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Review by karve 
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 1.1 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
 Erie,Boulder,CO
 $44 per month
 "few issues for 4 years and when one cropped up recently fixed in a systematic manner"
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I've been a client of mesanetworks since Feb-2004 - I never bothered with
their email side of things nor used the web-hosting, just the broadband
access.
Until recently, apart from an occasional, say once/year outage on a weekend
night I had no problems. When I started having difficulties this last month
- of slow speeds, and DNS resolution failures, they had a pretty clear cut
way of isolating the problem in the first instance - they looked at the
radio strength and session at their end and since it looked fine, then asked
me to connect their input directly into a desktop thus removing the router
from the path. This isolated the problem at my end and I did the necessary
things, on my own, to fix the issues with my wirelesslan. All conversations
with ther support was via email and they were promptly answered.
This solved the problem for 3 weeks.
Things got more difficult the last week -the problems returned on Friday
evening - I reached support very quickly and after a 2 minute restoratrion
of service after cycling the power to the radio, they determined that the
signal was cutting in and out - a service call was arranged for Mon. - the
engineer arrived, installed a "Stinger" - things were fine for 24 hours then
I had difficulties again - "timeout in reaching ANY website".
Reaching support was harder this time, a wait of 25 minutes but for this
more difficult problem - radio signal was fine, DNS resolution worked, pings
of of 32 byte lengths for mesa addresses worked, but not others, and larger
lengths of pings failed the engineer stayed with the problem, kept thinking
about the issue, switched me to another server which has solved the issue
from me - so far of coure.
All in all, pretty good service.
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Review by Rodgerbruce
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 4.9 years, 0 visits, last login: 4.9 years ago
Johnstown,Weld,CO
$58 per month
"Speed service"
 "I pay for faster speed and ip address but you can get for much less"
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Mesanetworks in johnstown colorado. Have had them for years service is
excellent and speed is great get 4 meg down and 2 meg up.
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Review by grahamsz
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 4.4 years, 4 visits, last login: 139 days ago
Erie,Boulder,CO
$58 per month
 about 2 days
"Fast, knowledgable staff, not comcast"
 "Peering leaves a little to be desired"
"A great deal"
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The install went well for me, but the signal was a little weak so they replaced my antenna with a dish. I've had great performance through them.
I connect to 3 different VPNs, use VoIP, and upload a lot of stuff, and the 2.5Mb/1Mb service is great for that.
First hop ping times average about 32mS which is maybe marginally slower than cable.
Update 3/27/08 - This appears to have been resolved. I'm now averaging 7.7ms for my first hop which is better than comcast or dsl.
I haven't seen the packetloss issues that others have and Lingo (voip) runs great.
My only complaint is that when i connect to Comcast customers in boulder (15 miles away) my connection routes through dallas!
Update 3/27/08 - This appears to be more comcasts fault than mesa's. I average a round trip ping time to EarthNet in boulder of only 21.6mS, with very little jitter (4mS stddev).
The wireless connection is rock solid. The only problem i had was when the wind ripped the dish off my roof. They were out the next morning to reattach it.
I'm also upgrading my value for money. While- hey are more expensive per mbit than comcast or qwest - you get the added value of not having to deal with comcast or qwest.
Followup comments:  
wispguy
| route through dallas.....why.... Most companies use peering points in major cities with something called BGP to decide the best route. I believe all of Colorado's Comcast traffic goes out to the California peering point (though this may have changed at some point). From this peering point it chooses the best path to the address you have requested and chances are the other provider that you are requesting is peering in California (or Dallas) as well and even though your connection is in the same state they will peer in another state. If Comcast were to peer in Colorado with companies such as L3, Cogent co, Qwest, Sprint, ATT and the various others out there you would be seeing sub 20ms to most of Colorado. The reason they don't peer everywhere is because of cost and priority. Once the data chooses a path off of their network they really don't care what the latencies are as long as it keeps them from getting phone calls about it. If you stay on a providers network you will typically never see over 10-50ms from coast to coast. Once you get off a providers network and connect to another at a major peer point those can go up into the 100's for latency. The major jump in latency depends on how big the pipe is, how long it is, what type of equipment it is, maintenance, and load. If you are gaming and want the lowest latency you can get select game servers on your providers network and if the server is working properly you should never see over 40ms to it. | |
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wispguy
| peering Also, if the provider you are on does not have a network to go from place to place directly they can also go to the peering points with both networks and connect to themselves there which causes your huge loop. | |
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Review by kevwil
Posted: 2.3 years ago
member for 2.3 years, 1 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago
Frederick,Weld,CO
$58 per month
"good customer service, pretty quick speed"
"high latency on wireless (bad for VoIP), very poor reliability lately"
"excellent alternative to Comcast or Qwest"
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I've used Mesa for over four years, and they've been great. Speed was very good, the people are great, and there have (almost) never been any surprises. The only problem I ever had was high latency when I switched to Vonage for our home phone service.
