 Review by Anyuser2 
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 1.6 years, 44 visits, last login: 1.5 years ago
 Oakdale,Allegheny,PA
 Contract price not specified.
 "Connection"
 "None so far"
 "Good, stable connection with no complaints"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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12/2006
I originally ordered regular (basic and expanded basic) TV and an internet self-install kit (for the 6mbps service). We had actually ended up having to cancel our first install, and when I went to get another appointment scheduled, it had to be one specific day - the rep I spoke with had to send it in to their dispatch office to see if it was possible, but had called me back in a matter of minutes to let me know it wouldn't be a problem.
No problems when the tech was there, it took about 10 minutes for him to get everything he needed done. The self-install kit (with a Scientific Atlanta DPC2100 modem) didn't get me any trouble, outside of having to fight a bit with cycling the equipment (namely, my Linksys wired router) after successfully completing the provisioning.
Now
This is a brief recap of what's happened since the service was up and running:
- It seems like everybody on my node had high upstream transmit power (>50 dbmv) for a while, but it's been taken care of.
- Upload speed was increased to 1 mbps (it was either 3xx or 7xx kbps before).
- There was a period of about an hour, at around 3:00 AM, that DNS had gone down. When this happened, my Linksys router decided to make up some static 198.x.x.x DNS server addresses(??).
- There was a period of about 20 minutes, sometime after midnight, that there was some scheduled maintenance that kept me offline (I had a downstream and an upstream channel locked, but [the modem] couldn't obtain an IP).
- There was a brief period of time a few months ago where there was some kind of issue with the connection to Level 3 (no problems until traceroutes would try to get out of Comcast's network). However, this also lasted about half an hour. It was odd, though, in that it only seemed to cause problems with some of the sites I frequent, but not most of them.
- Despite the whining about torrents, mine seem to be pretty much the same they always have been. I have no doubt that something is up, but I think that P2P connections are unreliable enough on their own.
- I had used the Comcast-provided McAfee on one of my prior installs of Windows (on another box, at this point) but I had occasional odd issues with it - when I would lose power, sometimes McAfee would block my ability to resolve DNS names. This, of course, was McAfee's problem anyway, though.
- I found out that there had been another DNS hiccup, oddly a day or two after a friend of mine was making fun of me for using OpenDNS. I, obviously, didn't notice a thing. However, after tinkering a bit and checking the ping reply times on several DNS server address, I have my primary set back to one of Comcast's servers.
- I upgraded to 16/2. After doing so, and checking with internet support to make sure I had the right bootfile, I ended up having to upgrade the firmware on my router to actually get the speeds.
- There was another brief hiccup where I was knocked offline. I checked my router and saw I couldn't renew my IP from the modem, and just had to cycle it (the modem had block sync). I decided, for ****s and giggles, to check with technical support and see if the uptime on my modem might indicate that it had reset - but, apparently, there was no way to query the modem because there was maintenance in my area (which essentially confirmed, at least to me, that my modem had reset)... However, I was online anyway so it didn't really matter.
So, all in all, it's been about 16 months and I've had a sum total of maybe an hour of downtime. Aside from what I have above, all I've had to mess with has been cycling my router when I lose power... heck, I'd really like to write a review for my power company...
I've rarely spoken to Comcast over the phone, but I've never had any issues when I've spoken with their tech support - they seem to know what's going on and have the access to do what they need to do... This seems to be different in some areas, though.
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