[Geek Question] Home ISP's

[lensman]

Ok I'm now looking into what the available home ISP options are, and I'm wondering what other peoples experiences and suggestions are?

I have thought about both AT&T Broadband, and RCN, but have heard both have issues (AT&T's new merger and their filtering of ports, and I heard RCN was very pushy wanting to get all of your home services)

Comments

Thanks

[lensman.livejournal.com]

I figure all the responces I get will be in the YMMV catagory, but forewarned.....

"and knowing is half the battle" the other half is death, destruction and general mayhem. In short a really good time. :-)

[tk7602.livejournal.com]

well, i have rcn, and can't comment on their pushy tactics, since i wanted them to have all of my home services. i end up paying ~40/month less than i was with separate phone, cable and cable modem.

the service is up pretty reliably, and the support and techs are generally happy to let you do whatever wacky things you want, so long as it doesn't break anything for them.

my install tech patched my phone line into the telephone patch panel i have in the basement, and didn't bat an eyelash at the 24 ethernet ports. he stood there while i hooked up my broadband router and got an ip.

the last time i called a tech, he asked what os. i said "just call it windows xp", he asked if it was an upgrade. i told him that it was freebsd, but that he didn't need to worry about that. he told me to "do whatever i need to do to release and renew the ip" i did, it worked, we were all happy.

Not only have I been a customer of both

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I've worked for both. Currently I'm working for AT&T Broadband.

RCN cable modem service is generally reliable but had occasional modem retrains. Tech support last I knew was quite clueful but RCN does not support home networking nor does it (technically) allow them on their networks. I did have routine billing problems with them as well.

AT&T Broadband cable modem service hasn't had the modem retrain issue. Tech support isn't quite as clueful as at RCN though they are close. I have had the rather annoying problem of my account going missing in the system a couple of times this past year; this isn't common for most customers, I just get special treatment :P

AT&T Broadband does, contrary to popular belief, lease its bandwidth to other companies. Currently you can get Earthlink powered by AT&T Broadband and if all you want from us is cable internet that would be a cost effective measure. We're working on getting other ISPs access - we'll even have AOL (gak!) sometime next year if the schedule I heard is correct.

The merger we're in, with Comcast, shouldn't cause trouble for cable modem services.

We currently don't offer static IPs and I don't know if we will be doing so in the future. If enough people called up and requested then they might, stress on might, change their minds about that someday.