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Review by maxic2 
Posted: 8.2 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 6 visits, last login: 6.5 years ago
 Framingham,Middlesex,MA
 $123 per month
 about 9 days
 "Reliable, relatively cheap"
 "Overly restrictive network configuration"
 "Good for an average user, bad choice if you like to be in control"
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My first encounter with RCN was July 20ish, when I called them to request a setup for the house I was closing on 8/8/01. I was going to move in approximately three-four days later, so I asked them to set me up on 8/11. They said they couldn't accept my request while the previous owners still had their service connected, and they also told me that as soon as they got the disconnection request, they would give me a call and have my request taken care of.
On 8/9, not hearing back from RCN, I called their customer service again, and after spending ~30 minutes on the phone, I was told that it was too late to have the installation done the same week, so my installation date was tentatively set for 8/17/01 (a week later than I hoped for and I felt was justified considering the date of my original call) with the promise that one of their supervisors would call me to reschedule for an earlier date. As I suspected, no one ever called me, so I was stuck for a week without Internet access (which I need, since I'm basically on a 24/7 call schedule, and I must have access to my company's servers no matter where I am), and without a working phone line at home (Cable TV I can live without, until the next season of The Sopranos).
This ordeal ended well, with a nice guy appearing on the doorstep on time; he ran around the house, and within one hour I was all set. The next thing was to find out what I got (BTW, $123 is the "Gold" package - digital cable with multiple premium channels, cable Internet, and a full-featured phone line). So, here's the breakdown of features:
1. Speed - consistent 1.1Mbps downstream and 400Kbps upstream - no Guinness Book of Records here, but still pretty decent.
2. traceroutes give good numbers, mostly staying within 100ms for major backbones.
3. NNTP carries the really useful stuff, with the retention a little over 24 hours - you can get what you need if you're quick.
These are the good things, now for the bad stuff:
4. RCN (at least here in Eastern Mass) fell victim to the Code Red scare, so no port 80 inbound. If you want to run a web server that doesn't fit into the 10MB of free web space RCN provides - have you credit card ready to pay for hosting.
5. As if filtering 80 inbound is not enough, port 80 outbound goes through transparent proxies (again, that may be specific for Eastern Mass). Go to a web site whose access_log you can see, get a couple of pages from there and check the corresponding entries. You won't see your system's IP address. Instead, you will see RCN's cache servers doing the request for you. Do you feel comfortable knowing that all your browsing goes through a proxy no matter what you specify in your IE? I don't.
Also, today my wife complained that she couldn't use her university's proxy server to access Internet article databases (a small explanation for non-research people: scientific journals are indexed by multiple databases that charge users for access; universities pay and have access enabled for them based on IP address - if you want to use such database, you either do it from a desktop on campus, or go through a university proxy server). I knew immediately that the problem was with RCN: the university's proxy is listening on port 80, so all requests were intercepted by RCN, and my wife's browser settings were simply ignored. I called RCN, and after 45 minutes (yes, that's forty five minutes) of waiting, I spent another 30 minutes talking to a clueless guy who was lucky to be in Springfield, Mass, where the transparent proxying is not used, so he was getting a result completely different from what I had. After I walked him through their network setup ("customer support" as in "supported by customers"), he finally went to talk to a specialist and got back to me with "Sir, please ask the university to enable a different port on their proxy server."
My answer to this? I'm going to teach my wife to use VPN.
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Review by DWAnderson
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 47 visits, last login: 3.8 years ago
Chicago,Cook,IL
$39 per month
about 1 days
"Fast, easy set up. Reliable service."
"Dyamic IP. Having to renew IP address."
"Much more reliable than my old DSL line"
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I ordered RCN internet service and cable TV service to be installed the day we closed on our new home. The rep brought the cable modem (with no documentation) before the cable line had been installed so I needed to call support to walk through the set up. I was up and running in about 1/2 hour. Had some flakiness with respect to dynamically assigned name server addresses, but that seems to be working fine now. IN the past month I've had to manually renew my IP address on two occassions to get the service working. Tech support is easy to reach, although they won't support the internet gateway I use to share the connection between multiple PCs (for which I can't blame them). Overall-- many fewer problems than with DirectTVDSL (fks Telocity) my provider at my old house. Very satisfied with the service. Get speeds of about 760K down and 250K up. Latency seems somewhat higher than with DSL, but nothing unmanageable.
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Review by LouieD
UPDATED: 8.3 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 351 visits, last login: 28 days ago
Carmel,Putnam,NY
$40 per month
about 5 days
"Arrived early for installation which took all of 15 minutes."
