Best Internet Provider

**FunkyCold5** · 03-02-2009, 03:11 PM

Have used COX since back in the day. Happy with customer service, cable and High Speed Internet.

Since I moved to a different County, I wanted to use COX, but they did not have service, so now I use Verizon Fios and am happy with it.

Highly recommend Cox if that's one of your choices.

Andrew

**Silencei2** · 03-02-2009, 05:07 PM

I setup internet for clients as part of my job and personally I use COX/cable internet.

COX in Southern California gives you anywhere from 5-15mbits down and 1-2mbits up. They are also pretty flexible with the pricing which means you can call in every few months and get their new package deals and save a few bucks.

Other Cable providers such as Time Warner have caught some flak due to speed/bandwidth throttling. In turn that means that certain things (eg. P2P etc.) will go slower and they also will have quotas for bandwidth so if you download more than 20gb per month you'll get an overage charge like $2.00/gb you go over.

AT&T and any other DSL usually hits 6mbits max from what I have seen. I just checked their site now and they offer Elite DSL for $35. If you're looking to save money then this would be the way to go but DSL has always been slower than Cable. Plus on some connections you have to hassle with PPPoE authentication which sucks for the most part. Your speed will also be affected by how far you are from their phone servers/boxes (the giant green boxes you see on the side of the street).

FIOS is relatively new but the hype and specs got me excited about it. A few of the client's I've seen with FIOS have been capped at 10mbits which is pretty bad compared to cable internet. I have also seen some people who've had issues with their FIOS service. Since it's still relatively new, I can't say much about it.

I would do a little research on the company you go with cause they always have a catch. Personally I'd stick with cable internet.

What Alcibiates said about sharing a cable line with people in your area is true but from the 7 years I've used cable internet I've never seen a drop in internet speed during peak hours. DSL and FIOS are dedicated lines and Cable would be the only one where you share bandwidth neighbors

**FactoredReality** · 03-03-2009, 12:19 PM

Originally Posted by Silencei2

What Alcibiates said about sharing a cable line with people in your area is true but from the 7 years I've used cable internet I've never seen a drop in internet speed during peak hours.

When I lived in Iowa I fought this issue for months. Turned out that during peak hours it was the DNS servers that took the biggest hit and would get overloaded and so they would throttle or disable my half of their network to reduce load and recover the server.
What I have found is you either have no issue or its so bad you can't do anything.

**Silencei2** · 03-03-2009, 07:33 PM

Originally Posted by FactoredReality

When I lived in Iowa I fought this issue for months. Turned out that during peak hours it was the DNS servers that took the biggest hit and would get overloaded and so they would throttle or disable my half of their network to reduce load and recover the server.
What I have found is you either have no issue or its so bad you can't do anything.

Makes sense... sounds like that ISP was cheaping out on server capacity though... I would hope most ISPs don't do that but who knows these days

**Kenyth** · 03-04-2009, 08:46 AM

A way around the problem with overloaded DNS servers is to find some others to use as backups. If you ping websites from a command prompt and don't get immediate address resolution, DNS is the problem. Turn off DHCP on DNS for your connection and insert the static address of a DNS server from a local college or other public accessible server. Sometimes, if you do work from home, your place of business will let you use their public side accessible DNS server, if they have one.

**chefchris** · 03-04-2009, 01:04 PM

Cox has 1.5 Mbps down/ 256 kbps up for $29.99. I don't know anything about speed. Is that relatively fast? I don't do a lot of downloading. Maybe a cd every other week.

Thanks for everyone's help.

**mrtr33** · 03-04-2009, 01:55 PM

I guess it would depend on what you use the Internet for. If you play games, download lots of information, sometimes even communication applications (I'm thinking Skype, etc.), watch Hulu movies, or stream anything online, 1.5Mbps might drive you insane unless you buffer your streaming feeds. I know it would drive me nuts. RARELY do you get the advertised speed consistently.

Also, if you have your own website, are uploading pictures/music/movies/data to the web, 256 may not cut it, either.

But for $30, if what you mostly do is surf cigarsmokers.com, read e-mail and download the occasional CD, go for it. Nothing is to say you can't upgrade after a month or two of not liking it.