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Review by NormanS See Profile

  • Location: San Jose, Santa Clara, CA, USA
  • Cost: $64 per month
  • Install: about 7 days
No caps! Smooth change.
Modem rental fee.
Worth the change.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

When AT&T Yahoo! DSL, my former ISP, implemented caps, I went shopping. Sonic.net had good reviews, so I checked availability. They showed about 9,500 to the CO, and a Fusion equipped DSLAM at the CO. I placed the order on June 8, 2011, and the service switch went smoothly on June 15, 2011, as specified in the email.

I did pay attention to other posts in the DSLR Sonic,net forum, and based on the information presented, I did not call AT&T to cancel! The number was switched without issue, nearly as I can tell. I did have to change the router from PPPoE (I had bridged my SpeedStream 4100 earlier in the year) to DHCP, but that was all.

I haven't had it long enough (barely two hours) to say if it is more reliable. But it is faster. A check of the SS4100 stats showed synch at 6208/1024.

So far this is looking like a good move!

I am not sure how to proceed; primarily because I moved, and set up new service at my new residence, but don't want to remove my prior comments.

In looking at the fields, I see I missed the part about including taxes and fees; so that is why I changed the "Total Monthly Cost" figure; still a bargain because the comparable AT&T bill, when I had them, was ~$101.xx per month.

Once I settled on my new location, I checked availability, and was pleased to see Sonic.net Fusion was available at my new residence. I placed my order, and was given an activation date about five days out. Service went live before the modem arrived; but I used a spare from the old residence and was online easily enough.

A tech brought a Pace 4011N-030 residential gateway a couple of days later. He fussed around a bit, and seemed rushed. Maybe he had parked in the 10-minute zone in front of the MDU, and wanted to get going ASAP? He failed to get synch with the splitter/filter, and left with my RG up, but landline down. On checking, he had left the phone connected to the filter/splitter, so I was able to see why he couldn't get synch: He had the phone plugged into the unfiltered ("Voice") port. Easy to set right. I could have done this as a self-install, but it all worked out.

Fusion does not have speed tiers, the modem and DSLAM work out the best data rate for the loop. At the old residence, the distance to the DSLAM was 9,156 feet, and the speed started out just over 5 Mbps, settling out at 4.9 Mbps. Here, the loop is ~3,000 feet, and the speed started out close to 15 Mbps, settling out to 13 Mbps.

At the other residence, I signed up for a single static IP address when they became available. I signed up the new service with a static IP address from the get-go. No charge. They have a control panel where I can set the reverse DNS, again, no charge. For an extra $1.95 ($23.40 a year), they provide DNS for my domain; about $3 a year less than I was paying another provider before.

Update:

Sonic.net turned up 6rd in January, 2014. After smoothing out a couple of early glitches, it has been working well.

Since starting as a new service, in my new home, I returned the rented Pace 4111N-030. I replaced it with a purchased TP-Link TD-8616, which I bridged.

My domains being up for renewal this year, I went ahead and moved them. Sonic.net resells Tucows registration, so I have it all in one place now. Sonic allows their customers to use the Sonic.net SMTP servers in their MX field of their domain. They also allow one to map domain email addresses as aliases to their basic email addresses; very nice.

In December, 2016, Sonic informed their customers of a $10 increase in the monthly fee. While some are complaining, I still believe the services offered, and the concern for customer privacy outweigh any negative of a price increase.

member for 23.1 years, 8300 visits, last login: 2.9 years ago
updated 6.5 years ago