Review by damox 
UPDATED: 204 days ago
member for 6.7 years, 1970 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Olympia,Thurston,WA
 $43 per month (month by month)
 about 90 days
 "Connection is fairly fast and reliable . . . and faster than I've ever had, but tech support is lacking"
 "Expensive!"
 "It's the best connection I can get at this locale for this $"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
UPDATED: 3/22/2008 The Comcast experience is just about the same. Nothing has really changed in the past year. I yearn for greater bandwidth, as my son uses quite a bit with his activities. Some times those download numbers dip pretty low. I may look into jumping up to 8 megabit down for $10 more, but from what some others have said, they didn't notice a difference between the 6 megabit and the 8 megabit packages. I sure wish Verizon had service in this area and offered Fios. Unfortunately, Qwest is the only other real game in town. No technical problems in the past year, except for a couple of brief outages.
UPDATED: 3/25/2007 My experience with Comcast overall, continue to go fairly well. Connection speeds continue to increase as does reliability. That's the good thing. Tech Support, however, is another thing! The other day I had my first outage since I can remember. It lasted two hours. When I tried to call Comcast, I could never get through to a real person. I was cut off twice getting the message that my call couldn't be completed and that I should visit "Comcast.com" for more information. To my knowledge there is no useful connection information at Comcast.com. As I suspected, it was an area problem that affected not only my internet connection but my cable tv as well. That Comcast does not direct users calls to a recording explaining that there is an outage in such cases, or post that information on their web site, is just plain irresponsible! They really have never been good at tech support. That is why having a reliable connection is so important. Hopefully I'll never have to use tech support again. Overall, I'd give them a solid C.
UPDATE 3/5/2006 Things continue to improve with Comcast. Bandwidth continues to increase, outages have been few and far between, and the price has remained stable though I still consider it to be expensive. I've had no dealings with Tech Support in the past six months. At this point I am very satisfied. Fast and reliable with no complaints . . . that's how I'd describe my broadband experience.
UPDATED 07-17-2005 Comcast has continued to upgrade the network. I have been pleased with how consistent my connection has been. Currently we are supposed to have 4000/384, but I've started hitting the mid 5000s on my bandwidth tests. Also, I've had two occasions to speak to Tech Support, one very recently when I replaced my Comcast owned cable modem that I've rented for 32 months. Tech Support was not only helpful, but really pleasant as well. Further, the inability to run "Trace route" has been cleared up. I don't know what Comcast did, but issue resolved. I'd given up on that. At this point I have no complaints, except for the price . . . IT'S TOO HIGH! I understand that the when the new bandwidth thresholds become available, if I want the next higher package (i.e. 6/384, it will cost me $10 more than I'm currently paying because I only have "Limited Cable" (the $15.00 a month bare bones package). If I want to continue at the price I'm currently paying for Internet Service, I'd either have to stick with the lower bandwidth, or get Basic Cable ($42.00 a month). I don't need anything more than Limited, because I really don't want to watch that much TV! Admittedly, I'm not very happy about that, but I guess there isn't much I can do but to switch service providers . . . I.e. go with Qwest DSL.
UPDATED 12-22-2004 We’ve been with Comcast (formerly Attbi) for 2 years now. Since my last review, I would say that my connection has improved. Speed, connectivity, and reliability have been excellent since the bandwidth upgrade. Even with 3 of us browsing the internet at the same time, browsing is normally snappy. I have only one complaint. After Comcast took over, in October of 2003, I lost the ability to do Trace Routes which is very annoying. That problem still hasn't been resolved. I did try to resolve the problem through e-mails, but was told I'd have to call. I really don't have time, and hate talking to Tech Support since many of them seem to have little knowledge beyond the script they are using to troubleshoot. Unfortunately those troubleshooting scripts are sometimes lacking as they only cover the basics. Though obviously I would like a better price, the rates are competitive and not unreasonable for the United States.
Update: 03-27-2004 New speed upgrades are in place. Connection has been very good and reliable! I am seeing download bandwidth between 3000 - 3400! One problem that I've been experiencing ever since the Blaster episode last fall is that I have become "Unpingable"! Unless the problem is with my Cable Modem, the problem is not on my end. I have hooked directly into the cable modem (bypassing my Hardware Firewall), I don't run a personal firewall, and TDS-3 was off. I was still unpingable. I also tried several different computers, all without personal firewalls, still unpingable. Comcast can ping my IP from inside of Comcast, but not from the outside. The other problem, which I believe is related, is that Trace Route does not work for me. Only the first 2 and last 1 hop show; everything else times out! I had contacted Comcast on-line and through e-mail, but was told that I would have to call their dreaded Tech Support. Eventually I will do that, but since it will probably take several phone calls, and several good blocks of time, I've been reluctant to do so thus far.
Overall, Comcast continues to be a good value and we’ve had few things to complain about. Still the problem of being unpingable and being unable to run Trace Routes really bothers me because it is keeping me from “line monitoring”, and an important diagnostic tool.
**********
Update: 12-19-2003. We have been with Comcast for 13 months now. Though our connection is still good, the reliability has diminished somewhat and my opinion of Comcast has diminished as well. In the past couple of months, we have experienced at least 4 periods of a few hours to 3 days when our router was unable to obtain an IP address from the DHCP server. To their credit, this last time they fixed it the same day. On one of those occasions, I called and found that the problem was affecting my area. In addition to that, for some time now, we have been unpingable from outside the Comcast network, and trace routes do not work. I was unable to convince Comcast the problem of being “unpingable” is on their end. Even when our firewall is removed from the equation, and our main computer is directly connected to the internet (we don’t run a software firewall), we are still unpingable! I cannot get Comcast to do anything about that. Further, I am disturbed that Comcast refuses to define download limits. My experience with Comcast support has been less than stellar. Overall, this is still a better value than the dsl being offered in this area, but I wish there was true competition.
