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PC World's ISP Service Rankings, as of June 2005 254

Posted by timothy from the go-ahead-do-your-worst-earthlink dept.
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."
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PC World's ISP Service Rankings, as of June 2005 More

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

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  • Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:24PM (#12916714)
    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.
    • Cox Communications (Southern California): 5 (Horrible support, could-be-faster speeds, and lame port filters)
      • 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.
      • 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.

        • Re: Cox Communications (Score:5, Insightful)

          by orangesquid ( 79734 ) <orangesquid@nOspaM.yahoo.com> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @09:19PM (#12917206) Homepage Journal
          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.
          • 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.
    • Yeah, we could do practical tests too. Only ISPs withstanding a slashdotting would get positive ratings?
    • 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.
    • 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. (Score:5, Informative)

      by ptbarnett ( 159784 ) * on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:36PM (#12916787)
      PC World doesn't even mention Speakeasy [speakeasy.net]

      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. (Score:5, Informative)

        by IANAAC ( 692242 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:50PM (#12916837)
        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.

      • Customer service (Score:5, Informative)

        by xstonedogx ( 814876 ) <xstonedogx@gmail.com> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:54PM (#12916855)
        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:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jht ( 5006 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @09:15PM (#12917194) Homepage Journal
        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 [cummings.com] 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.

      • 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), a

      • 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 accu
        • 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.
      • 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.
    • 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!
      • 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.
        • 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.
    • 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
      • 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
      • 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
    • 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.
      • 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" connec
    • 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.
    • 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!
    • 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
      • Yep, PlusNet [plus.net] 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.
    • 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 th
      • 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 und
    • 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 supp
    • 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 t
    • 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 [broadbandreports.com] 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.
    • 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 dis
    • 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
    • + 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
    • 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.
    • "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...
    • 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 provi

    • 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 frequ
    • 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.
  • 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.

  • "Best of" chart seems limited (Score:3, Insightful)

    by knifeyspooney ( 623953 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:29PM (#12916733)
    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?
    • Sorry to break it to you, but Speakeasy and Bway are both corporation, too.
    • 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.
  • 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.
    • 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 w

  • Reporters report reporting on the report. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CosmeticLobotamy ( 155360 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:32PM (#12916764)
    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?
  • 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 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Moiche ( 840352 ) * on Sunday June 26, 2005 @08:01PM (#12916888)
    This just confirms what we already suspected: dial-up users [penny-arcade.com] are the new lepers [penny-arcade.com] in our wired heirarchical society, and they're dissatisfied about it. Moiche

  • For UK ISPs... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Insipid Trunculance ( 526362 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @08:12PM (#12916934) Homepage

    Go to ADSLguide [adslguide.org.uk].

    • And as for Dutch ISP's, XS4ALL [xs4all.nl] 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 [debian.org] (*points at XS4ALL logo in lower left of Debian site*).
  • 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.

  • Not Much Is New (Score:5, Interesting)

    by value_added ( 719364 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @08:38PM (#12917042)

    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.

  • Speakeasy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by courtarro ( 786894 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @08:45PM (#12917078) Homepage
    It's unfortunate to see that Speakeasy [speakeasy.net], an ISP known for its flexible usage policies, is not specifically represented in that review. From the TOS [speakeasy.net]: "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.

  • Misleading results.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by papasui ( 567265 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @08:48PM (#12917089) Homepage
    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.

  • Worthless for the /. Reader (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @08:50PM (#12917094) Homepage Journal
    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
  • Highly Recommended.

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

    Nice folks, give them a call.

  • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
  • 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/
  • I notice the chart authors kept listing ISPs until they got down to AOL, and then they stopped.
  • 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 (Score:2, Informative)

    by OneArmedMan ( 606657 )
    Might do well to check this page

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

    not sure if its the latest tho
  • "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*


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

  • 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.
  • 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 E
  • 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
    • 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
  • 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 wro

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