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Review by frankmabrey 
Posted: 8 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 7 visits, last login: 7.9 years ago
 Portland,Multnomah,OR
 $17 per month
 Qwest
 "Connection stays up and is reasonably fast"
 "DNS server and news server periodically unavailable"
 "Good choice for home/small business user"
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I had a good install experience and my link has been reliable. I have had multiple problems with the DNS server and the news server being unavailable. The problems are usually resolved within a reasonable period of time, minutes or hours rather than days.
I am so glad to be away from Qwest/MSN for my ISP that I gladly tolerate the occasion glitch.
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Review by mfast3
Posted: 8 years ago
member for 8.2 years, 37 visits, last login: 6.1 years ago
Forest Grove,Washington,OR
Contract price not specified.
 about 14 days
Verizon
"Reasonable Price, Static IP"
"Recently changed Newsserver"
"Ok overall, wish that they had old Newsserver"
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My experience with DSL-Only was really pleasent up until this week. The main reasons that I decided to have them as an ISP was that the cost was the same as Verizon, Static IP address, overall good reputation and Free Ulimited Newsgroup access. Everything was fine until this Tuesday 11-06-01. I noticed that my newsgroup connection was not working properly. Called and talked to Sean and asked if they were having any problems with their News Server. He said "none at all, why?" I explained my problem and he said that they switched the newsserver on tuesday and if I reinstalled the program everything would be fine. I reinstalled the program and everything seemed to be working fine until I went to the Newsgroups that I visit frequently: alt.binaries.warez, alt.binaries.mp3, alt.binaries.complete-cd, alt.binaries.ware.palm and noticed that almost every post was incomplete. I called Sean again and told him what was happening. He informed me that the new server did not have any of the newsgroups that I had previously used on it. I asked if they were worried about bandwidth use and he said that this was not the broblem but in fact they did not have enough room on their server for all the "cd images and songs that people upload." I informed him of my diasppointment and intent to change ISP's.
Bottom line if you are looking for a good Newsserver included in you ISP charge DO NOT ORDER SERVICE FROM DSL-ONLY. Please let me know of any alternative ISP's in Portland area thay you have had good luck with regarding Newsservers.
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Review by Genemaniv
Posted: 8.2 years ago
member for 8.2 years, 245 visits, last login: 1.5 years ago
Banks,Washington,OR
$47 per month
Verizon (ex GTE)
CLEC party: Verizon (ex GTE)
"Good Product"
"Tech support and responce leaves something to be desired."
"Not sure what to say... Don't ask for any changes after the install."
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Here is my story. I waited 3 years for DSL to come into the area. When it did it was ATM not frame relay and verizon didn't support it's own lines as a ISP, so I had to go with the only ISP that did, DSL-Only. Ordered 768/128 to start intending to up it later. Verizon was back logged so it took a month or more to get it installed. When it finally did, (7/11)it was beautiful. I had 30ms pings to a game server I administrate, and got all the bandwidth I payed for. After a few weeks I wanted to get upgraded to 1.5/384 cause 128 up was too slow to serve games and such. I arranged with both DSL-only and verizon to make this happen on the first of the month(8/01) so as not to effect billing. Well it is now 9/27 and after repeated service calls from verizon and daily calls to DSL-Only I am at 768/384. It took 2 weeks to get the up side to 384,That was misconfiguration on the Verizon side, and still no 1.5 down. I have called and left messages at DSL-Only and sent e-mails and get 1 responce from them. Approx 2 phone messages 3 e-mails and one responce. I Have talked to both employees and they say they have to check with the other or do something else, and Bingo, no callback. They say verizon has problems upgrading people and verizon says they are seeing errors on DSL-Only's side. Verizon always calls back and I have worked with half their tech force including a sat visit from one. I Did one conferece call with both and the DSL-Only tech was extremly rude to the verizon tech saying that there are no problems on their side that it was verizon's fault and that they would contact the only specialist in Verizon that they ever got results from. Well if that ever happened I would never know cause they never called back!! Now I worked with the tech from verizon tonight that got torn to pieces last time in the conference call and appearantly DSL-Only won't work with them or acknowdege that there is a problem with their lines. I am still paying for a service that I have never recieved fully. My line qualifies for max speeds of 6933/896 and I can spit and hit the CO. Db readings of 29/24.
