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Review by pdy1 
Posted: 7.4 years ago
member for 7.4 years, 1 visits, last login: 7.4 years ago
 San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
 $49 per month (month by month)
 SBC
 "Month to month price $49 for 1500/128kbps that gives 1100-1500/75-110kbps"
 "Tech Support was weak on modem hardware issue"
 "First month is free and it's month to month service so you can't lose."
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I live downtown San Jose and the speed is very good 1100-1500kbps down & 75-110kbps up. If you want to get DSL and don't want to commit to a year contract then DSL Designs is the way to go. I spoke with Tami in sales and she was great, Fausto in support was weak and didn't realize that my modem was bad. ASI/Pacbell sent 2 techs to check my line and when they saw the lights on my Westell 516 modem they said the modem was defective, I had been telling everyone I spoke with about the lights on my modem and that the ready led was staying red and power & link leds were green. I knew I had sync because the first Pacbell tech showed me his test meter readings. But now that everything is setup and working I am glad I chose DSL Designs.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 7.6 years ago
(review was emailed from domain cityteam.org)
Gilroy,Santa Clara,CA
Contract price not specified.
"Pathetic service"
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I have 3 accounts with DSL Designs and the service is pathetic at best. On a regular time table DSL Designs runs kind of routine that takes the 3 services down. It is not until I call do they get service back online again. I would think with the number of trouble tickets I have placed over the months they would be able to figure out what the problem is. I would not recommend them.
Gary Kalus
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Review by ddavtian
Posted: 7.7 years ago
member for 9.2 years, 3431 visits, last login: 15 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$125 per month
 about 4 days
SBC
"GREAT GREAT SERVICE..FAST AND VERY RELIABLE"
"NONE SO FAR"
"GREAT DEAL FOR YOUR MONEY"
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I signed up with DSLDesigns about a week ago and after 4 days my line was up and running. When I saw the sync on my modem I called their tech support dept. and within a few minutes I got my static IP and all the info I need to make a connection. I have their fastest package 1.5 - 6MBIT / 386 up and I'm getting about this much on a regular basis.
Test running..........
** Speed 4125(down)/355(up) kbps **
(At least 82 times faster than a 56k modem)
Logged result.
Finish.
The service is reliable, I have fast newsgroup access and it's going well so far. I'll update as I test out the service more.
Dave
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Review by wor2k0
Posted: 8 years ago
member for 8 years, 7 visits, last login: 4.6 years ago
Los Gatos,Santa Cruz,CA
$50 per month
about 15 days
"Sent modem AND activated service 2 weeks early."
"HAVE had bandwith problems, but all gone now :)"
"Good to buy now with there new equipment"
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I have been with DSL designs for a little over a year now... I live in the santa cruz mountains a little over 15,000 feet from the box. After many calls to many ISP's, i was very happy when dsl designs went out of there way to give me dsl. There have been a lot of slow downs the past couple months but they are going to be resolved VERY soon. I work at Cybermanor very close to dsl designs and my partner just started working at DSL Designs. They have switched from 25 T1's to a DS3. Much more bandwith! It is saturday the 9th and the DS3 is up, they just have a little more work to do. My 768/128 is getting 685/115 already and its only going to get better. Thumbs Up.
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Review by gfeneis
Posted: 8.1 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 29 visits, last login: 8 years ago
Morgan Hill,Santa Clara,CA
 Business customer
$100 per month (12 month contract)
Verizon (ex GTE)
CLEC party: Verizon (ex GTE)
"Very good pre-sales."
"Call for support- always have to leave a message. I've never had the BW I've been paying for."
"I cannot honestly recommend DSL Designs"
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Ordered 768/768kbps service and a single fixed IP address. To DSL Design's credit, the connection is rarely lost, and the DNS servers are rarely down.
However, It's been over a year now, and I've never had the full bandwidth I've been paying for. That is, I realize that I'm not going to get a full 768kbps all the time, but I think an average of 88-90% is reasonable.
It appears to be some sort of dynamic bandwidth throttling technique. A large file download starts out at a rather good rate, say 125kbps. After a few seconds, it slips to 75 or 80. A few seconds later, it's at 50. It eventually settles in at something pathetic like 10-12kbps. This is just downloading. Uploading is terrible.
Recently, I've started hosting domains, so the bandwidth issues are now more important. After a few days of testing, I found that my download rate runs from between the upper 300s to the lower 500s. The upload speed is pathetic, ranging from about 80 to 190.
