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I've had my service with Speakeasy for about a week now and I could not be happier... now that I've finally gotten it set up. But it was a long road getting here. Okay... allow me to veny and give some background: I've been on the lookout for high-speed dedicated internet access for better than two years. Almost weeks, I've checked the websites of both my Cable company (Suburban Cable) and my telco (Bell Atlantic) for information... to no avail. Early this year I heard of Covad and the DSL service that they were rolling out around the country to compete with the local telcos, so I added them to my list of sites I would monitor. This summer, I finally stated seeing realistic dates for availability at my CO (Exton, PA - about 20 miles west of Philadelphia). Several sites said that Covad would turn up the CO on 8/15. I called speakeasy to se if I could "pre-order" and was told that I couldn't. I could understand that, but when i called back on the 18th of August, I was told that the CO had been pulled from Covad's list. I was back to square one, or so I thought. I kept checking back and by the end of the week, the Exton CO was back onling and was now accepting orders. I placed my order with Speakeasy for 384/128 service on 8/20. About 10 days later, I got an e-mail saying that BA had scheduled their install for 9/15 and Covad for 9/22. I was excited. Only about a month from my order date. Not bad. Well, 9/15 came around and BA never showed. I called Speakeasy and the followed up with Covad/BA. It took almost two weeks to get any real information. I finally got a new install date: 10/8 for BA and then 10/15 for Covad. A few days later, I got an update saying that the BA install was moved to 10/13 but since that was still before the Covad date, there would be no change in my scheduled Covad install. On the morning of the 15th, the Covad tech showed up a few minutes early!! He came in, and after about half an hour of fiddling, couldn't get the 5250 bridge to sync up with the DSLAM. He said that there were "electronics" on the line that that they'd have to work it out with BA before re-trying the install. Big disappointment, but at least since he was so prompt, I didn't have to use vacation. I was out of the house an to work by 9:00AM. About a week days later, I got a message saying that the phone company had worked out the problem and a new Covad install was scheduled for Monday 10/25. Again the Covad tech ( a different one this time) arrived a few minutes early and within 30 minutes had me up and running. I had already configured the IP addresses on my machines, so as soon as his ping tests were done, I plugged the x-over cable into my hub and my machines were browsing the net. Overall, it was about what I expected in the installation. Two visits is about par for the course from what I understand. And everyone was very courteous. Whenever you have three companies involved in the installation, there are going to be coordination issues, and I think that overall, Speakeasy did a fair job with the install. In a week of use, I've found my connection to be fast and reliable. I'm pretty sure that any slowdowns I've seen are related to server loads, and not line issues. Tech support has been very good. One of the reasons that I went with Speakeasy was because I wanted to run my own server and my own DNS. The night after my connection was set up, I had a conversation with Speakeasy tech support about registering a domain name and setting up a DNS on my machine for them to mirror. I got the information I needed, went to the Network solutions web site and filled out my registration form with my machine as primary DNS and Speakeasy's as secondary. By morning, I was able to browse to my web server by name. I can't comment on mail services from Speakeasy, since I'm going to run my own mail server, but I am very happy with their new server. I'm not sure who runs it form them, but I am happy enought that I'm going to dump giganews for my news service. Overall the value is outstanding, I think. A few problems getting set up, but I can't blame that on Speakeasy. That's all for now. Ted member for 24.7 years, 1635 visits, last login: 1 year ago lodged 24.4 years ago
I've had Speakeasy in Boston for a month and a half now and I'm very happy with everything, including the speed. (I regularly get around 300kbps downloads, against the theoretical 384/128kbps). Their sales reps were very knowledgeable. The one hitch was that they couldn't process the order until Bell Atlantic had turned on my phone line at my new apartment, but once that was done I had a Bell Atlantic date within two weeks (which went fine, I didn't even need to be there) and a Covad date a few days later. The Covad technician was competent and helpful. The install was quite painless. Now I have two static IPs, and permission to run servers (I don't know any other DSL or cable providers who allow that -- when I had an RCN cable modem I was running one in contravention of RCN policy). After the other fellows who try to con you into signing a contract for a year or more, Speakeasy is great: no money before the service is up and running (they even give you two shell accounts on their server in the meantime), and a monthly $59.95 thereafter (for 384/128). I asked for bridge but got a Flowpoint 2200 router which they configured as a bridge -- normally I believe the Flowpoint is $85 extra (I didn't pay any extra). In the last month and half there hasn't been any downtime, and the download/upload speeds have been rock-solid. These guys are great! Don't even think of going with anyone else... -- Rohan Oberoi. member for 24.4 years, driveby review (so far) lodged 24.4 years ago