************
With the transition to Comcast behind us, I am now able to make a fair evaluation of my internet service. I must say that I’ve been very pleased with the bandwidth, the speed of internet browsing, and both the reliability and consistency of the connection provided by Comcast. On the negative side, I e-mailed Comcast twice asking for help with something, and both times, they failed to respond. My three previous ISPs, all DSL providers, were very responsive to e-mails. For us, the transition from ATTBI to Comcast went smoothly. I did it manually rather than using the Comcast software. Not much to it, really. I would say that since ATTBI began transitioning to Comcast, I’ve experienced a more reliable connection. Maybe that’s just a coincidence, not sure. I am pleased with the boost from 1500 to 1800 kbps down. Overall, I’d say Comcast is doing pretty well for me.
************
UPDATE: We've been with Attbi for approximately 110 days now. In that time, we have experienced only a couple of problems. We had two periods of about 4 days each, during which we experienced major connection problems. Both times, it turned out to be a problem with ATT in the Lacey area. The download cap was apparently bumped up to 1800. Our speeds have been very good. Overall, I've been happy with Attbi, now Comcast. My son is a gamer, and he seems pleased with ATT's overall network performance as well. Cable continues to prove to be a better value than dsl. This will be my last review under the Attbi banner. My next review will be an evaluation of the new Comcast network.
**********
2002 I finally broke down and ordered Attbi broadband in early August. Got the first 6 months for $19.95 deal. Ten days after my initial order a tech came to do the install and discovered that the cable from the box to my house had been cut and I didn't have a connection. We haven't had cable TV since 1996, so we never knew. In any case it then took about two months to get a new cable run. Finally on November 8th, a Technician (contractor) was back out here and performed an excellent install. The tech was out here almost 2 hours but when he left I had a clear connection to ATT, and was up and running within 30 minutes without a hitch.
During those two months of waiting to have a cable run, I called ATT on three occasions to find out about the holdup. All three times I was told that the call would be expedited, and that I would receive a call back within 24 hours. I never received one call. Also, all three times I had asked to have my contact number changed to my cell so that when the cable was laid they could reach me directly. However, when all was said and done, they called my home phone and it was a week before I got the message. In defense of ATT for the length of time that it took to get a connection, I was told at one point that the holdup was the process of securing a permit to dig (have no idea if that's true). One thing that made this long wait easier is that I still had a dsl connection until 1 week after Install. If I hadn't had dsl it would have been a significant drawback.
When the new cable was finally laid, I called ATT to reschedule the Install. At first it seemed as though I would not get the 6 months at $19.95. However after a lengthy discussion with the service rep, I was informed that they would honor my 90-day-old order.
So far, this is way better than my dsl connection. On the positive side of that 90 day wait, is the fact that I have all new cabling from the box to my modem, as the Technician who performed the install ended up running a new cable into the house for no extra charge because he could not find the "splitter" and could not obtain an acceptable signal to the modem using the existing cable.
Followup comments:  RoCJester
join:2006-12-20
Pottstown, PA
| Tracert Actually from what I know is that Tracert isn't blocked on anything. Secondly if the CMTS has ping turned off, it won't work. The way (as i know it.. i could be wrong) is Windows Tracert does the 1st Hop, if it gets ( * )'s then it moves to the 2nd, then back to the first, and so on and so forth.. not like others who just continue to move on to the third hop.
Regardless I'm glad that your connection is stable and you are happy. | |
|  | damox
Premium
join:2002-01-07
Olympia, WA
 ·Comcast Formerly ..
edit:
March 26th, @10:04PM
| Re: Tracert Well obviously Trace Route can be blocked. It may not have been intentional, but something was causing a problem with my use of Trace Route. As was suggested by "Mr. Anonymous, I did try running a Trace Route from a web site, and I got the same result. Maybe the use of the term "blocked" was too strong a word, but as I stated in my ISP review in March of 2004, after Comcast bought out AT&T cable, I lost my ability to perform a meaningful Trace Route. I stated that I would only get a response from the first two hops and last hop, everything in between timed out. I also stated that even when I connected directly to my cable modem (bypassing my two hardware firewalls/routers), and did so from four different computers, I still got the same result. Something was causing that inability to get a response for the 10 to 16 or so devices in between me and my targets. I don't know if it was the Thompson cable modem that I was renting from Comcast at the time, or it was something in Comcast's configuration of their headend devices, however, it began happening after Comcast took over. It was after I purchased my own Motorola SB5200, that the problem seemed to stop, so I'm not sure if it was a coincidence, or it was something to do with the modem itself. In any case, the problem went away.
As far as being able to block a trace route, right now, I can run a Trace Route and I get a response from my first firewall, but my outside firewall times out because it is configured to do so. After that, of the six or so targets that I tried to trace, I get a response from most devices in between, but on two of the targets (which includes the technical college where I work where the firewall is configured to ignore ICMP requests), when I get to the actual target, it times out until it reaches 30 hops which is the default for the maximum number of hops! The other target that timed out was the NY Times. It is not unusual for organizations to configure their routers or firewalls to ignore ICMP requests.
--
DAMOX Proud to be a member of Team Discovery | |
| | | |
| Forums » comments on review of Comcast Formerly ATT Broadband |
|
(21)