What am I supposed to do?!?!
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 Review by GoldLexus7
Posted: 8.2 years ago
member for 8.6 years, 596 visits, last login: 3.6 years ago
Portland,Multnomah,OR
$49 per month
about 30 days
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"Great tech support! You talk to a real person right away!"
"Difficult coordination with Qwest (mostly Qwests fault)"
"Good ISP at a Good Price"
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I am overall pleased with DSL-Only. Most/All problems I had was with Qwest. My order should have only taken 10 business days (I already had DSL just switched from Qwest.net to DSL-Only to avoid having MSN as my ISP) but because for one reason or another it took close to 30 days. Again the problem was with Qwest and their lack of communication.
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 Review by xyar
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 376 visits, last login: 64 days ago
Hillsboro,Washington,OR
$49 per month (12 month contract)
about 40 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Fast, reliable service"
"Website, install co-ordination could be a little better"
"Great value, great service!"
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Okay, let me start by saying that I was a former Teleport employee, as well as a Telocity/DirecTV Broadband employee. So I have been on the other end of the phone supporting DSL for Verizon/GTE, Qwest/US West, Southwest Bell and Pacific Bell. I am familiar with DSL, how it works, the installation process, etc.
What happens when I want DSL at my new apartment? Well, Teleport doesn't exist anymore (And I sure ain't gonna go with Earthlink!!), and DirecTV Broadband isn't signing up customers in Oregon, but even if Teleport or Telocity were available, I still would have gone with DSL-Only!
First of all, I have had DSL service in my home in another location from another ISP before, and it wasn't as painless or smooth as it was with DSL-Only. I have also set up many of my customers' DSL service with DSL-Only, and I support all of their DSL connections in addition to my own, and we never really have any problems other than short, minor network outages that are unavoidable and frankly, not real noticable. I have had DSL-Only here for a few weeks, and haven't had a SINGLE problem since it went live. My speed is rated at 768K down / 128 K up. Depending on the sites I download from, I get the equivelant of 500K - 900K connections consistently. I mention 900K because I HAVE HAD files from some sites, late at night, download at speeds exceeding 90K per second!!! This is verifiable and has happened many times. REALLY fast. And I have pretty bad phone lines. My analag dial-up connections were always HORRIBLE, using an external US Robotics Courier V.Everything modem dialing into either US Robotics or Lucent equipment. The DSL, however, works like a charm.
DSL-Only's website could be a bit more informative, and I would have liked to receive more e-mails during the install process telling me what the status was (I kept calling because I was anxious ), but those things are minimal. Their tech support hours aren't great, but I don't need "support", the only time I would need to call is if the service went down, which I've found is quite seldom. I have no problem with their news server speeds. It's wonderful to call in and speak with a human almost instantly EVERY TIME, and have it usually be one of the same two people (Sean or Jasmine). I like the fact that I'm going with a LOCAL, small, independant ISP, an ISP that's not TOO SMALL, but not too big either. No offense, but I think you have to be brain damaged to actually CHOOSE to use your telco as your ISP. Telco ISP's are never as reliable or fast as a good, independant, local ISP (I don't think DSL works well on a national scale).
DSL-Only has low overhead, and it shows in their network speed and reliability. It was VERY smart of them to put their office and equipment in the Pittock Block. I think that has ALOT to do with their connection reliability.
So if you need DSL in the Vancouver, Portland or Salem metro areas, USE DSL-ONLY! They are the ONLY DSL ISP I trust, whether it's for business or personal use. I will probably be setting up two more businesses with them in the near future. Static IP address, low monthly cost, fast and reliable speeds, what more could you want?? Do you actually WANT to wait on hold half an hour or more when calling your ISP??? Do you WANT an IP address that changes all the time? Do you WANT PPPoE? Or have ports below 1024 blocked so you can't run your own servers? If so, then by all means go with Earthlink, Easystreet, Verizon or one of the other brain-dead ISP's. If you don't, just choose DSL-Only, you'll be glad you did!!!
