Earthlink DSL or AT&T @Home Cable?

[Xtremist]

Well, currently I have Qwest DSL via a local ISP. The ISP is great and I really hate to change service, but I just got a Visor and wanna try out the OmniSky wireless service. And there's no way I can justify spending THAT much on communications (besides phone). Here's the setup right now:

A 256kbit/sec ADSL line that trains at 640down | 272 up (these are the actual speeds I get as well... Typically 75-78k d/l and 25-27k u/l. So it's pretty good. I pay $69/month for this $30 to Qwest for DSL transport and $39 to my ISP (XMission) Yeah, it's a lot, but it's a business account. This lets me have unlimited static IP's (yup, so far "have 10, but only use 3 😉). It also gives me some other "advantages" over a regular account.

Ok, now that you have the background, I have looked at service providers in my area and Earthlink DSL and @Home seem to be the cheapest high-speed connection available here. My question lies squarely on which of these two options I should choose. I do NOT want this to be a Cable vs. DSL debate or soapbox for people. DSL's obviously a better technology and time will prove it 😉 Maybe I'm askin' for it there? But anyway, I'm not interested in which "technology" is better, just the service each of these provide. Here's my current understanding:

-=@Home Cable=-

• 128kbit/sec upload
• Tech support sucks
• 1 Static IP?
• Varying bit rates. One question I'd like answered (preferrably by those in SLC, UT area, and at LEAST those WITH @Home) is how much do they vary and at what times?
• HORRIBLE routing/peering?, at least from my experience. Packets fly all over the country before getting to their destination. Please tell me this has changed somewhat in two years since I had it???

Other things I wonder about @Home... Can I setup and run HTTP, FTP, mail, and DNS on this connection? Not if I can according to a TOS, but "can" I? I know you can with HTTP and FTP, but I haven't done much with mail or DNS yet and so I'm wondering...

Also, has the quality of service improved any? I had it almost two years ago when it first came to my area (thank God I kept DSL while I had Cable) and the service sucked HARD. I cancelled it about 5 days after getting it installed... So hopefully they've straightened it out?

-=Earthlink DSL=-

• 1.5Mbit down | 384? u/l (I think they use Covad in my area).
• Unsure on tech support
• The sales rep said 1 dynamic IP... Does someone know if this is assigned via DHCP or some other method? Or is it like the @Home "dynamic" IP's... like they don't really change at all... I'm not sure if that's still @Home policy, but I remember they used to say it was dynamic, but they weren't 😉
• Unsure on bit rates... Typically DSL is good at keeping it constant regardless of the time. I guess a question here would be if Earthlink/Covad can do this too?
• Unsure on routing. Anyone?

General questions:

1. Which service would have better uptime? Please tell me if you know this for a FACT or ASSUMPTION.
2. Which service has better technical support?
3. Which service would have better transmission rates? I weigh it on both fastest speed as well as constant data rate... And I think where one excels, it fails the other... So many opinions would be nice...
4. Which service would be better for running HTTP, FTP, DNS, mail, etc... servers on?
5. Please, any other comments you have on these two services!!!

I would like to keep it to these two services unless you have something that you know is available in Utah that totally rocks... And not wireless (costs like $750 or more for equipment here)... I'm sorry for asking so many questions, but after I switch, I do NOT want to change services until ATM runs to the desktop and takes care of alllll my needs 😉 Hehe, cheers!

 

[ToxicMussels]

I can tell you this! Here is a warning about Earthlink. They will tell you about how fast you can go, but they will NEVER give you a minimum. Watch out for this! I have had my Wireless BroadBand account with Earthlink/Sprint for over a year now! Their customer service sucks! Actually, their business practice is: Our customer service reps will give you the snow-job to keep you happy. The truth is, when you have a thruput problem like we do, you call Customer Service, they roll out a van, then you are told there is no problem on your end; it's our fault!
You then try to contact someone at Earthlink and all they do is laugh! I'm serious!

We have had so many down times and an average 14% packet loss daily since the month of August. I used to get 1.2 mbytes/sec. download; but that has changed. I now average 20-35 kbytes/sec. I am forced to log on to Usenet at 2am just so I can get 50k of thruput a channel.

We have daily logs of thruput from Earthlink and are currently presenting our case to the FTC, FCC, BBB, and the AZ Attorney Generals Office.

If you have complaints about Earthlink; good luck! They will only laugh!:|

 

[pm]

I think it would be better to ask people who live around you who have experience with one or the other (or possibly both). In my experience AT&T@Home service varies widely from city to city.

-=@Home Cable=-



<< 128kbit/sec upload >>

This currently isn't enforced in my city. It sounds like it is throughout the rest of the country though. I get ~800kbps uploads to friends and on Napster.


<< Tech support sucks >>

This is definitely true.


<< 1 Static IP? >>

It's technically dynamic, but mine hasn't changed since it was installed six months ago. A co-worker has had the same dynamic IP for well over a year. $5/month for more IP's.


<< Varying bit rates >>

Mine don't seem to vary much - or if it does it's not in a predictable pattern. I seem to get a roughly consistent 2Mb/s download regardless of the day or time from major sites like Intel.Com and Microsoft.Com. Latency seems to rise by about 20-30% around 6pm-8pm, but in most cases, it's going from 60ms to 80ms or something similar and is basically unnoticeable.


