PFFT!"

My worst experience was just before I moved - service was out for a week and their helpdesk lines were flooded with a 2 hour wait at any given time during that week (their helpdesk staff were only there til 10:00pm at night). The reason for the service being down - they decided to change the name and IP address of their DNS servers and didn't bother to tell anyone. A simple email a week ahead of time to all of your customers explaining what was going on along with how to change the DNS IP addresses (for the noobs) and the new IP addresses would've helped! Duh!

SBC/Yahoo
Pros:

Downtime - maybe 5 minutes in the last year I've been with them. All at a consistent 512kb/3.0mb.

Cheap - $36.99 per month for their fastest service which soon was $29.99 per month (I signed up earlier than the latest/greatest deal ;P). Almost half as much as cable for twice the speed down and up.

Speed - fast as I need it to be really. I game quite a bit and have a web server (with lots of vacation pictures, family pictures, etc), mail server, and IRC server running 24/7.

Port-blocking - non-existant. The only thing I have ran across is sending mail using my own mail server - it's blocked because it's not part of the SBC domain (at least that's my guess). I can receive all the mail I want using my own DYNDNS forwarder. It's probably a spam blocking measure or something.

Multiple PCs - they flat out said they could care less how many PCs I have behind my router/switches. The one tech guy I talked to before I signed up for service said his friend had 20 people at a LAN party behind one SBC connection which also hosted a Q3 server available to the public. They just don't care.

Cons:

Newsgroups - they suck. No *real* binary groups (pr0n, mp3s, videos, etc). This was a tough one for me, but it was worth it.

IP address - DHCP for sure...my IP address changes at least once a week. Definitely a service you need when using SBC and DYNDNS: ez-ipupdate (or something else if you use Windows ;P).

Re:Verizon FIOS // Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rati

[Newbreedofnerd]

I got Verizon FIOS the week it debuted in Keller. The main problem I had was the technichians installing it wrong in my house and screwing quite a bit of stuff up, then having to come back later. Also, I've decided I hate the D-Link router they've supplied me with.

world?

[Cymeth]

pc world might need a name change..
this is nothing to do with world..

america is not the world(yet).

Earthlink DSL

[Xii]

It's interesting to note the difference between Earthlink's DSL and Cable. The DSL service I use has gone steadily down hill over the last two years. At one point I called because I needed to switch the DSL service from one line in my house to the other (which, in the end, didn't need to happen). They told me they would have to turn off my current service and that it would take two weeks for the new line to be setup. Although this didn't make me happy, I knew it was likely the fault of SBC and possibly Covad. What angered me intensely was that the required me to buy a new modem and pay setup fees as if I was a new customer. They were completely unwavering when I insisted that I had a perfectly good modem which I was using with their service and had gotten from Earthlink.