Waited a month for install. Then on scheduled day Covad person never showed up. Then next day he showed up 3 hours late and harrassed my girlfriend. Finall Covad tech came on time, but then the Covad person came and did not install line correctly, but left saying everything was set up. After he left I discovered he disconnected my voice lines! So I am without DSL and my regular phone lines! I have been trying to get my regular phone lines fixed since Saturday but no one at Covad or Speakeasy is doing anything about it. I'm considering contacting my lawyer about this but I'd rather not go that route. (review was emailed in) lodged 24.5 years ago
I ordered 384/128 from Speakeasy on 1999/09/24, they quoted me 25-45 days for installation. I got a call from Covad on 1999/10/08 to inform me they had an appointment on 1999/10/12 to do their installation. I am very impressed that they actually completed the whole thing ahead of their fastest prediction. The whole process was very smooth. Speakeasy even gave me free dialup access until the DSL connection was up and running. I have two static IP addresses, which I think is great. I've had to call Speakeasy's tech support a couple of times for dialup problems in the last few weeks, and they are always helpful and knowledgeable about their systems. Overall I'd have to rate it a great experience. member for 24.7 years, driveby review (so far) lodged 24.5 years ago
My experience with Speakeasy was great. I called on August 23rd and talked to a knowledgable sales rep who answered all of my questions. He knew about networking multiple computers and went over the bridge vs. router with me. I went bridge for cost and asked for multiple static ip's. I placed my order right then. I recieved an email from him that same day with the details of my order (speed, number of ip's, order number, prices quoted but not to be paid until after installed and running smoothly). On August 30th, I recieved an email from Covad with the installation dates of 9/10 for the phone company and 9/17 for Covad between 12 and 5 pm. On the 16th, Speakeasy emailed me with all the information I would need to get up and running (ip's, gateway, DNS servers, etc...). On the 17th Covad showed up at 12:15 and hooked me up. I have had no problems with the service. I cancelled my order with flashcom after waiting 5 months and making multiple phone calls to see what the holdup was. I wish that I had known about Speakeasy before August, I would have cancelled flashcom much sooner. Mike S. member for 24.6 years, 2 visits, last login: 24.1 years ago lodged 24.5 years ago
Mostly based on the positive reviews I have seen here and elsewhere, I decided to go with Speakeasy. The headline is "so far so good!" I placed my order in late august. The pricing seemed competitive, although no special deals (free install, free month) that some of the other more agressive companies are offering. After a week, I got my install dates, which I awaited with dread, based on some of the horror stories I've heard. The Bell Atlantic guy was first. He even showed up on the day after Hurricane Floyd went by - I was suprirsed. After a lot of futzing about to find a good pair down the street, he was done. The next day (Saturday), I got a call from Covad asking if it would be OK to move _up_ my install date from them When I got my breath back, I said sure - they showed up the following tuesday (wanted to come monday, but I couldn't). They tested the line, hooked up their modem and were gone in an hour. The only snag was that somehow speakeasy hadn't yet assigned me my IP numbers. Then the big disadvantage of dealing with a west coast outfit - I had to wait a couple of hours until they woke up. But I shortly got the numbers, plugged them into my machine, and I was up! Performance is a vast improvement over my previous ISDN line. I've only been connected for a few hours so far, so I can't give any feeling for reliability, but at the moment, I'm a happy camper. Other plusses: up to 8 static IPs free! and they don't even ask for a credit card number until you are up and working. member for 24.6 years, 8 visits, last login: 11.4 years ago lodged 24.5 years ago
