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Review by Oregonian2 
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 1.3 years, 187 visits, last login: 3 days ago
 Beaverton,Washington,OR
 $26 per month (12 month contract)
 "Good support, mostly friendly folk, and local!"
 "DSL service company (going"
 "For DSL they provide great service with a local flair"
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I have to admit up front that I've just canceled my Spiritone/Aracnet 768/128 DSL account after using it for about ten years. I felt a little guilty about canceling after good service for such a long time, but even the technical support guy who answered the phone when I called them said that "I've got to do what I've got to do" (which was to go to FiOS which blows most anybody's DSL away).
Although I never had to, it was reassuring that I could have driven down to their offices to complain about something if I had to and that if I called them I was calling someone local -- not someone half way around the world.
Technically speaking they aren't a DSL provider, they're an ISP, the ISP that the DSL link connects to (Verizon is the central-office and copper owner, although that copper is now decommissioned due to our FiOS installation).
But, if one wants DSL I can heartily recommend them for the ten years of good service that we had from them. That's mostly what I have to say. Oh, and I didn't mind the static IP that I had with them, unlike the DHCP'd address I get with FiOS now.
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Review by rschus
Posted: 3.4 years ago
member for 3.4 years, 10 visits, last login: 1.5 years ago
Beaverton,Washington,OR
$18 per month
 Verizon
"Reliable"
"None"
"You won't be sorry here"
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Been with Aracnet/SpiritOne for 12 or so years. The last four years have been DSL 1.5/384. The few times that I have been down it has been back up and only knew if it was on Aracnet's end after they posted something. I can't complain about Verizon's DSL line either.
The few times I have called support I got fast, correct answers. The anti-spam filtering is a homemade system and it is good. It Has filters that are easy to configure, or you can choose one of the pre-made ones. Of about 30 spam that I get I might get three a week that come through.
Fibre optic available now and the only reason I haven't changed is because of the excellent service I have had with Aracnet/SpiritOne.
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 Review by clupea
Posted: 4.5 years ago
member for 4.5 years, 65 visits, last login: 2 years ago
Portland,Washington,OR
$60 per month (12 month contract)
 about 1 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Reliable, linux support, terrific spam filtering, sane TOS, responsive"
"none"
"Just plain works"
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$225/yr to Aracnet/SpiritOne + $41.50/mo. to Verizon = $60.25/mo. for 1.5MB/384k ADSL.
I've been an Aracnet subscriber since Aug. 1998. DSL was turned up Apr. 1999. They had some bumps early on and during the assimilation by SpiritOne, but have been rock solid now for years. I really enjoy the personal attention that only a locally owned and managed ISP can provide. Their admin and support are clueful and responsive. Their SPAM filtering is provided by a home grown solution (spasm - see »nspasm.org/) that beats anything else I've used. I run spamassassin on my server and it rarely sees anything now due to Aracnet's edge filtering.
Verizon is laying fiber in my neighborhood. It remains to be seen whether Aracnet/S1 will remain part of my connectivity. I'd hate to ditch them, but the allure of 15/2MB will be too hard to resist. I'm hoping to have the best of both worlds, but it's unclear if I'll be able to keep Aracnet/S1 if I opt for fiber.
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Review by o1eal
Posted: 6.5 years ago
member for 6.5 years, 1 visits, last login: 6.5 years ago
Portland,Multnomah,OR
$39 per month
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"Tech and billing support is above and beyond. Local and personal service."
"the very occasional outage. No worse than other providers I've used."
"Local, friendly, flexible. They take ownership of the entire install with Qwest."
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Aracnet has served me exceptionally well since 1996, with dialup and DSL from various apartments. The transfer to Spiritone involved a little downtime, but it wasn't too bad. I don't use their news or mail services very heavily, but have never been disappointed. I access my email there via command line and pine, which is a very rare feature these days! I do frequently get spam that's addressed to a whole lot of aracnet addresses, I'm not sure why that is.
When I've wanted to do anything unconventional, Aracnet has come through with flying colors. They went out of their way to help me set up my Cisco firewall as a NAT router, which I would not have expected from an ISP. They've also helped me troubleshoot a couple of network issues that turned out not to be their fault at all, but they were very patient. Their billing office is also very responsive and flexible. You can prepay in various increments, with discounts increasing with the duration of the prepay. You can also have monthly payments taken from a credit card automatically.