<< HORRIBLE routing/peering >>

Not in my experience either. There's a lot of hops to get to the gateway (7 IIRC), but the routing seems pretty good. It's hard to know where everything is when you tracert, but it seems like I go in a relatively intelligent fashion as long as I stay within the US (accesses to European, and particularly Australian sites seem to get routed strangely though).


<< Can I setup and run HTTP, FTP, mail, and DNS on this connection? Not if I can according to a TOS, but &quot;can&quot; I? I know you can with HTTP and FTP, but I haven't done much with mail or DNS yet and so I'm wondering... >>


You can definitely set up HTTP and FTP servers (well, like you said, you violate your TOS but...) but I do and no one seems to mind. I notice that @Home appears to run port scans looking for DNS servers though - no idea what they do about them. I haven't tried mail.


<< Also, has the quality of service improved any? >>

This seems to vary a lot depending on where you live. I'm in Fort Collins, CO, and here the service is, if not excellent, then at least very good. My downtime in the last six months is approximately 36 hours (broken into about 6 six hour chunks). This is not wonderful, but it's ok. My company provides me with a backup dial-up ISP, so I just pull out the modem when it drops.

I hear horror stories from my friends in the San Francisco Bay Area. @Home is definitely not the service to get in the South Bay from what they tell me. Here in Fort Collins, they do much better than USWest DSL though. Enough that several of my friends have switched. So, my advice is to ask around.

When I first got the service, I used to run a logged chron job to check latency, bandwidth, routing and uptime. I looked at the logs every couple of days. After about 7 weeks of this I gave up. The service was pretty consistent, and the uptime was pretty good. One thing that I have noticed is that the service tends to drop when the cable goes out (which may makes sense, but it doesn't necessarily follow). About half the time, they go hand in hand.

 

[Xtremist]

pm - Good point. Actually my girlfriend's brother has cable and so does my best friend (although he's not back from Dallas yet, so I gotta wait on that one). But one more thing... Is cable to cable transfers pretty quick? Man, if cable had incredibly fast transfers between their subscribers, holy moly everyone'd get it 😉 Anyhow, thanx for the words of advise...

 

[obeseotron]

At least in my area, consumer grade dsl sucks for your money. Cable is almost always faster than the first speed grade of dsl, and can be as fast as the top. I will tell you that your max download rate may decrease over time. 18 months ago when I just got the cable connection, I could max out the 10Mbit NIC at times, and 900Kb wasn't abnormal for a sustained download rate (many things at once through getright or leech ftp). Then it somewhat suddenly dipped to 600k and then again to the current 400k. Cable is currently the most reasonable choice, but it certainly isn't perfect.

Edit:
Quotes I've personally heard from @home:
-&quot;Windows can't handle 2 NICs in one machine&quot;
-&quot;You can't share your connection with any other computers without getting a second modem&quot;
-&quot;You must use the @home version of a your web browser, otherwise it will not work correctly&quot;

 

[pm]

Xtremist: no, I don't seem to be able to transfer faster or more slowly between other @Home subscribers even if they are on the same node as I am (we've tried) - my connection caps out at 600-900kb/s. It's the same on Napster. A guy who had a direct connection from Stanford Uni. was pulling off in the mid-700's from me a couple of nights ago. So, I don't notice a difference if they are on @home too or not. Latency is much lower if they are right next door though - as you'd expect.

I keep expecting my D/L rate to drop, but it still hasn't. My expectations were pretty low when I signed up for cable. My neighborhood is multiplexed (I typically got 19.6kbps - same modem, same ISP, analog line at work (Intel) I'd get 50.6kbps consistently - it was my line), and I'm about 5 miles away from the CO, so IDSL was about the best that I could get. I signed up for @Home with low expectations and have been blown away ever since. If it wasn't for the 6 hours or so a month of down time (usually all in one chunk - usually on a Sat. morning it seems), I'd be a completely satisfied customer.

The customer support is absolutely appalling though. The technicians who come out are usually pretty good, but the guys answering the telephones sound like they are reading from a script and don't seem to pay any attention to anything you say. I'll call to say that my connection is down, I'll wait on hold for 45 mins. to 1hr 15min. I'll talk to the guy who answers and say &quot;The link/sync light on my cable modem is off. The service is down here, can you report it to the technicians?&quot; and they'll respond &quot;Is the cable modem plugged in?&quot; and I'll say &quot;yes.&quot; and they'll ask &quot;is your computer turned on&quot; and I'll reply &quot;well, yeah, but the problem is that the cable modem says there's no service&quot; and they'll ignore this and ask me to release and renew my DHCP address and I'll do this but I have to carefully edit my response so that they don't find out that I'm running with a router because that'll be the end of the call (been there before... &quot;The problem is with your home network, sir, and we don't provide support for home networks. The problem is not on our end.&quot😉. If I can manage to pretend like I don't have a router, we'll then move down to the bottom of the script and finally they'll agree that my service is down. Usually the service comes back up while I'm sitting waiting on hold though.

It's not so much that there is a script as much as we could skip a whole lot it if they would just listen to what I'm saying. But the thing that kills me is the hold times. Like I said, the guys who actually show up in the van are usually very capable. I just wish that AT&amp;T would hire some more operators so that I wouldn't have to wait an hour to talk to them.