Well, it's been well over a month since I ordered DSL service from Speakeasy. I live in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, and have to deal with Covad and Bell Atlantic for different parts of the delivery. So far, all scheduled appointments (it took only 2 to get mostly set up) have been flawless. I was even able to bump up the Covad delivery date by a week. So, by August 2, I had a line from BA and a bridge/router from Covad (Efficient Networks 5250). I signed up for 768/384 service, and to this day (Aug 30), have yet to get a connection. The initial problem was a lack of tone on the line. The Covad tech called up Covad the day he was hooking stuff up and they said there was a problem with the line ("it failed the tone test"), so he packed up and split, saying it'll be a few days at best before something is resolved. Thus began the incredible saga known only to me as INCOMPETENT COMMUNICATION and ENDLESS TROUBLE-TICKET HELL. Let me give you all a piece of advice straight out: anytime anybody from Covad or Speakeasy starts talking about trouble tickets, make damn sure you get the following info immediately before another word is spoken: - Date it was assigned - Nature of the problem - Trouble ticket ID And immediately ask to have it escalated to the highest priority. It seems like this has done little good for me, but I can't think of a reason not to insist upon this: The supposed "legal" (according to Speakeasy) turn-around time on any trouble ticket by Bell Atlantic is 5 days. I've heard anything from 3 days to a week though from Covad, so I suspect they have less of a clue than Speakeasy. So, anyways, the trouble since Aug 2 has, and continues to be, an "unbalance" on my line. According to Covad, the "unbalance" is because of some "number" which says 2%. They like to see this "number" below 1%. Unfortunately, Covad can't do squat other than bow to the whims of BA when it comes to fixing line problems, thus the trouble ticket system. There have been no less than 4 trouble tickets issued by Covad/Speakeasy since Aug 2 about the exact same problem, and every time BA claims the problem is fixed, it turns out to be false (a lie?) This is one of the major reasons Covad has legal action already filed against BA. They're not properly dealing with the problems on their end. It frustrates me to no end to have to sit on hold for 30 minutes too with Covad, just to find out that nobody is doing anything about this problem. I mean, grow a friggin' mouth and _call_ somebody up there and find out just what the hell is going on. One month beyond delivery date is absolutely unacceptable in my book, and I find fault with all three companies in this regard (Speakeasy, Covad, BA, and the lack of communication therewith). So, to sum up... For those who've had no problems or less of a problem than me in getting DSL service, I congratulate you. For the rest, I feel your pain. It's completely ridiculous to have to wait more than a week, let alone a month, past delivery, only to have to deal with people who really don't have a clue about customer service or even value the people that are paying their bills. I'm just glad Speakeasy hasn't been stupid enough to charge me yet, otherwise Mr. Visa would be having some fun tossing them around right about now. . . member for 24.6 years, 661 visits, last login: 2 years ago lodged 24.6 years ago
by David Abrams It works! Speakeasy DSL in Boston - long story I have been trying to get Infospeed DSL from Bell Atlantic out of the Bowdin St. Central Office in Boston since May. (I am 2178 ft EU Wire Distance from the C.O.) BA gave me three roll-out dates (staring in May) and each time one came due they would give me another. Finally (late June) they just would say "soon" I tried to contact DSL higher ups with no success (Paul Lacoure, Peter Castleton, someone else?). I was unwilling to use Flashcom due to their reputation on Usenet and most other Covad ISP's either did not have the residential (i.e. cheap) product or had big prohibitions against "servers" (NAT, DHCP, etc.) It does not seem reasonable to pay for an internet connection and have to buy another to let my wife place her single monthly order to amazon.com . Anyway, in late June I noticed Speakeasy of Seattle offering Covad's telesurfer (384/128K $60/mo.) service in Boston. Their install price was the same as B.A. (about $220-225) but there monthly charge was $10 higher ($60 rather than $50). Bell Atlantic was faster download (640K) but slower upload (90K). Also Covad uses a separate pair for DSL (not frequency multiplexing my POTS line) so no splitter is required (and no problem with POTS interference some people have described). Since Speakeasy's web site had no terms of service I called them. The phone was answered by a friendly tech who told me they would like a gentleman's agreement that I would keep the service for a year to cover them paying for the installation. Also they would prefer no game or chat servers but other servers were ok. They offer up to 8 static IP addresses. Oh yeah, they would not need payment or credit card until the service was up and running and I was happy. After reading about Flashcom horror stories I felt I was in heaven. After begging BA (unsuccessfully) one last time to sell me something, I placed an order with