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Review by AFrules 
Posted: 4.9 years ago
member for 4.9 years, 4 visits, last login: 4.9 years ago
 Lake In The Hills,Mchenry,IL
 $65 per month
 "Possibly the best you can get aside from a dedicated line."
 "Invasion of privacy. ISP is so small they intrusively monitor all of your activity contrary to their written "privacy policy""
 "Awesome ISP only if you wanna "goose-step" alongside these "content nazis.""
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Ok, I will first start by praising the quality and speeds that DLS offers. The rest of this posting is a warning to future and current DLS users.
DLS the most intrusive company in the business. They won't monitor your e-mails, but they WILL and ACTIVELY do monitor all of your TCP and UDP traffic. They know exactly what you download, all the way down to details such as file size, and EXACT file name. They also do this contrary to their own written policies. Here are the exact words from their Privacy Policy:
"DLS Internet monitors its servers to the extent necessary to ensure that high standards of maintenance are met. DLS Internet does not monitor or record your activities online. We do not monitor which web sites you visit or look at what you put in written communications such as e-mails, news articles, or chat rooms. DLS Internet considers your email to be just as personal and private as your US Postal Service mail. DLS staff will not look at or read your email unless it is necessary to resolve a technical issue. In almost all cases, we will clearly inform you of the need to do so, and we will seek your permission before opening your DLS Internet mailbox on our servers."
Another thing is that they won't even allow you to have a simple, text-only, graphic-free, html page on your desktop computer. They charge people soo much money already for service that they hired a bunch of strokes that sit behind desks in their tiny cubicles going over each IP they lease and check for every possible reason they could charge you double for services. What I'm talking about is the simple web page. These guys found that I had a stupid, single page, test html page running on my computer; it took them very little time to restrict my account. You want to know why? Well just go and look at their commercial prices.... they are double. And all you get with a commercial account is a few lines erased off of the usage policy. Well.... I'm a student, I'm not making money off of my non-operational web page, and does that make me a potential "commercial" customer? NO. DLS is just a bunch of greedy SOB's. For now they are riding on their success, but it will catch up with him when more of us will start complaining about their greediness and BIG-BROTHER activities.
I'm really don't mind that they limit bandwidth with their leaky-bucket algorithm. I believe that everyone deserves a fair share of the amazing speeds they offer. BUT, they are an Internet Service Provider, not the local Police or FBI. The word "internet" in their business description is not something they own and govern. They are just a point of presence and that’s all DLS should be concerned about.
Oh yea, I know a DLS employee will respond to this posting with DLS' rhetoric, possibly even try to research my identity. The reason I'm keeping this posting anonymous is simple; Lake in the Hills is a small town, and DLS is the evil sheriff, so I don't want them to further mess with my account, until I change ISP's.
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Review by Fyllm
Posted: 5.1 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 2 visits, last login: 3.8 years ago
Antioch,Lake,IL
$65 per month
 about 60 days
"Good Tech support. Good Upload."
"Connection is a little flaky on some occasions. I was kinda annoyed that they show im in coverage for 10mb but can't get it."
"Very good service albeit somewhat pricey. Great for those without other highspeed options."
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I ordered DLS's 1.5Mb service awhile ago when they still were getting things setup in my neck of the woods (Antioch in Late 2003). It was kinda expensive and took them sometime to get a tower up and running for my area, but it was worth the wait as I only had dialup avaliable to me before hand. The installer they sent was very informative, and described to me in detail about how and where he intended to mount the antenna. He did have some problems setting up the connection on my computer, but it was minor and between the two of us we had it working after 15 minutes or so. Once he left, things went well for awhile until my connection started to kick out some weeks later after some nasty storms came thru my area. Unfortunately, after talking to a nice tech on the phone about a low signal strength, I found out that the nature of the design for the antenna DLS uses was that it tended to want to change orientation much like a windsock when very gusty winds were present (Of course most things do when winds are 50mph+). Once I got up on my roof and re-adjusted my dishes alignment and tightened down some of its locking bolts, however, things were up and running smoothly again.