Their prices are very competitive. I think you can get it a little cheaper through MSN/Qwest these days, but from what I've seen of the service you get from MSN, Aracnet is a slam-dunk. With Aracnet I get a static IP, immediate response on the phone till 10pm, billing and tech support people who recognize my name, no PPPoE weirdness, and a cool domain name tacked onto the back of my email address. What more could you want?
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Review by decaffeinated
UPDATED: 6.6 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 22 visits, last login: 2.7 years ago
Hillsboro,Washington,OR
$57 per month (12 month contract)
about 1 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"responsive, local ISP (very hard to find these days)"
"not multi-homed (ISP says they will address this)"
"a unique set of reliable services from a local ISP"
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I've been a member of aracnet since Jan, 1996. So I've been with this ISP pretty much from their inception. I was a strict dialup customer until 3/2001 and the price was great ($18/month for 56K PPP access). After much heartache, I recently procured Bronze+ DSL from Verizon. All the hassles associated with DSL were caused by Verizon (big shock there, huh?). My Aracnet subscription cost now is $24/month and I pay an additional $33/month to Verizon. In return for these higher premiums, I'm now enjoy transfer rates of 768Kbps down and 128 Kbps up. I don't ever want to go back to PPP. For my $24, Aracnet gave me, among other things, a static IP that I multiplex (via a DSL router) to a small LAN in my home. Thanks to the DSL router, I can now put up to 253 computers on the Net for $57/month. This is simply an amazing value. On top of that, aracnet gives me:
+ a robust satellite newsfeed (usenet)
+ linux shell access (a rare service these days)
+ 10 MB of disk space for web pages or shell files
+ 2 e-mail addresses
+ highly reliable, spam-filtered e-mail service
+ a 15Mbits/sec connection to the Internet
I've read the posted reviews of aracnet and they're not very nice, to say the least. I think many customers are angry about the recent outages in Dec 2000 and Jan 2001. And, hey, I was pretty unhappy as well. But one thing to keep in mind is that the outages occurred in the midst of an ownership transition, which is often fraught with chaos.
Let's talk a bit about the history of this ISP.
In the beginning, they were small and slow. But the owner was committed to improving service as his customer base grew, and that he did. He moved the ISP from 33.6 Kbps analog modems to 56 Kbps digital modems. He added a second Internet feed (i.e., became dual-homed) as his customer base grew. He added a satellite newsfeed when he could afford it. He added DSL when it became available. So many customers signed up for DSL that he added a Redback DSL router (at a reported cost of $100K) to ensure maximum throughput across the aracnet network. Recently, circa 12/2000, the original owner sold aracnet to SpiritOne, another local Portland ISP. We don't know why the owner decided to move on, but he did. As the transaction was unfolding, it became apparent that aracnet's current two connections to the Internet (via uunet and bbn) had to be replaced because these connections had been made in the former owner's name. So, in the space of a week, aracnet transitioned from two Internet connections to a single, higher speed, Verio connection. And then Verio went down for a prolonged time period. The Verio outage could not have occurred at a worse time--in the middle of an ownership transition. Customers were clamoring to know what the hell happened and the new owners were simply trying to tread water. Eventually, the problem was solved, but more Verio outages occurred in January and that did not help matters. Things seem to have calmed down since, but we still have a single connection to the Internet. The new owners say this will be fixed. We all hope so.
In the meantime, Portland's largest local ISP (teleport) has been taken over--first by OneMain, and then Earthlink. This ownership transition, by all accounts, has been quite unpleasant for existing customers. As disaffected teleport customers cast about for a new home, many of them are flocking to aracnet. Why? In part, due to many of the reasons I cited above: DSL access, static IP, shell access, decent newsfeed, etc., etc.
There are several reasons why I stay with aracnet:
1) local ownership. A local owner is accountable to, and values, his/her customers. A regional owner (i.e., Earthlink, AOL, AT&T) could care less if a single customer comes or goes. Believe me, I know wherefore I speak. My former ISP was Netcom.
2) responsive system administrators. When problems occur at aracnet, the administrators "turn to" and diligently work to address the issue.
3) reliable services. Everything at aracnet "just works".
What are the downsides:
1) single internet connection. If verio goes down, everything goes down.
2) the network configuration info that aracnet distributes to its DSL and PPP customers is not all that detailed (especially the DSL config info). It helps a great deal if you know something about computers.
I highly recommend aracnet.
============== Updated 12/6/2001 ==============
I received email the other day asking me if I was still at Aracnet and if I still recommended their service. Answers: Yes and You Bet!
A few things have changed since my review.
