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Review by Pacrat See Profile

  • Location: Cortland, Trumbull, OH, USA
  • Cost: $45 per month
  • Install: about 3 days
Seems to be very reasonable rates for performance realized
RR rate tied in with SmartHouse digital cable TV pkg
Very pleased with ease of use and pain-free installation! I recommend!
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

We've waited for quite some time for RR to be made available and now that it's here, we're very pleased with the performance. Of course, nearly anything would beat the 56K dial up connection we had. I just figured my averages and the Speed Test Tool has revealed what seems to be a pretty consistent Up of 350-370. Downloads seems to vary quite a bit but still average 1682 (counting the day there was a general cable problem in our neighborhood. If I discount the readings on that day, I get an average Download reading of 1912 (1413-2689). Don't know if there is a cap on anything but it seems there might be on the upload side, at least. West Coast speed readings seem to be consistently higher, generally well over 2Mbps. It's still very early in the game.

.Installer took great pains to route the cable in the most inobtrusive manner, and made the modem split before any of the TV feed splits. Don't know if that makes any difference or not. I definitely recommend the service, even without the "all the bells and whistles" TV pkg.

I am using a Toshiba PCX1100U modem (USB), to a Dell Dimension 8100 (1.3Gb, P-4). I have heard that the USB slows things down, but I sure haven't seen it. I wasn't quoted a specific speed, but was promised performance at least 10X over my modem, and I'm certainly getting that. I did apply some "tweaks" and noticed something 200-400kbps improvement in the download. Kept tweaking 'til the program said to leave it alone! No problems yet, but I'll keep everyone posted!

Special intro rate for 1st 3 mos. (SmartHouse Pkg = $89.99) Forgot to mention before that because RR was just now made available... install was FREE!

Struck by my 1st outage!!!! EGAD!!! Thought I was suffering from withdrawal. RR Techie showed up right when they said he would and within 15mins I was up and running again... as good as ever! Only rap was that it took 24 hrs to get someone here. Tested the signal and went to the splitter to reverse the TV and Modem taps. He said something about one tap being 1db down while the other was 9db down. So he reversed the taps so that the modem would have the least signal drop out of the splitter. Seemed pretty knowledgeable and he gave me some other(local) test sites to check speeds. Could only test downloads but could break it up into text, graphics and multimedia. Three different tests! I told him about DSLReports and he wrote it down in his "little black book" for future reference. Overall... I'm still sold on NEO.RR and sure would try to talk anyone else around here into spending the few bucks extra to get it. Now if I could only talk my wife into bagging AOL....!!!!!!!!!!!

2nd Outage!!!!! All of our utilities are underground. That said, we've experienced our 2nd outage... my wife cut our cable while she was edging her flower bed. They don't put it very deep (the cable lies just under the sod layer) and when my wife was edging the flower bed around the side of the house, near the cable junction box, she very neatly cut the cable in two with her shovel. I sure can't blame the outage on TWC, but in the spirit of truth and complete reporting, I offer it for your amusement. TWC is coming next week to replace the whole line... operating with a temporary splice job 'til then.

3rd outage! This one definitely wasn't the fault of RR or TWC. Seems they're(city employees) digging up the existing curbing in our neighborhood in preparation for casting new curbing and repaving the streets. About 2:10pm. today, 7/11/01, everything went out... no TV no RR, no nuthin'! I called service and they said they'd send someone out to check on the situation ASAP. In the meantime, I had to leave the house for awhile and I took an alternate path leaving the house. This took me over one block and lo and behold... there was our cable trunk line sticking out of the ground about 5 feet. Or, rather, one end of the line was sticking out... the other end was still buried in the ditch. Our city employees had hooked the cable line with the back-hoe and completely severed it. I called TWC-RR back again and told them that I thought I'd found their problem, and it was going to take more than just one "techie" to fix it. I gave them the exact location of the break and they were very appreciative. At approximately 6:00pm my service(TV and RR) had been restored. And get this... the repairman stopped at the house to thank me and checked to make sure my service was up and running again, before he left the job.

So, in the past 3 mos. I've had 3 outages... only one of which could I blame on TWC-RR. I'm still happy with the service and the performance I'm getting.

[Update 1-26-03]

Still sailing along quite smoothly... construction has ceased, at least temporarily, and the lines have remained intact. One minor glitch that I should mention, though. Every week there seems to be a mandatory "test" of the emergency "broadcast" system for about 15 seconds or so... designed for the cable network. I have noticed and reported that during the "test" RoadRunner has a tendency to hang for those few seconds. When I called to report it, I was told they are aware of it and are trying to correct the situation. It seems that the test signal occupies all the available broadcast bandwidth and it's spilling over onto the bandwidth used for RoadRunner. It's really no big deal... lasts for only a few seconds, but it is noticeable when the cable status light on the modem starts blinking.