Of course Murphy's law kinda bit me in the butt some weeks after that incident as the trees started to bloom and my signal degraded a bit due to some earrant shrubbery across the street that decided to block my reception at times. I informed DLS of this and they sent two of there more experienced tower installers to setup a taller mount to correct this problem. At the same time I had requested them to try upgrading me to their new 10Mb service as it had just become availiable in my area. They got the new mount setup and tried using the 10Mb gear but not to much avail. The two gentlemen informed me I was right on the edge where the 10Mb service started to drop off in strength making the connection somewhat unstable. I was a bit confused by this as DLS's coverage map showed I was well in range for my tower's service area. As such, the installers gave me the benefit of the doubt and let me try the 10Mb sevice for one week while alowing me to keep my 1.5 equipment for backup purposes. Unfortunately after the week I decided to concede defeat as I kept losing the connection on my Trango equipment just as the techs had warned me would happen. After having the same two installers back over a second time to remove the 10Mb equipment and reorientate the old 1.5, I really haven't had any major problems since. Although, to this day I am still alittle confused as too why I cannot recieve DLS's 10 meg service, as their coverage map still shows im well within the area for it. However, regardless of that fact DLS's service overall is very good and I recommend them to anyone in my area that needs Broadband Internet and dosen't want to get a dish.
-Philip Murphy
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Review by ModemJunki
UPDATED: 5.4 years ago
member for 7.6 years, 52 visits, last login: 4.9 years ago
Carpentersville,Kane,IL
$65 per month
about 30 days
"Excellent customer service, high speeds, reliable"
"None yet!"
"Wireless is worth it!"
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I've been a customer for quite a while now (Updated 10/13/04!).
After seeing several friends get DLS wireless 10/10 service, and becoming dissatisifed with my Earthlink/Covad aDSL service (not their fault, mind you, my line quality was poor as I live in an older neighborhood), I decided to make the change to DLS.
For a $250 setup fee and $65/month, they advertised 10 megabit up and down as the potential maximum. (Just like aDSL, the theoretical maximum is limited by technology factors, such as distance from the connection point).
You can also order lower bandwidth (3 megabit down/256k up, or 256k/256k) for prices that are very competitive with cable, aDSL, and dial up! (Note: DLS has reduced their installation fee since I purchased, to $150).
The initial installation and setup fee is fairly steep, but this is a specialized service and coming from a smaller ISP I did not think this was out of line.
My first pleasant surprise came when DLS sales called and asked if we could move up my installation date by two weeks.
The second surprise was the total installation time - under two hours in freezing weather. The installer configured my pre-owned Linkys router in a snap.
The speeds I am getting are exceptional - over 8 megabits in testing from DLS site, and over 5 megabits in real-world use. This makes gaming, VPN to work, downloading of software patches, newsgroup access, etc. all seem seamless, as if these remote items were on my local LAN.
Included is configurable spam filtering, webmail access, fax-to-Email, online access to your account stats, and the ability to set an "away message" for email when you go on vacation. You can order a static IP for $10.00/month, or blocks of IP addresses (though it seems likely that is more for business accounts).
Service has been non-stop except for twice when I had to power-cycle the wireless unit and my router.
Contacts to customer support with questions on setting up E-mail accounts, questions to sales for billing (they accidentally included occasional-use dial-up in my account, which they fixed in 5 minutes), all were responded to speedily.
I highly recommend this service to anyone needing high bandwidth and who can get this line-of-sight technology!
**Update: Still reliable. I now have VoIP telephony through DLS and am waiting for my landline to be switched over. VoIP gets you a discount on the wireless access, in my case down to $50/month + $45.85 (inc. tax) for VoIP. At those prices, I'm paying roughly the same as I was for all my telephone landline features and previous aDSL connection! Customer service has still been great when I call with questions. I'll be testing customer service again soon - I am having a new roof put on my house, so must have a truck roll to my home to remove/replace the antenna.
**Update: As above. New roof installed, truck rolled out, service reconnected, no hassles. I forgot to update, it just works, so no real thinking about it. 
**Update: 6/14/04 Still working fine. VoIP has occasional echo (that only my side hears) but it cancels out quickly. Faxing works through the VoIP adapter. It's a treat to bring my neighbors computers over, connect them to the router, and update Windows patches in a snap instead of burning CD's for them.
