Review of Cogeco CableAll reviews of |  about |
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 The network goes down once in a while, but it usually goes back up with an hour or two. Speed is good too... Don't think there's nothing much else to say, other then my closing note... Don't expect good technical support... I had one rep tell me I had to reformat my drive because the MODEM was dropping packets. *rolling eyes* Followup comments:
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reliable service. Sadly, with Cogeco, this is not the case. Pings are consistently over 150, with common spikes where they can go as high as 7000. Sometimes these spikes remain for hours on end. The amount of down time is also distressing. My modem is always going down and blinking slowly back to life. There are also extreme instability problems. Often when a website is loading, Cogeco will decide that it doesn't want to load the page anymore and simply call it quits. As if this in itself wasn't bad enough, the error causes all other active internet connections to be killed. That's right, ICQ, mIRC, FTP, you name it, it dies. Connection reset by peer errors are also distressingly common. I have been a Cogeco customer for many years. I used to enjoy sub-50 pings in Quake 1 games. Service in recent months has become hideously unreliable, congested, and unstable. If you want a decent cable provider, you will avoid Cogeco like the plague. Digi Followup comments:
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Sympatico was a worry, since they said they were only just ready to come online with HSE in West Windsor starting two weeks earlier, the very month of our arrival. UPS picked up our old Nortel DSL modem and exchanged a new Alcatel one in short order upon our arrival at the new digs, no problem with the emails. Problem was, the modem would not connect! When we informed Cogeco that we were already Shaw (@home) customers, they quickly arranged for "seamless" service transition to the new ISP/Company! We were able to keep all our existing email accounts, with a timeout of a few days while they were released from Shaw and transferred to Cogeco. Since these were both self-installs (in the first place) and only involved modem switching the race was on! A day later, the Cogeco "contractor" dumped off the modem, installes a new splitter and ran a few extra feet of wire, ruining the picture quality on our living room cable outlet, which is dead last, now 4 splits away from the headend in our home. The cable outlets in three bedrooms, plus the headend split for the modem now degrade the signal in the living room so badly we cannot add even a VCR to the main entertainment center in there, since the 35" Tosiba FST has two internal tuners (sigh - video only recording, no VCR+). One bedroom has two ATI tuners on two of our office machines, the others, a set apiece. Now I'm getting excited, at 3 days, the cable modem is DOA and the guy doesn't have a spare! He leaves it, and makes a work order for the cable guy to check the signal. I've already got the DSL modem, just waiting for a connect from the office -Right? Getting excited, I call Sympatico to find out what's happening. They say there must be "trouble in the office" and make a work order. They helpfully suggest I use their local dialup number (10 free hours a month -standard) to get my email and browse until connection is working. Less than a week and they've won! I got sympatico working before @home -Right? Cable guy shows up four days later to dump off the digital box. Another hungry tuner on the end of the line! Out goes the VCR, since the cable signal is so weak in the living room I can't bear the noise the guy can't see. He "doesn't do internet stuff" (or leave manuals for the universal digital box remote) and leaves. Now we see some movies, Broadband digital cable is poison for RF video bandwidth! Our TV set gets 3X better picture and sound when we switch antennas to normal broadcast band, can't understand how anyone with a larger screen could put up with it at all! All cable channels are fairly clear, but distinctly snowy and of poor-average fidelity. Digital channels are mpeg blocky, and display badly color reduced isobaric color distortion. This is the case whether you get the internet or not, just the nature of "wire cramming" technology. Maybe it will improve some day! Forget cable FM, it stinks, but the built in DMX is good enough, if you don't mind burning out your TV picture tube to listen to music the height of stupidity and poor design in digital boxes. Oddly you cannot turn off the TV set when DMX is on, even if you run audio direct to your sound system. The Sympatico guys phone and unsympathetically inform us that there is a shortage of "line cards" at our phone office, and the rack they have has been donated to some local third party ISP (we have no idea who) whom the CRTC has mandated to have first dibs on. Something about "competition". Bottom line, maybe a few more weeks before they can turn on the DSL  Now ten days have passed. the cable "line boss" guy shows up to see what the deal is. He tests the line, determines the Samsung cheapie modem is faulty, gets the "good one" (he says they're mostly all bad but he knows this one is working) he hooks it up and it doesn't work. Time to head for the pole. He moves our line to the top of the main splitter and magic, @home has won the race! Sympatico did not get it together until two (and a half) months later, and to top it off tried to charge us for both DSL (which wasn't working) and extra bandwidth on the dialup to boot!!! We put an end to that noisily!! Now that both are working, the sympatico service is more reliable, the cable goes out for a few hours more or less every other day. @home's servers, either news or mail are also rather flukey or down now and then. One cannot compare the speed, cable is way faster, when it works. Unlike Shaw (Teryon - Motorola) the Cogeco cable (Samsung) doesn't snoop in your netbios to 'identify' your machine and vnbt.386 can be completely dumped. POP uses normal authentication. Still a good value for the money, and we're thinking of dumping sympatico entirely, it's way overpriced by comparison! Followup comments:
