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Review by kingseamonke 
Posted: 8.8 years ago
member for 9.2 years, 34 visits, last login: 5.8 years ago
 Coppell,Dallas,TX
 $56 per month (12 month contract)
 Verizon (ex GTE)
CLEC party: Covad
 "Support tries to help me"
 "Support is poorly equipped/no Windows 2000 machines for them to troubleshoot with"
 "You can try 'em if you don't have Win2K, otherwise keep your distance!"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
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My ISP isn't listed yet, so I'll be the first to tell you about Covad.net. I was recently with Intetnet Express... another loser ISP. They are getting out of the residential DSL market due to conflicts with Covad. So like an idiot, I switched to Covad.net. This accounts for the short time from order to live. I was already wired and ready to go, but just changing ISP's. I really didn't have any beefs with Covad, just Internet Express, so I figured it was no big deal. And it wouldn't be, except for Covad's PPPoE implementation! I actually got it to work for a few hours and it was smokin'! (About 500K down/160K up, which is about 400K faster than Internet Express) But the rest of the time has been a nightmare. I've had the service for a little over a month. Covad.net claims to support their PPPoE software (Enternet 300) with Windows 2000, but such is not the case. I spent a total of four hours on the phone with support trying to get it to work. They are equipped with "Windows 2000 simulators" which don't appear to act anything like Windows 2000 at all. I've had enough, so I'm going to take my Covad rebate (whenever I get it), pay the $250 to cancel my contract, and go with DirectLink.net. Hopefully I'll be able to add to the many rave reviews of that ISP once I make the switch. Maybe the PPPoE software works well with NT 4.0 and Windows 9x/ME, but not with Windows 2000. I may add to this later, because while I'm waiting for my rebate to get here, I'll be installing NT 4.0 Server back on my gateway machine and using Proxy Server 2.0 to get to my DSL connection. If the Enternet 300 product does, in fact, work well with NT 4.0, then that should solve my speed fix in the interim.
On the plus side, the features provided by Covad.net are nice. You can add/edit/delete your email accounts(up to 5 of 'em) from their web site w/o having to talk to support. That's a handy little feature not available with Internet Express.
So I guess my bottom line is that they don't support my OS of choice. If you have something other than Win2K, they may be okay for you.
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