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Review by chrisca 
Posted: 2.9 years ago
member for 3 years, 9 visits, last login: 2.9 years ago
 Beaverton,Washington,OR
 $34 per month (12 month contract)
 Verizon
 "Small local company, short hold times for support, good support for non-line issues"
 "Poor support for line issues (everything beyond the computer, router, and modem)"
 "Not a good choice for business or mission-critical needs."
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Review of SpiritOne.com DSL Service
I have been a customer of SpiritOne for six years, starting in 2000 when they were originally Aracnet. Until 2005, the service was trouble-free. I had only one outage during that time, and it was cleared up in a few hours. In 2005, things really started to go downhill. That year, I had a nine-day outage with no Internet service at all. Repeated calls to SpiritOne, and Verizon, who handles the physical line and modem, were handled very slowly considering the connection was completely dead. There was a lot of finger-pointing between the two organizations and no one wanted to take responsibility to solve the problem or work together as a team. Over that time a technician from Verizon visited my home twice to check the DSL line. It was clear to me that my modem was operating properly, my computer was configured correctly, and that the problem had to be at the Verizon switching center or the ISP. Finally, the problem was resolved but I received conflicting reports from Verizon and SpiritOne, each blaming the other for the problem. I ended up writing a letter to the Oregon Public Utility Commission about the incident, but was told that Internet service was not something that they could act on a complaint about. I was shocked that no governmental organization seems to be overseeing Internet service companies.
I had a year of satisfactory service after that, until November 2006. This time, the connection was somewhat functional. Transfer speeds slowed below the 768k/128k I was paying for, and FTP transfers became unreliable. Web browsing was intermittent, with some pages loading and others loading only partially. Periodically, I’d open a browser window and there was no download of HTTP traffic, though it appeared that DNS was working. I contacted SpiritOne again and this time, started tracking the speed on DSLReports.com. Below is a test history showing the measured speeds:
Your Tool and Test History
Time(last 24 hours) Test Results.. Comment..
download upload Server Your Domain
del 26-11-2006 09:59 AM j-speed 485 Kbps 21 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more
del 22-11-2006 10:43 AM j-speed 625 Kbps 109 Kbps California, USA no rdns
del 21-11-2006 06:22 PM j-speed 404 Kbps 51 Kbps California, USA no rdns
del 21-11-2006 05:57 PM j-speed 482 Kbps 11 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more
del 21-11-2006 04:18 PM j-speed 329 Kbps 37 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more
del 21-11-2006 01:45 PM j-speed 228 Kbps 7 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more
del 21-11-2006 12:18 AM j-speed 280 Kbps 62 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more Supposedly 768/128 service
del 20-11-2006 01:41 PM j-speed 320 Kbps 35 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more
del 19-11-2006 10:07 PM j-speed 205 Kbps 43 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more
del 18-11-2006 06:21 PM j-speed 277 Kbps 35 Kbps California, USA no rdns
del 18-11-2006 08:52 AM j-speed 351 Kbps 40 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more
del 17-11-2006 07:52 PM j-speed 277 Kbps 39 Kbps California, USA no rdns
del 17-11-2006 06:24 PM j-speed 266 Kbps 23 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more
del 17-11-2006 05:46 PM j-speed 386 Kbps 31 Kbps California, USA aracnet.com more This is DSL?
del 17-11-2006 05:30 PM Line quality 0% loss latency 146ms more
Note that on only one day, November 22, was the speed anywhere near what I was paying for. That was the day that Verizon claims to have swapped out hardware in their central office where my phone line was attached to their equipment. I was away for a few days, had another good day of service November 25, and on November 26 the problem returned with the same behavior as before. During this whole time, SpiritOne and Verizon took a very simplistic approach to diagnosing the problem, asking me to disconnect and reconnect my modem and in-home router, and refusing to run any more detailed analysis, such as a line trace. Given their lack of interest, I suspect they don’t even have the capability of monitoring a customer’s traffic and seeing what’s wrong with it in any level of detail that’s needed to understand my problem. I contacted SpiritOne again on the 26th asking for another investigation of what was going on.
As an example of the kind of service I was getting during the outage, I tried several times over many days to do an FTP upload. During the upload, the upstream connection speed was zero for about half the time and far below the provisioned level of 128k for the remaining time. When the connection was working properly, the upstream speed was very near 128k steadily and did not drop to zero at all. The outage continued for more than two weeks before it was finally resolved, and I never received any kind of details on what was done to fix it.
