 Review by Mashiki 
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 6.5 years, 2045 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Woodstock,ON
 $55 per month (2 month contract)
 about 1 days
 "Quick, and fast setup."
 "Occasional hickups, slow newserver and DNS problems(proxy related), loop hangs, poor connections outside rogers domain"
 "Decent enough, good as be considered for lack of compition. Could be much better."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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This is an ongoing review of the Rogers ISP since installation since Jan 2002, for most recent updates please look to the bottom of this review.
Was ordered at 3000/500, consitant speeds of 1600-2900/380-440.
I called on a monday, setup was done on tuesday at 9am. Total instalation time was approx. 1hr, including the installation of a new outlet.
Cost break down -
$39.95/mo service
$5/mo for modem
TOC - 12mo.
Provided, free NIC either PCI/ISA or USB. Choice of modem, Terayon, RCA.
ISP states a dynamic IP, but I've had the same IP since Jan.
Currently at my local hub, a bad router is being used I'm talking to the local tech to get it replaced. Hopefully sooner then later, I've had one instance where the service has been down due to my ISP's hub UPS not kicking over.(aka falty UPS) which has been replaced.
Any comments can be pointed here, and I'll be happy to answer them. Or send me a private message and I'll reply as well. I check the site every 2 days.
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Time for the glorious Update -- July 6, 2002.
Well I've been on Rogers for 5 and alittle bit months, and things have started to go down hill. I have a feeling it has to do with them signing more customers then they have capacity for. Meaning that I've gotten the dreaded 1500/192 downgrade, or would they call that an upgrade?
Since I've been downgraded to the new speed, the best I've pulled from nyc is 1000/182, unfortunatly this is not what I've signed up for. I do have the little brochoure that they gave me when I signed up and it's actually written inside for top listed speeds of 3000/500, ofcourse when contacting support they simply call you nuts.
It's rather unfortunate but I think they know they will start to recive an influx of users from bell, as such will boost their user base. I've started looking into new ISP's as of the 3rd of July. The biggest complaint that I currently have and this has crept up in the last two-three weeks is the "loop-hop", where wether it being a switch, or bad router or something else, causes a users connection to get "hung" at the main office.
Usually that means Your computer, ->local cable office, to booster, to main office or second booster, and it seems to hang out, basicly cutting you off from various parts of the web. You can get a website in europe or asia, but you can't get one in downtown TO. Wether this has to do with teleglobe, or with something internal at rogers I have gotten no offical or unoffical response from them on it.
I do have a few DSL providers in the area, that offer the speeds that I was getting. Tho it would be nicer to have another cable company providing access here, I understand that the terms are rather draconian.
Feel free to post a reply, I'll answer as soon and as able as I can.
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Update 3
Connection is more or less stable now I still have the same IP that I have had since last year. The IP was orginally supposed to be dynamic(72hr rotation), but I'm not complaining.
Here are some current speed tests from Woodstock.
2003-01-15 12:22:06 Speed test (det.speakeasy.net) 1210/184 kbps
2003-01-14 11:22:44 Speed test (det.speakeasy.net) 1071/182 kbps
2003-01-13 22:07:39 Speed test (wc) 816/186 kbps
2003-01-10 21:31:43 Speed test (bos.speakeasy.net) 961/184 kbps
2003-01-02 14:06:02 Speed test (ec) 966/186 kbps
2002-12-22 22:23:10 Speed test (nyc.speakeasy.net) 749/184 kbps
2002-12-20 02:02:10 Speed test (ec) 1002/185 kbps
2002-12-20 02:01:19 Speed test (speedtest.cogeco.net) 1286/339 kbps
2002-12-08 14:56:59 Speed test (ec) 1069/186 kbps
The one from the 15th is the first speed test from speakeasy that has a speed over 1200 in 8 months. It's tolerable but I want my 3000Mbit connection back.
Update 4:
More or less okay, been some fluky things the last few months. Today is the worst it's been in months. Drop outs, modem resets, massive packet loss. Woodstocks routers have gone up and down all day today. The news server is back up to almost tolerable levels, but I still use Supernews.