[Update 12-5-03]

Overall performance is still great... and per their ads, download speeds have increased.. but certainly not 50%. The only gripe I have is that they seems to be having some intermittent problems with their e-mail server. it seems to crap out every few weeks for several hours. Supposedly for "scheduled maintenance"...

[Update 3-13-05]

About two weeks ago, my connection speeds dropped off the table... right into the dumper. And then I lost all ability to connect to any site on the web, including RoadRunner's home page. Made a call to customer service on a Tuesday afternoon and got a service call appointment on Thurday at noon. It was a long two days! Techie showed up right on time, power-cycled the Toshiba PCX1100U modem and determined it was DOA. Went out to the truck, brought in a brand spanking new Motorola SURFboard (SB5100), and hooked it up via the NIC and all was well. I mean really well as it immediately improved my connection speeds from less than 2000/330 to 4754/375. I'm happy... The only gripe I had was that it took two days to get it fixed. But I guess I can live with that, considering it's only about the second time in better than 4 years that I've been unable to connect and it was their fault. The other couple of times it was construction crews digging up the cables all over the neighborhood.

[Update:4-6-05]

Experienced about a 3-hour system shutdown this moring. At first I thought it was just me, but a call to TWC confirmed that they were having a system problem(area-wide) and that it shold be up and running soon. Well, obviously it's been fixed or I wouldn't be here now. Not a huge problem, but it''s a little disconcerting to not be able to get online immediately. Still, overall, I think it's a good buy.

[Update:10-18-05]

Experienced a few very minor outages, but they were enough to convince me not to add their internet phone service. The whole area was out (both cable tv and broadband) on two seperate occasions, but each lasted less than an hour. I still think, even with the minor inconveniences that it's still the best available in this area. I can see how people get so upset when their service hiccups, though. We've become so accustomed to instant access that when it doesn't happen we go directly into "withdrawal".

[9-24-07]Added VoIP phone service a couple of months ago. Install went pretty-much without a hitch and TWC has made available Caller ID on the tv screen. So now we have the whole bundle...tv, high-speed internet & phone. I was reluctant to put all my eggs in one basket, for a variety of reasons, but everything has been working very well and we've got no complaints. Well, none except I'd consider that the package is a little on the pricey side. But it's still cheaper than than what we had before... unlimited long distance with our telco, with all the calling features we never used, plus Road Runner, plus way too many premium channels available on the tv. But Momma's happy... and you all know the story... when Momma's not happy, no one is happy. And Momma can talk to her heart's content to the relates across the country, so she's very happy. No significant outages, although it has "hic-cupped" a couple of times for just a few seconds. Overall, we're pretty happy with the whole setup. But I'm sure there are cheaper ways to go about it available somewhere. This may not be eveyone's "cup of tea", but it's working for us.

[04-24-08] Have noticed marked increase in my download and upload speeds over a year ago. Some general improvements must have been made. No significant problems... just a couple of minor hiccups due to power outages on their end due to severe weather. I'm still very-well pleased with the service we've been experiencing. As far as saying much more, I guess no news is good news!

[10-3-08] System has been rock solid for months. Awaken the computer and the net is right there. Downloads are very acceptable. Don't upload that much so it's pretty adequate for my needs. Besides... my wife is happy, so I must be happy, too!



[11-18-10] I don't monitor my speeds regularly, but it seems that in the last several months, my connections have been noticeably quicker. I'm of the opinion that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and so far, it's worked quite flawlessly. There haven't been any appreciable outages, so I cannot complain about that. My wife loves it. She's big into Facebook games and has no patience, waiting for screens to load. She has no idea what "Please Wait" means. I'm still very satisfied with the connection, although our "bundle" price seems to be creeping upward pretty regularly. But then, so is the price of gasoline, milk, bread, and electricity.

[May 16, 2011] Now into the third day of sporadic outages of Road Runner net service and VoIP phone service. Two calls to Time-Warner have not resulted in any improvement in continuity of service. Outages seem to be random in duration and frequency. Sometimes, everything is fine... other times completely FUBAR-ed. Problem is evidently a system, or at least area-wide, as neighbors are experiencing the same symptoms. As much as I am annoyed by T-W's response, I have to admit this is the first time in years there has been a problem that lasted more than an hour or two. Am going to contact them again and request a billing adjustment for prolonged lack of service. We'll see what happens

[4-2-14] It works! Don't have to wait for pages to load. It's there when I need it. Not much else to say. We've had it for years and it's done nothing but get better. How fast is it? I don't know. It's certainly fast enough for our needs/wants. We've had a couple of small "glitches" over the past couple of years, but mostly they seem to occur in the "wee" hours of the morning so, for the most part, they've not affected my normal use of my connection. I probably wouldn't have noticed them at all if it weren't for occasional insomnia on my part. I don't test unless there's an apparent problem... and there hasn't been much of anything of that nature, with the exception of the aforementioned cases. And those may be due to normal system maintenance work being done during "off" hours. Is it perfect... no, but what is? For those who expect 100% performance all the time, it may be frustrating, but for my use, I'm totally satisfied with what I'm getting. The only dissatisfaction I can state is with the construction crews who, for whatever reason, tear the cables out of the ground from time to time. I do not attribute those types of outages to TWC. Just careless backhoe operators.

