 Review by Beth64 
UPDATED: 225 days ago
member for 4.7 years, 370 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Brooklyn,Kings,NY
 $60 per month
 about 1 days
 "Two tiers: 15/2mbit and 30/5mbit. Good deal when everything works!"
 "Currently lots of speed problems & highly fluctuating pings. Network performance has been declining during the last few months."
 "(WAS) Good value for heavy downloading. (IS) Frustrating for gaming due to latency issues."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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My review continues in sequence below this current problem report:
*** Be warned that right now, some OOL customers including myself are experiencing uneven pings which makes gaming frustrating. ***
* JANUARY 17th, 2008:
For the last two months, I've had extremely inconsistent speeds, culminating in almost a complete loss of downstream. I've diagnosed and spent almost a full day on the phone with multiple techs, including two Business Level BOOST techs who were just as stumped as I was.
I can't possibly begin to list all the things we tried:
a) multiple modems
b) multiple computers
c) multiple coax cables and ethernet cables)
d) multiple everything else I can;t remember due to frustration
e) several tech visits
What pains me even more is this is not my problem alone. Not only do I personally know two other people who had PERFECT speeds until two months ago who are going through the same exact process and are tearing their hair out, but the forum is FULL OF REPORTS OF SLOWDOWNS!
In hopes of getting some speed back, I even upgraded to the more expensive 30mbit BOOST tier. Even with all the boost settings applied, my latency and speeds were HORRIBLE, no where near 30mbit, and lower than my REGULAR OOL!!! (Peruse attached screen caps. One of them shows how BOOST *SHOULD* and used to work.)
I am at the end of my rope. I have only DSL and Cablevision as a choice for high speed internet, but right now my cable line is nearly useless.
Of course there are people who have no problems, and those of us with the sudden problems are in the minority, but right now is a BAD time to rely on OOL. Someone I know had no problems for years, wired multiple offices with their BOOST service and now is having problems in all his locations. (And this is by no means unique.)
CABLEVISION, FIX YOUR DARN NETWORK PLEASE.
=============================================================
Review:
OOL finally became available in my neck of the woods. I did a self install last night! My only other experience with broadband is using DSL at a neighbor's. As I was too far for DSL, I thought I'd be stuck on dialup for another few centuries.
I've been reading this board during the weekend and decided I'd see if Optimum was available to me.
Sure enough ** it was! ** After reading the online terms of service and calling Cablevision to verify pricing, I drove down to the center and was given a sleek black Motorola Surfboard 5100 model modem.
The installation instructions were clear and very easy to follow. I had the modem online within 10 minutes of walking in.
With USB I was getting about 5500kbps. After popping in a network card and adjusting the registry settings as indicated, I started seeing the above speeds!
At this point I am awed! I calculated that I'm downloading about 150+ times faster than my dialup modem and at least 6-7 times faster than my friend on EL/Covad aDSL.
Web browsing is very smooth with a caching DNS server which I run. The experience of streaming files is better than a slower connection. Speeds are consistently high!
Account activation was a breeze. I did not need to wait for any email from the ISP and so far, I give OOL a thumbs up!
Let's hope things last! I will try to update this review.
Here are some tests and traceroutes:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2003-11-17 18:04:37 EST: 9279 / 928
Your download speed : 9279034 bps, or 9279 kbps.
A 1132.6 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 928936 bps, or 928 kbps.
Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!
C:\work>ncftpget »ftp://ftp.ea.com/pub/easports/demos/ma···Demo.exe
Madden2004_Demo.exe: 66.52 MB 1.04 MB/s
C:\work>ncftpget »ftp://ftp1.optonline.net/test16
test16: 16.00 MB 1.14 MB/s
C:\work>tracert nyc.speakeasy.net
Tracing route to nyc.speakeasy.net [216.254.95.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 9 ms 6 ms 7 ms gateway.optonline.net [10.xx.xx.x]
2 6 ms 5 ms 9 ms dstswr1-vlan2.rh.nyk2ny.cv.net [67.83.220.161]
3 7 ms 8 ms 8 ms r3-ge0-1-2.mhe.hcvlny.cv.net [67.83.220.129]
4 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms r1-srp0-0.wan.hcvlny.cv.net [65.19.104.193]
5 10 ms 8 ms 8 ms 451be0b3.cst.lightpath.net [65.19.96.179]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms ge-9-0.ipcolo2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.68.97.46]
8 19 ms 12 ms 9 ms 166.90.136.34
9 10 ms 13 ms 11 ms dns.nyc1.speakeasy.net [216.254.95.2]
Trace complete.
