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Review by pfalk 
Posted: 20 days ago
member for 23 days, 8 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Sunnyvale,Santa Clara,CA
 Contract price not specified.
 "fast when it works, good if you know what you are doing"
 "spotty performance"
 "you get fixed IP and fast speed - when it works"
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Most of the time, I do have some kind of connectivity - a Good thing. Very often the performance is highly unpredicatable - not a good thing.
I didn't like the high cost of the wireless Trango modems. (~$500). Support is best via email, which means that you should expect resolution within 24 hours not within 1 - 2 hours.
I've also had problems with the DNS server, not to mention that there isn't any of the other normal ISP benefits like: Mail server account etc.
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Review by bod
UPDATED: 24 days ago
member for 6 years, 352 visits, last login: 5 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$129 per month (12 month contract)
"Speed!, symmetric transfer rates"
"Poor support & communication with customers, having to make a fuss to get attention"
"High symmetric speed, but poor support."
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Update 06/30/08: Still pretty stable, no outright outages since the last update. A handful of short periods when internet access was sluggish, but quite possibly not Etheric's fault. Ping times pretty stable during the day, some increases late at night/early morning. My link speed seems to be hovering around 10 Mbps down/8-9Mbps up, though I've seen individual tests as high as 14/12.
No improvement in customer support observed. I sent in a trouble ticket a couple of days ago about their speedtest web server giving 404 errors, and the email bounced! It listed several internal email addresses that couldn't be reached. So I sent it directly to the CEO, still no response (which is unusual). I'm guessing they have not hired a customer service manager yet.
________________
Update 03/16/08: Stability seems to have settled down, though minor occasional glitches remain. But my speed tests have settled out to be generally 20-30% lower than they were, which it's difficult to be happy about. Especially when they were hitting 40% higher for a few days. Which contributes to an impression that their network is not stable & reliable. Seems like they're always scrambling to fix something, never ahead of the game.
The CEO circulated an email to customers which laid out some of the corrective actions they'll be taking over the coming months. It includes hiring a customer service manager, which could help with their weakest aspect (support and communication with customers). Let's hope they find a rockstar.
I did renew for the next year, but not without thoroughly researching the competition first.
________________
Update 01/28/08: Things had been going swimmingly: great throughput, occasional but brief outage here and there, until mid-December. Things have been decidedly spotty since. I've had periods of poor throughput, high packet loss and multi-hour outages. I've just had my worst set ever at Etheric - a 5 hour, 2 hour and 10 hr outage on the same day.
I don't know the reason yet, which is an area Etheric could still improve - keeping their customers informed. It's probably PG&E's fault - the last major outage was (I had to call to discover that). The access points are at high elevations, and experience power outages more frequently in bad weather like we've had recently (high winds, heavy driving rain). It'd be great if PG&E would fix its frail network (heaven knows I'm paying my part to fund it) but it could be argued that Etheric could do more - e.g. backup supplies at the AP. Could be it comes down to cost - I suspect I'm on an access point with fewer subscribers.
Other problems have been interference affecting my link, and problems on the backhaul from the mountain ridge down to the Qwest data center.
I've been told the reason my upload numbers vary so much is that one of my neighbors on this AP is using a lot of bandwidth, and hasn't been capped yet.
On the other hand, Etheric hasn't been idle; a firmware update for the radio modems has dropped ping times from 2ms to 1ms (at the cost of 0.5% packet loss) and improved throughput.
One aspect I don't like about Etheric is having to be obnoxious about a problem to have it attended to - not something I enjoy doing. I'd rather report a problem, and have it fixed in a timely fashion, than have to make a stink. Past experiences have shown that not making a stink about it means it never gets attention (months can go by, literally). Support at Etheric continues to be their weakest area, sadly.
I usually pay annually, and am due for renewal about now. Which leaves me in a quandry. If I were running a business over this link, this would be hurting it, and I'd have no choice but to look elsewhere. But I'm not, and it's mostly an annoyance, except when I'm trying to use WebEx for a conf call!. It's also a more serious issue for my VoIP connectivity. Chances are things will return to their previous high levels; there's always that seed of doubt though, especially after extended periods of poorer-than-normal service. When it's working well (the vast majority of the time) it's difficult to match by other (reasonably-priced) means.
