Complete Failure
Written: Jan 06 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: See Below
Cons: See Below
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| soupcraze's Full Review: AT&T@home |
After having dial-up internet for a large portion of my life. I decided to switch to cable. I was trying to decide over Cable, DSL, or satellite (Gilat), Cable was without any doubt the cheapest. It's very similar to the T1 connections I have at college, just a lot less reliable. Most of my buddies were using @Home or Roadrunner (Time Warner). AT&T was the major operator in my area, and we already had AT&T digital service. So I called, and asked for it to be set up. The person at the other end of the line said the installer will be at my home from 10:00AM to 12:00 noon. I said that was OK.
Two days later, I woke up at 7:30, and was all excited about getting cable internet. I decided to make a list of MP3s and VCD movies that I wanted. That kept me occupied for a while. It was 9:59, my heart almost skipped a beat. I was thinking that I'd be spending most of my days at home, not with my friend at his dorm at NWU. I couldn't think of anything else to put on my list, so I went online. A couple of hours later, 12, no one still... This now really sounds like AT&T. I decided to watch a couple of DVDs. It was 4:30, still no show! I decided to call AT&T, all they said was that they SAID the installer was supposed to show up at 5:00 or 5:30. So I decided not to pick a fight. Anyways, the installer finally showed up at... 6:14PM.
He went on to install it. He showed me my cable modem, and put it in the basement. He went on to network the computers in the house to the modem using a system networks card. Then he attempted to get the computers to run the internet... Well... It wasn't working... I attempted to get the IP addresses in, and rechecked all of the lines. It was 8:00PM, and everything was still down. The installer had to call backup which showed up 30 minutes later. After a bit more work. They were finished.
I decided to take a long shower, and I returned to use the internet on my computer. Well, the internet worked, but the speeds were virtually nothing at all. The internet was only capable of chugging at a maximum speed of 70kps. I wasn't pleased at all. I decided to forget the computer, and went back to watching a bunch of Bond movies on my TV.
I came back later in the evening, the computer was able to move the internet at 90kps on average, nice improvement, ehhh? But then I decided to download all of my files in the middle of the night to reach cable internets limit, and so I went on at 2:30AM, and the speeds were only around 140kps. It was better than cable, but I didn't see much of an improvement over the time frames depending on the number of people using the bandwith. I was able to download a VCD movie (Austin Powers2) by late morning the next day. The speeds were jumping around at night, it sometimes lagged, and sometimes didn't. Overall, it was managable.
Then came the unexpected, I was talking on AIM, and all of a sudden it shut off. The cable internet went out for a few hours, and then came back on. Then again, it went off even for a couple of days at a time. This made using cable internet unbearable. So I called AT&T, and they said it was their servers, "It happens all of the time."
Ok... If this happens all of the time, then why the hell am I using it? I'm paying $39 a month when I can be paying much less for dial-up which doesn't have server problems every day, or be paying only $50 for DSL which is not on a sharred bandwith. Anyways, I was sick of cable, and decided to cancel. I had a contract, so it costed me... But I really didn't care at that point. I called Ameritech, and they installed DSL Speedpath for me, and the installation guy was on time.
I have been using DSL ever since, it just about never goes down, and if it does. I can run 56kps dial-up on the fiber optic lines. Anyways, I'm very happy with DSL, and never again will I use cable, here's a quick overview of why cable (especially AT&T is bad):
*Constant Server Problems which causes shut-downs, even for days!!!
*High Cost
*AT&T never has their installation guys show up ontime
*Shared Bandwith = Slow Speeds During Rush Hour, DSL IS NOT SHARED!!!
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
soupcraze
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Member: Soup Enthusiast
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Reviews written: 488
Trusted by: 185 members
About Me:
I enjoy many of life's passions... Music, medicine, people, and life itself.
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