"Inconsistent performance. Continuing problems with upload speeds and dropped packets"
"Even with the problems, still better than dialup 56k"
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After getting tired of AOL dialup, RCN Cable appeared to be the only option for me, too far away from CO for DSL. Ordering and installation were very easy. Tech arrived early (called to make sure that I would be here) and installed the 3Comm Sharkfin modem in 10 minutes. This service is ethernet encapsulation, no PPPoE, logging on or anything else. Just plugged my Netgear RT314 router into the modem, DHCP assigned the address and away we went. Unfortunately, the conection has not been stable. Download speeds are pretty consistent, 1.5Mbps to 750Kbps. Upload speeds have been VERY inconsistent, 750Kbps to 70Kbps. The cable modem has also lost sync multiple times. Tech Support indicated that RF levels were poor. Called and got Tech to come to house for diagnosis. Tech came on time, but found no problem with signal levels. So the saga will continue, I just haven't gotten up the juice to call tech support again.
Multiple calls to tech support finally resulted in their admitting that our area had a problem and engineering was working on the problem. Two weeks ago, engineering changed several operational parameters in the modem i.e. upstream frequency, dB levels, etc.
Since these changes were implemented, service has been very good. I consistently get 1200 - 1400 kbps down and 400 - 750 kbps up. ping times are reasonably good and lost packet testing returns excellent results. Let's hope the service stays this way.
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Review by oogy35
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 638 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
Carmel,Putnam,NY
$149 per month
"Resilink Platinum awesome cable modem speed 2 phone lines and 300 channels"
"N/A"
"For the money you cant beat it!!"
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I called 1-800-RING-RCN and discussed there resilink packages. What I decided to go with was the Platinum plan. In it you get 2 phone lines with 16 features and local and regional calling. You also get the infamous cable modem. I now tested out at speeds in excess of 1400 up and 740 down!!! Lastly I received to digital cable boxes which now get me almost 300 channels as well as 45 of digital music. I used to pay $100 to Verizon for the same phone features but only 1 line. Add the $50 I used to pay for basic cable. Now for the same money I get it all including the CABLE MODEM.
The installation took 1 hour and was as smooth as possible. I have also dealt with the customer support department and was completely satisfied with 1 phone call!!
Today 10 days after installation my phone began to pick up static. Within 4 hours a tech was at my door replacing there equipment. RCN is awesome!!
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 Review by Growler$
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 9 years, 412 visits, last login: 7 years ago
Carmel,Putnam,NY
$39 per month
about 7 days
"Price, Speed, No Contract Required."
"None So-Far."
"Great Price, Good Speeds, Reliable Connection"
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I ordered RCN cable modem on 8/9/01. Installation was promised on 8/16/01 and was completed as planned. The actual installation took less then 30 Minutes as the house was already wired for cable. The modem synched up immediatley and I am now getting speeds in the area 0f 1220 - 1500 Kbps down and 600 - 750 kbps up. The service is two way cable and the modem used is an RCA digital Broadband modem. Pre-sales information was clear and concise with no hidden clauses. Install coordination was perfect. Connection reliability has been perfect though the service has only been connected for two days. I had to call tech support because I inadvertently entered the wrong password and needed their assistance. I was able to get a support tech on the phone immediately without waiting. The tech was able to correct the problem immediately and help me set up my e-mail programs without a problem. Compared to Earthlink/Verizon DSL which took three months to get working after installation, and never really did work right, this service is far better then the capped speed DSL that is in my area.
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Review by ff1006
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 3 visits, last login: 8.3 years ago
Needham,Norfolk,MA
Contract price not specified.
"Internet connection is reliable, voice mail included, simple plans"
"Switching from Verizon (tel) took 1 month."
"Great service for the money"
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I switched service from what it used to be MediaOne now ATT Broadband for a few reasons: the RCN package is cheaper, no hidden charges or small print like ATT (try to figure out how much is going to cost you per month from their ads!), includes more TV channels and voice mail (ATT asks for an extra $5 - $6).
Internet: the connection is much more reliable than ATT. ATT network was down once a week, then it got better down once or twice a month. My neighbor is knocking at my door once a month "Is Internet down ?", "No dear, i switched to RCN, I have no problem". I had RCN Internet service for 10 months and I saw the red light on my cable modem twice, early in the morning for less than 15 minutes. News and email are fine. One drawback, if you want to activate your 4 e-mails you have to call customer service. ATT has self-activation on the web and offers 5 e-mail boxes. The web site provided 10 Megs and has a CGI-BIN directory (ATT does not offer). In other words no problem
Cable TV: more channels than ATT, never been down in 10 months. The cable box remote control sucks, but that's another story.