I'll post another update when things settle down.
________________
Update 11/18/06: It's a shame that it required complaining in a public forum, but it got the ball rolling at Etheric. I still think the normal support mechanisms need fixing badly, but Alex (the CEO) is serious about keeping his customers happy and fixing issues when he hears about them. Here's hoping that's infectious for the new support folks he's hired/hiring.
Alex first looked at the existing link, saw plenty of evidence of the issues, and spent some time trying to optimize my link (apparently the poorest on my access point). There was an small improvement, but not enough to think the issues were nailed.
Alex encouraged me to consider upgrading to the latest generation of equipment ('Gen3'), since the performance was better in just about every metric relative to the Gen1 equipment they installed for me three years ago. The catch? a few hundred dollars out-of-pocket. I can't say I leaped at the prospect, but after looking at the material, it did seem like I was getting something significantly better for the money.
A friendly and knowledgable installer came out to do the upgrade five days ago. It went smoothly. I have a much stronger signal than I did, and throughput has gone up about 4-5x over what I was seeing previously. DSLReports speed tests are regularly reporting speeds in the 10-11Mbps range in both directions, and I haven't yet seen a speed reported below 8 Mbps (even in light rain over a 9.3 mile link!). Ping times to the gateway are usually about 1.5 msec.
Etheric has restored my faith in them. I can't see any large ISP taking the time to make sure an existing customer is happy the way Etheric has done. Paying for an upgrade wasn't what I was looking to do, but they were pretty reasonable about pricing. I feel like I've gotten significantly better service, and at the same rates as I've been paying. So I can happy recommend them again.
________________
Update 10/28/06: Sorry to say, the service has eroded steadily, and much of what I wrote below is no longer true. I've had intermittent outages (>70% packet loss for ~15 mins) for almost three months now. The support email address is essentially a black hole. It took three days for them to open a ticket when I first reported a problem, and I've had zero response since the first couple of emails and attempt to fix.
My burst speed now averages 2-3 Mbps, a long way short of the speeds I saw originally. My service plan states 'bursts to 6Mbps' but I've not seen that in a long time.
I can't honestly recommend Etheric Networks as things stand. I'm actually sad to post this, as they've been great in the past, but I can't say I feel that way at the moment. I'm hoping this is temporary and things will improve again.
________________
I'm very glad I found Etheric Networks...
Prior to having service from Etheric, I was using two DSL lines (from different providers). Partly to try to get more bandwidth at reasonable cost, but mostly for some redundancy, as outages were not uncommon. While my time with Etheric has not been spotless, the few outages I've had have not lasted more than a few hours. To date, my outages have been caused by: firmware problems on the transceiver (fixed within a week, when the vendor released a fix), router failure (about 6 hours, I think), and a few short outages when configuration changes weren't quite right. That last one is a bit of a double-edged sword... The good folks at Etheric take the performance of their network seriously, and are often tweaking to make improvements - which is great, a point-to-point wireless network benefits greatly from that kind of attention. But sometimes the changes are not as transparent as one would like, and a little further tinkering is needed. But if I had to make a choice, I'd rather have a very fast network with rare, short hiccups, than one that's perpetually under-performing.
One problem that's occurred more than once has been minor problems with the local DNS servers. Haven't happened in a while though, so perhaps it's resolved.
While the monthly price isn't bargain-basement, it's great value. I have a committed rate equivalent to a T1, but usually see sustained throughputs in the 5-7 Mbps range (tested with DSLReports). I wish they'd run a local speed test server, as I suspect internet congestion is hurting the numbers!
I was trying to find reasonably-priced SDSL service before finding Etheric, and nothing came close. Startup costs are a little high, as you have to provide a security deposit on the transceiver that's installed, but I'd much rather do that than have it's cost rolled into the monthly payment.
The pre-sales experience was a mix. The first sales guy was hopeless, but he left shortly after. The second one was very much on-the-ball (though perhaps a little too driven for some), answered my questions promptly and kept the ball moving. The installers were great, took the time to put the transceiver in an unobtrusive location (which looks like a satellite dish, as I'm over 9 miles from the access point) and run the cabling out of sight.
These guys care about their network and their customers, and the support people know what they're talking about, on the rare occasions I need to call. I'm one happy customer.