**Update: 10/14/04 No problems to report. My overall download speed fluctuates more now - I must have mor company on the WAN. Still averages 6MB download, so no complaints!
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Review by gumbachoo
Posted: 5.4 years ago
member for 5.4 years, 1 visits, last login: 5.3 years ago
Lake In The Hills,Mchenry,IL
$65 per month
"Too many to list in this space."
"Zero. Zilch. Nada."
"Best ISP I've ever had. Bar none."
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i've been a DLS wireless internet customer for about a year now. just wanted to post some quick positive thoughts...and no, i do not work for DLS. i am just a very satisfied customer is all.
I've had it all ...dialup, satellite, DSL, cable...if you live in an area where you can talk to a DLS tower, short of leasing your own T1 line you're not going to find any broadband service in the chicagoland area that's going to give you better results than this ISP. simple fact. for example, comcast internet. bah. abhorrently large corporation. techs work on contract, you never know who's coming to your door. service seemingly goes down quite frequently for maintenance not to mention that you're potentially sharing bandwidth with thousands of people depending on where you live. they even block certain TCP/IP ports so you can't do some types of gaming. which in my case, that extremely sucked. and SBC/Yahoo DSL? might as well get Netzero or Juno highspeed dialup IMHO, you'll likely get the same speed at a much lower price and without all the hassle. ameritech already has built one fortress of solitude in chicagoland; I don't know about you but I'm not willingly going to contribute to that evil empire any more than I have to. =) not to mention that as i found out a bit later, if their census workers or whomever they are determine that there's not enough demand in your area, and you've got FTTC (fiber to the curb) or whatever that is such that you don't have copper wire running from the central office to your home, SBC can deny you service because the modem in their central office can't talk to you. again, large corporation, where money is THE bottom line. AOL? come on, join the 21st century already. unless you enjoy daily spam in bulk and working inside a box within the constraints of an aged, proprietary interface. and slow, slow, slow, slow speeds. i will however say that local dialup service and some other smaller DSL services (which i believe DLS offers as well) could serve your needs just fine if that's all you need, but if it's that broadband-level speed that you want, DLS wireless wins hands down.
now to all of you who continue to complain about minor installation problems, etc. I urge you not to post massive negative whining reviews here 10 seconds after a problem occurs. like all things in life, things go wrong, so deal with it and be patient first. DLS is not out to rip you off. if you want to be ripped off, go sign up for AOL and then try to cancel it. whatever problem you're having with DLS will then seem silly in comparison. seriously, trust me, once any problems you may experience in the beginning with DLS get ironed out (and they *will* get ironed out), you'll never want to try anything else. bottom line, it's a local company that can give you consistent broadband speed that is leaps and bounds above what these larger mega-corporations can provide, yes at a slightly higher price, but considering the massive bandwidth i have access to and the size of the company as compared to SBC, Comcast and the like, i have no complaints about that whatsoever. in fact it's really quite reasonable once I think about what I'm getting - T1-like speeds for a fraction of the cost.
so, in short, i'm quite happy. and i think deep down all fellow DLS customers are too...=)
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Review by PappaSiera
Posted: 5.5 years ago
member for 5.5 years, 4 visits, last login: 5.4 years ago
Lake In The Hills,Mchenry,IL
$65 per month
"ANYTHING is better than dial up"
"Shoddy Installation Damages House!"
"Up in the air"
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I had DLS wireless installed on 5/21/04. During the installation, the installer was having problems getting the cable to go down the wall and out my jack. After three attempt, the cable finally made it down. Everything appeared to be working great.
The next day, my wife discovered two gashes in the top of the wall and saw dust on the floor in the guest room which shares a wall with my office. I immediately called DLS to report the problem, and received a call back within 15 minutes. The tech first stated that they would send someone out with spackle and patch the holes. I informed him that the damage was more sever than what could be repaired with just filler; the gashes are 3/4" wide and up to 3 inches long. One of the gashes has gone through and lifted the top seal mud tape, NOT a good thing! The tech told me that he would have a supervisor call me on Monday (5/24/04) at my office.
