Review by Shady Bimmer 
UPDATED: 321 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 1225 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Northport,Suffolk,NY
 $45 per month
 "Fast ; Very easy setup ; Flexible"
 "Tech Support varies ; Occasional hiccups"
 "Good value with little hassle"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
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Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Update December 2008:
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My experiences over the past seven+ years with Optimum Online have been all positive. At times performance was not 100%, but was still acceptable. With my 15/2 service I regularly would achieve 14/2 at good times dipping to around 11/1.5 at bad times. I had switched to a CV-supplied Motorola SB-4200 when OOL bumped their 10/2 service to 15/2, making my CMX completely obsolete. The SB-4200 has been rock solid and service has been spot-on.
I recently switched providers to obtain a "triple-play" discount on my monthly charges. I would have stayed with Optimum, however their video service (TV) has been sub-par and degrading, which drove me away. Their internet service has always been solid and problem-free for me.
Original Review from October 2001:
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The Northport area of Long Island was one of the first to have OOL available. I chose not to be bleeding edge at the time but I have now had this service for almost 2 years.
Service: Dynamic IP for $29.95/month with Family Cable already subscribed.
Installation: I signed up at the local Wiz outlet with a now infamous 3Com CMX (bidirectional) since it had the best reviews of the very few DOCSIS compliant units available. By the time I got home (less than 1 hour) I plugged in the cable modem, plugged in the network cable, enabled DHCP in the OS for the NIC, rebooted, and BANG - I was online. No Phone order or appointments were needed, nor were any home visits by Cablevision/Optimum personel.
Early Experiences: Service seems fairly reliable and I had exceptional performance early on. Within three months, though, I started having very frequent loss of sync (by the cable modem). A single call to Tech Support had a technician dispatched within 1 day and after two visits the issue had been escalated and was eventually solved (it was supposedly a head-end problem). I never had to place more than 1 call to tech support since problems were always followed through to satisfactory resolution. Cablevison/Optimum seemed eager to have the problem resolved quickly. I have only had to call Tech Support twice in the two years.
Continued Experiences: Cable modem occasionally (once/month) loses sync (don't ask how I know) but otherwise is reliable. Performance is not what it had been but is still fast. The 3Com CMX is a dinosaur now and I would likely increase my bandwidth by replacing it. Eventually.
I have used Win95, Win98, Win2K, Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris and all DHCP client implementations worked flawlessly. No PPPoE garbage - pure DHCP the way it was meant to be (IE: no third party software to install) Almost literally plug-n-play.
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