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Review by Iamzim
Posted: 26 days ago
member for 4.4 years, 24 visits, last login: 26 days ago
Mountain View,Santa Clara,CA
$99 per month
"Fast when it is working"
"Mostly doesn't work"
"Stay AWAY"
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Been with them for almost a year. The connection is extremely unstable, high latency, dead connection. They said 24 hrs support but whenever you call them you get an answering machine. If you are luck they may return your call in a week or so.
My backup Comcast line is more stable than this... what a waste of money
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Review by MHethering
Posted: 106 days ago
member for 106 days, 0 visits, last login: 106 days ago
La Honda,San Mateo,CA
 Business customer
$99 per month (month by month)
 about 2 days
"Responsive, Implementation of Security Measures, High Speed and Reliability,"
"None"
"Great company, great people"
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We have used Etheric for about a year for a rural-based law practice. Etheric provides far faster Internet speeds than we had at our offices in Palo Alto. Set up was extremely fast; less than 2 hours to run cable to the office and set up the router. Technicians were friendly, responsive, and eager to help us, unlike any other Internet provider we experienced.
Alex Hagen is extremely knowledgeable about security and has helped us implement extra security measures that other ISPs don't care about.
Tech support has been outstanding and responsive. Whenever we've had a problem, a real person answers the phone, and often fixes the problem in minutes- even on week ends. We had DirecWay and Earthlink in the past, and had endless problems with Technical Support.
Etheric uses a technology that is substantially immune to atmospheric conditions. DirecWay and Earthlink went down or became unstable every time we had rain, drizzle, or even thick fog.
We highly recommend Etheric. Etheric provides a reliable, cost effective, high speed alternative to satellite, DSL, and cable.
Followup comments:  sghulten
join:2003-04-17
Gilroy, CA | Big improvement in southern network Alex made a network change about 3 weeks ago and the system has been consistently fast ever since. I can't even comment on the tech support since the system has been so stable. Very happy now. | |
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Review by djwARI
UPDATED: 132 days ago
member for 218 days, 38 visits, last login: 85 days ago
Sunnyvale,Santa Clara,CA
$99 per month
"It provided the best speed in our area at the time."
"Poor reliability."
"Could not recommned for a business that had an alternative choice."
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We original had a AT&T DSL connection for our small business. Due to the distance from the nearest center, our speed was not much faster than dial up. We switched to Etheric, the speed is normally good. At times the upload and/or download speed is unusably slow. This seems to have been improved slightly. In the past few months we have at least 4 instances where we have had no extremely limited internet connection for a minimum for 2 hours to over a day.. One time they changed there firmware, which left us with connection until they came out and upgraded our firmware. There is no excuse for this happening with a notification or upgrading the firmware in advance.
There are many customer phone support people who seem to have little knowledge as to what is going on. "I think that there might be some one climbing on the tower" is not an acceptable answer when service is down or limited. After hours phone support cannot provide any answers based on my experience.
Our upload and download speed is typically in the 1200 to 5500 kbps range. »/testhistory/1513050/1c683
If I needed a home connection, I would likely be ok with Etheric. For a business, it is not reliable enough. To start the day with no e-mail access as frequently as happens to us is a problem.
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Review by sghulten
UPDATED: 159 days ago
member for 5.2 years, 194 visits, last login: 28 days ago
Gilroy,Santa Clara,CA
$115 per month (3 month contract)
about 12 days
"fast"
"support needs improvement / needs redundancy on towers"
"the only solution for ruralites within sight of a tower"
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Here's an update. Finally got service restored after failed hardware unit on tower repaired. Having been down for serveral weeks (and being brutalized by using a dialup connection) I investigated alternatives for my location. Seriously considedred going back to satellite until I read the reviews on dslreports on hughesnet. Brought back too many painful memories. Still no dsl or cable. Tried Verizon and Sprint broadband wireless -- no signal. Notwithstanding the outage I have to admit that etheric is a godsend for my location. They really need to improve communication with the customer when problems arise. If I was told initially that they were swamped (because of recent storms) and that it would be fixed within a month I would have been more understanding.
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I don't like giving negative reviews, but.... This company utilizes wireless technology with transmitters on various towers through out the s.f. bay area. The company has a high potential, especially for folks like me that live in rural areas (no dsl, no cable -- satellite - been there, done that). I've been a customer for approx 4 years. I've been extremely patient as this company established it's network and associated support. The owner, Alexander Hagen is extremely capable at fixing any tech problems. However, his time is over committed.
