Review by sgsterling Location: Kennewick, Benton, WA, USA Cost: $100 per month (12 month contract) Install: about 5 days Symmetrical speeds; allow servers, VPN & business use; dedicated IPs reliability, latency Best solution for low cost symetrical needs

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We run some mail and web servers for a few very small non-profit organizations out of our residence. We need symmetrical speeds, but nothing too fast (T1), dedicated IPs, and a consistent throughput. I also use the line to work from home on the "real job" with a VPN, and downtime is "no income" time, which is never good!

We tried business DSL from the big V, but they could never get some problem out of the line that caused erratic performance (modem wouldn't sync), and phoning in a problem, and getting a tech was such a hassle.

Cable company was also bad-- overloaded!! Worked fine at 2am, but at 4-11pm, effective bandwidth dropped to dial-up speeds.

PocketInet is a regional mom & pop wireless internet provider. They mostly serve business, and give symmetrical T1 and better speeds, dedicated IPs (3 included), and no hassle running your own servers.

The mom & pop thing is good and bad. They don't have the depth of resources of the big boys, but they also care a great deal about their customers, answer the phone 24x7. You have a technical problem, you are talking to a real person with real technical knowledge, not someone reading from a script with the only solution being to reboot your computer. Someone that understands that the first device is Cisco PIX 506E, has heard of NAT, latency and syn.

The PocketInet wireless system does seem to have added latency, and is a bit " bursty". Looking at a packet stream, they can be held up for a few seconds, and then you get a burst of packets, at very high rate, then a gap, and a burst.... they average out to the advertised rate, but Skype for example gets broken up. Not good for gaming I wouldn't think, but OK for mail and web services.

Part of the problem may be antenna aiming. Being wireless, a small dish aimed at their antennas is required, and they have had to come out and re-aim it several times. I think they need more stable mount-- right now it is just a single leg screwed into the roof.

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Review by Jeebus Location: Pasco, Franklin, WA, USA Cost: $69 per month Internet access where DSL and cable don't reach Expensive, unreliable, congested connection Equates to a really expensive dial-up connection

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We got the 1 Mbs package. Pricey, but figured that would give us adequate bandwidth to do anything we wanted. The problem is that the connection PiN provides isn't stable. You get a really high transfer rate, there's a pause (1 s to as long as THIRTY seconds), then you get another really high transfer rate. So your effective upload and download speed is 750-1000 kbs, but that's useless because it's interrupted. You can't stream very well, and trying to voice or video chat is awful. The sound quality is garbled and video is pixelated. Online gaming is a disaster.

What really got me irritated is that, when I started having problems, I called tech support and they told me that there was nothing wrong. As it got worse and worse and kept calling, they told me it was my router and I needed a new one (even though the old one had worked just fine for almost a year). When I got a new router, they told me to call them back when I was having problems, and when I did that, they stopped returning phone calls and emails until I gave up.

We would like to use VOIP, but this connection is too unstable and interrupted. We're paying a lot for this service--more than I ever did for cable when I had it in Seattle and Boston--and the quality of the connection is effectively what I'd expect from dial-up. Most of the time I can check my email and browse internet pages, but downloading large files for real-time use, or streaming audio and video...those are just exercises in frustration. Even just browsing sometimes is a problem because of the network delays. I'm so tired of PiN and so frustrated at paying so much for so little. I can't believe their business customers would tolerate this level of service, so PiN must be more than happy to disregard their residential customers.

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Review by hansenj Location: Walla Walla, Walla Walla, WA, USA Cost: $59 per month Getting hard to find They seem to be only interested in commercial accounts They won't do anything but test from the office and it shows packetloss

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We had Pocketinet move our system to a new location and had great service for the first month or so and then things slowed down to dialup. I think they are tired of me as a customer and would prefer all their "residendial customers" go away and be replaced by commercial accounts. The response from the tech dept was quick, courteous and to the point. 'Yes there is packet loss and we will talk to the boss'. The next response was "Live with it or we can come take out our equipment." Now if this were cable I could go to the state public utilitiies commissioner with a complaint. I would like to keep them as a provider. When they work they are assume!! If things don't change I will go to another wireless service.

