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They provided me with the ARRIS SB6141 as an Internet Modem and they provided me with the Arris TM602G/115 as the telephony modem. member for 22 years, 5666 visits, last login: a few hours ago updated 2.5 years ago
I am using Prolog (PenTeleData) network through my television cable provider (Service Electric) . They use Motorola cable modems to provide their service. Service Electronic provides four tiers of service 1 meg (basic),6 megs(standard), 10 megs(premium) and 30 megs(wide-band). The 30 megs broadband is rather pricey but I am sure it's well worth the asking price. I am using the 1.5 meg(basic) and find it highly reliability and haven't had any major issues or service outages. »www.secable.com/wilkes-b ··· net.html member for 19.8 years, 898 visits, last login: 6.4 years ago updated 13.3 years ago
Well lets start off with the back story. I got a promotion at work that required me to work from the corporate headquarters... an 84 mile round trip from where I was living. With the cost of gas and the 10 hours a week of my life it was taking away I decided to relocate. If you've ever visited the north central part of Pennsylvania - you'll no doubt agree with me that it is beautiful... but populated it isn't! Welcome to Mayberry - er, Wellsboro, PA that is. Population ~4000, also the county seat of Tioga County (just to give you an idea of how populated the rest of the county is). Colonial gas lamps line the center of the main streets, well manicured lawns everywhere you look, Main Street is full of little shops and restaurants. That's all fine and well - but what is the broadband going to be like here!?!?! To my surprise - it's pretty damn good. Much faster service than I was getting with my Verizon DSL service 42 miles to the south. I ordered the service in February 2008 - it's now May and I think that has given me enough time to fully test the services. My cable company is Blue Ridge Communications, the ISP that runs the show is PenTeleData. I remember back in the early days of the internet, PTD was quite a powerful local ISP, with some services that were to be envied. PTD seems to have a pretty solid backbone, with multiple peerings in NY, NJ & MD. Ping times across the board are very low. I subscribe to the 10/800 tier (G10 they call it) and consistently hit my cap. We had a couple of bad ice storms since I've moved here, and all the while I was happily downloading at top speed along with everyone else in the area since nobody could go anywhere. When the service was first installed, they furnished me with a Webstar modem - it was very flaky and often needed rebooted- within a few days I purchased a Motorola 5120 and haven't had a single problem since. I have heard of a few people having their service suspended or terminated because of high usage... I'm a heavy user and have yet to receive a letter or phone call. They do provide a tool that tells you how much data you have consumed in a given month and it seems fairly accurate when compared with the monitoring software I use on my PC. All in all, I'm pretty happy with my new service. That can quickly change though if the service drops below unacceptable levels. I'll be sure to update my review. member for 23.1 years, 8578 visits, last login: 3 days ago updated 15.8 years ago
UPDATE: 4-11-2008 I just found out from a friend, who found out the hard way- about the actual but "unofficial" bandwidth caps for cable modem users: Websurfer (1.5Mbit) 15G down 10G up G5 50G down 25G up G10 65G down 35G up G15 80G down 45G up This just defies belief. A person can do 15 gigs a month on dial-up. Some of these levels are downright unreasonable. People are gaming, watching streaming video, listening to streaming audio, using Skype, downloading, and doing all kinds of other bandwidth intensive stuff online. Isn't this the reason one gets broadband in the first place? To pay for a fast connection, and be crippled with draconian caps like this is ridiculous. I have G15, and it's great. My speed is as fast as it should be, but I've only gone over 80 GB's once, and by a small amount, so they didn't hassle me. But now that I know- I'll have to watch every megabyte. I just figured I would let people know, because if you're thinking about signing up with Prolog you ought to know what your getting into. ************************************************************************* UPDATE: I had G7 for a couple of years, and just upgraded to G15. I didn't plan on upgrading... but my old Surfboard modem wasn't cutting it any more when they upgraded everyone from G7 to G10. BRC tech came out, hooked up a Webstar modem, speed shot right up. I decided to keep the modem. The deal was this: Upgrade to G15, get a free modem, and the first 6 months of the service for $29.95 a month. I was paying $42 a month for the slower speed. It was an offer I couldn't refuse. Then I ran into speed issues. Through trial and error, discovered that my router was causing a bottleneck. My router, which is a D-Link that is several years old- has a WAN port that is 10 Mbps- NOT 10/100. 