 Review by Almighty1 
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 6.5 years, 847 visits, last login: 203 days ago
 San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
 $59 per month (12 month contract)
 about 10 days
 AT&T
 "Unsurpassed Service and Support"
 "Being guilty before proven innocent and bad policies"
 "The Best ISP in California"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I am posting this review 2.5 years late.
I want to note that I do own and run a ISP in Hawaii so I am more picky than others.
If you read my previous reviews, I had PacBell Internet ADSL when it was initially available in March 2001. So during April 13, 2001 - April 13, 2002 - I had PacBell ADSL via Pacific Bell Internet Services which is connected to the San Francisco Financial District CO that is 4364 feet away.
In March 2002, I got a letter from SBC Internet Services saying that my one year contract will be up soon and that to thank me as a valued customer, I will be paying the month to month rate of $49.95, basically a $10 increase or a 25% rate hike.
This was when sonic.net looked attractive as many people on the ba.internet newsgroup highly recommend sonic.net including John Navas not to mention that sonic.net's CEO, Dane Jasper actually talks to customers personally and the company has up to 4 static IP addresses without needed PPPoE, 3 different news servers (one internal, two outsourced), support by both phone, email as well as their internal support newsgroups where users and their techs assist. Their phone support would always get someone who is actually knowledgeable answering within 2 minutes and will do all they can to resolve the issue to your satisfaction and they have servers that work not to mention that they are connected to 2 of the big three Internet backbones, WorldCom's UUnet and Savvis (previously known as Cable & Wireless USA), which along with SprintLink is responsible for a majority of the US Internet traffic. They also allow you to run servers. All this for $57.95 and I get to have Universal Lifeline again on my phone line so the $20 monthly phone bill with Flat Rate calling, WirePro repair, and 3 way calling just became $10 again. So it was a no brainer that I was switching to sonic.net which is only $8 more than PacBell Internet for the same DSL connection and I no longer had to pay $20 for binary newsgroups which would have made my bill at $69.95 total with Pacific Bell and my voice service would also be cheaper by $10.
So on April 13, 2002 - I called SBC Internet Services to cancel with a disconnect date of April 18, 2002. On April 18, 2002 - at 6am in the morning, I did lose sync and then at 10am, I no longer had a dialtone but I can call my phone number and it would ring but just never makes it to my phone. Calling 611 doesn't show any problems either that they were going to dispatch a repair tech the next day and then all of the sudden, in the afternoon on the same day, it mysteriously works again.
So on April 21, 2002 - I placed an order with sonic.net for their Basic 1.5Mbps/128kbps ADSL via PacBell ADSL which had a due date of
April 28, 2002. Things didn't go smoothly as I didn't get sync until May 8, 2002 after calling sonic.net and talking to Jasper C, not to be confused with the sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper. This was PacBell/ASI's fault as they were taking their time but when I had sync, everything was fast and sonic.net's support is excellent. Also, forgot to mention that this is the first time I got static IP's for my DSL connection.
In January 2003 - I did a upgrade to the Basic+ 1.5Mbps/256kbps ADSL for $69.95 a month which did give me more upstream speed and the 256kbps was later 384kbps when SBC upgraded the upstream speed on all DSL connections.
This package also included 8 static IP's.
Both of the above didn't require any contract term.
In January 2004 - sonic.net and their competitor, DSLExtreme announced 6Mbps/608kbps ADSL while SBC Internet Services only offered a 3Mbps/416kbps while the unofficial speeds SBCIS customers were getting were really 6Mbps/608kbps but this is still dynamic IP service. sonic.net offered the 6Mbps/608kbps with a 1 year term for $54.95 per month which included 8 static IP's. So it was a no brainer that I can get 4x the bandwidth for $15.00 less per month for the next year. So I placed my order on January 24, 2004 which didn't get processed until February 1, 2004 as SBC's order system did not allow the orders until then. SBC's due date of February 10, 2004 was missed and the upgrade didn't get completed until February 11, 2004. Everything since then has been very smooth and their tech support when I had to call them was outstanding. sonic.net is one of the few ISPs where if you have a problem, the CEO will personally resolve it to your satisfaction. So I would highly recommend sonic.net to others.
So bottom line, sonic.net is great for everything related to internet connectivity.
Updated on April 25, 2006:
Everything is still great except first hop latency has gone up from the 6-8ms to 12ms I guess due to sonic.net having more customers sharing the same bandwidth but speeds are still as great as it was originally. It's just the latency that's strange as having 1.5Mbps/128kbps is 20ms first hop, 1.5Mbps/256kbps is 10ms first hop and 6Mbps/608kbps is supposed to be under 8ms first hop since the uplink speed affects the first hop latency.
Update on July 30, 2008
Just a brief update. Before July 29, 2008, I believe SONIC.NET was the best ISP there is and have recommended SONIC.NET to others countless times over the years without taking credit but right now, even if it was free to all, I would probably have second thoughts about recommending them to others due to the way that when a customer is the victim of some kind of attack, they treat them like criminals not as in words but more in the actions in the whole ordeal instead of helping the customer resolve the problem. My motto as a ISP Owner and a Principle Network Architect for several ISP's has been to help the customer resolve the issue regardless of how much time it takes and even if I don't get paid for the time. See the following thread here for details:
»Poor handling by sonic.net support - DDoS attack
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of SONIC.NET |
|
SONIC.NET
(17)
(42)