I called Verizon (formerly GTE). They suggested that I call my ISP and that my ISP would handle any necessary work with Verizon.
I called the ISP, and their response is that they didn't see what the problem is. They also said they contacted Verizon, and Verizon did some prelimiary tests and deturmined that the problem wasn't bad enough to warrent further investigation. The ISP continued with some further generalizations about possible improvements in my service within the next few weeks as they are installing new equipment and making some changes soon. The person I was speaking with wouldn't say that the slow data rate was the fault of the ISP's, he only would say that things might improve in the next few weeks once they finish their improvements.
I called Verizon again and was transfered around only 3 times before I found an Advocate for my problem. This person at verizon entered a 'ticket' and started a series of tests. Additionally, this Verizon person told me that my ISP called only to confirm that my level of service is indeed 768/768. No tests were requested by my ISP. This Verizon person additionally scheduled a Verizon technician for a site visit that day. Over the next few days, after several phone calls and a total of 2 site visits, Verizon and I deturmined that there was nothing wrong with my computer, or any of the hardware between my DSL modem and the ISP. Verizon even measured the line distance to the CO to be an ideal 6000 feet. The conclusion was that my poor bandwidth problem must necessarily be the fault of my ISP.
Having done my ISP's ground work for them, I again tried to contact my ISP. It's difficult to call there and actually get to talk to somebody. I couldn't get anyone at techsupport so I tried sales. Eventually got somebody in sales. This person unloaded a bunch of woe about the changes they were trying to accomplish and all the difficulties involved. I suppose that was to make my wee little bandwidth problem seem minor in comparison. Regardless, I pursued and recieved some reassurances in the form of glittering generalities about performance improvements and how I was a good candidate for becoming a beta test customer for a new circuit they were installing.
Monday this week, after calling and leaving a message at about 9am with tech support, I received a call back at about 2pm, getting some reasurances that my bandwidth problems would be over by Friday. Well, it's Thursday evening and I'm looking at 175 down and 94 up. I guess DSL Designs has a lot of work to do between now and tomorrow night.
I have no problem with the service I received from Verizon. They took ownership of the problem and systematically confirmed each piece of the hardware between me and the ISP.
The root of my problem with DSL designs is that they failed to take ownership of the problem. Their response was quite literally "I don't know what to do about it." And/or Nothing can be done about it. and/or things should generally improve in the future as we add equipment, not that we admit that the problem you're having right now is due to our current equipment".
Hey it's Friday! The time is about 8:45. This is the day my data rate issues should improve. Well, let's see:
12kbps down/7kbps up. Wait, this must be a fluke let's test again.
9kbps down/15kbps up. Well, I guess DSL Designs really has some work to do if they're going to get some BW improvements today.
It's still Friday. High noon. Let's take another look before I go to lunch.
194down/17up and
204down/73up
I guess they're going to pull off some magic here in the next 4 or 5 hours.
OK, now it's late Friday afternoon. The time is about 4:30pm.
34 down/37 up. (trying again) 282down/37up.
Placing a call to DSL Design's tech support....No answer.....Calling sales...Spoke with sales person who acted like congestion and poor bandwidth problems were a known issue for several months. She said I should call directly to the tech support person's cell phone. I already had the number. He doesn't answer that phone either. I tried calling it anyway and left a message asking for an updated schedule (assuming that the poor bandwidth issues were actually going to be fixed in the future).
Saturday Oct 20, 8:30am, the day after things were supposed to be right. Also 16 hours after leaving a message asking for an updated schedule for improvements. No reply yet.
Let's do a test:
346 down/153 up Well, at least we're out of the teens. Still pathetic, though.
Saturday Oct 20, 18:14. More than 24 hours after giving tech support a call requesting an updated schedule for improvements. No reply yet. Testing...
214 down/70 up
Sunday Oct 21, 11:00 Test: 462 down/80 up
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Review by jeffi4
Posted: 8.4 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 2 visits, last login: 8.4 years ago
Morgan Hill,Santa Clara,CA
$49 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Excellent Customer Service. Fast, reliable connection."
"None so far."
"Definitely Recommend to others."
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The customer service has been the best I have had from any ISP bar none. I have had no connection problems in the year or so I have been with them, whic to me is amazing. The only problems I have had were with the actual modem (Fujitsu) from Verizon, which has been replaced once. The service itself is fantastic. I would definitely recommend it to anyone...
