 Review by Meteor Dive 
UPDATED: 45 days ago
member for 7.2 years, 1480 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Silver Spring,Montgomery,MD
 $60 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
 Verizon
 "Fast and Reliable. Few New Tier Plans."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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10/25/02
Well my move to Covad from AOL went pretty quick. Rather, it went quicker than I have ever expected. I canceled AOL around the 11th of October (. My DSL Line was then terminated on the 17th. I was in College during the time so I didn't have much time to make to the call to Covad to place my order for their services during the week. So I ordered for their services on a saturday evening on the 19th via online. The process was quick and painless. Simple clicks here and there, created a new account, and I was on the roll.
I did went on and setup my email account and dial-up connections which is a simple thing to do. No way you can go wrong there 
The SMART manager I found to be pretty nice and simple. Navigation was done with ease.
It felt odd being on Dial-up again. But hey doesn't that go everyone?
I ordered the TeleSurfer Plus (Self-Install) Plan.
- Dynamic IP
- Requires A PPPoE
- Includes a Self Install Kit:
1 -- Covad Customer Self Install CD-ROM
1 -- DSL Modem
4 -- 2Wire DSL Filters
1 -- 10ft. CAT5 Ethernet Cable
1 -- Approx 9" 6' Telephone Cord
1 -- AC adapter
1 -- 2Wire Wall Mount DSL Filter
1 -- 2Wire "Y" Adapter
For the first 4 months, I'll only be charged $21.95/mo. After that, I'll obviously hike my way up to paying $49.95 per month. And yes it includes a one year contract. This doesn't bother me much for I do plan on dedicating myself on staying with Covad for years to come.
The order was placed and I was ready to go. Covad has then Confirmed my order on next day which was Sunday. It was by Tuesday that they have confirmed my DSL availability and have scheduled to install the data line on the 24th (2002) which was Thursday. Around Thursday morning my telephone company, Verizon, called and stated that my DSL is now provisioned and ready to go.
Now that was fast!
Now by this time, my self install kit didn't arrive but I had already had a few DSL modems by my side since I purchased a few back about a year ago.
So after dinner on thursday, I went along and decided to use one the new westell modems I purchased that was in the closet. I did called up tech support just to ensure myself of the connection. I asked about the VPI/VCI settings (since some services use 8/35 where the factory could have given a different setting for the modem). They were friendly and told me the configuration should be set to 0/35. Cool I made sure my VPI/VCI were configured properly and I finally turned the modem on. Bingo! We have sync! I went ahead and configured my router. Inserted my username (userID@covad.net) and password and boom! I was flying
I did went along and tweaked my TCP settings for my line. And now I'm getting a consistent speed varying at around 1290-1305Kbps (download) and around 100-108Kbps (upload). On a recent speed test, I benchmarked at 1301/107
I'm currently synched at 1536/128 from the DSLAM.
So far I am satisfied with the service. Pings are stable and low and pretty consistent. Pinging at about 20-50ms around various locations here around the East Coast. Gateway route has been pretty clean in my line test. Page Response timing has been very quick.
I will be running stats independently on the line to see how things are going as my time with the service progresses.
Thankyou for being prompt Covad. I'm very impressed so far with the entire process.
Update 8/15/03
Service is still running solid. Speed are still consistent. There hasn't been a slow down yet. The radius server went down about three times over the last 10 months as indicated on my router around the usual 4:00am time. I concluded they were scheduled maintenance. Routing is still awesome.
E-mails are still working nicely. Overall, I'm continuing to enjoy the service as I did the first time I went live with Covad.
Whew its now 2/23/05
Hello DSLR! (well I'm still an ol' fan of the acronym of the site back in the days).
Time for a review. Still here up and running with Covad. I have renewed their contracts roughly more than a year ago (doing so gauranteed another 4 months of free service as well as paying $10 cheaper monthly) and so as of now I'm only paying $39.95 for their services. Speeds have yet to decline and the connection is still is rock solid as ever. Only once the connection was down since the last review, due to no response from the PPPoE server (some time about November on 2004). Connection was reestablished 15mins later so it was not much a serious problem at all :P Other than that, everything has been rather clean with their Covad's services.
