Telocity DSL, any comments gripes?

[DO97]

Anyone have expierience with Telocity DSL? I just had mine hooked up today, after about a month and a half of waiting. Anyway. Pings to game servers (half life/Quake 3) are much lower than what I got using my Mediaone cable modem. Which I still have ( I can easily switch back and forth between the two, one to each NIC). Although my downloads are much slower than my cable modem. I've topped at about 40k/sec. I downloaded the same file from the same server on my cable and I nailed over 100k/sec (40k/sec on DSL). I'm more of a gamer than a warez/download monkey so it's not a REAL big deal.
Their phone support leaves much to be desired. I've waited on the line for many many hours over several phone calls to their tech support with no human answering. I find this absoloutley ubsurd. I'm hoping once I get everything roling I won't have to call for any kind of support.
Would anyone like to share any expieriences with Telocity? I'm leaning toward my new DSL and giving my brother the full use of the cable modem once I get my email account going. Thanks in advance.

Dave

 

[Kalidor]

I like pretty much ... although from what i have been reading it seems that it all depends on your area as well as your distance. We've always known that distance between your modem and your DSLAM affects signal quality. But recently I've noticed the dpending on the teleco that installed the DSLAM, they may try to bandwidth cap you. I am not sure if this is to try and get you to use thier serivice or if they are just morons. If you are getting low speeds contact their help desk, and tell them you seem to be having problems with those certain game servers, and that you'd like to talk to 2nd or 3rd level help asap. 1st level usually can't do anything more then test out your line again, although .. this could reveal if your teleco fudged around with the DSLAM.

 

[CrimsonKing]

Check out the post Kalidor started in hot deals:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=40&threadid=205527

I've had my share of problems with them, but your mileage may vary. My ISDN connection was at least far more reliable if not as fast.

Their DNS services are always dropping out, too. That's annoying.

I'd switch, but you've seen the turnaround times with DSL. I'm going to give them some time to get better.

Update: their mail server is down again as I type this. Twice in two weeks!

 

[Homerboy]

their damn mailserver has been down ALL DAY!!!

my first problem with them though...

 

[ktwebb]

At 40KB, you are either too far away from the CO or you need a TCP/IP stack tweak. Probably not, since it sounds like your cable speed is fine. More likely you are outside the 15k feet range from the CO. I get almost exactly the same speed as you with my Telocity account and I am 16-18k feet away, depending on which webpage resource you believe. Regardless, I am at the outside limits of reliable service, but reliability is excellent in my case. You have seen the big downfall of Telocity, their tech support. It sucks, but the modem is great, static IP, no contract. Overall I give it a thumbs up. Dont know what kind of problems the earlier post had exactly, but I have never experienced name resolution problems once, nor have I had any problems with mail, however, I dont use the telocity account for mail, so I can't really speak to that, but the DNS service is fine. Not a problem in the 3 months I have had it.

 

[CrimsonKing]

KTWEBB:
Wish I could say the same, but I get home tonight to find that Telocity claims their service is back up and running (said so as of 5PM at one time, I believe), yet my mail still says "bad login" when I check it with their webmail feature. Outlook just keeps prompting me with password checks like it has for the past 24 hours.

I can't believe you haven't had any DNS problems. It happens for five minutes, then it works, then the whole service goes down, then it's just DNS. Last week that happened for half an hour. Their reliability is a joke. See my comments in the thread I linked to above. Their service is actually insulting.

Maybe things are changing, though. When their mail server went out last week, they at least knew the problem right away and fixed it within an hour. The only nice and intelligent conversation I've had with the same person.

I know everyone's mileage varies, but I don't think these people understand what it means to serve the customer. Just my fifty-two cents. . .

 

[ktwebb]

I read in recent post on another board about their mail going down. That would bother me but I run my own mail server for personal stuff, and use my work account (VPN with Outlook or Webmail) for business so I never even worry about the Telocity mail. Never had a problem with the News server. And yeah, havent had a problem with name resolutin yet. Their customer service and tech support sucks, fortunately for me, I have only had to use them once in 3 months and that was early on. Just had to reset modem, which I have to do, maybe once every three weeks. Other than that, I have been very happy.

 

[CrimsonKing]

ktwebb:
I've been wanting to do the mail server thing, but I have a couple concerns (in addition to the increase in the electric bill). I'm wondering most what happens when my service is interupted. How long does mail float in limbo before returning to the sender? It would be a great learning experience to set up an Exchange server. Any pointers? Feel free to email me. Thanks!

 

[ktwebb]

I am just running a cheesy little mail server called anywhere mail server, or something like that. Cracked version, and it seems to do fine for me. I dont really get enought traffic to tell you how long it takes for returned messages to get to the sender. I have thought about running Exchange at home. I am the Exchange Admin for my company, and have access to a copy but I would need have to go through the setup, putting it on another PC, which at the moment I would have to come up with, so I just use the little cracked shareware version I mentioned. Havent had any problems so far.

 

[CrimsonKing]

Do you have to leave the mail server program running 24/7? That's my main concern.

 

[ktwebb]

I am also running a webserver on the same machine, so yeah, it runs all the time