Review by willgmcc 
UPDATED: 2.3 years ago
member for 7 years, 56 visits, last login: 1 year ago
 New York,New York,NY
 $40 per month
 about 12 days
 "Fast when it works"
 "Speed drops dramatically during peak hours, techs are a mixed bag"
 "Fast if you're in the right place, tough time if you're not"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I moved to Manhattan in September from Virginia where I had several different DSL connections over the years. Up here, however, I didn't need a land line (I use my new mobile for everything) and even so, a basic land line is substantially more expensive than I'm used to. This, paired with the rather high cost of fast DSL, pretty much made my decision for me because the only resulting choice was RoadRunner via Time Warner Cable. I made an install appointment from Virginia for the first few days my roommate was in the apartment (she moved in two weeks before me) and it went off without a hitch. They dropped in the cable modem and she, a total computer novice, was able to use it with her iBook without any configuration. I moved in a bit later, set up my router and everything worked fine for several days.
After those first few days, though, I began having major problems. The cable modem would work fine for a seemingly random time period, anywhere from minutes to days, and would then drop the connection and be unable to reconnect automatically. On occasion, if left for long enough, it would reconnect, but most of the time I would have to come over and fiddle with things until it started working again. The digital cable television service, coincidentally, worked perfectly throughout all of this. For a while, simply turning off the modem, disconnecting the cable modem from the cable splitter (the little Y adapter splitting the cable coming into the apartment to the modem and cable TV box), reconnecting it and turning it back on would fix the problem. No other combination or order of actions would fix it, but that would every time.
After fooling with it for a few days and ultimately deciding that the problem could not be fixed by myself, I called in the techs. A service duo showed up several business days later, replaced the cable Y adapter, and it then worked fine for four days, whereupon the problem reappeared and the fix I had began working less reliably. I called tech support again, and they set another appointment a few days later. This tech showed up and declared that, contrary to what the previous techs said, the problem was with the line coming into the apartment and not the splitter or cables inside the apartment. He said he wasn't authorized to do this, though, and that I would have to set another appointment to get this done, which I did, although somewhat annoyed.
A few days later the new appointment passed without anyone showing up. When I called the Time Warner Cable number, they said that the tech had signed off on being at my apartment, but to the phone tech's credit she believed me when I said that was untrue. They gave me an expedited appointment only about two days later (a shorter wait than the previous ones) and the final tech appeared. While not as clean-cut as the other techs, he was clearly more experienced and able, and the first thing he did after taking some readings was go up onto the roof of my building and check my connection up there.
He came back down, reported that he thought the problem was with the connector on the end of my cable up there and that he had replaced it. He re-took his readings, found them much improved, and I was pleased to discover that my modem, which had at the time been in one of its refusing-to-connect phases, had suddenly begun working. Still hesitant because of my two previous false positives with techs, I was able to get him to do some more thorough testing and to even leave me with a spare Y-adapter just in case before he left. Sure enough, he was right and my modem hasn't dropped the connection once in the three months since then. I waited one month to make sure everything stayed working and then called up Time Warner Cable to request a refund for my first month of internet service, which I was granted quite painlessly and without any objection.
I have since been quite pleased with my cable modem connection, as it hasn't had a spot of trouble since the cabling issue got worked out. It is also very consistently fast, even during peak time periods, and my bandwidth tests are always up to par with other RR users in Manhattan. The boost from 2mbps to 3mpbs was especially enjoyable, as I'm now able to download over 300K/s from fast servers.
While I do wish that my initial problems had been resolved more quickly, I am happy that they didn't make me pay for any of it while it was problematic and that they were cooperative. Because of this, and because the service beyond that has been excellent, I do recommend Road Runner to potential customers in Manhattan.
** Update July 12th, 2007 **
A year and a half ago I moved from the East Village (where the original review was written) to Washington Heights. I got RoadRunner there as well, but it's been a really different experience. While I haven't lost the connection outright too many times, the speed I get on it varies widely. For the first few months I would often get over 500KBps and things would go smoothly, but as time went on that became rarer and rarer. Now, I haven't seen that sort of speed in months, and some nights I rate below 1Mbps on the speed tests. I've spoken to RoadRunner support about it repeatedly, and while they've come out twice to replace various cable runs in both my apartment and in the building's basement, they've since decided it's just normal variation in speed due to peak usage times. It does indeed seem to get worst in the evening, and I don't seem to have any packet loss thus suggesting it's not a line quality problem, but that sort of variation in speed seems pretty lame to me. I'm moving back downtown next month and am looking at getting DSL from bway.net very seriously. It may be more expensive, but it's worth it to me to not have to deal with this sort of inconsistency and to not be lining Time Warner's pockets.
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