At 1:30PM on Monday, after not hearing anything from DLS, I called in and asked that someone call me at my office. I never received a call. Someone did call my home, and talked to my nephew, who happens to be a contractor and is painting the interior of my house this week. That individual again stated that they would be out with spackle to patch the 'hole'. My nephew informed them that it will take more than spackle to do the job. The caller stated that they would be out 'sometime' this week and that they would call on Tuesday, 5/25/04, to schedule a visit. My nephew gave them my work number and told them to call me.
Well, it is now 10:13 PM on Tuesday, and STILL I, the OWNER of the house, have not heard from anyone, except the tech I talked to on Saturday, even though both my nephew and I have given my work number several times. I understand that there is a lot of work going on, due to the storms, but I think that damage to a house should warrant a call from someone in management to ME to explain exactly what they intend to do to resolve this issue. To top it all off, I received a customer satisfaction survey for my CLOSED ticket! Are they just hopping that this will go away? If I don't hear from them by this time tomorrow, I will be contacting a drywall contractor, and a painter, and I think you know where the bill will be going.
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Review by wdliii
Posted: 5.5 years ago
(review was emailed from domain billscomputer.com)
Lake In The Hills,Mchenry,IL
$50 per month
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Hello:
Last week during the storms there were some gaps in service, then it
"broke". Within 12 hours a technician was onsite and had the problem
fixed. That is excellent service service. It was especially important
because I had some contractual deadlines to meet. My customers do not
want to hear about my ISP issues and with DLS they never have had to.
Adam, Aurelio, and Brian were attentive and concerned. My son mentioned
afterward that "Scott, was pretty cool". He was the tech who was
dispatched to correct the problem.
During our last conversation on this matter Brian had called to follow
up I was informed that in the next couple of weeks they are upgrading
the equipment they have on my premises. This will increase capacity
three-fold. I currently have a non line of site wireless connection.
There is no charge to me for this upgrade. I have been a long time
customer and have spent an even longer time in the IT business. Mt
assessment is that overall for price, performance, and service DLS is
tops. That is not to say that they are perfect but they are the best I
have come across for this area.
Regards.
WDLIII.
William D. Lechner III
Bill's Computer Company, Inc.
307 Hiawatha Drive
Lake in the Hills, Illinois 60156-1454
eFax: 847 841 4206
Cell: 847 812 0374
Specialist in Software Configuration Management
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Review by diablorising
Posted: 5.5 years ago
member for 5.9 years, 45 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
Dolton,Cook,IL
$41 per month
about 8 days
"Rob is awesome, painless switch from sbc, stable"
"kind of expensive for the speeds I actually get"
"Can't compete w/ SBC. Highly Recommended."
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Well, I've had DSL since last year and was previously an SBC customer. My service became unstable in the late summer, and SBC gave me the old tier one runaround. After dozens and dozens of calls, I ended up getting no tech visit when I asked for one and was told if they didn't find a problem, they'd charge me. I was paying for service I wasn't even receiving, but because of SBC's contract I'd have to pay 200 bucks to cancel. I came here, found out how to do a dedicated line, installed it myself and got my dsl back, after no support from SBC. My speeds were 300/109 all the time. Then I started to lose sync AGAIN. I finally had to resort to bumping down from 384/128 to 128/128. That's ISDN for pete's sake! I discovered DLS here after browsing the different ISP's in my area. They were the only ones that would provide me service. SBC said they couldn't get me any faster than what I was already getting. I can't justify ISDN speed w/ SBC's lack of reliability for 50 bucks a month. Rob at DLS got me on 1.0/256k, but I'm only getting 520/200. I'd gladly pay DLS ten dollars a month less for 1.5x the product and customer support. I got to use my speedstream 5360 that was free from SBC(well, to some extent. I think emotional suffering should count as payment!)Because of my dedicated line and already having a modem, the install fee of 99 was waived. Great!My only problem was when I switched from SBC to DLS, I was connected w/ my SBC account info. When I rebooted my computer, my SBC info wouldn't work, and I hadn't received DLS login info yet. I called the tech support, and after about 2 hours I got a response. Then the guy tells me I'm not even a DLS customer! So I call SBC, and they tell me I'm not an SBC customer! Yikes! I called Rob in sales the next morning. He told me there was a problem getting my order through, but they did get it through and he gave me my username/password. When I told him I was a Counter Strike fan, he let me know that there's a CS server provided by DLS, and my ping should be really low on it. What a guy! What a company. I hope now the tech support will improve, since I am a customer! It took 8 days til live, just like they said it would, and my speed shot up right away. I didn't even know it switched over until my CS and JKII ping was scary low. I did a speed test here and put 2 and 2 together. Bottom line, SBC is full of crap, I can support more than they said, and DLS is the best. For 41 bucks a month total, getting 500/200 is a great value, even w/ a dynamic ip, because nothing else comes close to that speed in Dolton.
