Review by Hellfire99X 
Posted: 2.3 years ago
member for 2.3 years, 8 visits, last login: 2.2 years ago
 Cape Coral,Lee,FL
 $85 per month (24 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "It's fast when it works"
 "Connection uptime and tech support are extremely unreliable"
 "When I need a stable connection for gaming and talking to friends, I have to use NetZero dial-up"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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When Time-Warner Cable first introduced Roadrunner into our area in 2001, we were one of the first beta testers. At the time, we had two telephone land lines and shared a dial-up connection whenever one of us needed to get online; this was the cause of a lot of frustration. Needless to say, getting the chance to switch to a much faster cable connection made us VERY happy. Sure, Roadrunner had its occasional downtimes, but overall it had a 99%+ uptime. We were very happy and contented.
... until Comcast bought out Roadrunner in our area and switched us over to their DNS in about April 2007. The day they switched us over, we started getting random lagspikes that would completely disconnect us from everything we were doing about once an hour. Very frustrating for two gamers who also use VoIP (Ventrilo) regularly. We also could not get more than 1 computer online at a time without using a router, and storebought routers tend not to play very nicely with multiple Bittorrent users. Comcast told us that we could only get static IP addresses for each computer if we upgraded to a business-class account for our internet, so the solution seemed to be pretty clear: upgrade to the business account for the static IP addresses, and wait for them to fix the random-lagspike issues.
To their credit, Comcast's installation and tech support guys have been on-time for every appointment that they've made out to our house, and they've all seemed very knowledgeable.
With the installation of the new business-class modem/router from Comcast, the lagspikes were still there, but they caused less of an effect on our gaming and VoIP connections; they only made everything stop for a few seconds, only to come down the line all at once in a sometimes-garbled mess when the connection was reestablished. (I have a constant ping connection going in a window, so I know exactly when my Comcast connection is lagspiking.)
Unfortunately, over the past few months these lagspikes have been becoming more frequent, longer-lasting, and are resulting in several disconnects per day -- easily 10, if not more. I've had several Comcast technicians out to the house over the past few months. We've replaced the business modem with a new one, the cable coming into the modem from the cable splitter outside, we've removed the splitter and hooked up ONLY the internet line to see if that would fix the problem, the techs have tested the lines several times... I've replaced the ethernet cables between all of the computers, tried using different NICs, tried hooking up only one computer at a time... all in vain attempts to try to narrow down the cause of the problem. A few times I've called Comcast, they've noted that there were outages in the area that they claimed were fixed the next morning, yet our connection has still remained as intermittent as ever.
The only thing I can surmise is that this is a problem either within Comcast's realm, or within the realm of their backbone provider (apparently AT&T, according to traceroute logs.) The last Comcast representative claimed it must be a misconfiguration problem with my computer; when I asked her how a misconfiguration with specifically MY computer could randomly and frequently disconnect ALL of our computers at the exact same time, when all four of our computers are connected to four individual ports on the back of the modem, she couldn't answer but was very insistent on it being the problem. Needless to say, resetting all of the network card settings I've never changed and even trying a different NIC hasn't fixed our connection; the only thing that HAS changed since our connection was reliable and stable was when Comcast switched us over to their DNS from Roadrunner's, and she wouldn't listen to me when I tried telling her this.
I only foresee the problem getting worse. I've since looked around at other internet access options in the area, but the only DSL services in our area require a contract, and I'm unwilling to take the chance of getting stuck with another shoddy internet connection that I can't cancel. I've since signed up for a NetZero dial-up account, so that I can have a steadier-than-Comcast connection option available to me for when I NEED that steady connection. My patience is running out. Unless this problem is VERY quickly rectified, I will never even consider Comcast or AT&T as viable internet options in the future, and I will very strongly recommend against either of them to everyone I know.
[EDIT - 7/9/07]
As of this morning, the service is terminated. In the days following the posting of this review, I was getting between 4-12% packet loss, with the packet loss usually occurring in large spikes, with anywhere between 1-15 minutes between each spike. Completely unreliable even for their own services, such as the VoIP service that they've been pushing to sell.
At the very least, when they saw all of the work orders on their end from their attempts to "fix" the problem, they offered to end the contract without the 70% buyout + early termination fee, and even promised a refund of last month's monthly rate. That, in itself, has been the most positive part of my experience with Comcast. I only wish their internet service were as positive.
Followup comments:  Alex5517
Premium
join:2007-07-27
Tallahassee, FL | Comcast Intermittent dropouts I have the same problem from Tallahassee. Dropouts of 10 to 20 seconds occur several times daily. | |
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