Best Internet Provider

**chefchris** · 03-01-2009, 02:24 PM

We're moving into our new town house tomorrow and looking around at internet providers. I see that AT&T has DSL bundled in with a phone line and cell phone for the same price as our usual AT&T bill. Our other options are Cox Communications and through GRU which is a multi-service utility owned by Gainesville.

What's the best "bang for the buck" out there?

**Alcibiates** · 03-01-2009, 09:28 PM

I haven't seen the bundle deal from AT&T that includes a cell phone, but their DSL is usually pretty good, particularly if you're moving into a heavily urbanized area or if you plan on having to use your internet at peak hours.

Cox is going to use Cable internet, which is one big line run for an entire neighborhood or area, and if a bunch of people are using cox, and particularly if they're all using it at the same time, your speed can vary wildly. Although they do have some deals for cable tv and cable internet that are pretty good.

I think you're going to save the real money by buying one of the bundles from either provider, just find which bundle actually saves you more for what you need. The actual internet speeds depend on what kind of area you're moving into. Cable is generally faster, but if you're moving into an area with a lot of teenage gamers, or just heavy internet use in general, DSL can win out pretty easily.

**ashauler** · 03-02-2009, 09:28 AM

I have cox cable. Pretty reasonable cost, reliable service, and I don't have any issues with speed working on my wireless network.

**FactoredReality** · 03-02-2009, 10:08 AM

Alcibiates nailed the important points between cable and DSL. One thing you should look into is how far you are from the central phone office / exchange. DSL is distance sensitive and the further away from the exchange you are the slower the speed. You can also check cable speed stats at places like DSLReports.com

**mrtr33** · 03-02-2009, 10:25 AM

We recently were in the market for getting Internet/Phone service. I don't know how it works in your community, but AT&T had several incentives for people who signed up with their service online. You might want to look into it, anyway. This is the second time I've went with AT&T and I've been pleased.

I would avoid Comcast.

**Mizicke5273** · 03-02-2009, 11:37 AM

I say if its available and you have the funds; FIOS. Ive been wanting to check into it for a bit now for myself, just havent got around to it yet.

**FactoredReality** · 03-02-2009, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by Mizicke5273

I say if its available and you have the funds; FIOS. Ive been wanting to check into it for a bit now for myself, just havent got around to it yet.

I'm running FIOS with verizon. I ended up waiting over a month to get it as they were finishing connecting up my development. Instal took 4+ hrs as maintenance screwed down the crawl space access and tiled over it (they fixed this with a hearty application of hammers and crowbars). No problems or outages since I signed up.

**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.

**chefchris** · 03-04-2009, 05:11 PM

We might be going with AT&T. Where's a good place to get a DSL modem for a reasonable price?

**kevin7** · 03-04-2009, 06:36 PM

Modem should be part of the equipment they provide

Verizon provided my modem free,if not you might be getting hosed

**mrtr33** · 03-04-2009, 11:06 PM

While I agree that it SHOULD be part of the equipment they provide, I've seen more nefarious practices in years past. First, they will probably give you an option: you can either buy their modem for, say, $75, or rent theirs for $10 a month. In which case, it would depend on how long you were planning on being there as to which plan you'd go with.

What's more worrisome is that you will probably just be buying a modem, which is very necessary in connecting to the Internet, but very useless all by itself. I also connect my modem to a router, a wireless router at that, to keep my house wireless and I like the idea of a hardware firewall. Should you decide to go with a router, there are numerous ways to go about setting it up. I use WPA encryption with an impossibly long password full of lower, upper characters, numbers, and symbols, a masked SSID, and MAC address authentication. The 70 year old neighbors probably will never notice, but a Wardriver will.

Bottom line: I've just always suckered up and paid the telco for the modem. I guess I could take a stand and buy mine independently, but I just never have. If you do get their modem, and have a router you want to connect, and can't, you may need to bridge your modem to work with your router....but the above should get you going for now.

**Kenyth** · 03-05-2009, 08:38 AM

Originally Posted by mrtr33

While I agree that it SHOULD be part of the equipment they provide, I've seen more nefarious practices in years past. First, they will probably give you an option: you can either buy their modem for, say, $75, or rent theirs for $10 a month. In which case, it would depend on how long you were planning on being there as to which plan you'd go with.

What's more worrisome is that you will probably just be buying a modem, which is very necessary in connecting to the Internet, but very useless all by itself. I also connect my modem to a router, a wireless router at that, to keep my house wireless and I like the idea of a hardware firewall. Should you decide to go with a router, there are numerous ways to go about setting it up. I use WPA encryption with an impossibly long password full of lower, upper characters, numbers, and symbols, a masked SSID, and MAC address authentication. The 70 year old neighbors probably will never notice, but a Wardriver will.

Bottom line: I've just always suckered up and paid the telco for the modem. I guess I could take a stand and buy mine independently, but I just never have. If you do get their modem, and have a router you want to connect, and can't, you may need to bridge your modem to work with your router....but the above should get you going for now.

The benefit of buying from the Telco is that it should be set up for use when you get it. They filter devices by MAC address, so if you buy your own, you have to deal with a long call to tech support to get it going. Tech support reps also tend to be more difficult if you buy your own equipment.

WPA with a good passphrase is a good idea, but MAC and IP filtering is pretty useless these days. It doesn't take much to spoof those. They are deterrents only to the most casual wireless sniffers. Your encryption is your first, and best, line of defense.

**mrtr33** · 03-05-2009, 01:20 PM

Originally Posted by Kenyth

WPA with a good passphrase is a good idea, but MAC and IP filtering is pretty useless these days. It doesn't take much to spoof those. They are deterrents only to the most casual wireless sniffers. Your encryption is your first, and best, line of defense.

Thanks for the advice. I know I should probably use WPA2, but I can't get it to work with all OS's in the house. I wasn't aware that masking your SSID or MAC filtering were an ineffective security measure now.