Review by ganjah 
UPDATED: 67 days ago
member for 7.6 years, 33 visits, last login: 67 days ago
 Vermillion,Clay,SD
 $45 per month
 about 7 days
 "Reasonable speeds"
 "Very oversold in Vermillion, slows to a crawl after 3:00PM - Update: The 9/14 node splits have reduced congestion!"
 "It's an internet connection, but how good remains to be seen. - Update: Pretty solid now."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Update 09/21/09 - Midco performed the scheduled node splits and now things are significantly better. In fact, I have no major complaints whatsoever now. I have been getting full bandwidth since the day after the node splits. My only minor complaint is pings aren't very stable, but I think that's just a factor of poor peering options in the upper Midwest, not Midco's fault specifically. Thanks for making this connection worth the money! 
Original:
I just moved here, and the only two decent ISP options in Vermillion, SD, city limits are Qwest DSL and Midcontinent cable. I chose the latter, called up, and was installed on an early morning appointment a week later. This was prior to all the college kids arriving back for school.
At first the service was fine, right at about the advertised 15/1 speeds for $35/mo + taxes & fees, both day and night. Then the college kids started coming back into town. Over the course of a week of collegians moving back to town from their summers off, the service has gone from good to 100% completely unusable after 3:00PM on weekdays, and this is my first weekend.
When I say unusable, I mean that on speedtest.net the Midcontinent test server location (in Sioux Falls, SD) which had previously been 7-10ms ping and exactly 15/1 all times of the day and night is now, at the time of this writing at noon on a Saturday, latency is at 153ms ping (we're talking a mere 5 hops to support.midco.net, all completely in-network) and speeds are atrocious, 2.43mbit down / 0.17mbit up.
It may be just my local node, but it's not my inside my house. My wrt54gl running dd-wrt claims zero additional bandwidth usage, and the cablemodem status page (Ambit SpeedStream U10C018) is showing a ton of critical errors, such as:
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No UCD's Received - Timeout
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire FEC f...
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) Init RANGING Critical Ranging Request Retries exhausted
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established Critical (3) SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Failed to acquire QAM/Q...
I've spoken to the houseful of college girls next door, and they're experiencing the same exact issues. In researching this a bit more on campus, I've found a bunch of people say this happens every year. I've placed a service call with Midcontinent, but apparently they may charge me for being called out? First I've heard of that, although having moved from KC where there's a lot of competition, I suppose I was spoiled with the customer service from EverestKC.net, Time Warner, and Comcast all competing.
I guess it's good that Midcontinent has no contracts required, because if this continues or gets worse or is not resolved satisfactorily, I may have to go with the phone-line-required Qwest, which I know for a fact isn't a lot better (having used it at a relative's house) and is more expensive. At least I'd get a local phone number out of that deal, though.
Followup comments:  ganjah
join:2002-03-28
Kansas City, KS
 ·Midcontinent Commu..
·RoadRunner Cable
| Sunday Night After not being around much of the weekend, here's my results at 11:30PM Sunday night. Keep in mind that school starts tomorrow...
Not your typically high-usage night, and you can see that the service is horrible. Supposed to be 15/1, and please recall that this is 5 hops, all in-network. Atrocious. | |
|  | ganjah
join:2002-03-28
Kansas City, KS
·Midcontinent Commu..
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: Sunday Night Called to report it, again, and it's getting worse. Starts at about 3:00PM when kids start getting home from school. Continues most of the night until the wee hours of the morning, and goes all weekend apparently...
 | |
| ganjah
join:2002-03-28
Kansas City, KS
·Midcontinent Commu..
·RoadRunner Cable
| Possible Resolution on the Horizon So, I've spoken at length with Midco and they've acknowledged that almost all of Vermillion is oversold. Their exact words were (from the local tech and the team leads on phone support), "We're planning to resolve insufficient amplification issues with node splits in the near future."
In layman's terms this means that the current node structure in Vermillion is beyond capacity, and they don't have enough bandwidth on their DOCSIS 1.1 system to handle the user density (and probably the college student usage profiles).
Apparently my node is scheduled to be split into two new and independent nodes on Sept. 15 between 12:00AM and 6:00AM. I'll wait to pass final judgment until then. In the meantime, I suppose I can tether to my 3G phone if it gets really bad. Speeds with that unlimited data plan are pretty good, and latency is at least stable, if a bit high.
On a positive note, they did acknowledge all of this information and have credited me my first month of service. The customer service has been good so far, and that's a mark in their favor. Had it been crap, I would have had no incentive to stay. Here's to hoping month two (and beyond) passes without incident! | |
| | ganjah
join:2002-03-28
Kansas City, KS | Re: Possible Resolution on the Horizon Resolved; see updates to the original review.
Current:
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