 Review by tater_gunz 
UPDATED: 270 days ago
member for 4.9 years, 1032 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Holland,Lucas,OH
 Contract price not specified.
 about 2 days
 "Very reliable (in my experience), competitive price, VoIP!"
 "Upstream is only 384kbps for standard plan..."
 "Only other service available to me is DSL, which BEX blows away."
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Before saying anything else, I want to point out that I do in fact work for BEX (Buckeye Express), at the helpdesk. Some might feel that makes me biased, but I was a BEX subscriber for years before hiring in. Also, I've had ADSL through SBC in the past, so I have a feel for their offerings.
Now that that's out of the way, here's the lowdown on BEX:
In the four years that I've had BEX, I think my total downtime is somewhere around two days. Compared to my spotty DSL connection, which I only kept for a year (contract), that's pretty reliable. Like any other service, BEX does have downtime. Usually it's for maintenence or upgrades (early morning hours). My hub, Springfield, seems to be very solid, but we do get occasional outages in the other more densely packed hubs. The good news is that since working for BEX, I have yet to see any hub or node down for more than a few hours. Subscribers with standard level of service or elite service get 10 free hours of nationwide dialup service, so that could be used as a backup connection in case of downtime.
I've had a few different modems over the years, and currently I'm using the standard Arris modem, which has yet to give me any problems. It cooperates nicely with my Netgear router. IP's are dynamic, although a static IP can be rented for an additional charge each month. My IP has changed only a handful of times since being installed, so I don't bother going static. Speeds for my connection are very consistent -- any time I check, I always get the capped amount (3500kbps down / 384kbps up), give or take 5%.
The only ports BEX blocks are 25 (SMTP) to avoid spammers, 80 (no servers), and 135-139 to block common viruses. VNC and RDP both work very well for me; as soon as I get to work every day I set up a remote desktop session with my server at home and stream my music to my desk. Very handy. 
For you constant downloaders, there is no enforced cap. In fact, some of my co-workers and I have tried to see who can get in the top 20 for bandwidth used. To my knowledge, no one has ever been disconnected for excessive use. Now, I'm not saying this can't change, but again, I'm just telling you my experience with the service. The terms of service / acceptable use policy says no servers, but BEX is pretty cool about this other than blocking port 80. If you want to run a server, I suggest either a business account or the elite residential package (5000kbps down / 512kbps up), with a static IP, because static IP's only have ports 134-139 closed.
Truthfully, my only real gripe with my connection is the upload speed. I have the standard service level, which has 384kbps upstream, but I really feel that a 3.5mbps downstream should have at least 768kbps upstream bundled with it. I've heard rumors that we're looking at bumping speeds up, but nothing official has been announced yet.
On a side note, BEX e-mail servers used to be like a roller coaster a couple years ago, but this seems to have been taken care of for the most part. I hardly use my BEX mail accounts, but they don't seem to give me any trouble any more.
Something else that might interest folks -- BEX is in the process of rolling out Buckeye Tel, which we're really excited about. BTel is our VoIP product, which offers a huge local calling area and kickass long distance abilities. Overseas calls are dirt cheap! I don't believe we've rolled BTel out in all areas yet, but I'm seeing more and more callers from different areas with it. It's only a matter of time until everyone will be able to get it.
So, that's pretty much it. I've tried to be fair and impartial, but I understand if folks are still skeptical. I've based this review on my own experiences with BEX, so your mileage may vary.
** If anyone has any questions, please feel free to IM me. I'll be happy to answer your questions / concerns as best as I can! I'm on DSLreports very frequently. ***
....
Update 8/15/2005 -
Two things -- The first is that I am no longer on the Springfield hub. As of 8/1/2005, I am now living in Sylvania and my connection feeds off of card 5/DOU0 on the Sylvania hub. My new CMTS hasn't been upgraded with the 2x8 cards yet, but it's only a matter of time. Besides, the average subscriber won't be able to tell a difference either way. Currently my return is transmitting at 44dBmV and the forward is coming in loud and clear at 7.5dBmV (my modem sits no more than 10 feet of coax away from the ground block now).
Secondly, BEX speeds have just been increased. I don't know if new configs have been pushed to all modems yet, but after powercycling mine I am able to get near the 5000/512Kbps new speeds. A little bit of tweaking and I should be over that, but for the time being it's a nice little bump up. FYI -- the "Elite" package has also been upgraded; folks who are willing to spend the extra $$$ now have 8000/768Kbps connections.
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Update - 10.27.2007
Current modem: Motorola SBV5220 (VoIP capable but not used)
Wow, I can't believe I've been a DSLR member this long. Where has the time gone? The DSLR system just sent me an automated request to update my BEX review, so here I am. It's been an interesting two years since I last wrote, and I'm still just as pleased with my BEX service as I was when I penned my first review. I'm still wanting more upstream though...
By the way, I no longer work for BEX. I left Buckeye Cablesystem a while back in order to work at its sister company, Buckeye Telesystem (commercial fiber optic and copper telephony services). Some might say that still makes me biased, but honestly, I really don't care what anyone thinks. I have nothing to gain by lying about my experiences with BEX, especially now that I my affiliation with them is tenuous at best.
These days I am running the 10 Mbps downstream / 800 Kbps upstream package, and I pretty much always get within 90% of those speeds consistently. There is another speed upgrade in the works, so that'll be welcome once it finally rolls out. As far as reliability goes, in the past two years I've had maybe 24 hours of downtime (if that).
Traffic shaping has become more prevalent but I'm still able to get very reasonable P2P speeds. Others have complained that they have been running into trouble with P2P, so I guess I can only speak for myself.
Insanely fast symmetric speeds are in development at Buckeye, and I can't wait to find out what the future has in store. Verizon just announced 20 Mbps symmetric service in a few of their service areas, so the bar has definitely been raised!
Followup comments:  slckusr
join:2003-03-17
Maumee, OH | good riddance buckeye glad i moved to dsl buckeye was junk in maumee.
guess i got spoiled by comcast.
3 dsl and dishtv | |
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