Review by Mr_Stealth 
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 3519 visits, last login: 17 days ago
 Lucasville,Scioto,OH
 $32 per month (12 month contract)
 about 4 days
 Verizon (ex GTE)
 "Rock solid connection for over 3 years"
 "Service quickly went downhill after offering higher speeds to area"
 "Verizon started offering more than they could actually provide"
| Pre Sales information:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Final Update (Feb 29, 2008)
After three years of stable service, Verizon DSL took a nose dive during the end of December 2007. They had recently expanded the availbility of 1.5 mpbs and 3 mpbs packages in the area, but had failed to upgrade their network to handle the new load. Myself and my neighbor who also has Verizon DSL began noticing very low speeds during peak hours and were getting frequent disconnects. Our modems were not losing sync, but equipment on Verizon's end would completely drop us off of their network.
After a few calls to tech support, Verizon admitted that some equipment had "traffic congestion" and transferred *my* connection to another circuit on their network. This did (for a short time) fix my connection, but did nothing for my neighbor who was left on the overloaded part of their network. After a few weeks of little problems I started getting slow speed and disconnects again.
I have not, and likely will not be calling Verizon to fix this again, because at the beginning of Feb 2008 Time Warner began advertising for RoadRunner service to be available soon. I have an install scheduled in the 1st week of March, and if all goes well my Verizon DSL serviced will be terminated at that time.
My only dealings with Verizon Tech Support was during this time nearing the end of my having service with them, and I do have to say that their support policy proved to be absolutely appalling. Nothing was done to actually fix the issue. They merely took a stop-gap measure to improve service for one outspoken customer, leaving others with nothing but excuses and attempts to blame the problems on the customer's computer/router. Three years of excellent service does nothing to make up for this completely irresponsible and unethical policy of "silencing" customers that show knowledge of the problems and speak out to get them addressed.
For more information about my problems with Verizon, check the forum thread I started about it. »[connectivity] Repeatedly losing IP (still sync'd) every day 8:3
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The remainder of this review holds true for the three years of services from Oct 2004 through Dec 2007. I enjoyed three years of excellent service (only 768 kbps was available, but it was a solid and stable service).
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I've had Verizon DSL since 10/27/04 and haven't had any major problems with it. I'm about 17,000 feet from the CO, so I'm stuck on the 768/128 package. Speeds have always been very consistent at about 715/135 (90KB/s for downloads). There hasn't been a single outage except for having my PPPoE connection dropped for a few seconds during network maintenance.
Installation was easy. I recieved my Versalink Wireless Gateway the day before my service ready email. I used Verizon's CD set up the Versalink, then used GoBack to revert the PCs hard drive, and then manually setup my email accounts in Thunderbird. After getting everything working with one PC, I disabled NAT and wireless in the Versalink and setup my Linksys WRT54GS to handle PPPoE and NAT. Haven't had any problems with this setup.
My only complaint is the ping times. Most of my latency is between my router and Verizon's gateway. I get 35ms to the 1st hop past my router. After it gets past that 1st hop, pings seem good across Verizon's backbone. Even with the added time from their gateway, I can still find plenty of good servers for Call of Duty and Counter-Strike. Unlike my previous ISP (a local WISP), I haven't noticed any problems with packet loss during gaming, and my line packet loss test looks good.
I've only had to contact their tech support one time concerning my DSL. The first day my service was active, I noticed that my ping was about 20ms higher than my neighbor who just got Verizon DSL a few days earlier. Thanks to the users in BBR's Verizon DSL forum, I found out that my modem was operating in interleaved mode instead of fast path. I was advised to call Verizon and ask for it to be switched. I called, and the first tech I spoke to told me that I was using interleaved mode because their system thought it was necessary, and that it couldn't be changed. I knew he was wrong and asked to speak to a higher level tech. The next tech told me that I was using interleaved because I had low signal strength and that using fast path would almost certainly cause problems like my modem losing sync. I told him to switch it anyway because that extra 20ms was a problem for me, and he reluctanty did it. After getting it fixed I found the most likely cause of the low signal, dirty connections in my NID. I cleaned off the copper connecters which increased my signal strength, and I haven't had any problems with my modem losing sync.
Overall, I am satisfied with the service. Although, I do wish I was closer to the CO and could get the 1500/384 or 3000/768 package.
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