In the last month or so, our connection reliability has been horrible - about 3X as much down time as up time. Due to Vonage being in patent trouble, and the connectivity problems lately, I'm switching to Qwest. I expect to be raped on charges, spammed like never before, and get marketing calls in the middle of the night, but hopefully I'll have decent phone and 'net connectivity.
I hope Mesa gets their issues worked out - they were great!
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Review by Hotinco
Posted: 4.4 years ago
member for 4.5 years, 47 visits, last login: 1.4 years ago
Frederick,Weld,CO
$44 per month (12 month contract)
about 2 days
"Avalible to remote locations - Great Speed"
"peering could use a little work"
"Great service - Great Support - Mucher better then Comcast or Qwest"
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I have had Mesa Networks 1.5/512k service for almost 2 years... I can count outages on 1 hand and most of those were scheduled for maintence. I have had not signle loss in Snow storms, Lighting Stroms or Rain. I use Sunrocket VOIP and the calls are clear and now problems
Suport for Mesa is quick and knowledgable....
I just wich they would expand to Boulder so I could have them at my Business.
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Review by bootleg3
UPDATED: 4.8 years ago
member for 8.1 years, 54 visits, last login: 4.8 years ago
Longmont,Boulder,CO
$58 per month
about 4 days
"Fast install, fast line, good customer service!!!"
"Can't use VOIP with them, I' ll stay happy until I need VOIP"
"GET IT ASAP... can't be beat!!!"
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Only 4 days from ordering to installation!!!
So far no problems, ordered 1mbps averages 970down/700up.
Customer support is quick and friendly too..
I have no doubt this is the best and fastest service in Longmont for this price.
Why wait when you can be up and running in less than a week? I waited over three months for a DSL install, then USwest postponed again...I canceled and promised them I would not get DSL from them no matter what the price.
UPDATED 1/5/2005
I had just visited here and read the Mesanetworks reviews; and what gwsii says in his review about dropped connetions is right on. I don't use VOIP, but would like to at some point and unless mesa can fix this problem of lost packets or whatever is it is, I will have to go with a provider who does not have this issue. What I see is like "gwsii" said, while browsing about 15-20% of the time nothing happens....it's like the request went into limbo. Reclicking the link usually fixes it, but I can see where a VOIP connection would be ruined by this. Mesa is a great provider otherwise; they are fast to call you back and help out/work with you to get things fixed (if they can) and I'll miss them if I have to change over to another company to use VOIP. One other thing I would like to warn about is if your a gamer, then you might want to look to getting cable instead. A friend I turned Mesa onto had to drop them after a few months because the ping times are too long with Mesa. I think it's not their fault, but just the way wireless is....it adds more delay and with a gamer that can mean life or death in the game your in. He said his ping times to the gaming server were in the 100-150ms range and when he got cable it went down to 25-35ms. I'm not a gamer, so I'll stick with Mesa and am very loyal to them, but VOIP is looking very attractive and it will be hard to keep justifying the $58 a month bill when I can't use VOIP with them.
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Review by s_r_w
Posted: 5.1 years ago
member for 5.1 years, 9 visits, last login: 3.5 years ago
Fort Collins,Larimer,CO
$44 per month
about 10 days
"Great service. More clueful than cable or DSL."
"Bandwidth per $ a little lower than cable/DSL if you can get those"
"Excellent. Services like static IP and /29 subnets are worth it. Reliable."
