 Review by swilliams 
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 9 years, 3172 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Mount Prospect,Cook,IL
 $43 per month
 about 20 days
 "Easiest install I've ever done"
 "None so far"
 "My only option (no DSL) - it's fine so far"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
EDIT 07/11/07: Moved into Mt. Prospect and had only Comcast as my high speed option. No DSL at all as there's no RT and I'm over 20K feet from the central office. So, got Comcast via comcastoffers.com (a third party seller). A bit of a screw up on the order as the modem arrived fine (very quickly actually) but the order was never placed with Comcast. A few phone calls, a few transfers between sales and tech support (to provision the modem) and it all works fine.
Speeds are kind of fluky between where they should be (8 megs or so) and 5 megs or so. Normal fluctuation with cable service. Not thrilled about it, but since I have zero non T-1 options, I'm not complaining too much.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------
EDIT 09/23/04: No longer working at home (have an office now - YES!) so I no longer need the duplicate internet access. Comcast was OK. SBC DSL (for me) was better. Comcast went down more often and was less consistent speed wise. However, if it was my only broadband option, it would have been good enough. I do like that there is no contract and it's DHCP so no messing around with a login server....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------
ORIGINAL REVIEW 05/06/04: Already have SBC's DSL that works perfectly and is very reliable. But like all home flavored internet access, it's not always 100%. Since I work at home full time, losing my internet connection would be a major hassle. So I decided to add Comcast's service simply as a backup.
Bought a Motorola Surfboard SB5100 modem one late afternoon from Best Buy. Even had the sales kid place the order for me right there in the store. The next morning, hooked up the modem and called the toll free number that was on the Best Buy receipt. Got a guy that knew what he was doing and picked up that I knew what I was doing too. Changed a setting in IE for the proxy, surfed to »https://sas.r5.attbi.com as instructed, entered the registration info he gave me, clicked a few more links then waited for the modem to reboot. A five minute phone call and I was done. Speed was the full config at 3.256 up and 246.57 down per SBC's Elmhurst, IL speed test server (closest speed test server to me that I know of.). Speed has been consistent every time I’ve run it.
I'll still rely on SBC for my main connection on my LAN as I’ll never have to worry about phantom caps that others seem to be facing. I’m connected all business day downloading a data stream that's a little more than a gig a day. I know that’s only 22 gigs or so a month, but the DSL works so well and it’s MORE than fast enough for the data feed, so why risk the dreaded Comcast letter?
I then bought a Xincom dual WAN router and attempted to load balance/rollover the two connections. Unfortunately, because the data feed vendors I use are very picky, they see packets split from two WAN connections as two attempts to login to the same program and thus, lock me out completely. They also tend to die if interrupted when a connection fails (can’t tell you how many times I pulled the plug on one modem just to see how long it would take to reestablish) which then requires a closing and restart of the software. That can take upwards of 30 seconds. The router worked exactly as I'd expect (downtime from a pulled plug test was maybe 8 seconds once I got it configured correctly). It's just the software I used didn't like the change over. Not Xincom's fault. So if the DSL dies, I can easily just jump over to the other machine set up on Comcast that has comparable (but not identical) software that’s already running. Max down time – maybe 10 seconds. That works for me.
Other than the registration phone call, haven’t needed tech support so I didn’t rate that other than neutral. Usable extras with Comcast are better than SBC so far (web space that isn’t Prodigy’s old weak Ameritech pages) and more email addresses but the main reason I got the service was for backup.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Comcast Formerly ATT Broadband |
|
Comcast Formerly ATT Broadband
(21)
·