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Review by dslslave
UPDATED: 8.4 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 185 visits, last login: 3.4 years ago
Los Gatos,Santa Clara,CA
$50 per month (month by month)
about 20 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Tech support sometimes returns calls/email, that's a step in the right direction"
"Email to sales or tech support are seldom answered"
"They're out of control. Sometimes the service is smooth, but often it is not."
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** 29 July 2001 **
Read the connection diary entry for July 30 (EDT) for a laugh. Really. It's just too strange.
** 12 June 2001 **
What follows is a snapshot of over a month of problems with service from DSL Designs, with a summary at the end. One warning -- I have been getting under 200kbps download speeds (on a 768kbps line) again for several days now but cannot graph the results for others to see, and have sent a question to this organization (DSL Reports) to find out why poor speed test results are not being graphed for all to see. Until very recently -- last two or three days -- they were being accurately graphed for everyone to see. You can see my test results in my connection diary, taken directly from my DSL Reports Test History, which logs all tests correctly, if you want to check them.
** Feb 2001 **
Just an entry to note I've started a diary due to ISP problems on Feb 22, 23, 24, and 25. Approximately 14 hours of downtime total, with many more hours extremely slow (timeouts, very poor speed test results if the test could even be run to completion) due to some problems on their "circuit 2" that they are aware of. I thought it would be best to log problems here in a diary as they occur. I've noticed they are aware of the circuit 2 problem but do not have it under control, whatever the problem is, and have not notified customers that there is work (I guess) being done with more outages to be expected. They wait for you to call and report trouble rather than themselves using email, a message area on their web site, or even a recorded status message at their support number to alert the customer to known trouble. To their credit tech support did not deny that there was a problem.
--Feb 28--
Service OK Monday Feb 26 - Tuesday Feb 27. On Feb 28 the news server, but apparently no other service, is down. Logged this in connection diary.
--Mar 04--
DSL speed/availability good for Mar 01 - Mar 03, with news server back up Sun Mar 01 A.M. However, speed today is terrible at 11:20 PST: 59k down / 86k up. Logged in diary and in speed test results.
Second test at 11:40 PST is only marginally better: 104kbps / 82kbps -- also logged this (and it appears to have replaced the earlier logged entry).
--Mar 04 (second entry)--
DSL Designs' mail server is now down at 11:50 PST, and DSL is down for all practical purposes. That is, unable to access either the web or mail, but still had an SSH session working. Now using my dial-up ISP to make this update. No tech support on weekends. -- Postscript: All services came back up at 15:15 PST, but then completely down again at 22:30 P.M. (using dial-in ISP again to make this update)
--Mar 09--
Service up from morning of Mar 05 through Mar 08. On Fri Mar 09 at about 8 A.M. PST, NNTP, FTP, and later HTTP access all became impossible -- unable to connect due to timeouts. Details in connection diary.
--Mar 09 (second entry)--
At 18:41 PST it looks like everything's back up, maybe, including FTP and the DSL Designs mail server. So that's at least 10 hours of downtime today, not fixed until after the traditional business day is over. I'm counting this as downtime since major services like POP (email), FTP, and NNTP (new servers) were down, and even HTTP was a gamble. (You never knew if your next web request would be successful or time out.) I even got a timeout just now on my first attempt to post here, so this may not be fixed yet. At least I got my errands run today between tries at working, waiting for things to get fixed. But the icing on the cake is my email to DSL Designs' tech support that I sent via dial-up (Mindspring). I just got it back, bounced of course ... here's the last line of the bounce message: "... Host unknown (Name server: mail.dsldesigns.com.: host not found)"
Yep.
--Mar 18--
Good service for the week Mar 10-Mar 17 ! No gripes for a change.
--Mar 19--
18 Mar was OK, but with Monday comes horrible DSL speed again. 19k down / 63k up (that's right, 19k) at 10:30 PST. I am unable to even log the result.
Update at 10:50 PST -- all services down, unable to access web or POP mail. Looks like another 56K dial-in day with Mindspring.
--Mar 24--
Service up from PM 3/19 to PM 3/24. All services down again at 21:15 PST 3/24.
--Mar 31--
Service up 3/25-3/30. All services down again at 09:00 PST 3/31.
Postscript: Came up after recycling the modem and rebooting a few times. This behavior has continued since Mar 31 -- now after each power down of the PC I have to power off/on the modem to get connectivity. No s/w changed on PC.
--Apr 03--
All services just went down at 18:23 PDT.
SUMMARY
Had about seven weeks of really good service for most of April and all of May, and I thought I'd be able to vastly improve my rating of DSL Designs here, but now the usual old performance problems started again on June 7.