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I've had service in Fort Collins (Fossil Court East - just west of College and a block or so south of Harmony) for a couple months now. I've got the 1000/250 service - which includes a static IP for just $44/month.
I haven't had any problems. When the installer came, he noted the house was in a bit of a valley and wasn't 100% sure we could get service - plus we were the furthest away from the main antenna that he'd installed, although he did say he was new at the job.
Anyway, with an extra $50 install charge, we got a dish (just like a sat TV dish) instead of the regular antenna and he got us setup just fine. Speed tests indicate we're getting the full published bandwidth.
I intend to upgrade to the 1500/500 service soon, and get a /29 subnet (5 public IPs) because I have my own web/email server that's currently co-located in a previous employer's server room! I need to move that to my house, and the Mesa service definitely seems up to the task.
All in all, this is a very good service. Yes, the bandwidth for the price is a little less than Comcast (and possibly DSL?) but Mesa has a clue, and services like static IP and /29 subnets definitely make up for it.
BTW, the FAQ says the bandwidth limits are fairly flexible - they won't just charge you a ton of cash when you go over if you're pretty close. Their tech support say this too. I'm pretty sure I went a little over last month, since I downloaded a .tar file of the whole disk on my server (about 5G usage) plus a 4-CD set of Fedora Core Linux, plus regular Internet usage, plus some other smaller incremental backups and testing. I didn't hear anything from Mesa about this.
Only downside: Tech support is either a little swamped, or possibly assumes you're a regular clueless user, and doesn't always give the detailed technical answers you might want e.g. regarding low-level IP routing requirements entailed by getting a whole subnet of public IP addresses. Still, I got the info I required. As far as just using the service, you'll never need to contact support - it just works.
I'd love a more symmetrical high-bandwidth service for my server - e.g 1500/1000 or 1500/1500. Still, it probably doesn't need that much bandwidth! I'll see when I setup the server here
Also, I'm renting now, but want to buy. As of October 2004, Mesa's coverage map shows most of west Fort Collins as uncovered. Hope I can find a place in their coverage area when I move next year!
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Review by azunprinzess
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 2 visits, last login: 4.7 years ago
Longmont,Weld,CO
$44 per month
about 2 days
"Reliable, fast, everything they promised!"
"none"
"Way better than Comcast! I had them last and they sucked! Now I am never dropped, I have high speed at a decent price."
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Mesa Networks is the only competitor to Comcast out here in the tri-town (Frederick, CO). There are other wireless providers but unless you're Donald Trump, Comcast and Mesa Networks are the only providers. We don't need anyone else though, because I had Comcast and Mesa is far better in every aspect! I have the 1000/250 (see below) plan for $44/month. I am never dropped, the speed is what they promised, and it's worth the money. The tech that installed it was proficient at what he did and I love the service! They're a small company who doesn't seem to get their joys off of too many customers without the service. Hopefully they stay this way and don't jack up the prices and lower the service.
Update 2-28-2005: They raised the speeds, not the monthly payment awhile back, now it's 1500/500 and the speed test I just took was «1566 down
«474 up ,
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Review by tkdoty
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.7 years, 33 visits, last login: 4.8 years ago
Loveland,Larimer,CO
$44 per month
about 35 days
"Fast download, Weather has no effect, Consistant connection."
"Latency is a little higher than cable."
"Best value, very helpful local staff."
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1000/500, $44.00 monthly package. Fast, painless install, Static IP!
I've had Mesa for a little over a month now and have tested and toyed with this connection every day. I've found that the download is very fast and reliable, but gaming isn't top notch.
Comcast charges $55.00/month before taxes for people that aren't subscribers, this $44.00 service has no taxes and has no hidden charges.
Overall there is nothing that you have to settle for with this connection, I was very surprized at how good it actually was, and I hear that they're making it faster soon!
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Review by bgeerdes
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 3 visits, last login: 5.3 years ago
Broomfield,Broomfield,CO
$44 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Great connection, local company"
"Antennae had to be re-installed"
"Happy"
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After the first install I had occasionally (but annoying) dropped connections. Support staff was helpful and the diagnosis was quick (able to tell my antennae had 500+ open sessions, which I guess is very bad). They came out, moved the antennae to the other side of the house, everything has been fine since.
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Mesa Networks