Speakeasy on July 7. I asked if I could get the FlowPoint 2200 router/bridge instead of the normal Efficient Networks 5250 bridge. The Speakeasy guy apologetically said it would be an extra $85 over the normal $225 install costs. No problem. I asked for two static IP addresses. On July 12 I received email from Covad stating my BA delivery date was Monday 7-19-99 (all day) and the Covad install would be 8-2-99 (afternoon). I had to be home for BA since my network interface is in my basement. On Fri afternoon 7-16-99 I got a confusing email from Speakeasy telling me (sort of angry) that I should tell them if I was going to cancel my service. Huh? I was about to take a day off work and sit at home the whole following Monday waiting for Bell Atlantic. I called Speakeasy and it turns out that the install had been canceled because "BA had the wrong C.O." (yeah right). And no one told me. Covad->Speakeasy->me communication chain does not work. I was lucky that I did not waste a day at home and I was lucky I found out when it had been rescheduled - see below. My advice is stay on top of this do not assume someone will let you know what is going on). Ok, so now I am really depressed. I have a new Covad order number and no install date. Even worse, the BA Infospeed web site says installs coming July/Aug. I call Speakeasy the next week but they do not have a new install date yet. I call Speakeasy Thursday July 29 because I am still waiting and they say "Oh, I see Covad has Bell Atlantic install scheduled next Tuesday, didn't anyone tell you?" Arg! So Monday at 4PM I call Covad to make sure they still think BA is coming the next day. They say yes and I prepare to spend the whole day at home waiting. By this time I assume BA is deliberately sabotaging third party DSL installs. (Aside - I do not actually think it is deliberate sabotage but I do believe BA has not gone out of its way to make the third party install procedure foolproof.) Oh yeah, on Monday Bell Atlantic calls to tell me they are installing Infospeed out of Bowdin street and would I like to make an appointment? Too late sucker. So I wakeup Tuesday, put notes on the junction box in the alley behind the house and on my front door with my cell phone number so I can go to the bathroom or walk the dogs. Bell Atlantic (Dan - good guy) calls at 8:30 to make sure I am home. He shows up just after 9AM. He says he did the outside work the day before and there is a good pair back to the CO hooked up to Covad's DSLAM. He connected it to one of the spare pairs in the six-pair going into my basement (installed by nice BA ISDN guy Jim Long two years ago). We go downstairs, he ohms out the pair, runs a jack up to my homerun pair going up to my office upstairs and calls Covad. They runs some tests and all is blessed. I thank him and I am ready to go to work by 10AM. But wait! I can't STAND waiting two weeks until 8-17-99 for the Covad install. I give them a call and mention that the BA pair is set and I am home. They own up as it is a slow day and they will call me back. 40 minutes later I get a call, the Covad installer is on his way. (Just to let you know I really won the lottery the Boston Edison guy showed up to change the meters while I was home waiting for Covad to call). Covad shows up at 11:15. He even has the FlowPoint 2200 I wanted on short notice (I assumed it would get lost in the rush). I switch my homerun in the basement from the ISDN line to the new DSL pair. We go upstairs and he connects the wall jack to the FlowPoint and the FlowPoint to his NT laptop. He downloads a bridging script to the router and it lights up green. We synced up! Ok, but we cannot ping beyond the local machine. The Covad guy is a bit confused and sets the management port address on the FlowPoint from the default nonroutable 192.168.254.254 to one of my assigned IP's. He sets his machine to my other IP. He sets the default gateway to the IP assigned to the FlowPoint management port. I suggest that as a bridge the only gateway must be the Speakeasy router xxx.xxx.xxx.1 We try that. Nothing works. We call Speakeasy at 11:30 but they are in late that day. We get a hold of them at noon and they set their router up correctly. Yeah - We can ping, we can surf! We plug the FlowPoint into my firewall machine (temporarily running win98 to not spook Covad) and I cannot connect. The nice Covad guy runs out and opens another brand new FlowPoint 2200, configures it, checks it with his NT machine (it works). It still does not work on my system. I tell him I will figure it out since the line obviously works and he leaves at 12:30 I boot my firewall (www.gnatbox.com) and change the port for the Public Network from PPP (my ISDN modem) to the second Ethernet card and it works fine (Win98 apparently has trouble setting the Dlink 10/100 card to the right speed). Hot Damn! I am running the free two user version of the gnatbox firewall on a spare P90 I had lying around. No hard drive, no CDROM, no monitor, no keyboard. It provides NAT to my wife's computer also. I did not use DHCP but it does support it. I