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They still have a few problems to iron out, but that is usually due to constant upgrading as more and more areas of Ontario are coming online. In the Windsor area, they have static IP addresses. In the rare instance, when they go down, you may have to wait 15 mins. on the line, but they tell you how long the wait may be, and they have an automatic "System Status Update" to tell you of any problems they are having in your area. For your money, you get a FREE Network card (installed free), and and external cable modem...installation was free too! The only drawback is that it is $10 more/month if you don't use cable TV too, but I am of the opinion that if you have TV sets split off your cable, it degrades the signal, and slows the connection...With no TV there seems to be No cap of 2.2 megs on the modem.. I am using a Samsung InfoRanger SCM100R modem (one of the old GOOD ones), and have had little or no probs with it.. I think it is a good value for your money. Followup comments:
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The speed has gotten much faster since I ordered it. When I ordered it the dreaded 128k upload cap was in place, but in the fall of this year they booted it up to 384k. This was a very nice bonus, without paying anything extra. By using the tweaks on this site, I regularily get over 2.2Mbps down and 370kbps up. The tweaks here almost tripled my download speed - I recommend them to anyone. The only little gripe I had was the odd down period where all the modem lights are on, but there is no service. This has only happend a few times, and it has only gone on for a day or two. Once in July it went out for 3 days, so I called and complained and got 10 bucks taken off my bill. Not bad at all. A couple friends have the same service and all get relatively the same speeds as I do, so it is very consistent in my area (Southeastern Ontario). Cogeco@home rocks! I recommend it to anyone looking for broadband. Followup comments:
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Cogeco will be amoung the #1 providers with enough reviews Usually the service is good, especially at night. This area has a 2Mbps down limit, and a 384 kbps up limit, it used to be 128 and I'm glad they changed it. I asked for it to be installed, and it was installed the next week, could have been within 3 days but I wouldn't be home then. I get a static IP via DHCP lease and I could network them or ask for another one (at an extra charge). There is no charge for modem rental and the install was free. The first month of service was good, I could do anything at anytime, but the next month it got bad, and after that I couldn't even play a game at 2am that requires a 28.8 connection, my pings would jump constantly.... eventually they fixed their network and I was getting 250k/s down all the time, even during the day. Right now it rocks, and hopefully it doesn't turn to crap again. For $30 a month canadian, you can't go wrong, since a good ISP is 20 or 25. The mail system here sucks, I don't get alot of the mail that is sent, and sometimes it takes over 8 hours to get here, if you sign up get a separate email account. The customer service is actually good now, during the time when the cable was almost dead they hung up on me because I told them a 28.8 could do better, thankfully they refunded half the money for those months (for everyone on @home in the area too). The last time I called, they were patient, and answered really fast, they tried a lot of good options to get the problem fixed. Web space isn't great either, not much room and slow, but the programs offered on their networks are good, you get direct cable transfer for netscape, IE all customized for @home, if you want to live with their proxy. Updated 01/04/01 Despite my fears, the speed is rock solid 24/7. 2300/350 is the max, and I wish I could give a rating greater than 5 star for reliability. Followup comments:
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D-link ethernet card and install free, Com 21 cable modem, static ip included w/ $40 fee Order taker was freindly but wanted to put me on to tech support when i asked about firewalls and i said No thanks would research myself. Tech guy was in and out in 1:15 (wiwhich included the standerd story a bout a dog nearly biting his toe off the other day) the registry tweaks (here and other sites) were key to setup. I know some people like to cry and moan about cable service but i doubt they know little more than where the shorcut to qwak, i mean quake is on thier mommy's computer sys is. town: Hamilton, Canada Followup comments:
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Cogeco Cable
(23)
(49)
(12)
Welland Ont.
$39 per month (month by month)
about 3 days
"Great consistent speed/Very rarely down/Install Tech went out of his way to do a great job"
"I cannot imagine going back to dial-up"
"Non Existant tech support, email and news servers down 50% of the time"
