At 18:28 01/08/06, Winterlight wrote:
Do you guys with Verizon DSL have a reliable connection. I have COX
cable modem. The first five years it was great...never had a
problem... but a year ago I began having all sorts of problems. One
day I can't send email, one day I can't receive mail. Seems like every
other Sunday at midnight eastern my connection goes south... or like
to day, I keep having to reset my modem and even when connected I
can't through to a lot of sites. It feels like I have hollow
bandwidth. I have had this sort of problem last until the middle of
the week.... and then it's OK for a few days until the next Sunday.
Well, I have had enough.
I just checked the Verizon site and see that I can get better upload
speeds then I am getting now, and similar download for 25 per cent
less money! So I am thinking of giving it a try. Verizon DSL just
uses a modem right? There is not logging in software involved ...right?
How reliable a service is it?
I have both Road Runner Cable Internet (my 2nd email address is
[EMAIL PROTECTED]) and Verizon DSL (Queens, NYC).
I get 5mbps down / 384kbps up with Road Runner and am pretty happy with it.
About two years ago the Road Runner service began to get bad...with
speeds dropping and eventually dying completely every hour or so. (I'd
have to reboot the cable modem to get back on.) Road Runner support was
no help by phone and after complaining over and over, they finally came
in person and upgraded my modem from a Toshiba PCX1000 to a PCX2000.
The problems stopped. A year ago, things slowed down again and I had to
complain about three times before one phone support guy solved the
problem (apparently by changing the cap inside the modem). My service
went up to about 6mbps for a while, but when Road Runner started
offering everyone 5 mbps a few months later, my service went from 6
mbps to a steady 4.9 mbps.)
I mentioned I also have Verizon DSL, with a Westell 327W. (I use the
DSL router in bridge mode...not using its NAT or wireless ability.)
I need a backup Internet source to guarantee that I can work from home
when possible...I hate that 140 mile round trip on the Long Island
Expressway. I have a Xincom TwinWan router that takes two WAN sources
(Cable and DSL) and lets me do load sharing (not so useful, I've found
that things work best if I set cable to 100%) and fault tolerance
(works great...if one WAN source dies, it instantly switches to the
other). I occasionally pull the plug on my Cable modem to check how the
Router and DSL are doing. The switch to DSL is seamless, but the speed
sucks.
I'm paying $30 a month for 1.5 mbps but I'm lucky if I get half that.
(My brother works for Verizon and has checked my wiring and my settings
and can't find any problem.) I can only get 1.5 down direct off a
Verizon server...never close to that from any other speed test server.)
Complicated webpages that always load in a second or two via cable
often take 10 to 30 seconds to load using DSL alone. (It's a
combination of poor latency and poor download speed.) I get no better
performance from DSL if I try it direct...without going through the
TwinWan router.
Road Runner newsgroup service is lightening fast but very incomplete.
(Multipart binary messages are often incomplete and most messages
expire quickly.) If I miss a day from an important group (to me) like
sci.physics.research, the messages are gone (on the Road Runner news
server). Verizon newsgroup service is very reliable but very sloooooow.
(With Road Runner, headers from, say, ten newsgroups might download in
five seconds whereas the headers from the same ten groups might take
five minutes to download from Verizon. Even short text-only message
bodies take a long time from Verizon.) Over and over I've concluded
that Verizon's news server is about a hundred times slower than the
Road Runner news server. But I guess slow but reliable is better than
fast but unreliable.
I have "keep alive" enabled in my "always on" router but every other
night the DSL looses connection. (I turn the computers off when I'm
sleeping but the modems and router are always on.) DSL dies completely
for hours at a time a few times a month (when I want it to work). Cable
dies completely on occasion, but not as frequently (maybe a few times a
year).
To give you a typical example of Verizon's service here in Queens, a
large truck that passed through recently knocked down my phone wires. I
called (using Cell phone) and was assured that a serviceman would come
the next day. (I had to agree to stay home all day for him.) He never
showed and when I complained, I was told that my phone showed up at the
central office as working fine. Remember that I'd told them that the
wire was broken and lying loose on the ground. (By the way, the phone
wire to my next door neighbor's home were also down!)
Cable TV service from Time Warner of New York (same provider as Road
Runner Internet) is terrible. I've been through six cable TV modems in
ten years. I need a new one right now. My digital TV picture is
starting to deteriorate but it takes two weeks to get a service
appointment and I've been putting off making that appointment.
My TV picture is always noticeably curved on one side of the screen and
if I reboot the Digital TV box, which is sometimes necessary due to
pixilation or stuttering, the TV box now always takes a half hour to
start up again. (The picture on the same TV is fine off the outdoor
antenna or when watching videos.) Besides my poor picture, Time Warner
TV goes dead every day or two...for minutes or for hours. Sometimes
just a few channels, sometimes all channels. My neighbors verify that
it's not just me.
When Verizon gets around to offering fiber Internet and TV service, I
could see ditching my cable (both Internet and TV)...but only if it
proves to be reliable.
Regards,
Bill
