What do you use for your business internet connection?

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Craig Seeman] “NYC Optonline aka Optimum, aka Cablevision – 100mbps down 15mbps up $99 a month . . . and they’re blanketing their coverage area with their own wifii so you can wander around the streets aimlessly and log in and watch Hulu. I’ve explained to my wife why we are never moving.”

Now I am jealous, Craig. We have nothing anywhere near this in our area.

Turning green with envy,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

I just took the speakeasy.net speed test and came in at…

…quite honorable enough for a cable modem rated at 20 down and 2 up.

Not all of the cities give me the same speed, but that is an issue with the routing and hops more than with our account here.

We don’t get as good a deal as many around the world, but we do have grape vines and vineyards as our view, so there are indeed trade-offs to be made.

Ron Lindeboom

[Craig Seeman]

I think the trade media has given this some coverage. Cablevision Ultra 100mbps/15mbps is the first of its kind in the country. I know they are making claims that it is the fastest in the USA. The amazing thing is not only is it fast it’s only $99/month.

Cablevision is aggressively trying to beat down FIOS.

It’s fun living in a niche area undergoing a technology / price war.

The thing is unlike Time Warner, Comcast, Cox, Cablevision is a small privately held company holding just a small area contract in between Time Warner and Comcast.

Like most (all?) Cable licenses they are exclusive to their small area but Satellite and FIOS compete and if either makes a significant dent, they’re done (I suspect Time Warner would take over as they did to Adelphi in upstate NY).

BTW while Time Warner has been experimenting with monthly data rate caps (to make sure you watch your video on Cable and not the Internet), Cablevision has stated publicly they will NOT engage in such consumer unfriendly practices . . . and they will blanket their area with Wifi for all their internet customers too. They’re still building that infrastructure but a couple of weeks ago I went out to Long Island (about 30-50 miles from my house) and had no problem getting my Cablevision/Optonline wifi connection.

As I said, I explained to my wife why we are never moving.

[Moody Glasgow]

Thanks all for the advice.

The company that is offering us the WiMax guarantees a MINIMUM of 5MBs in each direction. They also guarantee 99.99% uptime, and for every 2hrs of downtime they refund 5% of your monthly bill. Also, they do give you 30 days to cancel if things aren’t working out. They do need to install an antenna on our roof, and our landlord has decided that we need to open up our lease agreement, and to “rent” roof space will cost us $500/mo. !!!!!! This is the same landlord that doubled our rent in the past 5 years. I don’t think they have looked out the window lately and have seen all the vacancies around us.

I have gotten many quotes for other services. Time Warner wants $340 a month for 20MB / 2MB. We are currently have 8MB/756kbs from them, and we are less then impressed by the service. FIOS isn’t available, or any other fiber options. From Speakeasy, for 5×5 we were looking at business ethernet for $720/mo. I also have some quotes for bonded T1 that was 4.5MBs for $999. So far not one company seemed interested in making any deals.

By the way, we are using a Cisco RV082 router, that is dual WAN capable. So we also have a DSL line, and we use a load balancing mode in the router to help out when all the assistants sit on youtube all down watching crap.

Again thanks all for the advice.

moody glasgow
smoke/flame

[Franklin Mcmahon]

Here is another good site for testing internet speed:

https://www.speedtest.net/

[Craig Seeman]

It’s the “definitive” site for speed testing in my opinion. It what our local cable techs use and what I recommend for those doing live streaming.