New set of Speedtests:
2003-08-01 14:42:39 Speed test (ec) 924/184 kbps
2003-07-21 15:14:18 Speed test (ec) 1074/184 kbps
2003-07-20 17:46:54 Speed test (ec) 921/185 kbps
2003-06-26 02:38:20 Speed test (la) 842/180 kbps
2003-06-26 02:37:31 Speed test (ec) 1235/186 kbps
2003-06-24 00:14:13 Speed test (wc) 517/184 kbps
2003-06-24 00:02:58 Speed test (la) 530/126 kbps
2003-06-23 23:59:56 Speed test (ec) 1190/185 kbps
2003-06-15 16:47:44 Speed test (wdc.speakeasy.net) 907/184 kbps
2003-06-15 00:28:28 Speed test (ec) 1092/184 kbps
2003-06-04 15:31:41 Speed test (ec) 1098/185 kbps
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Nov 6th 2003.
Things have been interesting. I spent a month with a modem that went up and down, September to October, two techs which were dispatched, the first tech checked the lines which were fine and left the second replaced the modem. Finally got a replacement modem. Unforunatly, it's the same brand as before. A TCM200, the DOCSIS(Toshiba) wouldn't work at all. There was something wrong with the modem, but I still haven't found out what, and people that I know who work for Rogers are unsure of what the problem with the modem is either. Hooking it up causes it to eventually drop off the network, and it's then unable to confirm information with the DHCP server.
There has also been an increase in speeds which I'll list after this update, not sure if the speed increases are perm. or not. The IP which I had for a constant period has switched, and and at one point I had 10 new IP's in the span of 48hrs. It should be noted that I use Windows 2003 to route my computers. This problem seems to have been cleared up. DNS problems still exist, and I run an internal DNS server for resolving now.
The routing has also changed from Woodstock, and there are now more outbound hops to get to an outside node from the Rogers network. On average it was 15 hops to get DSLR reports before the change in Sept. It's now 20.
2003-11-03 03:21:49 Speed test (dslr-west1.megapath.net) 1840/356 kbps
2003-11-03 03:20:28 Speed test (dslreports-west1.speakeas) 2076/360 kbps
2003-11-03 03:19:20 Speed test (speedtest.cogeco.net) 2342/247 kbps
2003-11-03 03:18:41 Speed test (ec) 2117/365 kbps
2003-11-03 03:17:21 Speed test (speedtest.cogeco.net) 2375/253 kbps
2003-10-31 01:47:28 Speed test (ec) 2203/367 kbps
2003-10-28 09:27:53 Speed test (dslreports-west1.speakeas) 1813/348 kbps
2003-10-25 15:27:04 Speed test (ec) 1958/348 kbps
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Saturday Mar 13th, 2004
Routing is still an issue and provisiong as well as other work on the nodes has caused a slowdown across the city. Rogers has yet to give an actual reason as to why the speed has dropped 900kbps or why it has happened after the work on other hubs. DNS issues remain an issue I run my own in network DNS server now, and stalling when downloading e-mail is a common problem. Waiting upto 2 mins will eventually work. As it stands my replacement modem does seem to be working well still. I believe I will be looking for a new ISP shortly, the fluctuation in speed has become a real irritation.
2004-03-13 22:21:30 Speed test @ dslreports-west1.speakeas 1109/353 kbps
2004-03-13 22:11:24 Speed test @ ec 1616/373 kbps
2004-03-13 22:09:13 Speed test @ speedtest.cogeco.net 1672/348 kbps
2004-03-13 22:08:40 Speed test @ dslr-west1.megapath.net 208/345 kbps
2004-03-12 16:40:26 Speed test @ ec 1157/273 kbps
June 23/07
Contract has been changed to cable billing rotation. 2mo contract billing.
Last two years pretty much uneventful, in the last 5 months there has been two or three service interruption's ranging from 10-30mins for provisioning. And a severe issue with rogers' choice of an external provisioning provider to AT&T which caused issues to other networks, causing nearly 80% packet loss. Rogers unfortunately was very slow to take customer complaints and work with them to resolve the issue.
Switched over from an internal server to a netgear hub with internal dns server and firewall. The Yahoo-email merger was and still is highly annoying, since I don't see the service I don't see any benefit from it.
Usual upgrades have gone through Woodstock without any major issues, and slowdowns really haven't happened since the old mass proliferation of the service that happened in 2004, the service overall in this area has leveled out. However following the upcoming year with the increase in housing, business and such due to the two Toyota plants and increase in general population around here I expect another decrease in speed.
The speed increase has gone through as well, roughly getting a speed of 5800/520 from most test servers.
My tech and services rating will remain the same, connection reliability has been moved to 4 from 3. As long as the the transfer caps remain the value for money rating will remain at 3, especially with other companies in the area that offer DSL. However with Woodstock's dreadful telco system, cable remains a more stable choice until Bell upgrades the majority of the system.
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