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Review by cibbi
UPDATED: 5.5 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 39 visits, last login: 195 days ago
Crystal Lake,Mchenry,IL
$65 per month (12 month contract)
about 35 days
"Friendly people, great install, great internet speed, great VoIP as well!"
"None."
"Highly recommended"
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An update to my update....
I received an email from DLS today that they have activated their new caller id name service. Sure enough, it works like a champ. This was two weeks ahead of the promised delivery.
I have to say that I am really impressed with the service of this company. It's such a pleasant change from my experiences with larger ISPs. I highly recommend their wireless internet and VoIP service.
An update to my previous review...
We've now had DLS wireless internet for about 6 weeks. I added Voice over IP service to my wireless connection, and I have been very pleased with the service. The sound quality is fine, and having all the features with unlimited local calling and national long distance is really a bargain. The availability of the service has been excellent as well.
We transferred our home phone number, so we have now consolidated our internet, phone, and long distance on our DLS wireless connection. By combining these services, we now have significant savings compared to our previous arrangement, which had phone service by SBC, long distance by Amerivision, and internet by Earthlink. I would estimate we are saving about $40/month.
The only downside to the VoIP is that the caller-id does not display the calling party's name, only their number. But once again, kudos to DLS - when I opened a trouble ticket for this, they informed me that have already contracted with a private caller-id information vendor and will be deploying calling party name identification in the next two weeks.
Overall, I'm really happy with both the wireless internet service and VoIP service. We're averaging about 3Mbs downlink and uplink speeds for the internet.
===============
Just got DLS internet today, after "suffering" with earthlink DSL for nearly two years. I'm nearly at the distant limit from the central office for DSL, so my speeds were rarely above 300 kbps, and Earthlink DSL experienced frequent, frequent outages. We decided to give DLS wireless a try based on the reviews we read in this forum. I signed up for the platinum package, allowing speeds up to 10 Mbps.
Chad G. from DLS installed my radio and antenna today, and he was great - being an engineer I had a bunch of questions, and he was patient and answered all of them. The installation was so much easier than I expected, and it was literally about 60-90 minutes from the minute the truck pulled into the driveway until we were surfing the web. I was really impressed with the quality of the installation.
We're an all-Mac OS X household with an airport providing the wireless LAN. We have 3 Macs connected wirelessly to the airport, and one connected via wired ethernet. The airport is connected to the radio/antenna using PPPoE. We've been consistently pulling >3Mbps on the Macs connected to the wireless LAN, and > 4Mbps on the one Mac that is wired.
We've only been on one day, so I can't comment on the availability of the service, but my initial impression of DLS is very favorable. I only wish I had switch from Earthlink before!
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Review by kat2000
Posted: 5.5 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 527 visits, last login: 4 years ago
Lake In The Hills,Mchenry,IL
$50 per month
"Good Installers. Good speeds for some time."
"Support always goes to voicemail. Sales support is not upto the mark. too pricey"
"If there is alternative - I would drop this"
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- I was one of the few first customers in LITH paying $350 for connection. But when DLS started rolling out 10Mbps, they are least bothered about the customers who paid more than 3 times the current install charges. There is no preference for existing customers. Looks like their assumption is that "these guys have no alternative so they will stay with us".
- When ever you call for any support, you should be ready to leave a voice mail.
