Optimum Online v.s. D.S.L. Highspeed service

In My Humble Opinion
1

Having just gotten a MOST aggrivating sales pitch from Cablevision, I’m curious. This guy is telling me his Optimum Online Cable Internet is 4 times faster than my DSL, he tells me it’s a " lightning fast fiber optic signal, unlike DSL " ( Which of course is bullshit. )

Anyone out there ever had both? Is it worth it to switch? I’d have to dump my e-mail names, etc. The idea of higher speed is nice, but they want at least 44.00 a month, and I have 128 Kbs for 26.00 a month, and can’t really afford more ANYWAY.

Is Optimum Online that much better a service?

Cartooniverse

2

I’ve had Optimum Online since April 2001, and it’s been great. The speeds are very fast, even during peak internet usage times. Their service is also very prompt and good.

3

I have no specific knowledge of either company’s service, but it is entirely plausible for residential cable to have downstream speeds well in excess of 512 Kbp/s.

4

This is more a matter of opinion than fact, so I’ll move this thread to IMHO.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

5

I’ve had both, and the guy isn’t lying.

I lived in Queens and had DSL there (Verizon). It was a pain in the butt, I consistently had problems getting a connection, it wasn’t “always on.” It was a rare event to use the connection for any lengthy period of time without it “blinking”… and of course, while better than modem, 128K DSL just ain’t that fast…

So I moved to Nassau County last year, and ordered up DSL. After a 6-week waiting period to get it “turned on” nothing happened… Called Verizon and they said “oh, we don’t offer DSL in your area, someone should have told you that.”

So, in exasperation, I went out and got an Optimum Online kit. Came home, plugged it all up, turned it on, it worked and it’s been working ever since. I’ve had one service outage that I recall which was fixed within an hour. I’ve turned it off only a couple times (to add a router/firewall, etc.)

Now for the real magilla: It’s WAAAAY faster. I consistently get 512 throughput or higher. I can easily recall many times of having half a dozen MP3 files downloading simultaneously at over 100 each. If I FTP into my company’s big-ass powerful server from home (when I’m generally the only one using it and it has nothing better to do than feed me) I can get over a meg.

I recently set up a home network with three computers all going through the cable modem, and consistently have someone using all three at the same time to surf, etc. without a problem or notable slowness of any kind.

And no, I don’t work for them or anything… Just was truly amazed at the difference after having had both.

Hey, if you can’t afford the extra ~20 a month for it, I hear ya… But I would absolutely say it’s worth it if you can, and the speed representation is definitely true.

6

Afterthought: Don’t they have a 30-day “no risk” period where you can return the equip and tell 'em no and not pay? Maybe give it a shot. My guess is you’ll be addicted in 3 hours rather than 30 days, but at least if it doesn’t yank your crank, you can be done with it. They don’t conflict, so you can always keep the DSL for that month and then either revert to it or cancel it…

7

I often get a total download speed of 2Mbit/sec, which seems to be the cap. This is faster than T1, a DSL line capable of this speed would be very expensive. However, upload speed is capped much lower, around 30 KB/sec. Affordable DSL also has a low upload speed though.

The connection does slow down somewhat during peek usage, but not enough to affect browsing. You only notice the slowdown if you are downloading a monterous file from a fast server and watching the speed.

Relaibility will depend on your local lines and company, mine has been very relaible. Almost no unplanned outages, a couple of times e-mail and DNS went down, but I was still able to connect by specifying another DNS server that I happen to know about.

8

Forgot to say, I have Road Runner.

About the install; DO NOT let them install any software whatsoever on your PC. They didn’t even try with me, they probably took one look at my huge pile of computer junk and knew I was a geek that wouldn’t want any of that. They just ran the cable, plugged the cable into the modem, and attached the modem to my NIC with a standard ethernet cable. Five minutes after they left I had all of my computers online using Microsoft ICS (requires 2 nics in the main machine).

9

Bibli, sorry about that. I shoulda thought about the tone of my OP a bit more, and put it in there myself. ( Hangs head in shame, offers up cat 'o nine tails, etc. etc. ).

I am sorely tempted. It all comes down to cost. My DSL is just a few dollars more than Dial Up. I deleted my AOL account to save the 23.00 a month, I cannot really justify the added 20.00 a month for Opimum. However, technology being the wonderful thing it IS, I can say this.

I called my local DSL provider the second that Mr. Snotface got out of my ear with his sales pitch. I said, is what this fellah told me true? ( vis a vis speed, etc.). The DSL Tech was straight up with me, which was nice. Yes, it’s true. We then ran the speed test, and whaddya know. My speeds are so far down below what my DSL provider feels I ought to be getting for the fee I’m paying, that he wrote a repair ticket for me. Thursday, they will come and check out the hardware outside, and inside.

I am running 178 download, 88 upload- which is atrocious for DSL. We pulled down my firewall, and removed the router, and the speeds remained the same. Hopefully, I will get increased speed when they come and tweak. I have to say this, the DSL speed is pretty remarkable in of itself. While it is always an exciting thing to sit down at someone’s machine that has such a high rate of access that a media-crammed web page loads immediately, I do enjoy the access I have now.

Besides, I plan to call my local DSL provider back today, and get the Customer Service folks, and play one off the other. If they want to keep me, perhaps they will up my speed for free. :smiley:

I am getting the “slowest” DSL rate, guaranteed at 128k up and down. I will ask them to change the filtering so I get 256 k up and down, because I am considering the move to Optimum…we shall see.

10

Toonie -

Verizon sucks. Cablevision as a cable provider and sports team owner sucks. Optimum, much as I hate to admit it, is excellent.