**May 5, 2006**
Whew its been long since my last review hasn't it? lol
Covad still has been working superb. Once again, PPPoE server dropped again roughly last year around December. After four years and after a renewed contract (even this contract is completed lol), I only experience two outages all together. Now that is impressive is hell. Honestly I expected more outages, especially from the many skeptical claims of the past towards Covad. To this day I'm currently paying 39.95 for their DSL service. Speeds has yet to drop and still averaging at 160 KB/s. Latency/Ping has not changed much at all. Its still ping at 20-30ms from gateway. I myself being introduced to only a few online games, there was hardly any latency issues at all. Service is still going tremendously strong to this date.
Updating again.
Today is April 26th, 2007.
Prices have reduced again, and I've, once again, renewed the contract with Covad about sometime January. With renewing the contract, Covad provided 3 free months of service. Afterwards we're only paying 24.95 monthly. Service has been reliable during my times online. The service has been enough for me to do just what I need to do. There's no rush to get into Fiber optics for a good while. Logs from the router has shown about roughly 4 outages usually in the morning times over a period of about 6 months, but I'm never home to experience it. These were seen as just simple disconnections from the PPPoE server. Whenever I came back home, the connection were normal when I was prompted of the outages. Hard to say what happend, server went down? Network went down? PPPoE negotiation issues? I'm not sure. Something did happen, but it resolved on its own. Sometime last week on the 20th of april, the modem ready light began blinking while checking out a couple youtube videos. But it sync'd right back to solid after a couple minutes.
Its been 5 years and I have yet to make any phone calls to Covad for tech support. I probably should call them at least once to give them thanks for a reliable DSL service though lol
Updating again.
Today is October 21, 2008 (Its been quite long ride!)
Few things I wanted to comment. First I haven't had an interruption of internet service for more than 1 hour!
It was just last friday that I had a awkward disconnection from the internet around midnight. It was just really weird. Modem shows a live a connection. Power is good. Link is good. Ready light quite bright. I check my router and I actually have an IP from PPPoE server! DNS is also resolvable, yet I can't connect outside the bubble behind Covad's gateway! lol I disconnected my router and reconnected it and obtained another IP and still could not surf! Called tech support and they went ahead on disconnecting my line and reprovisioning it after I gave them my circuit ID number and such. After 5mins on the phone, the line was back to life after they performed that task. Tech on the phone even chuckled a little, since it was just so awkward haha. First time experiencing something like that, was quite funny honestly lol.
Anyway that's it for down times I have with Covad. Not bad for 6 years huh?
2nd thing I wanted to comment was that I'm still using the Westell Wirespeed C90-36R516-01 that I bought back in 2002! Still works to this day!
All right! Well first off a number of tier plans offered by Covad has been somewhat overhauled and renamed. Accounts that are under the older plans won't get affected by the changes. It is up to account holders to make any changes to their billing if they wish to go to another plan. Otherwise, Covad will simply keep billing you under the older plans if you choose to stick with it. With that said, they've added a few new speed lanes for a price. For example, one of the newer plans offer 3.0Mbps/768k for 79.95/Mo SOHO type. Another one they added was 3.0Mbps/768k Standard DSL for 59.95/Mo if you choose to buy new modem/router hybrid from them (which ranges from 85 to 130$ depending on which equipment you decide to purchase).
Note***They also had promotions available where you can get rebates for the equipments you've purchased, though (sadly) I'm well beyond that period to benefit from that now *sigh* Oh well, my loss lol Life gets too busy to search for the little things behind your ISP's backyard.
Anyway, I had some birthday money left over to spend (hah). So I decided to upgrade to 3.0Mbps/768k for 59.95/Mo and purchased a new Netopia 2247NWG-T from them. Along with this upgraded, I re-renewed my contract with them.
I made the request to upgrade from the Covad service website on September 30th, 2008. Service was upgraded on October 2nd, 2008. Our Westell synced with the new speed with no problems. I recieved the new DSL modem from them roughly around the 10th of October I think. Can't remember the exact date. But it took a little more than a week for the new equipment to arrive.
Anyway, since the 2nd October I've been enjoying the new speeds! Other than that odd interruption I described earlier, the service has been rock solid as it has in the past.
At the moment, I'm definitely gonna test the durability of this Westell modem and see how long it can last and use the Netopia as another wireless bridge or perhaps an AP until the day I'll be needing it. But then again, I still have the original equipment I recieved from covad (The Zyxell modem). And its still in its original package lol!
Anyway that its for this review.
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