+ The satellite newsfeed has been replaced. News is now outsourced to usenetserver.com. This feed is working so well that I will most likely dump my external newsguy.com account next Spring.
+ uu.net has replaced verio as the NSP (network service provider). No more outages. Period.
Otherwise, aracnet is still not dual-homed....
Q: How's my DSL connection holding up, you ask?
A Just amazing. I've had (.....wait for it.....) zero minutes of downtime since activation.
aracnet ====> (still) highly recommended.
============== Updated 3/24/2002 ==============
Well, January was a bad DSL connectivity month for aracnet. We had lots of DSL down time, most of it due (we think) to Verizoff outages. These outages seem to have disappeared.
The newsfeed has been changed to newsguy.com because usenetserver.com had recurring problems that they simply couldn't seem to solve.
And, inexplicably, aracnet dropped all e-mail spam filtering this month.
If you don't like spam, go somewhere else (yes, I'm very grumpy about this issue).
============== Updated 4/10/2002 ==============
Re: the spam filtering issue. I'm currently beta-testing a new system that lets clients choose their own set of spam filters from a web page. Way cool.
Once again, aracnet knocks my socks off. Still highly recommended!
============== Updated 4/19/2003 ===============
ELI is now aracnet's NSP. Spam filtering is provided by a third party outfit called
Postini. It works well. As usual, everything here continues to "just work" (TM).
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Review by doodaa
Posted: 7.3 years ago
member for 7.3 years, 2 visits, last login: 7.3 years ago
Beaverton,Washington,OR
$71 per month (12 month contract)
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Good, consistent performance"
"Very competent performer"
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These folks have consistently provided great performance. The value is
attractive and the technical support staff, based on the very few calls I've
had to make to them, has been outstanding.
About the only beef I've had is the relatively small maximum email size that
they enforce for any one emai.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 7.5 years ago
(review was emailed from domain jhu.edu)
Portland,Multnomah,OR
$42 per month (month by month)
Qwest
"Good price and good performance"
"none"
"good deal!"
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I have been on Qwest DSL for about 6 months, and realized I needed to
find a DSL ISP fast to avoid Qwest.net switching me to MSN.
I must admit...I first was struck by the name, then the favorable prices.
The changeover was not painless. It took some tech work for me to
reprogram the DSL modem. Qwest tried but wasn't much help. The tech
at Aracnet was patient, helpful, and friendly and led me through the
setup. And the tech support hours go to 10 PM on weeknights, which is handy.
I've had the service for about a month, and there's not much to say
about Aracnet. If I turn on a water tap at home, water comes out. If
I turn on a lamp, the light bulb lights up. And if I go to get my
email or websurf, the electrons dutifully go from our networked
computers to the modem and to Qwest's offices and thence to Aracnet
and on to the internet. It's been reliable, I haven't needed the tech
support since getting set up, and I'm saving money over my days using
Qwest.net. It may be an illusion, but it feels like data are transferring faster since the switch.
If I had it to do all over again, I'd be with this same company.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 7.5 years ago
(review was emailed from domain museworld.com)
Portland,Multnomah,OR
$26 per month (3 month contract)
Qwest
CLEC party: Qwest
"They connected me and got out of the way - no efforts to control, and simple."
"They don't support Verizon ATM DSL (yet), only Frame-Relay DSL, so I have to quit!"
"Great service AND Great support - stellar ever since 6/2001 when I joined."
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I started with Aracnet in June 2001 after reading about them on the local Linux User Group mailing list. The general sense there was that they had a phase with some problems but were a good company. Well, I've been with them about a year and they have been great - not one problem the entire time. The only bobbles were that I received three modems from Qwest, but that was more Qwest's fault than Aracnet's. (It took ten months to get my bill credited the extra $400!) And really, I can't speak to their customer support because I never had a reason to call them with any problems. 
I am leaving them because I am moving to a Verizon area and, sadly, they don't support the Verizon ATM-style DSL connections. They do support the Verizon Frame Relay-style DSL connections though, which appear to be more common. But my central office only supports ATM I guess.
They have great value for the money. I'm trying to find a comparable ISP now and I've looked at both Easystreet and DSLNorthwest, and they both pull that ridiculous "protected static IP" garbage, where you have to spend twice as much as Aracnet to get the same service (unprotected).
DSL-only seems to have good prices in comparison, but I am unsure if they support the Verizon ATM DSL. And I'm wary of the common theme of DSL-only's comments - that their hardware is good but that their technical service sucks.
Aracnet's service is great in contrast. Their DSL goddess Kirstin is more helpful than you could hope for in setting up and moving service.