15 into 10 doesn't go.... I took the router out of the loop, and tried this with a fast ethernet 10/100 switch- bam! Full speed. No, I don't always get full speed- but I usually hover between 12-15 Mbps. And I can and do regularly hit 15+ Mbps. If you are using a router and having speed issues, check your specs for the WAN port. I am awaiting a new router, and using the switch in the meantime. There are still download caps, but I can't complain about the service. It was a good deal, and existing customers were eligible for a change. I've hit 60 gigs without any warnings from Prolog, so I can live with that. I don't abuse it like some people. I think they are starting to feel the heat from Verizon with FIOS. Well, FIOS isn't here yet, and in the meantime I'm pretty happy with what I'm getting from Prolog at this point in time. I figured since I've always been fast enough to criticize them, I should have a good word to say when they do something right. ********************************************************************************** I've been with this company for years. I've seen them go from a poor provider to a provider I thought was top notch. They offer 3 levels of service: G3- 3 mbps, G7- 7 mbps, and G10- 10 mbps. The service has been pretty good. It's very reliable, and the network rarely goes down. They give you 10GB's a month premium news service, but the NNTP download speed is capped at 2.5 mbps no matter what speed tier you have. Some broadband customers are now complaining that they are getting letters from Prolog telling them they are downloading too much. Some are getting these letters after downloading only 20 GB's a month. According to Prolog it violates their AUP. However, nowhere in that AUP is there a limit stated. Customers are being told verbally by customer service that the limit is 12 GB's a month. Every byte of data that flows into your computer counts- surfing, email, streaming media... etc. The letters warn users that their accounts can be terminated and tries to force them to upgrade to commercial accounts. Commercial accounts are half the speed, for a lot more money. I'm a 20GB+ user, and I haven't gotten a letter yet, but I will post here when I do. It's only a matter of time. So, how many G's can you handle? What does it matter if you are restricted to 12 gigs downstream a month. member for 18.6 years, 1830 visits, last login: 5.1 years ago updated 15.9 years ago
Installation simple. 2 Dynamic IP's so 2 computers or 2 routers. Service has yet to go down in 1 year of service. The only problem I have run into is the limited upload speed and when using VPN for work there is a lot of lag. There is no option to upgrade unless you upgrade to a commercial account. Paying for 7 download, tested today only getting about 2. I am going to do a direct connection tomorrow to eliminate that as the problem. Verizon DSL available however only offers PPOE which can be a pain to setup and troubleshoot with a router. member for 22.4 years, 20 visits, last login: 10 years ago updated 16.1 years ago
I ordered my service from BRC/PTD and they came out and installed a Zyxel 941 modem. The installer, who was knowledgable, installed the filter and a new line(shielded cable, along with new cables to all my rooms) to my computer room. About 30 seconds after I hooked up the modem I was online. This modem flies, the 800k/800k cap is great after having 640/160 aDSL for so long. I did a speed test on here and got 776k/774k so I am pleased. No outages yet, no major speed degradation during off peak or peak times. Of course you get a normal slowdown in peak times due to more usage by other users. Cant have everything with shared bandwidth. I havent used tech support yet so I havent really got a rating for that yet. Mail and Usenet are ok. Former Review on ProLog back when I was in Jim Thorpe ------------------------------------- New Review on ProLog since living in Wilkes-Barre, PA As a former employee of Service Electric I felt that it wasn't right that I gave a review of the service since I worked there. However, since I've been a non-employee of the company for close to 4 months now, I feel that I'm able to since I see the service as just a service now. So, I have the 10/512 package from Service