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Should I get EarthLink?

cleo

cleo

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 21, 2002
1,186
0
Tampa Bay Area, FL, USA
I've been thinking about changing my ISP from Roadrunner cable to Earthlink DSL. I very rarely get even 500kb/sec downstream with Roadrunner, and things get very, very bad on nights and weekends (we're talking under 100kb/sec). Does anyone in the Tampa Bay area (I'm in central Pinellas) have Earthlink DSL? Can anyone anywhere offer any advice?
 
medea

medea

macrumors 68030
Aug 4, 2002
2,517
1
Madison, Wi
I don't use earthlink anymore but I can say that your speeds would probably not be any higher with DSL than they already are with Cable. I used to have earthlink through sprint but had many problems in my area with them (ft.myers, about 2 hours from tampa) so I dropped the phone company completely.
 
evildead

evildead

macrumors 65816
Jun 18, 2001
1,275
0
WestCost, USA
RR

I have RoadRunner Cable and I get 1000kb/sec - 1200kb/sec. A friend that lives in the area has Earthlink DSL and he gets 600/sec.

It really depends where you live. I would go to DSLreports.com and look for people that live near you. Find the best speeds and feedback. I had Earthlink dial up a long time ago and I like the conmpany. RR has been great too.

My cable is faster than all the people with DSL I know, but my cable service is also the righest rated in my area. I love when the DSL comersals were on that showed people fighting over cable connection speeds. My friends all believed them. I took them to dslreports.com and tested their lines... then showed my my saved testresults... they were pissed off.

-evildead
 
maradong

maradong

macrumors 65816
Mar 7, 2003
1,058
0
Luxembourg
Just a little remark.
talking of dsl @ speeds higher thatn 8mbit is nonesense as the dsl standart is only going to 8 mbit and not a bit more. thats the theoretical maximum.
DSL will never be faster than cable. thats impossible.

By the way what does a connection ike the yours cost by month evildead? here in luxembourg i think you could not pay it, way to expensive.
( i only got 256 kbit meaning 32 K byte max in dl and 196 up :) , so it s kindastrange for me to hear people say there download speed is not good @ 500 kb sec :) )
 
jholzner

jholzner

macrumors 65816
Jul 24, 2002
1,385
21
Champaign, IL
If you're using PPPoE with DSL you cannot use AppleTalk OR Rendezvous...didn't realize this until after I singed a contract with SBC for DSL...once my contract is up I'm switching to cable...these new technologies (rendezvous) are too cool not to mess with.
 
chibianh

chibianh

macrumors 6502a
Nov 6, 2001
783
1
Colorado
Originally posted by maradong

By the way what does a connection ike the yours cost by month evildead? here in luxembourg i think you could not pay it, way to expensive.
( i only got 256 kbit meaning 32 K byte max in dl and 196 up :) , so it s kindastrange for me to hear people say there download speed is not good @ 500 kb sec :) )
Click to expand...

I have dsl and pay $50/month. I get speeds of around 500-600 kbps down (that's about 60-70 kiloBYTES per second) and 200-300 kbps up. That is slower than what my friends have for their cable line which is not available in my area. But i'm not complaining. WOW is coming soon and they're offering 3mbit up/down for $45/month ;)
 
MacBandit

MacBandit

macrumors 604
Aug 9, 2002
7,440
8
Springfield, OR (Home of the Simpsons)
Re: Should I get EarthLink?

Originally posted by cleo
I've been thinking about changing my ISP from Roadrunner cable to Earthlink DSL. I very rarely get even 500kb/sec downstream with Roadrunner, and things get very, very bad on nights and weekends (we're talking under 100kb/sec). Does anyone in the Tampa Bay area (I'm in central Pinellas) have Earthlink DSL? Can anyone anywhere offer any advice?
Click to expand...


Are you saying kilobits which is abbreviated Kb as you have it or kilobytes wich is abbreviated KB which I think you mean?
 
Foxer

Foxer

macrumors 65816
Feb 22, 2003
1,274
30
Washington, DC
I just switched from RR to earthlink, because i hate the cable companies and will do anything to avoid giving them money. I ran the cnet tester, too. Here's what I got...
 
MacBandit

MacBandit

macrumors 604
Aug 9, 2002
7,440
8
Springfield, OR (Home of the Simpsons)
Originally posted by Foxer
I just switched from RR to earthlink, because i hate the cable companies and will do anything to avoid giving them money. I ran the cnet tester, too. Here's what I got...
Click to expand...


Are you on Earthlink DSL? How much are you paying for that sort of speed?

Here's my speed with Comcast Cable.
 
Foxer

Foxer

macrumors 65816
Feb 22, 2003
1,274
30
Washington, DC
Originally posted by MacBandit
Are you on Earthlink DSL? How much are you paying for that sort of speed?
Click to expand...