It is now Thursday evening, January 31st and I've now been without service since Sunday evening. I was told my "problem" would be fixed two days prior. The support person I talked to doesn't know what the actual "problem" is but that it has been assigned a high priority. For all I know, this situation will exist indefinitely.
Actually speaking to support outside of 10-6 M-F is hit-and-miss -- mostly miss.
Bottom line -- This company is understaffed. A company in buisiness for 6+ years should not be subjecting customers to such a lousy experience. Remember, I paid money for this???
Followup comments: 
Disgusted
@mikecappella.com
| An illness that doesn't go away... Once again, Etheric's network is plagued with long-term downtime and un-usability: extremely high packet loss (+80%), high latency (+3000ms), and transfer speeds that barely compete with a dialup modem (58k/52k). This has been an especially terrible couple of weeks.
And still, they simply do not understand the concept of "customer support". Support line does not answer, calls are disconnected, emails are not responded to, and returned or follow-up calls are not made.
Time to restart the T1 shopping process again. Sigh.
I'm so totally disgusted with this company... | |
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Disgusted
@mikecappella.com
| Network pain Some pictures for your entertainment. | |
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Disgusted
@mikecappella.com
| It just gets worse... and worse... Another day of network hell from Etheric.
- Support is not answering calls
- download speed 8k, if at all
- net apps are losing connection, stalling
- the chief is literally "asleep" | |
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Review by acehreli
Posted: 1.1 years ago
member for 1.1 years, 2 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
Mountain View,Santa Clara,CA
$80 per month (12 month contract)
about 2 days
"Very fast inbound and outbound speed; static IP"
"More expensive than other options but much better too"
"Very fast and reliable connection from a friendly company"
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(ratings above consensus)
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Review by provos
Posted: 1.3 years ago
member for 2.5 years, 15 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
Mountain View,Santa Clara,CA
$149 per month
about 7 days
"static ip and reverse dns"
"very unreliable and almost no customer support"
"better find somebody else"
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I have been using Etheric for about three years now. When I got the service initially, it was very good. Unfortunately, after a few months, high packet loss and high latency became the norm. Sometimes this was due to weather and equipment damage which was outside Etheric's direct control.
It took me a long time to discover that the initially installed equipment did not support link layer error correction and the higher the packet loss became, the more often data was corrupted during transfer. It essentially became impossible to download large tarballs of source code. My workaround was to download the tarball to another computer and then do repeated rsync over ssh until the data finally arrived on systems in my house.
Last year, Etheric installed their Gen3 equipment on our roof, without charging as a courtesy to make up for past problems, and promised that I would really like the improved quality. Things were fine for maybe three months but now 10% average packet loss is not unusual. The web servers I have been running over Etheric's link have become so unreliable for visitors that I had to move them to a co-location facility.
My frequent emails and phone calls to the support line remain unanswered for the most part. When I am able to solicit a reply, the promised fix or phone call usually does not happen.
So, although I had great hopes for Etheric, I cannot recommend them. I am still using them right now, but probably have no choice but to finally engage the telcos or cable companies for connectivity :-(
You can see smokeping snapshots for the first hop Etheric router attached.
Attached images and files
Followup comments: aligzanduh
Premium
join:2003-02-04
Mountain View, CA
| Customer Experience Re: This customer. The G-3 system we have installed system wide - works quite well for the vast majority of our clients. Unfortunately this customer did not show up in our trouble alert system - because most of his tests were good.
The senior engineering "lives" in our radar system - the junior engineering handles individual residential link problems customers report.
Generally Senior Engineering allready knows about the issues customers contact us about when it comes to line quality - and usually there is a project in the works to correct it.
In this case the customers multiple emails did not result in his getting a ticket opened and resolved.
This is unconsciounable and we are flogging ourselves over this sloppiness.
Rest assurred that all customer link issues that come to us from the customer will be reviewed on at least a bi-weekly basis with senior engineering to ensure no-one's service suffers for more than a short period of time.
We have in fact put in our G 3.5 Network at Black Mountain - and elsewhere - and we immediately transferred this customer to the new 3.5 gen transmitter servicing SunyVale and Mountain View - we will credit his account and I hope he will post back confirming that all is well.
