Why does @Home suck for people

[Hoober]

I've had @Home for about a year now. My roommate and I play QIIIA on it all the time through home network and don't have any problems with it. Everybody I talk to, though, says that its horrible... why?!?!?! I've never had problems with it. Maybe I'm just lucky. Anybody got an opinion?????

 

[nateholtrop]

700+ pings on Counter Strike and 15K/sec download rates.....and the 50 dollar month price tag...screw them I am going DSL.

Nate

 

[pm]

I've noticed that it's very area dependent. I love my @Home connection here in Colorado - my friend in San Francisco complained constantly about his and finally switched to DSL.

 

[spidey07]

I think it goes by area.

my pings are never over 50 and I get 400+ kbytes/sec download. But I hear that is VERY LUCKY.

my friends on DSL are so freakin jealous.

<edit> email and tech support are beyond pitiful though

 

[Hoober]

Yeah, it must be area. I'm in Colorado, too and I get 400+K/sec downloads without any disconnects or errors. Guess we are lucky, pm.

 

[Russ]

My biggest complaint with them is all the mail I get bounced back to me when responding to people using their service.

Russ, NCNE

 

[BCYL]

I have no compliant about @Home's speed (except when the service goes down occasionally) or their price ($40 CAN a month, including modem rental)... But their customer support sucks! Those guys dont know anything, and they think you dont know sh!t too!

 

[travisio]

Im not sure what service Cox Communication uses but I have the worst pings and DLs ever. I play CS, if I play at like 1 in the morning I get right around 100 ping everywhere. Heaven forbid when I play between 5:00-12:00 the pings avg. 300+ I emailed them telling them that their service was unacceptable and they emailed me back saying we are expecting new equipment in a month for upgrades. I wonder how many other people got that exact same email......

 

[Durron]

It has alot to do with the actual cable company in your area. And what modems they are giving people. Here in Sarasota, FL we have Comcast Cable. They used to provide the standard Motorola POS modems. They did alright, I could get maybe 200KB/sec max to a good server. But after alot of bitching from customers they are starting to switch over to the new DOCIS modems (Digital, they keep saying, whatever)...but now I can get a good 600KB/sec easy. Uploads are still capped at 15KB/sec which really bites but oh well. Uptime is pretty good for the area though I will say. However their support is REALLY bad, apparently noone there really knows what they are doing. (don't get me wrong though I used to be having alot of problems with my @home service and they weren't helping at all, my problem was only fixed after i got the new type of modem)(the problem was getting timeouts between me and my gateway, but they insisted it was my machine (yeah right))

 

[BCYL]

Durron:

I know exactly what you mean about their service... they ALWAYS insists it's your machine first, unless you can prove to them beyond any doubt it's not you... then they will switch over to the &quot;we are having temporarily difficulties with our servers, should be fix in a min...&quot; line...

 

[Fattz]

I guess I am lcky... My @home is pretty ok all things considering..and since its the only cable avail. in the area... guess I can't be choosey lol

I get between 200 - 300 K transfers...and they pretty much always up.. their email seems better now but for awhile, it was horrid...and they always credit me time when I call and complain if their service is down.. so All in all they ok

 

[Rifter]

@home is ok for me, i get 50ms ping anywhere in north america, and 200-300kbps downloads. There e-mail is a joke though, the servers are down as often as not, so i dont use @home e-mail for anything important.

 

[travisio]

Would any of you ping your default gateway with the MTU and tell me about how many ms it averages?

 

[Fallen Kell]

I can tell you from the experiences that I have had. I have had @HOME pretty much since it came out (3.5 - 4 years ago). Everything is setup in sections called &quot;blocks&quot;. Each &quot;block&quot; has a max bandwidth cap that everyone on the &quot;block&quot; shares. &quot;Blocks&quot; range in size from 2 city blocks to several square miles. If you happen to have a lot of people in your area that uses @HOME then your speeds will decrease with every user.

I happen to live in an area in which the &quot;block&quot; that I am on seems to be fairly small and there are not many people on it with me. I also happen to have fiber-optic lines from the junction box 30 feet from my house to my server allowing for HUGE bandwidth in the area. My average connection download is 99% limited to the system I am connecting to. I have run some tests with servers estimating my download to be in the order of 8.5Mbps which is MASSIVE for an system. My upload is capped, however, at 128kbps.