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Review by wuchang
Posted: 8.3 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 2 visits, last login: 8.3 years ago
Portland,Multnomah,OR
Contract price not specified. (12 month contract)
about 25 days
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"Real humans on the phone, competent tech support, cheap, static IP, great value"
"Poor coordination with Qwest"
"No problems with this ISP, the CLEC (Qwest) was nothing but trouble"
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Signed up on-line at www.dsl-only.net, got a confirmation e-mail the next day. Waited 10 days and got the DSL Modem from Qwest. Unfortunately, Qwest totally messed up. They managed to sign me up with Qwest.net as my ISP and shipped the modem in PPP mode. Very bad since the whole reason I went with DSL Only was so that I could get a static IP address. After calling up Qwest, I had to wait another week and a half to get my ISP changed. Then, I had to reprogram the modem into Bridging mode so that I could hook up my DSL router. (this step is annoying, but not a big deal). After that, everything was up instantly. For sure, the best thing about DSL Only is that they have live, competent humans answering the phone when you call. There's nothing worse than navigating through phone menu hell, waiting an eternity for someone to talk to, and then getting a complete idiot at the other end of the line (as I've done many times in the past with other providers). Misc information about my installation....DSL Deluxe package (640k/252k), static IP, cisco external dsl modem, Bill=17.99/mo for ISP plus Qwest line at 29.95/mo
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Review by oritpro
Posted: 8.4 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 8 visits, last login: 8.3 years ago
Portland,Multnomah,OR
Contract price not specified. (12 month contract)
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"None"
"Get better service from your local 7-Eleven"
"Don't waste your time"
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I honestly can't comment on the quality of their Internet, mail or newsgroup service. After getting a taste of their customer support during the initial order, I quickly switched my ISP over to Qwest. All this before my equipment has yet to arrive.
Here is my story:
6/19, initial order. Waited about 10-days. Got nothing, not even an order confirmation. Called them to find out the status of my order, was told "oh, your scheduled to be connected on 7/5".
7/5 rolls around, equipment has not arrived yet.
7/6 I called dsl-only to find out when I could expect the modem, the (extremely rude) chick on the other end says, "What modem? we don't show an order for a modem, blah...blah...blah... After a short discussion she said she would call Qwest and get back to me".
Having a pretty good feel for what I was dealing with I called Qwest a few hours after that and ordered the modem, according to the Qwest rep, dsl-only never called.
7/9 and still no phone call or email from dsl-only.
7/9 I call Qwest to switch my ISP to their service. Something I should have done in the first place. A $30.00 lesson learned (glad I ordered during a promotion). Qwest has been an awesome help during this whole ordeal and completely unbiased. Btw -they did not pursuade me in anyway to switch, I did it on my own accord and wasn't about to give dsl-only my credit card number after this experience.
How companies like this stay in business is beyond me but one thing is as sure as death and taxes, they will never get my business or anybody that I know.
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Review by hhiggins
Posted: 8.4 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 8 visits, last login: 8.3 years ago
Beaverton,Washington,OR
$50 per month (month by month)
about 30 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
CLEC party: Verizon (ex GTE)
"Somewhat reliable, usually quick tech support time"
"Technical Issues are delt with in the most unprofesional manner I have ever had the displeasure to witness."
"The service is fine as long as you aren't the target of a denial of service attack"
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I was (note the past tense) a customer of DSL-Only for quite some time until just recently. I never really had that big of a deal with them and usually blamed any connection problem I was getting on the phone company to give DSL-Only the benefit of the doubt. I recommended them to my friends and family due to my dealings with them and how well, although unorthodox, issues were dealt with.
Now the bad...
My problem started on the 6th of June with this company. I run a Linux server that I used as a gateway to pipe my DSL connection through-out my house. This machine was also a DNS server that I used to host my domain on. Everything was peachy until someone decided to smurf attack me (denial of service attack). To those of you who don't know what a smurf attack is its basically an exorbitant amount of a data being sent from multiple machines to one IP address through the use of broadcast addresses on unsecured machines. The over all intended effect is to cause that IP address to stop responding and sometimes drop the ISP along with it. Keep in mind this attack is a little over 5 years old, and millions of companies are hit with it as often as once every minute.
The perpetrators of these attacks rely on the ability to source spoofed packets to the "amplifiers" in order to generate the traffic which causes the denial of service.
In order to stop this, all networks should perform filtering either at the edge of the network where customers connect (access layer) or at the edge of the network with connections to the upstream providers, in order to defeat the possibility of source-address-spoofed packets from entering from downstream networks, or leaving for upstream networks.