I've written too much here, see my connection diary for details from now on. I thought DSL Designs had improved considerably after the streak of reliable service, but that doesn't offset the lousy service before I started recording it, through all of March (recorded here), and now the resumption of that lousy service in June. If things are back to the bad old days I am leaning towards Speakeasy or perhaps Cruzio if they serve my area. Speakeasy gets really good ratings.
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Review by pleech
Posted: 8.5 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 1 visits, last login: 8.5 years ago
Alamo,Contra Costa,CA
$49 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
SBC
CLEC party: SBC
"worked completely as advertised. Modem sent in advance, line activated on schedule, email sent with required info, setup inst"
"none."
"It was a very positive experience to get hooked up with DSL Designs."
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I had already installed DSL from a previous service provider who went bankrupt. So I hunted around for another provider in my area, and when Pac Bell refused because I was 50 feet too far from their 'central office' , I tried DSL Designs, who said they could/would do it.
I thought I already had the right modem, but DSL Designs Sales told me my previous service was SDSL, whereas their new service was ADSL, and would require a new modem. They were right, and after pricing the modem on the outside, I realized there was no benefit to procuring the modem elsewhere, so DSL Designs took over from there.
They gave me an installation target date about two weeks out, sent me the modem (as well as another network interface card, which I didn't need) well in advance, and when the target date arrived, I received an email with all the IP communications settings and instructions necessary to get connected.
When I finished putting in the static IP information, I rebooted my PC, clicked on my browser, and voila -- it came up the first time. I then set up my email accounts, and again, everything worked beautifully the first time.
What a wonderful way to get started! Thanks, DSL Designs!!
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Review by thedges
Posted: 8.7 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 10 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago
Los Gatos,Santa Clara,CA
$250 per month (3 month contract)
about 7 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Fast Connection!, Escalation of Tech Support Issues, Value"
"Moderate Down Time, approx 99% uptime"
"T1 Performance for 25% of the Cost"
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I have 768K up / 1.5MB down ADSL service from Verizon & DSL Designs, Inc. I have 32 static IP's for a very high-end home office. I switched my existing ADSL service to DSL Designs in 12/99 - the whole process took 7 days.
I am most impressed with the download speed - I often exceed 100 KB/s, faster than many sites with T1 lines costing over $1K / month. Upload speed is at the limit most of the time.
As with many T1 sites, I have outages every few months; I wish it happened less often, however whenever the outage has exceeded a couple of hours the company founders of DSL Designs have gotten personally involved, on nights and weekends, too. This is what I want from a servive provider. [BTW the uptime exceeds my electric service from PG&E here in Northern CA!]
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 Review by pietrop
Posted: 8.8 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 160 visits, last login: 106 days ago
San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
$58 per month
about 40 days
CLEC party: NorthPoint
" Totally reliable connection; Nice people"
"Responsiveness is sporadic; Installation process was rough"
"I have some complaints, but the bottom line is I've been able to count on the connection being there."
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Keeping a diary starting 2/2/2001
Got a letter from Zyan today (2/2/2001) announcing that Zyan is taking over my account!
=======================================================
I initially inquired about service through PacBell which they were advertising for $39/month in September 2000. As soon as I contacted them, they quoted me a price of $57.95 through NorthPoint/Zyan. They said I "could" have the PacBell service if I really wanted it, but they couldn't guarantee installation dates, etc. They pushed the NorthPoint option.
Setting an installation date was a real zoo. NorthPoint called once to schedule, promising my houseguest that they would call back. The next I heard from them was maybe a week later. The installer called to apologize that he was running late. I wasn't even expecting him! So he arrived very late in the afternoon, and put in the wiring, but after much tweaking and testing, the connection still wasn't live. After a couple of weeks of waiting, and conversations with both DSLD staff and Zyan, the connection was suddenly on, and I've had no problems with it. NorthPoint provided the modem, but not the NIC.
My complaints mostly have to do with lack of clarity and lack of responsiveness.
When I finally got connected, I was told that I was to have a dynamic IPaddress at the $57.95 price, and that dynamic would be extra. Since the initial offer was for dynamic IP at $39, I wasn't at all happy. The rep told me she would be able to get me a static IPfor $57.95, but not right away. I'm still waiting.
They claim to provide newsgroup access, but my e-mail inquiries on that have gone unanswered. How hard can it be to send me the server name? Other e-mail inquiries have also gone unanswered.
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DSL Designs, Inc.