I have never had any real problems with them, but I do have to agree that their customer service people have no clue about what is going on or how to figure out what the problem is and solve it. Luckily I am a network administrator and usually know what is exactly happening and how to fix it BEFORE I even call them. Once I can get them to transfer me to tier 2 tech support things usually are fixed shortly. I have also found that if you are nice to the tier 1 guys, they tend to speed things up and transfer you sooner (and you show that you have at least a brain and know what you are talking about).

All in all, I can't beat the service I am getting not unless I want to spend $2000 a month for a T4 connection. But like I said, it is dependent on the area you are in, your cable lines (fiber is better), and how many people are also using the service in your area.

 

[PrinceofWands]

As a former tier II tech (for about a year) I can shed a little light.

@Home as a company sucks, its management is among the worst I've seen and it's policies prevent improvement of the service. The MSO's (cable companies) are even worse. Area's are a major deal, vancouver WA for instance has sucked donkey dung for 4 months out of the last 12. You've just basically been lucky Hoober.

Russ - @Home email systems have consistently been rated the worst of all US ISP's.

BCYL &amp; Durron - Now now, lets rephrase that. How about 'MOST' techs don't know anything. I may not be the computer God but I do have my pride. BTW you should know that @Home techs aren't allowed to truly 'troubleshoot' a problem. We had specific things we had to do and say or we got fired. Blaming the customers system was pretty far up the list.

Fallen Kell - They may have been called 'blocks' when the service started, but now they're called 'nodes'.

Anyway, any other questions just ask, I'm always happy to expose @Home for the failure it is

theprinceofwands@home.com

 

[iamwiz82]

i like my ping and download. I hit a record of 1.1 megaBYTES one night with 2 200 meg files downloading simultaneously

 

[Dazmite]

@Homes great here in Connecticut too, for me atleast. And for 29.95 a month as oposed to DSLs 49.95 rates. Besides with cable, internet, and our phone system all from 1 company I get a cool 10 bucks off every month.
Daz

 

[pdo]

I have no complaints with DL but when it comes to gaming it's no problem in the morning, but from 5-11 PM it's unplayable..

 

[darth maul]

Ya my pings go thru the cieling 5-11 or so too, they have blamed it on someone in their service area having the same IP as me, and they are spliting bandwidth with me......hmmm, I didn't even know that was possible....is it? Tracert's done thru MS dos prompt show a great ping ~10ms for the first two hops at all times, but the third hop it springs to 120-150, and this is only during the bad pinging times of 5-11. During off peak hours, I am pinging around 40 to yahoo, and usally under 70 to most GOOD Q3 servers. And don't even get me started on @home's email problems, heck even the local cable people said &quot;just use hotmail or something&quot;. I think I am going to write the editor of the paper here real soon.

 

[DavidJr]

I to live in CO and love it!! But I hate them!! They sent me an email saying they are capping me at 128kps now, when now, I am getting 1000kps about. It makes me mad why they have to do this, they say it wont affect the average user, but what about the online gamers???? Like me, we need good upload speeds, but now I cant host for my friends anymore, and that makes me mad, why cant they cap us at a little more speed, like 384kps or 400kps or something, that would be fine with me, but 128, HA, thats 2x a 56k, what a croc. Whenever something with no cap gets closer to me I am getting rid of this!!!

 

[Quad]

@HOMO SUCKS!

i live in toronto, and the rogers @home service here is horrible. quake pings are disgusting: 150 ping with 45% pl. WTF!

i want to get dsl, but it's not available in my area. 1 km from my house, it's available, but not for me. o well.

i hate @home and all it's affiliates/employees with a vengeance.

 

[sadb0i]

how is it in the sac area...i may get it...or should i just go DSL?

 

[TheCableGuy]

Princeofwands is right, it all depends on the area. I'm the HSD Technical Manager of a major contracting firm for Comcast@Home. Prince is right... the tech support are not all idiots, and they are limited in what they can troubleshoot over the phone. My techs take the troubleshooting to the field, and it does very much depend on area. In @Home's favor though, they are in the process of restructuring each area's system to the DOCSIS modems. It's gonna take a little while though, they have to change out the routers to support it. Anyone who knows anything about Cisco stuff knows what a pain upgrades are. Imagine changing out routers that support 30,000 plus remote clients......

 

[Hoober]

Yeah... I just did an upgrade where I work, which is 2000 remote clients. And that was a pain...

 

[DavidJr]

How do we know if we are running DOCSIS @home system? I would kinda like to know. My download speeds depending upon the site can be as much as 700KB and as little as 50KB, but average around 300KB now. I picked up some download speed with the new cap, but would rather be uncapped and have my 250KB download speed.