Tracing route to c10-ssa-xw-lb.cnet.com [216.239.115.141]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 10 ms 6 ms 7 ms gateway.optonline.net [10.xx.xx.x]
2 8 ms 6 ms 6 ms dstswr2-vlan2.rh.nyk2ny.cv.net [67.83.220.162]
3 10 ms 9 ms 11 ms r4-ge1-1-2.mhe.hcvlny.cv.net [67.83.220.133]
4 9 ms 7 ms 10 ms r2-srp9-0.wan.hcvlny.cv.net [65.19.104.211]
5 9 ms 7 ms 8 ms r1-srp0-1.in.nycmny83.cv.net [65.19.96.133]
6 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms pos5-2.pr1.lga1.us.mfnx.net [167.206.8.154]
7 17 ms 12 ms 12 ms so-6-0-0.cr1.lga1.us.above.net [64.125.27.134]
8 31 ms 40 ms 32 ms so-3-0-0.cr1.ord2.us.above.net [64.125.27.169]
9 86 ms 89 ms 81 ms so-3-0-0.mpr3.sjc2.us.above.net [64.125.30.205]
10 84 ms 83 ms 82 ms so-4-0-0.mpr1.sfo3.us.above.net [64.125.31.122]
11 85 ms 85 ms 84 ms 64.124.44.37.available.above.net [64.124.44.37]
12 86 ms 85 ms 85 ms vlan700.365-sfo1-6506-1.cnet.com [216.239.127.41]
13 81 ms 83 ms 81 ms ge5-2.xch-sfo1-6506-1.cnet.com [216.239.127.22]
14 93 ms 92 ms 98 ms vlan509.xch-sfo1-6506-2.cnet.com [216.239.127.30]
15 90 ms 89 ms 91 ms ge5-2.att-sql1-6506-2.cnet.com [216.239.127.25]
16 88 ms 89 ms 91 ms c10-ssa-xw-lb.cnet.com [216.239.115.141]
Trace complete.
--------------------
December 12, 2007
OOL has unquestionably increased it's value to users. Gone is the frequent, random capping. The speed tiers were raised and it is quite a value these days:
OOL currently has two tiers:
Standard Tier - 15mbit downloads, 2mbit uploads, 16,500,000/2,000,000 modem cap (there are no traffic limits other than this highly generous limit.) - Port 80 is blocked and serving is against the TOS. --- This is the tier I currently subscribe to. It is $29 dollars per month for the first six months, and $44.95 (or $49.95 if you don't have cable-tv) afterwards.
BOOST Tier - 30-35 mbit downloads, 5mbit uploads, ~35,000,000/5,000,000 modem cap. (There is actually no upper cap on the modem, but a DOCSIS 2.0 node can only provide 42,884,296 bytes per second minus overhead, so in reality, the downloads max at about 33-34mbps.) - PORTS 25 and 80 ARE OPEN, UNTHROTTLED, and may be used to run a WEB and/or MAIL server. - BOOST costs an additional $10 ($15 if no CATV) per month. If you order BOOST online, the first month is free.
--13:33:09-- »ftp://ftp.aol.com/aol6.0/171340/setupaol60.exe
=> `setupaol60.exe'
Resolving ftp.aol.com... 64.12.204.18, 149.174.36.113, 152.163.212.243, ...
Connecting to ftp.aol.com|64.12.204.18|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done. ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD /aol6.0/171340 ... done.
==> PASV ... done. ==> RETR setupaol60.exe ... done.
Length: 46,335,048 (44M) (unauthoritative)
100%[================================================================================== ======>] 46,335,048 1.23M/s ETA 00:00
13:33:45 (1.34 MB/s) - `setupaol60.exe' saved [46335048]
Other than that , it's a fair deal, especially if you sign up for the existing customer tripple play. I have it, and for $99 I have 200+ channels, Optimum Voice, and Optimum Online!
They recently started allowing existing customers to take advantage of the tripple play deal.
Overall, you'll have to be the judge in your situation. HTH
Beth
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