Philadelphia high speed internet

DiscoZombie

I am unable to express with words how much I hate Comcast. It is a monopoly, so I have no other options I can find. They charge way too much and the cable and especially internet are incredibly shoddy. They don't allow routers unless you can find a way around their protections, and the internet dies every 5 minutes during peak hours. Not good, especially for MMORPG raiders like me and my wife. You can wait for an hour on hold with them if you try to call for help, and since the problem is intermittent they "can't" diagnose it.

Anyone know of a better ISP in the philly area or am I SOL? Can 2 people play an online game on one DSL connection and still get a decent ping? can you get DSL if you don't have a home phone?

Crashtard

Is this available in your area?

http://www.rcn.com/philadelphia/special-offers

DiscoZombie

Crashtard wrote: »

Is this available in your area?

http://www.rcn.com/philadelphia/special-offers

I did find that one, and I tried entering my (philadelphia) address, and it's like, "sorry, we're only available in ... and Philadelphia"...

also read some horrible reviews... I'd almost be desperate enough to try anyway. Don't know why there isn't more competition between cable internet providers. I guess so many people get satellite tv that there isn't a large enough market for just cable internet yet?

Mim

what about verizon? that's what I have at the moment and I'm not complaining. It handled RO for me (when I played) but I'm unsure of bigger MMOs.

lifeincognito

Mim wrote: »

what about verizon? that's what I have at the moment and I'm not complaining. It handled RO for me (when I played) but I'm unsure of bigger MMOs.

You could probably get FioS and never worry again? They seem to be pushing it hard in the Philadelphia area, at least in my next of the woods (near the boarder with the city).

shadowane

I have comcast in philadelphia and have absolutely none of your problems. I have a router, the internet is fast enough, and it very rarely dies and not during peak hours the last time I can remember. Are you sure the lines going into or through your house aren't just terrible?

Dog

Where do you live?


I've lived all over the city so I can probably help you out. Although like shadowane, I never had a problem with Comcast.

DiscoZombie

shadowane wrote: »

I have comcast in philadelphia and have absolutely none of your problems. I have a router, the internet is fast enough, and it very rarely dies and not during peak hours the last time I can remember. Are you sure the lines going into or through your house aren't just terrible?

I live in west philly, a few blocks west of university city...

I would try to get Fios but it's not available here yet apparently, nor has it been available in any of the Bucks County apartments I lived in before this.

I've had comcast in my last 3 apartments out of necessity, and it has been awful in all 3 places. The router blockage is apparently pretty common, but I followed this and similar guides to get around their safeguards, so that's not really an issue anymore. Some days, my connection will be fine, and other days, I will lose connection every 5 minutes for hours - extremely frustrating. I watch the lights on the modem, and whenever the connection fritzes out, 2 of the lights on the modem go out for like 30 seconds or so and then come back on (and the connection is back, at least temporarily). It could be a bad line, but that would be a surprising coincidence since I had these problems in 3 different apartments on 3 different lines. It could be a bad modem, which is a bit more likely, since I've had the same modem in 2 of the 3 places - I don't know if it's that either though, because I actually have another modem they issued me, and that one works even worse...

I probably wouldn't even notice the problem if I wasn't an online gamer - if you're just browsing the web, it doesn't matter if a page doesn't load for an extra few seconds. If you lose connection on a raid boss though, you have 24 people pissed off at you for wasting their time and e-gold. -_-

thanks for the comments so far though

Dog

So are you a drexel/penn student? If so you can probably get a discount via RCN or RoadRunner (maybe TW too?), whatever they have in your area. We were able to get cheap RoadRunner there when I was still in school, it wasn't fantastic speeds but never had a problem with 4 people sharing a connection and playing MMOs.