Ruptga

Lifer
Aug 3, 2006
10,246
207
106
Which one do you have, and do they suck? I'm finally getting out of a dorm but I have no experience dealing with ISPs. I'm also in Oklahoma City and it looks like my two choices are Cox and AT&T, but I'm sure there are smaller providers I just haven't found yet.
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Comcast is generally viewed as the best provider in the country with their high performance docsis 3.0 HFC network with speeds up to 50 Mbs. Customer service is also top notch and award winning.
 

HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
Comcast is generally viewed as the best provider in the country with their high performance docsis 3.0 HFC network with speeds up to 50 Mbs. Customer service is also top notch and award winning.

Dude, your information on ISPs is as fallacious as your P&N views typically are.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/Advice/ComcastCustomerService.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast


They are typically rated the worst by every rating system out there. Good grief your facts are always messed up.
 

Ruptga

Lifer
Aug 3, 2006
10,246
207
106
Seriously now? I'm hardly an expert, but I've heard of how much love Comcast gets.
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Seriously now? I'm hardly an expert, but I've heard of how much love Comcast gets.

As much as I hate that site check out dslreports.com and check out the providers in your area. Nobody can really tell you about your providers unless they live there and have experienced it.
 

HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
Umm not really, because Comcast is one of the worst offenders against net neutrality. They were the worst at throttling customers for traffic usage for things like torrents and such. They have worse HD compression as shown in the wiki and as such, worse HD quality because of extra signal degradation.

Not that I like any of them. At least Comcast was cheaper when I used it for Internet only. However, the speeds sucked with it even with the most expensive tier of internet service. Using Time Warner right now and while they have problems, they are not throttling my internet at all. I was using Comcast in Houston about 6 months ago and even now I know people there only getting about 16 to 20 Mbps down. I'm getting 35+ in San Antonio with Time Warner for the same "tier" of internet service but paying about $15 more a month so it's a wash.
 

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
17,501
12
0
I have Cogeco Cable (Toronto area) and mine sucks balls. Phoned them today to find out why I'm paying for 14mpbs service but I'm only getting 4mbps. They tried to BS me that it was congestion in my area. Seeing as how most of my neighbourhood is at work (I'm off Tuesdays and Fridays), I can't see how this is possible. It's even like that in the middle of the night. This is just after them sending me an ad that says they just upgraded my area to 30mbps capability!

I know what they did. They slimy S.O.Bs never upped my speed from the original 5mbps service I had six years ago when they changed my package, but kept charging me the same. It's still the same package so I should be getting the benefits of the better service. Finally they're sending someone on Thursday to "look at it".
 
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nboy22

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2002
3,304
1
81
If you're in OK, just go with Cox. Cable is superior to DSL. Cox will be superior to AT&T DSL in every way.

DSL is such a horrible system. I work for AT&T DSL tech support so I know you'll only be able to achieve 6 mbps in the best case scenario. You might be able to get a Uverse package, but I'm pretty sure they don't offer that in OK.

Cox is actually one of the best providers I've used. I've been on Cox, Qwest DSL FTTN, Comcast, and CableOne.
 

Aharami

Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
21,205
165
106
They were the worst at throttling customers for traffic usage for things like torrents and such.

WERE?! They still ARE throttling. I cannot browse the internet at all when I have bittorrent open. All websites routinely time out. I really hope FIOS gets to me soon. In-laws just got FIOS and their HD looks much better than what I get.

And Comcrap routinely messes up my bill every couple months which require lengthy phone calls to resolve. Worst customer service, worst HD quality, worst internet practices. no wonder it was voted the worst company,
 

AndroidVageta

Banned
Mar 22, 2008
2,421
0
0
I have Charter here in Atlanta. LOVE THEM! No joke. Getting 25mb internet for $40 a month with basic cable (which is actually full cable + HD, they just dont know it) and the service has been excellent as has been the customer service.

At&t on the other hand, the people I had before charged me $55 a month for 3mb internet that went down like every day and had the worst customer service Ive ever seen...I have NO idea how they are still in the internet business.

CHARTER F T W!!!
 

Crusty

Lifer
Sep 30, 2001
12,684
2
81
WERE?! They still ARE throttling. I cannot browse the internet at all when I have bittorrent open. All websites routinely time out. I really hope FIOS gets to me soon. In-laws just got FIOS and their HD looks much better than what I get.

And Comcrap routinely messes up my bill every couple months which require lengthy phone calls to resolve. Worst customer service, worst HD quality, worst internet practices. no wonder it was voted the worst company,

You do realize that if you're using all your upstream bandwidth for torrents NOTHING is going to be fast right? If you can't acknowledge the receipt of your packets fast enough the sending side is going to slow down.
 

Gibson486

Lifer
Aug 9, 2000
18,378
2
0
As much as I hate that site check out dslreports.com and check out the providers in your area. Nobody can really tell you about your providers unless they live there and have experienced it.

yeah, I have comcast. it blows. It was decent when i lived in Boston 3 years ago. I moved to cambridge now, it blows.
 

ViviTheMage

Lifer
Dec 12, 2002
36,189
87
91
madgenius.com
Comcast is generally viewed as the best provider in the country with their high performance docsis 3.0 HFC network with speeds up to 50 Mbs. Customer service is also top notch and award winning.