Now, the technical support people at SpiritOne are polite and helpful in some ways, but their hands are tied in that they are contracting with Verizon to provide the physical connection and SpiritOne cannot diagnose or service everything that’s involved in connecting the customer to the Internet. That puts them at a serious disadvantage. It’s nice to be able to call people who pick up the phone right away, and are not in a call center in India. However, I am trying to run a small business over this connection and it’s just not working out. The model of having a company like Verizon, who wants to sell me Verizon Online DSL or FiOS which are both managed entirely within Verizon does not put any pressure on them to handle a customer complaint from a subcontractor like SpiritOne. Verizon would rather see me do business directly with them. Based on this experience, however, I’m not very likely to do that. If Verizon were to handle service issues promptly when I report them to SpiritOne, I’d be more interested in considering FiOS.
The result of all this is that the customer can’t get a reliable connection, and gets angry. But getting angry with SpiritOne isn’t the solution because Verizon’s underlying DSL service is poor, at least in my location. Recent changes to the terms of SpiritOne’s contract prevent the customer from calling Verizon and voicing any problems with the service.
I must conclude that the model of offering Internet service through an ISP and having a phone company who’s also in the Internet business provide the physical line is broken, and possibly in violation of antitrust laws. The phone company clearly isn’t interested in working to keep the customer happy and it’s caused me to lose time and money as a result. I’d like better service from SpiritOne, but were I in their position I doubt I’d be getting any better cooperation from Verizon. So if you are considering buying DSL service from SpiritOne, be very careful, and don’t try to do anything mission critical with it. You’ll likely get burned.
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 Review by JTC
UPDATED: 3.2 years ago
member for 7.8 years, 2028 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Portland,Washington,OR
$22 per month (month by month)
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Good prices, very friendly staff"
"No 24/7 tech support, new billing software in use (billing burps)"
"Not a bad outfit, but needs to get a few things worked out"
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My DSL provisioning experience has been a long running adventure.
After Verizon finally provisioned my DSL line (1st try, almost done, cancelled due to the modem messing with the voice line, Verizon claiming they can't do a dry line or that there has to be a working voice line for ADSL), I called Aracnet that night and had my port on the router turned on. Whee, I've got broadbadn back (used to have Reflex until they went under so suddenly). This was back in mid November of 2001.
The next afternoon, I find that I can't get past the router. I call their tech support, they say that my account was disabled due to non-payment. Talked with billing, and their new billing software had automagically disabled my account due to it being short a single dollar. Billing did turn my account back on, but I could not access my machines remotely (I was away from my flat at the time). Tech support suggested to power cycle the modem, then call verizon if it still didn't work. I did so later that night, no joy. Called Verizon's DSL support line, they said everything looked good.
Called tech support again the next day (grumbles about no 24/7 TS), explain the situation. Tech looks at the system and my account, says she will call the sysadmin and call me back. About an hour later, she calls back and I'm back up and running.
A few weeks pass (early December), my account is dead again per the billing software, I owe for December and I'm past due. I explain to billing again what happened with my account (their records still show the original try at getting DSL as my start date back in June/July). I play phone tag for a few days, and they assure me that my account is current.
Since then it's been working just fine. Aside from about a week ago when the router was having "issues" for a few days on the weekend (no response from the gateway IP and the TS line was always busy), I've not had to call them at all. Sometimes packets take a bit longer for TX/RX than expected, but to be fair, I am on the outskirts of the CO range.
UPDATE: 1/28/02
Renewal time! Called Aracnet to verify the amount, and for some reason, they think I've got a sliver plus package from Verizon and want to charge me for that amount. ??? If it wasn't such a pain to switch ISP's, I think I might switch to DSL only.
UPDATE 4/11/02
So far, it's been great. Connection hasn't gone down since the initial setup, and I've not had to ever call tech support since. My connection speeds are about 80K/sec download max, with an upload of 15K/sec max. Considering how far from the CO I am, I'm not complaining too much!
UPDATE 5/29/06
This sucks. For the past few months, I've been suffering from the occasional disconnect. Every time it happens, I have to call up tech support, and just about every time, it's been their router. And virtually every time, they have to 'touch' my circuit on the router side, or on occasion rebuild my circuit in the router. As I am writing this, my connection is down (I'm using another open AP right now, thank the computer gods for coffee shops in the area with free wifi). I called them yesterday, one minute past 7 (when tech support closes for the night on sunday), and got the answering service. Right, one minute past and they won't call the office for a customer who is totally down. And now, being a holiday in the US, there is apparently no one there and I"m still screwed. This is BS, there no one being there at all for at least a few hours, or someone checking the VM system. I can't wait for Fios to roll out in my neighborhood, as I'm sooo gone when it does.