[1-30-15] Lost my VoIP part of my service a couple of weeks ago. Called TW, and the techie showed up the next day. He replaced my old modem/gateway with a new Arris TG-1672 and everything has returned to normal. The only gripe I have is the size of the new unit. Relatively speaking, it's huge and a bit awkward on my desk top. Performance-wise it seems to be working quite well, although it took an inordinate amount of time to get everything working and synced up. The techie admitted that his unfamiliarity with Apple systems had a lot to do with it. After some considerable "futzing" he finally got everything set up and running. It seemed that Apple Airport unit didn't want to "play well" with the new modem. But all is well and our service is sailing along without any further fiddling.

member for 23 years, 7516 visits, last login: 6.1 years ago
updated 9.1 years ago


royalpalm6
join:2000-12-01
usa

royalpalm6

Member

THATS GREAT!

That's very good I have RR also but im in NEW YORK. After people see how fast it is in your area your speed will decrease. But they'll ajust the servers and it will be fine.

I found this awesome site that answers computer questions.
»www.geocities.com/comput ··· dex.html
System

Anon

RoadRunner Gets 2 Thumbs Up!

I'm in Northern New Jersey, and I'm also using RoadRunner. It has got to be one of the greatest broadband ISPs out there. Installation was no problem at all. I had a some trouble connecting in the beginning, but after a visit from tech support, my problems disappeared. I've been very impressed by everything as of now.

dthree
@24.168.x.x

dthree

Anon

Re: RoadRunner Gets 2 Thumbs Up!

Interesting, you're in Englewood Cliffs too..

I wonder how many people in our small town have RR now..

snapcase$

join:2001-02-20
Purgatory

snapcase$

Glad You're Happy!

I'm using Road Runner myself and it's excellent. I'm glad everything worked for you!

xGoD_vs_SaTaNx
join:2001-04-10
Thousand Oaks, CA

xGoD_vs_SaTaNx

Member

Yeah, RR is awesome!

I'll probably be getting RR, at least to try, my friend has never gotten less than 1600 on his computer, and when they all play Tribes (3 computers) they ALL get about 50 ping! That's incredible, my friend's other computer get around 3000 down, while one is netsurfing, it's an awesome service.
mksub0
join:2001-04-04
Rochester, NY

mksub0

Member

Still waiting RR! :'(

Man! I was info that RR would be avaliable in my area(lower Manhattan) since last year May, and they delayed til "Summer 2001". roadrunner is great, but I wait much longer than DSL, still have 2-3 months to wait.
DoubleL
I Dont Know
join:2000-12-30
San Francisco, CA

DoubleL

Member

Re: Still waiting RR! :'(

you should check if ool is in your area. if i had a choice between rr and ool, i'd choose ool in a heart beat.
GeekRules$
Geekgirl
join:2000-07-29
Topeka, KS

GeekRules$

Member

RR is an very cool service!!

I have Roadrunner in NE KS and I constently get 70 to 79 times faster than a 56k at peak time or not. I wasn't quoted speed, either, but the cable company said I should be getting anywhere from 70 to 100 times faster than a 56k(which I do get right now!).

I'm not an online gamer, but, from what I have read on the WWW, pings are good for fast webpage loading. I get pings in the teens near me, and 50 to 90 pings to servers across the US. Oversea pings, I would get 100 to 185 ms. Roadrunner has to be the best ISP there is, it's better than dialup(which I had for the last three years).

The price is right, too, around $45 per month. I had dialup and I used to pay $50 for two phone lines, and slow aol at $27 per month. So the price turns out good for RR. I only have premium cable tv, but I don't watch tv much, because there's nothing on. But I love "The Simpsons", "Jerry Springer" and "Malcom in the Middle", "Futurma", "King of the Hill", and old cartoons on The Cartoon Network, and PBS. What a shame I can't get techtv here:(

Yep, the service is worth it. The service is fast, always available when I need it, and good pings! Now that I cancelled my second phone line, I can be online without no disconnections, fast website loading, no tying up the phone line and fast speeds at peak time or not!

TheGeek, who loves her high speed connection!
System

Anon

Download Acceleator

I just installed download accelerator in my computer. From all of the sudden I'm downloading stuff at 180K + in most sites. Very cool program, highly recommended!!!

nmop$
join:2001-05-05

nmop$

Member

Re: Download Acceleator

I personally think flashget is much better than DAP. Just my 2 cents...

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ

dvd536 to Anon

Premium Member

to Anon
flashget is spyware tho.