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Review by Dr_OOL 
Posted: 8.2 years ago
member for 8.2 years, 98 visits, last login: 6.1 years ago
 Paramus,Bergen,NJ
 $39 per month
 about 2 days
 "Fast Installation"
 "Slow"
 "Warp Drive Online seems uninterested in upgrading properly. The competition is much better."
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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The town of Paramus, NJ has two choices when it comes to cable providers. On one hand, you have Cablevision - corporate America at its finest. On the other, a smaller local company - 'US Cable of Paramus/Hillsdale' a.k.a. the little guy. US Cable continues to grow, providing mediocre cable service, but doing quite well overall. Some of the local network channels (ABC, NBC, FOX, etc.) lack a stereo signal, for which I can't get a straight answer as to why. And they also have a mysterious 'snow' from time to time for which they also have no answer but those are other issues!
US Cable had partnered/purchased a local company named 'WarpDrive Networks' a.k.a. NIS (National Internet Source) which in turn provides the ISP, technical support, cable head end equipment, etc. for US Cable. The joint venture is called US Cable's 'WarpDrive Online' high-speed Internet.
Of the two cable providers, US Cable was the first in our area to offer digital cable, and of course, cable modem Internet access. Since they were the only cable modem game in town, I decided to give them a try. I ordered US Cable's service approximately one week after Northpoint's unfortunate demise. Installation wasn't a problem, and I had a professional installer at the house within 2 days of calling US Cable. (April 2001)
WarpDrive Online provides one dynamic DHCP IP with a 4-hour lease time. You can use any DOCSIS 1.1 compliant cable modem with their service, and I SUGGEST you do so. WarpDrive has selected the COM 21's 'DOXport 1110' as their modem of choice. This modem is rather ugly and bulky. It is cheaply constructed of dark blue plastic and looks more like a hollow toy rather then a professional Internet device. It takes up to 30 minutes to range for initial service, and occasionally loses sync under bandwidth taxing situations (such as normal uploading, or downloading of any kind!) You are also offered 10 free email boxes, but keep in mind they are just web based emails (similar to Hotmail, but not quite as advanced.) They are NOT true 'POP3' type email accounts.
As a network administrator myself, I spoke with WarpDrive Networks prior to the installation. I requested information as to network expectations, backbones they were using, etc. At first I was told that they were incorporating a dual T1 system. My first thought was that this probably wasn't enough bandwidth to cover the towns that US Cable services. I was assured that they were upgrading to a T3 at the end of April, or early May.
Jumping forward, I did find out that it was only one single T1 line for upstream and downstream. Clearly, not enough to support the users they claimed to have. I also noticed WarpDrive Online's backbone provider was Level3 networks. I've had some problems with Level3 in the past, including but not limited to poor routing issues, sluggish bandwidth, and high latency. In my opinion, as a backbone provider, I believe Level3 to be a poor choice.
Moving on, I have had no personal experience with cable modems, so my initial experience was quite satisfying. DSL reports speed tested my modem at approximately 985kbps down/876kbps up. This was a considerable increase from my 416/416 SDSL circuit. The thought again entered my mind that this bandwidth was coming from a single T1.
WarpDrive religiously uses a web site »www.speed411.com for speed testing modems after installations. This was the first time I've ever heard of the speed411 web site. I noticed that speed411's test results are a little puffed by approximately 100kbps/sec (testing my installation at around 996 kbps, and the occasional - and I stress OCCASIONAL 1126 kbps result.) Also, speed411 does not distinguish between upstream and downstream bandwidth levels. DSL reports speed tests were always a little lower, but my guess is that our friend Level3's latency is to blame.
May, and June came and went. Bandwidth was still averaging around 700-900 upstream/downstream. Towards the end of June, I started to notice some bandwidth degradation. Not long after, my initial fears were validated. Sometime around the beginning of July, bandwidth crawled to a halt the classic over subscription had occurred. Bandwidth was missing in action! The Pac-Bell DSL commercial with the angry neighbors being 'web hogs came to mind. 'I'm not a web hog! You're a web hog! To top it off, DSL reports speed test said 'About modem speed' as my speed results.