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jwvo join:2001-07-27 Seattle, WA jwvo Member 2003-Dec-26 7:42 pm response Just wanted to let you know, you are probably just talking to tech support which has had problems explaining what errors there were on your account. The site for your area is new (less than 5 months) and is just getting the redundancy which will help to bring our service there up to our 99.9% uptime goal. In any case, we do generally offer a very reliable service, just in your small area trouchet/lowden we have not been up to par with our own standards. Just for the record we provide SLA (Service level agreements) for our big customers in walla walla and meet 99.9% without any issue at all, usually surpassing it to 99.95 or higher. If you have any questions or have problems getting answers out of tech support, please shoot me an e-mail at jvanoppen@pocketinet.com with your problems and i will dig up the info on your account directly. Thanks, John van Oppen PocketInet IP backbone admin 2003-Dec-26 7:42 pm: · hey mods ·

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Review by Trif Location: Walla Walla, Walla Walla, WA, USA Cost Contract price not specified. Good Service not sure at the moment, maybe the price Overall, being out of range of DSL, Pocket inet ROCKS!

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Had to drop DSL because I moved out of range, signed up with Pocketinet. Was set up the same week, service was good. Cable came to the area, dropped service for cable because of pricing. One year of cable service, at first it was good then went down the tubes. the last 8 months of service my connection sucked. Tech support tried to inform me it was my system. This was a joke, I am a technician, could almost call me a guru. When I tweak I know when it is my fault. Anyway, dropped Charter went back with Pocketinet. Pocketinet may be more expensive than Charter, but you get what you pay for. I need good quality service. Guess what, I have never needed to call tech support. If there are down times, they would let me know.

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Review by tacobender Location: Walla Walla, Walla Walla, WA, USA Cost: $45 per month Install: about 14 days I get more bandwidth then I pay for! bandwidth fluctuation bandwidth fluctuation

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First off lets start with the installation. which started out good, and
then got shakey when they did a site survey, where I live there are big
trees infront of my apartment, and not alot of high points on my
roof(not good for wireless). This took them 14 days roughly, which isn't
bad, they set a date for install and were there that date to install,
when they left everything was working perfectly. They mounted a pole to
a sturdy vent in the roof and ran the line straight in. The installation
team told me it wasn't has difficult as previously thought. Anyhow, I
was pleased!

Pricing, I pay 45 for connectivity, and about 30 for equipment a month.
Which isn't bad compared to the other local company's that are charging
$65 for aDSL 128/256. The 45 is for 256/256, and I'm usually well up in
the 380 - 500 area on downloads at least( HUGE PLUS )

After using this service for just about a month, I have ran into only
one disconnect, which was due to a software FIrewall(norton), locked my
computer. I called tech support which are only open 8-5pm mon-fri, on a
friday night about 7pm, and didn't here back from them until the
following tuesday, oh did I mention that when I called there was an
option for Emergency Disconnects, which didn't seem to me to be an
Emergency follow through. I was able to fix it on my own, by just
pinging the gateway a couple of times(the first time I got 3 timeouts
then the last packet got a ping time). anyway all fixed and everythign
has been working great since.
until about a week ago I started noticing on the weekends getting
extreme slow downs ping the gateway which usually was at 10-15ms, was
now at 400 - 800 ms.
I called in and still haven't heard back from them, I believe it was
something on thier end because its back up to normal now.

The only bad thing that I can say about the service right now is that I
get extreme packet loss 75%, which is hardley noticable when just
browsing websites, but when it comes to playing Online games, like
quake3, or Unreal tournament I have heavy fluctuations in ping times
like I'll be going good at 120ms and then bam I'm at 250ms which could
be game server load, and packet loss. I have ran a few tests here at DSl
Reports and have found they show heavy packet loss. Anyway I plan in
the near future I'll be making a call to the Office and having one of
thier service reps come over and check for packet loss.

All and all I'm extremely happy with PocketiNet's service right now, but
then again this is my first experience with Broadband coming from a
dialup.

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