Changing ISP's

[lparsons21]

Mediacomm, after 3 years decided it was time for me to pay them $64/month for their internet service. 12Mb/1Mb cablemodem, and honestly it has worked quite well for some time.

But with the combination of this now 'full retail price' and the introduction of some caps and overage fees that they just started very quietly, it is time to move to something good enough, even if it isn't quite as fast.

For $30/month Frontier will give me 6Mb down and whatever up. Certainly much slower, but it will support HD and SD video streams just fine and anything else I'll want to do. Hopefully the phone jack in the room where the cablemodem is still works as that would make it easier to just switch out.

Mediacomm here keeps talking about losing customers, but then they don't have much to offer. About 25 HD channels total, only one of any of the Premiums (ie; 1 HBO, 1 SHO and so on), and their VOD is just SD. And then there's the prices, fine during promos, terrible otherwise.

I've been with Frontier before when they only had 3Mb service and it was fine, but I wanted more and they didn't have it. 6Mb will get it done and at a great price.

 

[Teehar]

Mediacomm, after 3 years decided it was time for me to pay them $64/month for their internet service. 12Mb/1Mb cablemodem, and honestly it has worked quite well for some time.

But with the combination of this now 'full retail price' and the introduction of some caps and overage fees that they just started very quietly, it is time to move to something good enough, even if it isn't quite as fast.

For $30/month Frontier will give me 6Mb down and whatever up. Certainly much slower, but it will support HD and SD video streams just fine and anything else I'll want to do. Hopefully the phone jack in the room where the cablemodem is still works as that would make it easier to just switch out.

Mediacomm here keeps talking about losing customers, but then they don't have much to offer. About 25 HD channels total, only one of any of the Premiums (ie; 1 HBO, 1 SHO and so on), and their VOD is just SD. And then there's the prices, fine during promos, terrible otherwise.

I've been with Frontier before when they only had 3Mb service and it was fine, but I wanted more and they didn't have it. 6Mb will get it done and at a great price.

Honestly $30 for 6Mb down ain't bad.It costs $45 for that with AT&T and that's with a bundle.6Mb down is plenty fast enough for streaming HD video and d/loading.Not much of an online gamer but,I'm sure it would do all right for that as well.If Frontier or any other provider offered a deal like that here AT&T would be out the door in a flash.

 

[lparsons21]

I think $30/month for that service is wonderful! Cheap enough to not notice the bill, and fast enough to get all I want done.

I just hate changing!

 

[Voyager6]

I think $30/month for that service is wonderful! Cheap enough to not notice the bill, and fast enough to get all I want done.

I just hate changing!

Use that price as leverage against Mediacomm. Many times when you call to cancel they somehow manage to find a discount for you.

 

[Peter Parker]

Use that price as leverage against Mediacomm. Many times when you call to cancel they somehow manage to find a discount for you.

I have to admit that I had several isues with my old cable company that tehy were not interested in dealing with----until I cancelled. At taht point they became very concerned but it was too late.

 

[lparsons21]

Well, the switchover was today and it went slick as I expected it to. Of course, the Frontier guy had no clue as to how to integrate it into my all wireless network, but I just told him to get the DSL working wired on my iMac and I could handle the rest.

When he left and I started to configure it the way I wanted which is to just be a wired router and dsl modem so that I could just plug it into my Apple Extreme wireless router. Simple as pie! Ran ethernet from the DSL modem to the WAN port on the Apple Extreme and change the config on the Extreme to bridged mode. I had thought I might have to do a bit more as I have another Extreme at my AV rack that extends the network and lets me plug in my AV gear to the wired ports on it, but no, didn't have to do anything. Picked it right up.

Then I turned off the wireless in the DSL modem. Here Frontier is using all wireless router/dsl modems from Netgear, don't know if that is the case everywhere Frontier services though.

Did a quick speed test and I'm getting 7.5/.8Mb which is certainly more than fast enough.

Now to call Mediacomm and tell them goodbye!

 

[lparsons21]

I have to admit that I had several isues with my old cable company that tehy were not interested in dealing with----until I cancelled. At taht point they became very concerned but it was too late.

Just got off the phone with Mediacomm, yep NOW they have all kinds of offers to make me stay!

I rather expected that since they use the same model for dealing with upcoming cancels that D* and E* most often use, you know, wait until it is a day late!!

It was interesting, the CSR first tried the 'How will you deal with 1.5Mb DSL?', I told him since mine was 7.5Mb I wouldn't know and it went downhill for him from there.

 

[lparsons21]

An oddity I didn't find out about until last night. On the iPad I couldn't do anything with the internet. Checked settings and all seemed right, was pointing to the Apple Extreme wireless networking, just wouldn't do squat on the internet. So I turned the wireless back on in the Netgear DSL modem/router and had the iPad connect to it. Worked fine. But still left me scratching my head.

This morning I fiddled around with things and had no luck getting the iPad to connect to the internet though it connected to the apple network fine. Still the only way to get to the internet was to select the DSL modems wireless. I checked with Airport config software, everything was right on. Then for some strange reason, I decided to look at the wifi TCP/IP on my iMac which was working fine connected to the Apple wireless. And there was the culprit! The DNS on the iMac was set at 192.168.254.254 (which is also the router address), but the iPad was showing 192.168.1.1 which is the Apple network router/dns setting. Odd! So I manually changed that on the iPad to match the iMac and all is good.

Turned off the Netgear wireless as it isn't needed.

Now I need to change the HRs over, since I'm sure I manually gave them an address and didn't allow for an auto setting. I noticed that my iPad DirecTV app doesn't see the HRs, so I know that is misconfigured now.

 

[Teehar]

So many devices here I had to do away with auto ip and static everything,with the exception of the dish receivers haven't figured out a way to static them yet.

 

[primestar31]

So many devices here I had to do away with auto ip and static everything,with the exception of the dish receivers haven't figured out a way to static them yet.

Some routers allow you to permanently reserve and IP address that a device is using. Check and see if yours will do that... I did it with my new Dlink router.

 

[lparsons21]

netgear's default on mine was about 30 addresses in the DHCP range, so manually setting up other devices is just a no brainer and only takes a few moment.

What I still don't know is why the DHCP didn't fill in the blanks for DNS properly on two devices. Not a big deal, but it was a bit irritating to have to go through and check those things that should have 'just worked' but didn't.

Oh well, it is done now and other than a new Time Capsule that is on the way, I won't be fiddling with my networking for some time.