@home and loving it!
Written: Oct 21 '00 (Updated Jan 09 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast downloads, always connected , fair price
Cons: Servers go down regularly
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| darkbreeze's Full Review: AT&T@home |
Let me start by explaining one thing to you, not unlike many of you, I spend an extremely large amount of time on my computer. Most of it is spent on the Internet searching for a particular program, plug-in, reference material, graphic material or writing articles, both here and at Themestream. So what I need to do is find what I'm looking for, download it and then get on with what I was working on. When I still had a dial-up connection, which I haven't had for about two years now, I would spend ungodly amounts of time just trying to find what I was looking for, much less downloading it. And, this is all assuming I was able to get online at all considering bad connections, disconnections, server timeouts (Due to slow connections.) and the fact that invariably at least one of the members of my average sized family were on the phone using my single and at that time, much revered, phone line. Cripes, when will this all end.
Well it all ended the day I decided enough was enough and I was switching to cable modem access. I live in Pueblo, Co, which by the way was given the national honor of "Most livable city in the U.S" this year, whatever that means. Anyway, we finally had cable modem access available, as a test area for a proto-type network environment that @home was trying to develop and implement nationally. Test area or not, I'm in. So I call them up and believe it or not, they told me they could perform the installation within two days. I told her that wasn't going to do at all. Nope, I'm used to having to wait a minimum of a week for anything to get done when dealing with services I consider to be important like power, heat, my doctor or replies/service from an ISP. So don't go thinking you can just up and change my viewpoint on this, I am, after all, set in my ways.
I guess she must have been new because she got so flustered she couldn't even finish the call and had to let her supervisor make the arrangements. I guess she didn't understand my somewhat dry sense of humor. So after a relatively painless exchange of information my appointment was set. I thought to myself, this is great. I'm going to be rid of my evil dial-up connection in less than three days and I'll never have to deal with a broken download evermore. Boy was I in for a surprise. Not a bad one like you might think either. No sir! Would you believe that the very next day they had a cancellation and called me to ask if I was available for them to come do the install early? I was flabbergasted. Never in my life had I ever heard of anybody in a similar service oriented business actually CALLING to see if they can get you fixed up EARLY. Usually if somebody does call, it's to let you know that it's going to be on backorder, or late, or that the particular technician has gone on vacation so your microwave is just going to have to wait two weeks for him to get back. Needless to say I was very pleased at the start.
This fairytale isn't all happy thoughts and dreamy landscapes though. The very day the tech showed up to install the necessary cable line and set up my network settings, my new, although thankfully short, nightmare began. After changing out the necessary cable lines from the closest node to my house, swapping the premium channel filter located up on the pole to one that wouldn't interfere with two way signals and running new cable to my study didn't seem to help establish a connection with the network the technician decided the modem was bad and swapped it out. Finally, after an entire day of him checking this and that he finally got the modem provisioned, which in layman’s terms means the damned thing was recognized and registered on the @home network as a valid modem.
Once it has been provisioned you then have to achieve a state of constant connectivity known as block sync. This just means that you are connected to the network and can send or receive data. You can usually know before you even sit down to work/play whether or not there are any problems on the network that will affect your connection, by whether or not the proper lights on your modem are solidly lit indicating block sync. @Home uses many different modems throughout its vast network. Motorola makes some of these modems, some are made by RCA and so on. Each modem may use a slightly different way to indicate block sync (Connected to network). Mine for example, which is an RCA, indicates sync with all three lights (Power, data and cable.) solidly lit. Some only use two lights and a very few may only have one that needs to stay lit. Most times if you have sync, you won't have any problems. Not always though.
Certain extraneous circumstances such as a particular server being down may cause you grief even though your modem shows block sync. Many times for example, you might have no problem accessing web pages but you can't get your E-mail. In this instance either the entire mail server or at least a crucial part of it has gone down while other key parts of the network remain up. This is a fairly common and frustrating occurrence if you use @home so be prepared for it. This can happen both ways, although generally if a key data server goes down, those with a need to access through that server will lose their block sync and won't be able to connect until it comes back up.
I'll tell you right now that if you expect fast customer service from @home you better get to know somebody at the local level really fast because wait times at @home customer service can be long and unrewarding. Although they are pretty good about finding and fixing your problem once you do eventually get to speak to someone, it's seldom that they can do anything from where they are. In this case they schedule what they call a "Truck roll" which means that a technician needs to come look your system over and run some tests between your home and the network. Don't expect this to be a quick and simple process though. In fact, you'd be lucky if they could get someone back to your residence in less than a week, which means unless the problem is on the network and goes away, you don't surf for seven days or more. So keep in mind that while they may not take much time to get you set up, it's likely to take a while to get you back up if you have a non-network related issue.