Telephone: horror story trying to port my number from Verizon. Long story. It wasn't RCN's fault. Others had to give up their number and get a new one from RCN. As a matter of fact, Verizon left us without dial tone and RCN gave us a line for the time being free of charge. The voice mail signaling works with VTech telephones. It might work with others as well.
Tech service: wait time when calling is zero. Somebody will pick up the phone, more or less helpful and very polite. The number of skilled technicians for home service is limited. Most of them know the basic stuff but for more complicated matter they have to call the older guys. MediaOne seemed to have a more skilled tech department.
Overall I am happy with RCN. The plans are simpler and cheaper compared to ATT, the network seems to work very well. Recently they started to copy the ATT style of marketing, calls at home to "upgrade" the service for a few bucks more. No thanks. I hope they stick to the simple and clear service plans that they had until now.
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Review by sle2
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 12 visits, last login: 4.1 years ago
Brookline,Norfolk,MA
$45 per month (6 month contract)
about 7 days
"Fast, reliable cable modem service"
"Phone service call waiting ID not compatible with many devices"
"Pretty good overall"
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I have no complaints about the cable modem service. I bought the package which bundles it with phone service (they offered cable TV as well, but didn't have a cheap "basic" service, only deluxe). The package ("Bronze") is $45/month for internet plus a discount of essentially $10/month off their phone service. The problem with phone service is that if you want call waiting ID (caller ID appears when you're on a call), it doesn't work with most phones, caller ID boxes etc. RCN uses something called a Cablespan 2300 which appears to be the source of this problem. RCN tech support is unable to tell me which phones currently sold ARE compatible. After buying a few, I gave up. They did give me a $30 credit to buy a new caller ID though.
Also, the sales guy didn't fully disclose all of the "hidden" phone charges, and messed up on ordering directory listings and distinctive ring service. Once, our invoice showed that we were inexplicably removed from package service and switched to "a la carte" which took several calls to resolve.
RCN doesn't mind if you share the connection using a router and hub or switch, but they don't support it either (although it's pretty simple to set up).
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 8.3 years ago
(review was emailed from domain starpower.net)
Gaithersburg,Montgomery,MD
$40 per month
"Great speed when it works"
"If the could deliver on their commitments, this would be a great package"
"Find a different provider"
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They have had 13 separate appointments. On three occasions
they never showed up. Only after three months did all of the services
work (phone, cable, cable internet).
I purchased the bundled package but some of the commitments were not
met. Aside from not arriving for the first appointment, they never
credited the promotional month of cable internet service. Additionally,
they quoted $.07/minute for long distance and free local calls. They
failed to mention something called regional toll calls that are at
$.20/minute. This was particularly ironic because the technical support
number the supervisor had asked me to call was a regional toll call. So
when I received my first bill, there was about $7 worth of regional toll
charges.
I have been in contact with their "Executive Resolution Committee" to
resolve the problems. They have a hard time returning calls and
indicate that the reason they have so many problems returning calls is
that, "we've been really busy."
If there are other companies in your area, I would encourage you to go
with another provider.
Note: In my area, RCN trades under the Starpower name. The "Executive Resolution Committee" is the RCN complaint department.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 8.3 years ago
(review was emailed from domain gs.com)
New York,New York,NY
Contract price not specified.
"Very fast; good service"
"Astounding, a pleasant experience."
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I installed RCN in my apartment in NYC on May 24th. There was about a
two week delay for the installation but that was the only
problem. My entire building is serviced by RCN cable tv so there was
only an extension of existing wiring to be done in my apartment. It was accomplished very efficiently.
The actual service is very, very good. I do not notice any decrease in speed during the day or at night.
The several calls I've made to customer support for technical information
have all been handled efficiently.
I was able to take advantadge of a combined broadband access, local and
long distance telephone service all for $76 per month. In general, I am
very pleased with the service.
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Review by shrivti1
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 19 visits, last login: 6.6 years ago
Chicago,Cook,IL
$49 per month
"Easy installation, fairly good customer service"
"THE CONNECTION SPEED IS HORRIBLE"
"Don't you get a cable modem for speed?"
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I have been using RCN for about half a year now...at the beginning it was great, and fairly reliable...the installation was on-time and smooth, they gave me a pretty nice 3Com cable modem, with standard dynamic IP (optional static IP for more $$$). I was satisfied with the speed, which decreased noticably with increased load, but was still fast. But now it is horrible. Often, far too often, I get download speeds that are slower than a 56K dialup modem. I freqently have high packet loss and very high latency ratings. I have called RCN about this and have asked if this has anything to do with increased system load...they tell me it doesn't. To their credit, they have tried to send people out here to see if they can somehow fix the problem, but so far all their attempts have been in vain. I will soon be switching to a new ISP if these performance problems continue.
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