 Review by mbernste 
UPDATED: 1.9 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 4271 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Port Reading,Middlesex,NJ
 $52 per month
 "It's still the fastest ISP in town."
 "Upload speed needs to be increased"
 "I'd rather have Optimum On-Line"
| Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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August 2007: My parents move to a new condo and I am there to assist with the computer infrastructure set up as this was also the day Comcast was supposed to come--for a second time. The first time they come (I wasn't there), they couldn't locate the main connection point into the unit, so the installer simply gave up. The second time they come, they were very late (we waited around 7 hours) so besides getting the $20, the install went reasonably well. While the installer was activating the TV side, I set up the SB5120 modem. It got synch and I was in the walled garden. Despite explaining to the tech that they already have an existing account from their previous location, he proceeded to have the modem provisioned to a new account. Needless to say that this eventually caused problems as my parents ended up getting charged for two accounts for both TV and Internet. In the end everything got resolved. The good news is that their signal levels are excellent, which is surprising considering that the building has almost 200 units.
September 20, 2003: Comcast tech support is useless. They give false information about their web space offering and then refuse to acknowledge that they have a problem. I will retract this statement once my problems are fixed. If you want good customer support, look elsewhere.
January 28, 2003: $95 for 3,500/384 is a lot of money. Other cable ISPs in the area have faster speeds for more than half the price. If you live in NJ and in an area that as AOL-TW Cablevision, or two-way RCN, count your blessings. If you have Service Electric, well...sorry to hear that.
August, 2002: Forced to retire my 1/2 decade old Motorola CyberSURFR. Comcast decided to shut down the non-DOCSIS network. I received from them a Terayon TeraJet 615. Not a bad modem since it has a lot more status lights than the CyberSURFR. The migration process to DOCSIS was fairly painless. Comcast did a good job in that the modem was pre-provisioned in their database (except they forgot to take out the old modem in the DB). I plugged it in and was up and running. The only challenge was getting the router to work with it (in my part of NJ you must clone the MAC). If you go with Comcast, I highly suggest you get a SurfBoard series (4200, do not get the 4220) if you have Comcast so that you can keep an eye on your signal levels (the TJ 615 doesn't have a status page).
December 27, 2001:
I woke up this morning (4:09AM) to find that I had no connectivity (as expected) since I go through a router that was configured for my @Home computer name (which was required for you to connect to their network) and @Home domain. Since I didn't know what the new entries are supposed to be (didn't know that you no longer need one to connect) I connect my PC directly the cable modem and release/renew IP and still got nothing. I called Comcast's Tech Support number (not the transition number) and got a polite recording in English and in French (for our Canadian friends) saying to stay on the line. After hearing that recording twice another one comes on saying that the party isn't answering and then hangs up on me. I then call the "transition hotline" (the one that comes with the kit) and after a 15 minute wait I get a real person. The analyst said in the last hour (remember this is 4AM EASTERN) they received over 100 calls from customers in New Jersey alone who couldn't connect!! He said he THINKS (what, he doesn't know???) it is a statewide outage and then procedes to take me through the process of changing network settings. All I wanted to know what the new DNS server name is and he didn't even know what DNS is. I had to explain it to him! While we all hoped that Comcast's techs would be better than @Home's, it appears we have gone from bad to worse. Several hours later the outage was resolved and my WINDOWS XP (someone said that it wasn't compatible) machine auto configured itself to the new settings via the magic of DHCP and assigned itself the correct DNS server. I was then able to clear out the addresses in my router and get my home LAN (hybrid wired/wireless network) on the Internet again.
The new e-mail system is flaky I can receive e-mail and on occasionally send from my new "comcast.net" address, but not consistently. I guess they felt that since our @Home addresses will be goot for another 2 months, that it wasn't a super high priority. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Newsgroups still work via the @Home servers, so that's good...at least until Feb 28th, however the analyst stated that comcast does plan on giving us newsgroups.
Via several tracerts I have discovered that our new backbone is (probably to no one's surprise) AT&T. I just hope we don't experience the same crap they did. My downstream speed is just as fast today as it was yesterday and my upstream speed has the same 128K cap.
One other thing I noticed is that they may have an incomplete or outdated DNS table. There are certain sites (i.e. »www.grc.com) that I cannot connect to that others with a different ISP can connect to without any problems.
As long as I stay connected and am able to connect to my mail (somewhere) I'll be happy.
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