UPDATE 8/29/06:
Well, I've left Aracnet/SpiritOne. I got sick of of the random drops when their router decided to crash and reboot, sick of not having 24/7 tech support when this happens so they can fix their end (I had one day of three outages, each time I had to call them to get the line back up), sick of being down over three day holidays becasue they have no one in the office covering the NOC. I have switched to Integra Telecom for POTS and a 512 symetric (to start) dataline for less than the VZ/SpiritOne combo. I don't want to see a local company go under, but the way they handle things leaves much to be desired.
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Review by wonko9
UPDATED: 7.8 years ago
member for 10.2 years, 26 visits, last login: 345 days ago
Beaverton,Washington,OR
Contract price not specified.
"Makes me think my 28.8K modem is fast."
"Aracnet is run by monkeys throwing bananas at routers."
"Only retards use Aracnet"
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It's been about a year now since I first used Aracnet DSL, and I'm safe in saying that it completely sucks.
Aracnet has always had very spotty connectivity, but the latest problems (over two days of downtime for ALL Aracnet users and STILL COUNTING...) have finally convinced me that Aracnet is run by either retards or monkeys or both. If you feel like actually being able to access the 'net more than 10% of the time, Aracnet is NOT the ISP for you. If you choose Aracnet, you'd better get used to dialing up free ISPs on your old 28.8 modem, because chances are your Aracnet DSL service won't be working.
UPDATE: See the more recent reviews for details on the outage I mentioned above. Since writing this review, I have given up on Aracnet and moved to DSL Only. DSL Only has their own issues, but they're still far more reliable (after having been with them for six months) than Aracnet ever was.
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Review by Qubert
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 3 visits, last login: 8.8 years ago
Newberg,Yamhill,OR
$99 per month (month by month)
 about 14 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Very reliable connectity for the first year"
"Very UNreliable connectivity for the last 6 six months"
"Placed order wtih DSL-Only.net yesterday"
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I was the first person in my city to get DSL about two years ago. I chose Aracnet because they issue static IP addresses (no DHCP) and their prices are reasonable. Internet connectivity was very reliable and very close to advirtised speeds (384/384). I was never impressed with their tech support but I was willing to live with that. The last six months have been hell though. Aracnet has suffered verious hardware and provider problems for at least six months. This week was the final straw. When I needed to take the final exam of an online course I am taking with Portland Community College, not long after I started the timed exam my connection was dropped! This isn't supposed to happen with DSL! Needless to say, I'm dropping Aracnet. DSL-Only received my order to switch service yesterday.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 8.9 years ago
(review was emailed from domain first-insight.com)
Hillsboro,Washington,OR
$57 per month
Verizon (ex GTE)
"The ladies running their billing department are the only ones who care"
"they have only one backbone circuit and it is highly unreliable"
"They need to get their act back together, but is seems they are going downhill instead of up"
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I've been with Aracnet for more than two years, most of which has been via
DSL. They are very hot and cold, though mostly cold. They recently went to
a single backbone provider instead of two as they had prior. The choice
they made was an incredibly poor choice: VERIO Verio can not seem to weed
out problems with their circuits, and Aracnet has been down now for the last
30 hours and counting. They claim to have a new backbone provisioner on
order claiming something like a 45 day lead time. I certainly can't wait yet
another 45 days for a decent connection. It's been hit or miss with them for
the last 6 months and I can't find the confidence when talking to them that
their next attempt will be a hit. Their tech support does not answer
emails, and they really seem to be going downhill FAST.
I wish they could get their act together and be the leading DSL provider in
Portland that they once were.
Bob S
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Review by gilflatt
Posted: 9.4 years ago
member for 9.8 years, 170 visits, last login: 2.7 years ago
Portland,Multnomah,OR
$25 per month
"Can't think of any"
"Inconsistant, Tech support is avilable but always blames some else for issues"
"Look somewhere esle"
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Been with Aracnet for about 4 years. They had pretty good 56k service, about 6 months ago I went with DSL bronze package. At first it was great however after 2 months service has been going down hill. When calling tech support, the first thing they say is, there is no problem then after pushing the issue they will blame it on GTE or the upstream provider. I think the case is to many users signed up with not enough bandwidth. You can get pretty good speeds when everyone is in bed (i.e. Sunday mornings)but when most users start to get online it can get bad (40-80K). When you call to complain they give the ols soft soap about how they are working on the problem. Getting new service in about 2 weeks.
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SpiritOne / Aracnet Internet Services, Inc.
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