Yep. Earthlink DSL. It runs the same cost per month as my roadrunner did - about $40 month. Of course, I get the first three months at 1/2 price. Oddly, when I called to enroll, they transferred me to my local cable (Time Warner) office to schedule an installation. So the TWC guy came out, took the Roadrunner box and replaced it with a new Earthlink box. I wasn't there, but my wife says that that was the extent of his work. I suspect I have the same thing I had before....
 
evildead

evildead

macrumors 65816
Jun 18, 2001
1,275
0
WestCost, USA
Originally posted by maradong

By the way what does a connection ike the yours cost by month evildead? here in luxembourg i think you could not pay it, way to expensive.
Click to expand...

I pay $40 US per month. With all the taxes it comes to about $45

-evildead
 
macphoria

macphoria

macrumors 6502a
Nov 29, 2002
594
0
Personally I recommend Earthlink. I've used them for a long time and their customer service is quite impressive. One time, this lady stayed with me on the phone for more than 20 minutes to help me set up, and even told me how to reach her again if things didn't work properly. This might have been a rare case, but even after that other customer service related issues with Earthlink were always handled promptly and professionally.
 
MacBandit

MacBandit

macrumors 604
Aug 9, 2002
7,440
8
Springfield, OR (Home of the Simpsons)
Originally posted by macphoria
Personally I recommend Earthlink. I've used them for a long time and their customer service is quite impressive. One time, this lady stayed with me on the phone for more than 20 minutes to help me set up, and even told me how to reach her again if things didn't work properly. This might have been a rare case, but even after that other customer service related issues with Earthlink were always handled promptly and professionally.
Click to expand...

I agree I had Earthlink for dial-up for about a year and I have to say that was one of the best access experiences I have had. The only thing better was when I lived on campus and had an ethernet connection that I was getting regular 500KB-800KB/s downloads through.
 
K

King Cobra

macrumors 603
Mar 2, 2002
5,403
0
Our family had Earthlink dial-up for a few years and the first year or two, on the contrast, was the worst experience ever with dial-up.

We got disconnected 6 times for various reasons (password wasn't entered correctly on the other end, charge card was not charged, etc.) and with each occassion my father had to spend around 20 minutes on his cell discussing the issue with the dumbf**ks at the other end.

Of course, I would not recommend my N.J. dial-up service from fcc.net, either. I get disconnected, on average, about 5 to 10 times per week I am constantly using the internet in N.J. Go figure. :rolleyes:

I've found that your best connection is most likely going to be from some local serivce that does little or no advertising and has a low monthly charge. This seems to be true for a majority of our internet services so far.
 
snahabed

snahabed

macrumors regular
Sep 14, 2002
165
0
New York, NY
I just want to chime in.

It is well settled that, in many situations, cable is a bit faster than DSL. Of course it depends on distance from a phone company's central office, or the amount of users piping through a cable termination point at any given time.

That said, Comcast is the most evil company in the world. They were complete jackasses from start to finish. So I switched to Earthlink DSL. My speeds are more than adequate for my needs, and Earthlink is an Apple-friendly delight.

My only problem is bad Airport reception, but that's Apple's fault, not Earthlink's :)
 
celaurie

celaurie

macrumors 6502a
Mar 2, 2003
628
148
Scotland, UK.
Originally posted by Foxer
I just switched from RR to earthlink, because i hate the cable companies and will do anything to avoid giving them money. I ran the cnet tester, too. Here's what I got...
Click to expand...

Okay, I ran the test three times on the Charter Pipline DSL connection I'm currently using - the results varied from 592 - 989kbps...

How is that?

Chris, the confused. :confused:
 
J

jragsdale

macrumors newbie
Apr 13, 2003
25
0
Originally posted by celaurie
Okay, I ran the test three times on the Charter Pipline DSL connection I'm currently using - the results varied from 592 - 989kbps...

How is that?

Chris, the confused. :confused:
Click to expand...

600 to 1000kbps is at or just under 1mbit. What was your advertised speeds? If they advertised 1.5mbits and you're somewhat far away from them, that seems right in line. Do you play any multiplayer games? If your ping times are consistantly 60 to 80ms or less on nice servers then don't complain :)

I may get 2mbits but I consistantly have 100ms to 150ms latency on nice game servers while others are in the 60's to 80's. I think some ISP's decide whether or not they want to offer great latency or great download speeds and set a happy medium.

Celo, you should call your ISP and ask why it's so slow. If they don't have an answer you should just move, I'd bet you wouldn't see those kind of speeds again with DSL.

DSL has other benefits too, most Cable companies block port 80 whereas most DSL companies don't. So with DSL you could run a small web server. I've heard your connection with DSL is suppose to be stable, if so I'd rather have that myself vs. 200KB+ in the morning and 100KB in the evening, or something like 100KB or slower when it's usually fast.
 
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