Evidently they hope to be ATM-capable in the next few months. I'd definitely stay with them if I could - it's been the most painless DSL ISP experience I've ever had.
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Review by rlangis
Posted: 7.6 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 44 visits, last login: 7 years ago
Hillsboro,Washington,OR
$24 per month (3 month contract)
about 1 days
"Great Tech Support"
"None so far - prices dropped recently"
"Great bang for the buck!"
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I've been with Aracnet for at least 5-6 years - they've always been extremely helpful, wether it be for billing or support. In fact, one technician helped me secure my sendmail installation on my DSL network. (I had an open relay, yikes!)
Whenever I had a service problem, a quick call to support often gave me the answer I needed - and at least 95% of the time it was an upstream provider or other problem that they couldn't control.
The ONLY problem I've ever had was just recently when my credit card information changed - I forgot to let them know to change the info on file, and they emailed me about the problem. I dutifully filed the email and forgot about it, then they shut off my account. After giving them a call as to why, a 'DOH' and a slap on the forehead later, my account was reinstated in full.
All in all, unless my financial situation required me to change providers, I'll be sticking with them for the forseeable future. I only hope they stay independant, because I love that about them.
----------update----------
I should add that for my $24/month, I get my 56k dialup ($19) and a static IP ($5), plus domain hosting, unlimited subdomains via DNS, unix shell, cron jobs, and I'm *cough* using at least 2x my 'alloted' server space without being charged for it. Although now that I've admitted that they'll probably see this and start charging me. 
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Review by The Hideaway
UPDATED: 8.8 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 143 visits, last login: 2.7 years ago
Portland,Washington,OR
$25 per month (month by month)
about 4 days
Verizon (ex GTE)
"Price VS. Services"
"Your on your own"
"If you can't/don't want to - do your own troubleshooting look elsewhere..."
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DSL Customer since early 1998. Currently running dsl bronze+ (768dn/128up) ($25/m aracnet - $32/m GTE=$57/m Total). Prices have not changed since I signed up. Multiple computers/OS's. Static IP.
I have had very good service from aracnet over all. Yes, they are a little on the fat side when it comes to outage frequencies and durations. My speeds are very respectable (500-700 down and 80-120 up) most all the time. I have experienced only a couple instances of slowdowns, generally the service either works great or is completely down. I often have slow download speeds, but on cheking it ends up being the site I'm connected to not my connection. In the time I have been a subscriber I would guess at 10-15 outages that lasted overnight and into the next day, 5-10 outages that lasted 1 full day, and 1-2 that lasted longer than that. The most recent was exceptional at ~3 days. They do currently have only one connection to the internet but as I see in these reviews, everyone is running for DSLONLY. Guess what guys - they only have one connection too!!!
When I first signed up they had a couple ladies in the office that really knew what was going on and were very customer oriented. So when I went through my startup there were people there who could actually help me. I'm not real impressed with their office or tech staff currently (I feel like I just called GTE customer service. You know "Thank you for calling GTE, how may I provide you with excellent service?" To which the answer should be "Put me on hold and go get a third level supervisor so I've got a fighting chance at an intelligent answer."). When I call the business office now the impression is they just want to end the call rather than answer the qeustion. The usual answer I get after asking a qeustions is Um-(pause)-please hold. On calling Tech support to inquire on problems I feel like I just called 1-800-tell me a story.
Aracnet has recently been acquired by Spirit One Internet Services. They have made a promise to acquire an additional backup connection (when I have no idea). I feel like the previous owners pretty much gave up on this business and I am hopeful that Spirit One will turn it back into a business again. I'm hanging in to see what comes of the new scenario cause if they do turn around the bad points (which to me are not a problem cause I'm already up and running) it will again be the best deal in town!!!
OK - I give up... I'm outta here! I've taxed every portion of my forgiving nature to justify staying with aracnet and am now finished. It's going to cost me the price of another computer to host my website and FTP on going to DSL-Only but if they are as good as everyone says it will definately be worth it! I'm tired of the excuses and the non-action to rectify thier current situation. GOODBYE. Order placed with DSL-Only 1/15/01... I will continue to post in that forum so see you there!!!
So here's the latest - They just changed all thier DNS Servers to a different IP address which of itself is not a large problem. The problem is that they didn't tell anyone they were doing it!!! I just started getting these huge lags when loading a page and couldn't figure out what was going on. In researching it, I found that to be the problem...
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SpiritOne / Aracnet Internet Services, Inc.
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