I know everyone hates on Comcast, but I love em too :). Not once has my DOCSIS 3.0 gone down since they started beta testing here in Minneapolis.

My residential line has never gone down either.

comcast doesn't throttle downloads, i'll tell ya that much! I'll get a picture of my torrents running at 6MB/s if you really want.

pt22.jpg


pt2.jpg
 

frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
7,925
1
81
WERE?! They still ARE throttling. I cannot browse the internet at all when I have bittorrent open. All websites routinely time out. I really hope FIOS gets to me soon. In-laws just got FIOS and their HD looks much better than what I get.

And Comcrap routinely messes up my bill every couple months which require lengthy phone calls to resolve. Worst customer service, worst HD quality, worst internet practices. no wonder it was voted the worst company,
That could be a router issue. A lot of shitty ones can't handle all the connections that BitTorrent tries to make. Or as Crusty mentioned, if you're maxing out your upload, it's going to cause things to slow down to a crawl.

Anyway OP, FiOS offers great speeds and service, worth looking into if it's available in your area. I think it's a bit more expensive than cable, though, and I've heard some bad stories about Verizon's billing and customer service. Or if you just need something basic, DSL would probably be fine. If you think you can get by with a 1.5Mbit or 3Mbit connection, it's usually a pretty good option.
 

AMDZen

Lifer
Apr 15, 2004
12,589
0
76
No matter how bad comcast is to other people, its all i have here in Denver and I'm quite happy with it. I get rated at 12 mbps down and like 1.5 up but I get close to 15 and 3 respectivelly.

Even if I had another choice I'd stick with comcast.
 

frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
7,925
1
81
I'm sure most people are happy with Comcast. The people on a site like this who are upset about the BitTorrent throttling, 250GB/mo cap, etc. are a small minority of customers. Most don't know or don't care about stuff like that.
 

child of wonder

Diamond Member
Aug 31, 2006
8,307
176
106
I know everyone hates on Comcast, but I love em too :). Not once has my DOCSIS 3.0 gone down since they started beta testing here in Minneapolis.

My residential line has never gone down either.

comcast doesn't throttle downloads, i'll tell ya that much! I'll get a picture of my torrents running at 6MB/s if you really want.

I'm moving to New Prague this Friday and am VERY leary of the 250GB cap each month I'll have with Comcast. We're forgoing cable TV in lieu of using Playon to stream Hulu and a lot of other online content to our TVs. Being a Linux and VMware guy, I'm frequently downloading new ISOs or patches and purchase games on Steam.
 

ViviTheMage

Lifer
Dec 12, 2002
36,189
87
91
madgenius.com
I'm moving to New Prague this Friday and am VERY leary of the 250GB cap each month I'll have with Comcast. We're forgoing cable TV in lieu of using Playon to stream Hulu and a lot of other online content to our TVs. Being a Linux and VMware guy, I'm frequently downloading new ISOs or patches and purchase games on Steam.

Yeah, me too...i've gone well over a few TB, I never got a call/email/letter in the mail. I am still on the residential DOCSIS 3.0...once they start to complain, i'll bump up to business class, so I am not limited.
 

yh125d

Diamond Member
Dec 23, 2006
6,886
0
76
I have AT&T DSL about 75mi from you... I'd go for cox. 600kb/s peak down 80kb/s peak up, and apparently it's about that most everywhere
 

Aharami

Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
21,205
165
106
You do realize that if you're using all your upstream bandwidth for torrents NOTHING is going to be fast right? If you can't acknowledge the receipt of your packets fast enough the sending side is going to slow down.

yes i realize that. that's why I limit up upload to 10kbps. even then I can't browse
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
yes i realize that. that's why I limit up upload to 10kbps. even then I can't browse

Probably your router then and it's NAT/state table is just too big. P2P is like a virus on network resources and consumes them all.
 

rudeguy

Lifer
Dec 27, 2001
47,351
14
61
Comcast is generally viewed as the best provider in the country with their high performance docsis 3.0 HFC network with speeds up to 50 Mbs. Customer service is also top notch and award winning.

Charter also has an HFC network and is deploying docsis 3.0 throughout the country. Current top speeds are 60Mbps.

That said, I have Comcast. I am stuck using 6meg unless I want to pay a stupid amount per month to upgrade.
 

AstroManLuca

Lifer
Jun 24, 2004
15,628
5
81
I have Qwest DSL, which is only 5-7 Mbit, but it's not that bad. Customer service has been kind but incompetent. When I moved, instead of transferring my service to a new address, they canceled it and started a new one. That had the interesting effect of adding a $200 early termination fee to my old account (I had signed up for a deal to get a $13/mo discount in exchange for a 2-year contract). Since the fee was on my old account, I was never notified of its existence until I got a call from a collections agency.

Turns out they have a pretty shitty system that makes it difficult to transfer a standalone DSL connection from one address to another (because it requires a new phone number), and a lot of CSRs will just cancel service and start new service to get around it. I eventually got everything sorted out but it took a while.

Thankfully, though, my service has never once gone down or even slowed down. I'm not a huge downloader but I do use Netflix streaming and I get games from Steam.

It's not perfect but it's reliable and cheap. Monthly cost is $47 vs. $60 for cable (and I know they'll give you an introductory discount on cable but I don't care about that, I want to know how much it costs most of the time, not for six months). I don't have or want cable TV so there is no reason for me to get cable internet (no bundle discounts).