- On one occassion, when I left a VM requesting changing scheduled install, the sales person did not even care to respond. When I sent an e-mail cancelling the appoinment, she called back and said "she never got any VM". What proof can I show her?
- With regard to speeds if I can get SBC DSL pro-package for $39.99, it is far better than the gold package of DLS. When I initially ordered the connection I was never hinted about the capping of speeds. But it's a reality now. When I had DSL earlier (before I moved to this place), there were no caps. I had same experience with Cable.
- I never got the 3Mbps download . the maximum I could get was like 1.7 Mbps. Once I called the Tech support, but seeing their generic replies I decided to live with it. With regard to upload I am not sure why it is capped to 256 Kbps? (I think the eqpt I have was supporting same upload and download speeds ). I think this is a way of forcing the customers to signup for their $65 plan. I don't mind for that plan. but what is the fuarantee that they won't change the speed limits again and put unannounced caps.
- They need to put their policy of these speed caps in their web site. This wording of upto xxx mbps/kbps is highly misleading (it is like utp 75% discounts we see in retail stores)
- I was a very happy customer when I signed up. But these days as DLS picked up more business, they don't really care about old/existing customers or service much.
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Review by simfreak
UPDATED: 5.6 years ago
member for 7.7 years, 497 visits, last login: 3.5 years ago
Grayslake,Lake,IL
$65 per month
about 11 days
"FAST! LOW PINGS! AWSOME SERVICE!"
"What bad points?"
"Better then DSL!"
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Updated
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I figured I would wait until my recent service call was resolved before posting an updated review. Point blankly I couldn’t be happier with the service. Being the first Customer on the Lake Villa tower, I have gone through the good the bad, and the defective.
Over the past year, my CPE has died once. After contacting DLS, they were out at my house the next day replacing the radio with a new one.
Recently (beginning of Feb) I noticed that my speeds had begun to plummet. It was a slow degradation, so I figured it was just them adding new people on the tower, or over selling the tower.
My downloads continued to dwindle as my uploads maintained a quickness. Soon it got to this point consistently: 2004-03-29 13:13:41 Speed test @ www.dls.net 863/5442 kbps. It was then when I called DLS to report what was going on. After about 20mins on the phone they told me to install a switch between the router and the CPE, something to do with the CPE running at 100MBs/Full Duplex while the routers WAN port runs at 10. So I did and this was the result: 2004-03-29 13:21:45 Speed test @ www.dls.net 1134/5415 kbps. So basically problem still persisted, but figured it was traffic on the tower.
That was on Saturday; on Monday I received a phone call at around 5pm telling me that they were sending out a technician to adjust the radio. Apparently the Engineer wasn’t in and he had a look at my signal and noticed that it was doing a lot of resends.
The technician came out, tried 2 of the 3 mile radio's with no success. It was then that I was upgraded to the 10 Mile dish (yes, bigger bulkier, uglier, but it’s a 10MB service, and I could care less what the neighbors thing =))
This was the result: 2004-04-07 18:08:35 Speed test @ www.dls.net 6754/5442 kbps
So I am back running full speed again; service has never been better. Web pages load in a snap again, and it’s not unlikely to see bursts of up to 1MB/s+ on faster websites.
The only thing that I have to complain about the service is the fact that they instituted a cap, where by after X amount of downloading your connection is capped to a 1.5/10MB service. The only way to reset it is to stay off your connection for a while or reconnect. While I don’t mind them instituting a cap, it puzzles me why it would be on the download, rather then the upload, but so long as there are no monthly caps I can't complain as most of my traffic is bittorrent and it allows you the ability to pause and resume.
I do have some concerns with DLS partnering with Best Buy and Geek Squad, as it may bring on an influx of new customers where the infrastructure won’t be able to support it.
Over all I will continue to recommend the service to anyone who doesn’t have fiber to the home, or a T3 running through their back yard :P
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My story starts off about 8 months ago when I moved from my comfortable 1500/384 DSL connection in Libertyville, to the broadband black hole that exists in Grayslake. Upon buying this house, we were assured that DSL would be available only to find out that the entire subdivision is on SBC's light-span fiber network (i.e. no dsl). There was a glimmer of hope as we were able to talk to the head of the DSL division for IL SBC. It appears that there are copper/unloaded lines in the box and if I signed up for SDSL I would get a pair. Well, bighting the bullet and cost I signed up, only to be let down 2 weeks later saying that the line was 16200ft and they wouldn’t install it unless it was under 15000ft (Sound familiar everyone?). To this day there is a pair of copper lines in the box that are 12000ft that are unused, but SBC is unwilling to find them.