Electric & ProLog in the Ashley section of Wilkes-Barre. It's honestly the best service I've had since beginning to use broadband back in the late 90's. My speeds are consistently between 8.5 and 9.5Mbps on the speedtests both offered here on BB and other speedtest sites. I game quite a lot(BF2) and my connection is stable and consistent all the time. I don't use their mail server so I don't have an opinion on that, but my broadband itself is awesome. In the last 4 months I've not had one service outage that I know of. My Cable TV is really good too. I have the Hi-Def package and get something like 17 HD channels. I'd give the combo of SE and PTD 2 thumbs up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Review for the last year. The service in Wilkes-Barre has been awesome. Still just as reliable as when I first had it installed and I'm getting about 9.5/900 at peak. member for 22.2 years, 2945 visits, last login: 7 years ago updated 16.2 years ago
Prolog is way better than DSL in this neighborhood. I have the HD DVR package with cable modem for $115/ month. I usually get 7Mb/s down consistently. and always 384Kb/s up. I wish we had Fios.....but until we do this is the best deal around. member for 23.3 years, 489 visits, last login: 99 days ago lodged 16.2 years ago
It is the only way to surf, beats dial up no competition. Much faster and cheaper then dsl. You get the speeds you pay for. Currently I do not share my node with very many other customers so the speeds may suffer if more of my neighbors get it. I constantly get download speeds of over 4 mb and the upload is always above 600 k and most of the time closer to 750 k . member for 16.8 years, 242 visits, last login: 3.9 years ago lodged 16.6 years ago
When we first got the service (2 years ago) they came in to install the modem and they set up 2 computers using my router. when they left, I plugged in the upstairs network switch to the router by the modem. So i have a theory that PTD keeps track of how many computers are hooked up on the modem. If there is more than the number of allowed computers on the network, they cut you off and you have to reset the modem. We did call them in and they replaced the cable from the wall jack to the modem (3 ft piece) Now they upgraded the number of computers from 2 to 5. but now i have a new laptop but they haven't reset the connection yet...but PTD never complained to us that we had too many computers hooked up to the modem. I'm wondering if the connection now stays on all the time because of the replaced cable...or the number of computers has been raised. UPDATE: Turns out it has been dropping out due to a faulty modem (Arris CM300a) I bought a Motorola 5101 Surfboard and it's on solid now. First 1-2 hours had uncapped downloads (G13 anyone?) UPDATE: I've Just upgraded to the G10 service (10000/800) The download really is fast downloading with a manager that uses 7 sockets will pull data in at about 1.2MB (which is (9.8 of 10megabit connection) Which is right on considering a small overhead. The upload with G10 is also right on the money, It sends out it at a tiny bit over advertised speed (104KB/s) »mtois.mine.nu:86/~MTOSER ··· peed.jpg member for 19.5 years, 72 visits, last login: 14.7 years ago updated 16.7 years ago
I bought a house in Wantage Township in Rural Sussex county NJ. I needed broadband because I work from home (and so does my wife). Went through service electric because it was either them, DSL or satellite. DSL was painfully slow, and forget about satellite that wants to be broadband but is really not. Got the 10mb package for $41.95/month. The cable modem is a Toshiba. Nothing special. DHCP, no PPPoE. Set up went smooth. The TV service was set up quickly as well, using two CableCARDs for my TiVo series 3. The cable guys came, installed and when they left I was happy to be connected to the world again. They handed me the paperwork, and I signed my life away. However, when I was looking at the fine print, they limit you to 40GB/month data transfer and charge you after that. I guess if I don't download a lot of stuff I won't end up with a big bill, but I generally feel uneasy about paying for "unlimited" service with a limit in the fine print. Oh well, I don't think I'll use 40GB/month anyway. Also, no servers. Pretty standard among cable modem contracts, but I would at least like to have the option as I did with OOL Boost. Guess I'll have to co-locate my server, which is a better option anyway. The service has been reliable so far, all of two weeks. No complaints at all. member for 21.5 years, 2825 visits, last login: 8.6 years ago lodged 17 years ago
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