Now are you ready for the fun part? You just heard the worst of what you can expect from @home, so get ready for the goodies! To start with you get multiple email addresses with your account so everybody can set up their own identities if you share a single computer in your home. For about $4.95 per month you can get additional IP addresses which allow you to use more than one computer to access the network with the same modem although you will have to buy some kind of networking hub to route signals. You can pick one of these up for anywhere from twenty to three hundred dollars for a typical five port 10/100 hub. Presently in my home we have three computers connected to the network via their own IP addresses and one more that shares its IP address with the computer in my study. None of this seems to affect access or transfer times for any them so don't worry about that aspect.
The thing I love most about my cable access is the download times. I used to spend an average of ten to twenty hours a week with my 56k just downloading data I needed. Sometimes it took considerably longer. Never again. While @home has recently limited upstream speeds to try and eliminate or reduce the use of residential connections for server applications, the downstream speeds still kick ass. I recently downloaded a 110MB program in less than ten minutes and that's flying. I usually download at between 30k and 130k but I have occasionally downloaded at as much as 350k depending on whether or not the source server can support those kinds of speeds. In other words, if someone is serving pages via a dial up connection, no matter what kind of connection you have your not going to ever exceed maybe 10k tops and probably more like 2-4k.
The second favorite thing is not ever having to wait for a dial up connection to go through it's silly little cycle. Just point, click, and BAM! there you are, right where you wanted to go. No funky modem clicks, whistles and hums, just pure Internet. At 39.95 for basic service, in my area at least, it even beats getting a second line for access because by the time you pay for an ISP, basic service connection fees and applicable taxes you will probably end up paying more for dial up, at least if you consider that you are still paying for your primary phone line too. I also enjoy the fact that every member of this household can be online at the same time without affecting each other’s access whatsoever.
One thing I'd like to note is that, despite what @home or anybody else would have you believe, you don't need a fast computer to use a cable modem service. @Home's site indicates a minimum of 133mhz processor, 32mb of RAM, etc. Bull! I have an older computer in my garage that I built from bits and pieces of other computers and it connects just fine with the @home network. This dinosaur has an impressive 60MHZ processor, minimal board cache, 16MB of SIMMS memory (Old, very old.)and a 2X CD-ROM. I don't even use a PCI network card but rather an ISA network card because the damned thing isn't even PCI 2.1 compatible. It works just fine although it does take somewhat longer to display graphic pages due to the slow hardware. Non-graphic intense pages load nearly as quickly as my 750MHZ Duron does though.
Here's a tip that can speed up you surfing, clean up your operating system, increase the amount of system resources your computer has available to it and speed up your connection by eliminating some upstream and downstream bandwidth used by the @home software. Some of you surely know this already having far more extensive network skills than myself. First let me explain what it is you are going to do to achieve this. You are going to remove any trace of @home's software and browser from your computer. Now most or at least some of you are going to say, but wait, if we do that we can't connect anymore. Wrong! You don't need one single shred of @homes software installed on your computer to access the network. The only thing that affects your connection to the network is your proxy settings in Internet Properties and your network settings in Network Properties.
The following is based on the assumption you are using at least IE 5 and Windows 98. Older browsers, other browsers and older OS's may have slightly different procedures that need to be followed. Novice users or those that are uncomfortable with medium to advanced functions shouldn't try this unless you know somebody who can get you out of any mess you might accidentally create by being unfamiliar. The first thing you need to do is go into your network settings and in the configuration tab, below where it says "The following network components are installed" open each individual item such as "Client for Microsoft Networks", "3Com etherlink III adapter", "TCP/IP" etc. and record all settings and information for later reference. Next, click on the Identification tab and record the information for computer name, workgroup and computer description as you may need to plug this information back in later. After you record all pertinent info, close Network Properties by clicking "Cancel".
Go into Internet Options and click on the "Connections" tab. Now click on LAN Settings and record all checked boxes and proxy settings for later use. Close Internet Options. Go into Add/Remove programs and Uninstall anything that pertains to @home, @home browser, @home2000 or anything you know for certain the technician installed when setting your system up. Re-boot your computer and go into windows explorer. Delete any remaining @home folders that aren't in the actual windows directory. If you have effectively uninstalled all software related to @home you should be able to delete any remaining @home folders with no adverse effects. Now that you've cleared your computer of all @home software, go back into Network Settings and verify that all the information under each tab is still correct. If not, change the values to those you recorded. Now go into Internet Options and do the same. Probably somewhere along the way you will be prompted to re-boot but don't do so until you've made all your changes. Then you can re-boot and you should once again have access to the network without any @home software bogging your system down. One note though, if you don't have Netscape or Internet Explorer installed you may not be able to use this procedure as I haven't tested it with other browsers but I see no reason why it wouldn't work as long as your network settings are correct and whatever browser you are using has the appropriate proxies set.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
darkbreeze
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Member: Leonard Ratliff
Location: Pueblo, CO
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 21 members
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