So with no cable rollouts planned in the area, I took the next step and got Starband's office Satellite service that was supposed to yield 1000/128. Wow, what a mistake that was. A month after the service started the cluster I was assigned to became so over crowded that the service was down from 8am-6pm weekdays. When I tried to get moved, Starband said they would not, no madder what and to just be patient as they tried to improve the network. 7mo later I’m still having the same problems. At $130 a month and $700 ($500eq, $200in) plus a 18mo contract, I was ready to start a class action lawsuit.
Finally the answer came. DLS. When I found out about them in Feb, and after reading all of the good reviews on this site, I decided to give them a call. Sadly the first time I called I got a voice mail and no return call. So I tried again another day and talked to a service rep that was VERY informative. She told me everything I wanted to know about the service including when the tower was scheduled to go online (try asking Comcast or SBC when they are rolling out service and get a reliable answer!).
At the time install was 30 days out and the tower was 60days away from becoming active, so she told me to call back in 30days and they would put me on the list. So 30days later I did. Surprisingly, 4 days later I got a call to schedule an install for the following week! What went from 30days turned into 11, not only that, but I would be the first and only person on the tower (for now).
The guy showed up for the appointment 10mins early and got right to work. After some bad cable problems everything was installed and working within 2 hours. I was lucky seeing that the tower is only 1.5miles NE of my house with no trees, buildings or any obstructions. Because of my proximity they gave me the smaller transmitter that is smaller then a sheet of paper.
What shocked me even more is that even though it is only the 1.5Mb service (where in Cary they have 10Mb), They installed the 10Mb equipment on the tower and on my house and as soon as they can get the bandwidth to the tower, the service will automatically jump to the 10Mb service. Which they said might be later either this or next year, but soon. (Cary will be going to the 20Mb service this summer).
The service is $65 a month, +$10 a month for a static IP, There was a one time $50 activation fee that was due on sign-up and $350 install fee due after install. The cost is for the 2 hours onsite for the installer, 100ft of out door cat5 cable, and a crossover cable. This fee does NOT mean you own the Transmitter, that remains the property of DLS and if it gets damaged it comes with a $1500 bill. What is really cool is that unlike Starband, There is NO modem! The cable comes straight into your house and plugs into this little tiny wall plate that looks like a 2 port phone jack with a power cord and that’s it, from there it can go into a computer or router with NO problem. I think the linksys took about 10sec to setup properly.
The installer said that it's almost a must to have a router for this service because if you lose your connection, you might still be logged into their network and will have to call to get your self disconnected. The KeepAlive function of many routers solve this problem.
So what are the results?
2003-03-21 15:02:53 EST: 1414 / 1423
Your download speed: 1414872 bps, or 1414 kbps.
A 172.7 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed: 1423149 bps, or 1423 kbps.
Seems like broadband. Above the 1mbit barrier!
(It was higher yesterday)
This is a PPOE connection through the Linksys router.
Ping Test (pcpitstop.com) Site URL Round-Trip Time (ms)
Min Max Avg
www.pcpitstop.com 40 451 180
www.mheller.com 80 471 309
www.byte.com 90 540 281
www.cern.ch 160 560 262 overseas
yahoo.com 40 451 194
google.com 40 210 72
www.unisa.edu.au 280 681 426 overseas
(starband was consistantly in the 2000's and higher)
Lastly, the only better service that I can think of that is better is either a T1 line, or a FTTH service. Once the 10Mb service is rolled out throughout their network, there will be nothing in IL that will be able to touch it. Further more, they are testing equipment that transmits in the frequencies above the FCC regulated range. Meaning that once that equipment is in place, they will have to answer to no authority (ie telco's, government etc) which will drop prices and raise speeds.
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DLS Internet Services
