Review by Remix4 
member for 12.1 years, 49 visits, last login: 11.9 years ago
updated 12 years ago
 Silver Spring,Montgomery,MD
 Contract price not specified.
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(ratings below consensus)
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UPDATE: 2/10/00 - running normal, sort of...good throughput, some random spikes on hops 1-5, at one point at hop 1, BUT WILL NOT UPGRADE THE RATINGS, YET.
UPDATE: 2/7/00 - On phone with tech support with a rep named James, been on for almost 30 min ( he had to ask his "mentor" to see if i can speak to level II tech which i've dealt with a million times already). 3rd hop on qwest in DC timing out for me or showing latency constantly in the thousands. BTW, was on the phone a few hours the night before. May file a complaint with BBB, but that may not do much.
UPDATE: 2/3/00 - ran trace routes trying to find out why the connection was so slow...third hop pinged in the THOUSANDS. Screwed up everything after that. Qwest routers, hops 3-5 surged to as high as 5000+ or timed out, and frequently, the 1st to 3rd hops surge up to 500+; from qwest pinged in the 4000+ range and stayed there after repeated pings. Sometimes, I can access sites, sometimes I can't. Even getting into Bell Atlantic's start page took forever. These are my final ratings. I'm sick of this shit. STAY AWAY, UNLESS YOU WANT TO ***WAIT*** for things to be fixed. GAMING IS HORRIBLE...
UPDATE: 2/1/00 - starting to feel like it was worth the TROUBLE.
UPDATE: 1/31/00 - seems like the connection has been normal, EXCEPT the fact that around 5:00pm I could not connect. Recieved an error 718, "timed out....could not find a valid PPP peer..etc". After dinner went back and it was up again. If I didn't experience the connection failure, I would have bumped it up a notch.
Bell Atlantic Personal InfoSpeed - 640/90
$49 per month
$99 Westell external modem
PPPoe
Win98SE P2-400
I STRONGLY RECOMMEND FROM MY EXPERIENCE WITH THIS "COMPANY" TO LOOK ELSEWHERE FOR BROADBAND SERVICE. I HOPE THOSE MORONS ARE READING THIS.
I am just going to spit out whatever comes to mind from my ordeal:
I have never experienced such horrible technical support from individuals who are just simply computer illiterate and who seem to be coached on exactly what to say. Come Bell Atlantic, for someone who is fairly computer literate it is pretty obvious.
Long hold times with cust service/tech support as well as a stupid full voice mailbox!!!! Yes press one to TRY to leave a message only to find out that it is full.
I get conflicting solutions from different techs. Sites like this provide a hell of a lot more information than the dumbass tech support staff.
The only thing they got right was the delivery of the modem. That's it. The first modem had a faulty power cord ,and the second one they sent and the ehternet/line ports REVERSED. Nice of you people to check it out before sending it. So I am using the power cord from the second shipment with the modem from the first shipment.
There was no rj-11--->rj-45 adapter included which made the cord connection quite insecure. Something Bell Atlantic should have included with the shipement of micro-filters etc. Don't blame Westell. You damn name is on the modem also.
As for performance. Throughput ranges from around the range of 60kbps to around 600kpbs. The range varies a great deal.
THE MOST ANNOYING PROBLEM ARE THE PAUSES, LAGGING, AND BREAKS DURING SURFING, DOWNLOADING, LISTENING TO MUSIC, ANY STREAMING MEDIA, AND ESPECIALLY ONLINE GAMING.
Online gaming being the worst. My latency would start around 60-90 and then every 5-30 seconds it will shoot all the way up to GOD. It's like gaming with America Online.
The idiotic techs can't explain the issue, and when I am forwarded to the level II tech I am on hold for the next 100 years. And then I decide to leave a message and the mailbox is full!!!! I felt like I was quickly push out of the call because the tech named ALI --------- had no idea what to say, so he immediately told me that he'll transfer me to a level II tech which i never got to because WE THE CONSUMER can't wait FOREVER.
AS for the lagging issues, it is simply ridiculous. I run traceroutes in both the dos box and with a utility and I always get extremely high numbers within the first three hops, which screws up the rest of the trip. Not all the time, but if I set the utility to ping every 2.5 seconds, for 100 times, maybe every 10 seconds or so i'll read 500+ to 2000+ and sometimes 9999 which means NOTHING WENT THROUGH.
Throughput isn't so much the issue, eventhough it is terrible at times, it is the pauses and lagging. I even placed a non-routable ip address to the nic and the only thing it solved was the long boot times.
If anyone has anyting to share, post it in the BA's section of the forum.
Thumbs down here. Go for cable. For me, this service is a NO GO for gaming. Surfing is fine, but your "fast" service is supposed to enhance the internet experience, and I feel like you've done is took a S**T all over it.
Over-sold bandwidth, oversubscribed, high latency starting from the first three hops which is within Bell Alantic.
DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS SERVICE UNLESS YOU WANT TO TAKE A CHANCE ON SPOTTY TECHNICAL SUPPORT AND SERVICE.
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