Review by buoux 
Posted: 9.6 years ago
member for 9.7 years, 300 visits, last login: 56 days ago
 Las Vegas,Clark,NV
 $49 per month (12 month contract)
| Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I ordered ADSL service from Sprint on Mar. 8 and and was scheduled for an install on Mar. 16. I came home on the 14th and found a message on my door saying that the installer had arrived and found that no one was home. I called to find out what had happened and they said there was a miscommunication between their (Sprints') office and the installer (an independent contractor). They told me that he would still keep the original appointment, but after reading so many reports on this site I have to admit that I was leery of anything they told me.However, as it turned out, this was the biggest glitch of the entire install process.
The installer showed up about 30 minutes early. He immediately recommended an external modem. I figured this was because he would save time by not having to open up the case. I said that, despite the lack of desk space, the Alcatel 4060 External would be fine. He also implicated that there were some problems with the internal model which swayed my decision. All in all the install went smoothly. He loaded WinPoET 2.0, connected to Earthlink the first try, and gave me my new username and password. Since I already had an Earthlink account, I called Tech support and asked them to cancel my dial-up account so my new account would have the same identities as my old one.
Tech support was pretty quick to take care of this. They told me that the installer should have dealt with this matter, but since they took care of it themselves in about 90 minutes, I didn't mind
I went to dslreports site and began to look around. I found the speed test page and started to log a few tests. My results weren't very impressive so I started to look into the Tweaks section. It took awhile before I realized that I may have to go into my register and increase the size of my receive window (RWIN). I changed it to about 34,xxx and my download results went from around 58-62 kbps to 420- 424 kbps ! This is such a significant increase that I can't understand why the installer didn't take an extra 40 to 50 seconds to do it. I don't know how many people like me have DSL service but haven't been made aware of this option, but it seems like it should be part if the standard install procedures. I subsequently increased it to about 65,545 but this had no additional impact on my scores.
Since the install, I have downloaded a firewall, (ZoneAlert 2.0) after a security test gave me a relatively low (bad) score and I have to say that now there is only one quirk in my system. When I first boot up, if I do anything before I start WinPoET, it usually gives me an error message something to the effect that there is a general hardware failure and that the port could not be opened. I havve to do a warm boot and start up WinPoET first thing, go about my business and then open up my web browser to go to the internet.
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