also like www.sharethenet.com and www.nc4u.com as firewalls. I prefer a firewall that does not run on my primary computer (like sygate and the other windows firewall/nat servers) since I think that it is safer. Also I have lots of old underpowered computers lying around. I also like the sonicwall and ugate plus products as they are small and unobtrusive but add $300 to $500 to the DSL startup costs. The FlowPoint router can be used as the primary firewall/NAT server with the addition of $200 for the password to turn on the firewall features but I had the gnatbox already setup for my ISDN line. I download the latest firmware from the FlowPoint ftp site ("it fixes some security issues we would rather not document but you really should upgrade" - hey I can take a hint) and flash the router. I load the flashpoint windows gui config software and backup the FlowPoint configuration. I connect up the included serial port cable to the router/bridge and change the password, the SNMP community string and limit telnet and SNMP connections to my IP address on the internal LAN (Covad left my router with the default password, default SNMP community string, and a public IP address - wheee, can you say hack me?). I try to check my email. I do not exist. I call Speakeasy and they turn on my email account (but he still will not take my credit card number yet). I guess at the newserver address and find a Supernews server with lots of groups and good retention times, however it appears to be throttled at about 12-15k/bytes/sec. I am REALLY happy. I get 40kbytes/sec download from a Microsoft site. Mostly I get 15 to 18kbytes/sec. The news server is throttled at 1/3 my 384K bandwidth (the router includes a SNMP speed meter and I also use dumeter). The next day Speakeasy sends me mail finally asking for money. I am more than happy to give it to them. This is way cool. I am very happy with Covad/Speakeasy. Speakeasy is very reasonable, I always got a knowledgeable person when I called, they did not ask for a credit card number or money until I was up and running. The ping times to the first router are a bit slow (109ms from sprintlink backbone to Speakeasy to me) and if I need to talk to them I cannot call until noon (but they are still there when I get home). I do not know if the good service will continue if they get too successful (I bet flashcom was good in the beginning) but I am way happy. The FlowPoint 2200 is very nice. For $200 I can add (turn on!) a packet firewall. It does not use a power supply brick! You can manage it through the serial port, telnet or snmp. Unfortunately the built in four-port hub is 10BaseT only (these DSL router guys don't get it. I want to use the hub to talk to the OTHER computers on my internal LAN also and they run at 100BaseT). It has a command line interface and a Windows gui config program. One down side of using Speakeasy from Boston: All traffic from my machine goes to a router in Seattle. This means that downloading from Microsoft is way faster than downloading from MIT (a mile from my house). Tracert shows about 100ms from my computer to the first Speakeasy router. This means to get to MIT I go from Boston to Seattle to Cambridge. If you plan to contact west coast sites exclusively then this does not matter. If you need DSL to telecomute to work a few miles away you add 200ms round trip time which may be unacceptable. If you decide to sign up, make sure you keep on top of Covad and Speakeasy. Also call the day before an install to make sure it is still on. And if you do not hear anything for a few days it can't hurt to call and see if a message got lost. Oh, yeah. It took over an hour on hold to cancel my ISDN line with Bell Atlantic. -- David Abrams Galactic Industries Corp dea at galactic.com member for 54.3 years, driveby review (so far) lodged 24.7 years ago
Ordered late June, Got two install dates. First for Ameritech, second for Covad. Covad shows up and tells me that Ameritech didn't do their part. A week later Covad tech comes over, does the wirring, plugs in the modem. Leaves with out even doing a ping test. Nothing works ofcourse. So I called Covad and speakeasy, and a week later with much frustration on my side, it started to work. Had it for 2 weeks, works great. I am on 384/192 service plan. member for 24.7 years, 100 visits, last login: 13.8 years ago lodged 24.7 years ago
Ordered well over a month ago. Speakeasy people are friendly and knowledgeable, but the whole Speakeasy -> Covad -> Bell Atlantic chain of communication has been a complete fiasco. No one seems to speak with each other. Sometimes it seems like people aren't even speaking to their own employees. I've had Bell Atlantic people show up unannounced on my doorstep saying they were called in on a trouble ticket. Only, they didn't know what they were supposed to check out. I'd comment on the service, but I still don't have it. On a positive note, they had the cheapest installation and gave me additional static IP addresses at no extra cost. member for 24.7 years, driveby review (so far) lodged 24.7 years ago |