Repeated calls to technical support were answered with: 'We're having a problem at one of our nodes' , 'It will be fixed by tomorrow' , 'We just blocked someone's MAC address that was running a server!' , and 'Something is wrong with your modem, you need to replace it.' (Against my better judgment, I actually replaced the modem thinking that perhaps I did have a faulty unit. What a waste of my time.)
After 3 weeks of this slowness, the fix finally arrived. This fix WarpDrive Online decided to implement comes in the form of the dreaded 'modem cap' . This was their answer to a bandwidth problem. The only thing overlooked was that even with the modem cap, bandwidth was still a total crawler during peak times. Video streams chopped up, downloads slowed and sometimes even dropped out.
I determined the bandwidth was capped at approximately 450kbps downstream, 192kbps upstream. These incredibly 'high speeds' were only achievable after peak times, of course.
Recently, Optimum Online became available in our area, and I was planning the possible switch over. I decided to straight out ask WarpDrive when the T3 was coming, because this level of service was intolerable. An admitting, and somewhat 'aware of the problem' tech finally told me it should be in by the end of the week. 'Verizon is holding us up.' (Should I believe this one? Verizon is known to be a pain in the ass, but a 2-3 month holdup?)
Weeks came and went, and every call I made was responded with different answers: 'The T3 will be on at the end of the week; tomorrow; tonight; check under your pillow for the T3!'
In the next week or so, nothing much changed except for an unexpected 3-day outage beginning on a Friday. A Call to US Cable customer service was unhelpful, as they just redirected me to WarpDrive Networks' support number. Nobody was working at WarpDrive on the weekend to answer calls. So then obviously the problem wasn't resolved until Monday. In my eyes, this shows lack of rapid and effective response time to network outages.
It was now mid-august and the great T3 finally makes its debut. The result? Drum roll please. The speed was restored, but the 450/192 modem cap still remains! I was excited to see the T3 actually up, only to be disappointed with the speed test results.
I also noticed the modem receive light was blinking rhythmically the day after the T3 was activated. My first thought was that the Code Red worm might be scanning the new IP block. After some minor investigation with a packet sniffer, I found out what was causing it.
At this point, I decided to call tech support to ask their opinion on the light (basically using this answer as one of the determining factors if I'm going to stay with this sub-par service, or move on) and the answer was 'Because the T3 is so much faster, more data is coming in, so the receive light blinking like that is normal' Ah, yes. The good old big T3 'more data' excuse. Good one!
Well, I discovered that a device on the network is making ARP broadcasts approximately 3 times a second. I have the MAC address of the offending device. Maybe it has some legitimate purpose. In either case, the ARP broadcast frequency is way too high.
Oh and another thing, the reverse DNS is still not active on the T3 IP block (This was also the case when I initially signed up for the service it wasn't corrected until a week after I made them aware of it.) I wonder which will be fixed first - the cap, reverse DNS, or the mad ARP'ing device. Well, I'm not sticking around to find out. I have placed the order for Optimum Online 
UPDATE:
I made one last call to tech support to see if they were going to match the speeds of their competitor Optimum Online by the removal of the unreasonable modem cap. The answers I received were: 'We're trying to figure that out now', and 'We don't know.' I have the feeling they don't believe me about Optimum's 4-7 megabit speed. Well, that was 2 weeks ago. I think that was enough time to resolve this issue. I am not wasting any more of my time calling technical support.
US Cable's customer service handled my unhappiness extremely well. I was issued credits, where credit was due. This is one of the reasons why I am sticking with their cable service. US Cable seemed as upset with modem service as I did, obviously aware that the service is not what it once was purported to them to be.
I finally have Optimum Online's cable modem service. I am very satisfied right now, with speed tests into the 6-7 megabit range (that's 6000+ on speed411's test), and low latency (between 9 and 20ms ping times) to 95% of high-speed servers. It's great for gamers also. I tested Quake III and actually got rejected from a server because my ping was too 'low'.
A word to the wise, in order to get the Cable guys to run two lines from the pole to the house (one for US Cable's digital cable, and one for Optimum's cable modem) is a fiasco, but it can be done if you're determined enough.
In conclusion, I'd guess their service is good enough for the simple Internet user. You know the type (check email, surf porn, turn off computer. Is that you?) If you would like to have the full broadband experience, I'd recommend going Optimum Online. Optimum Online is obviously the superior provider in the area.
Take care,
Dr_OOL
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