Sincerely
Alexander Hagen
CEO
Etheric Networks Inc | |
| | provos
join:2006-01-04
Mountain View, CA
 ·Etheric Networks
| Re: Customer Experience This is an update on my situation.
Etheric switched me onto a different beam and since then all my network troubles have vanished. I waited for about one month to post an update. For the last 30 days, I had zero packet loss and very low latencies. So, right now, I am very happy with my network situation.
However, the support problem is really something that Etheric needs to get under control. Alexander told me that they are working on it. I guess I will find out the next time I need to get in touch with support.
At the moment, everything looks very good. | |
| | | aligzanduh
Premium
join:2003-02-04
Mountain View, CA
| Re: Customer Experience We have now doubled our support staff at Etheric. Every network has some nodes that are problematic. In our case - we have the power to correct these problems - as we maintain our own fully meshed redundant network. We are currently peering directly with AOL, Qwest, Level 3, Global Crosssing to name some of the key partners.
====================
We presently have a ratio of customer to tech support staff that is very aggressive. We have 1 engineer for every 50 customers. (5 full time and four part time technical support staff). This is about the right level for true 7 x 24 capability and response. In addition we have admin sales and R&D staff of an equiv amount.
Sincerely
Alexander Hagen
CEO
Etheric Networks | |
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Review by jhebert
Posted: 1.5 years ago
member for 5.4 years, 66 visits, last login: 9 days ago
Los Gatos,Santa Cruz,CA
$100 per month (12 month contract)
about 3 days
"Faster than advertised, support responds promptly when called"
"Connection goes down a day or so every few months"
"Not perfect but the best thing going for my location"
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(ratings match consensus)
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My home is in the Santa Cruz mountains with a direct line-of-sight to their tower on Loma Prieta nearby so Etheric was the logical choice. I picked Etheric because it is the only service that could deliver 2-4mb symmetric bandwidth at this price to my location. They claim they can deliver more but that was all I was looking for. I also desired static IP addresses. I've been using Etheric networks as my ISP since 11/2004 and I'm generally happy with them.
When I started, they quoted me 1mb burst for $100/mo with static IPs. The service has always been faster than that. The receiver was installed in 3 days after the order. It worked immediately (no surprise considering my location).
Reliability could be better. The connection goes down every month or so. Typically there is a substantial packet loss for a few hours, this happens without notice. I usually find the problem in my server logs but it is cleared up within a few hours (usually before I notice it). There were 3 times when my connection was severely affected for days, I called the support line and somebody would look into it right then. Typically they'd see that some other receivers were affected and they would acknowledge they were doing some tweaks to get around interference that was causing the problem, it seems that this setup or the environment (perhaps the nature of wireless) is fragile. The outages I've seen are more frequent than I'd like otherwise I'd have rated them higher. Fortunately, I do not require a 24x7 connection I work from home only about half the time and I can drive into the office.
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Review by alain40
Posted: 1.5 years ago
member for 2.1 years, 61 visits, last login: 274 days ago
Palo Alto,Santa Clara,CA
Contract price not specified.
"Fast enough, but not as fast as advertized"
"Down once a month or so, takes a call to get back service"
"Not a bad service, but not ready for prime time"
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Hype, lies? You decide:
- 24X7 support is really 9 to 5
- 15Mbps speed is really 5Mbps (but symmetric which is great if you are hosting)
- Mission critical is really down once a month or so, with no tool on their side to know you are down.
Not ready real applications, good if you want a fast service, HIGHLY recommend you keep your DSL as backup to Etheric if you choose to go this route
Followup comments: aligzanduh
Premium
join:2003-02-04
Mountain View, CA
| Response We have doubled our support staff and believe you will see the difference.
We have four times more support now on evenings and weekends.
Unlike most Cable and DSL, we can real time improve performance problems in most cases. I am typing this from a Comcast connection I am getting 600/60 on right now. I will not call them about this, because its usually pointless. | |
| alain40
Premium
join:2006-06-19
Palo Alto, CA | Service has improved substantially It is now very reliable with under 0.2% packet drop, it is fast - I get most of the time between 10Mbps and 14Mbps-, and support has indeed improved. | |
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