The reason for me writing this is the fact that I was a victim of this type of attack. The first instance was early this month when I received a call from DSL-Only stating that I had been attacked and immediately began interrogation type tactics on me insinuating that I was some how to blame for this happening. After I told them I hadn't been home all day I was told that my IP address would be changed and if this happened again I would be kicked out of the ISP. Upon hearing this I was shocked and outraged. For one, I was the victim, not the attacker! How could they possibly justify kicking a paying customer out to which they have had no trouble or complaints out of for over a year?!? Well, the justification I got was simply this statement:
"The attack took us down and I can't afford to have that happen anymore...if you get attacked again, I'll have no choice but to tell you to find another ISP"
Hmm....So what is happening here is DSL-Only can't protect against the attack fully so they will just kick paying customers out when they are a victim of an attack because that cant "afford" to get attacked again. Well I've got some news for them. What they really can't afford is to kick paying customers out of their ISP when something goes wrong. If a broadband ISP can't protect against denial of service attacks they are doomed.
The second part of this story starts last Friday (6/22) when I came home from work and noticed my connection was down. I didn't think much about it and went to check my messages. DSL-Only left a message for me to call. Automatically thinking the worst I called them up and sure enough this is what I got:
"You were attacked again this morning and I had no choice but to refund this month's payment and delete your account"
I managed to actually hold my anger down after hearing this and didn't explode. I did receive an apology from the tech but that meant VERY little to me at the time as I was already visualizing the head-ach of getting DSL service changed to another provider. If I had known this company handled business in this manner I wouldn't have even humored the idea of going with this company for a second. Hopefully my mentioning this here will let others learn from my dreadful mistake of naming DSL-Only as my service provider.
Final thoughts....
This ISP, in my opinion, did something wrong here and I'm sure they know it. When you run a business the customer is top priority. If your in the ISP business and one of those customers gets attacked you should go out of your way to find a way to put an end to it without simply disposing of the problem through kicking the customer out. Perhaps they don't really care for the customers as much as they should. A fault that will prove the failure of such a business if this is allowed to continue. For now I will be telling as many people as possible my story and I will never recommend this ISP again. I actually liked this ISP before all of this started...it's sad the way things turned out.
Thanks for your time,
Hank Higgins
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 Review by Delusions
Posted: 8.6 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 303 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
Beaverton,Washington,OR
$50 per month (12 month contract)
about 35 days
Verizon
"Great Sales Staff"
"No Tech Support After 8pm & not being able to use my old modem"
"Good Speeds Good Price."
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They Only really bad thing From the company it self is they forgot to call me and tell me my install date so I had to call them back. But other than that So far great speeds but still to soon to tell if the quality will go down after i have had it. The extra static Ip is a little expensive compared to the my old company 10 bucks compared to 5.
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Review by sip217
Posted: 8.6 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 10 visits, last login: 8.6 years ago
Hillsboro,Washington,OR
$49 per month
about 2 days
Verizon
"cheap, mostly reliable, static IP"
"slow download speeds, lagging on connection"
"you get what you pay for"
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I am one of those unhappy Aracnet customers that made the switch last December after several prolonged downtimes and average download data rates.
At first, life was peachy. My first week with DSL-Only saw download speeds in the 500-600 area (on the 768D/128U plan), which was far better than what I had been getting with Aracnet. Never mind the fact that they were tons more reliable. My connection never dropped off.
Lately, I'd say the past month or so, things haven't been so stellar. I've been performing speed tests on a regular basis over the last 2 weeks and averaging between 200 and 350 down. It doesn't matter what time of day. Once or twice, I've hit somewhere in the 400 range but that's still not quite as nice as the 500-600+ I was getting when I first signed on earlier this year. Makes me wonder if too many people have switched over from Aracnet. 
But the download rates aren't my primary concern. What bothers me most is that about 75% of the time I try to connect to something (can be an ftp site, telnet session, or web site), it doesn't automatically connect. Sometimes I have to wait anywhere between 15 and 90 seconds before I get a resolution. Once I'm connected though, speeds are fine. It seems as though there might be a problem with the DNS server!? But that doesn't make sense because sometimes I have problems just connecting to an IP address.
In sum, I'm still fairly pleased with DSL-Only. My problems now involve lags upon connecting and overall slower download. If anyone else has experienced similar problems, I'd love to hear about them.
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DSL Only, Inc.
