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Which is Faster, AOL or PowerLink?
When I first got Adelphia broadband cable Internet access, the answer seemed obvious. PowerLink was the hottest thing around, and brand-new. A cable technician came out and installed the stuff for me. I found web pages downloading instantly. The service was up better than 95% of the time, 24 hours a day, every day. Sometimes I wondered if it would not be an exaggeration to say they were up 99% of the time, and I didn’t ever get kicked off, unless there were cable problems, and then there is no cable TV, either.
During September and October the answer hasn’t seemed so obvious. There were two weeks during October that I could not get on at all during the afternoon or evening, but had great service after midnight. During the latter part of the day I would have been better off surfing the web with AOL and the 56k modem in my notebook. Pulling up any web page became impossible at times. I started to consider getting AOL as a back up Internet provider for a while.
I noticed that when I couldn’t get through, I usually found my cable modem light on solid yellow. This indicates very heavy traffic coming in. Once I tried rebooting the computer, but that didn’t help. Even with the computer off, the box was solid yellow. This is usually an indication of a "Denial of Service" attack. The intent is to broadcast ping everyone on a network so fast that nothing else can get through.
I emailed a letter to Adelphia (Cable) Communications to let them knew what is happening and suggest that they fix the problem:
I have heard of "Denial Of Service" attacks where people will use zombie program on the Internet to ping a server to the point that no one else can get on and no other communication can get through. I believe this is happening to your system. I believe this is intended to anger your customers, so they will find a new service provider.
Some of my friends are talking about leaving Adelphia Power Link and trying Verizon, in hopes of getting away from this problem. The funny thing is they same friends were telling everyone that they thought cable access was the best thing around. If you cannot (or do not choose to) resolve this problem, you could find the number of customers you have, dwindling. With time, I believe this will affect your bottom line.
Customers in the area have indicated that they started noticing some slowness occurring starting in July 2001. The slowness wasn’t bad at first. But, now that the weather is getting colder, more people are starting to spend more of their time on the Internet. During the past couple months, the service has become sluggish and unreliable between 4 P.M. to 10 P.M.
According to Sam Hemingway of The Burlington Free Press, "For months, Adelphia admits, there were warning signs the system it had set up to handle the needs of its PowerLink customers in Vermont wasn’t up to the task."
So what was Adelphia's answer for the problem? Adelphia spent the summer mass marketing. Now there are 16,000 PowerLink customers on our system, according to Sam Hemingway. "It essentially comes down to trying to cram too much information down too narrow a fiber optic ‘backbone’ linking Vermont’s Adelphia customers to the Internet."
And if you think surfing the Internet on Adelphia broadband "PowerLink" Internet service is bad. Check out their email service. It is worse. In fact, the email problem has been there since the beginning - it’s just worse now. This problem is caused by "not enough ‘mail stores’ to hold the data until it can be delivered. Adelphia did improve the mail problem for a while, by offloading the upper New York customers to a mail server in Plattsburg last spring.
There may be light at the end of the tunnel, however. Adelphia has decided to upgrade the current system around the December 2001 time frame.
Responses may be emailed to
editor@burlingtonwebmagazine.com or
posted on the
Burlington Open Forum
Read your article on the problems with Adelphia.
I am experiencing the same problems. I am using AOL 7 and sometimes I can get around the net faster on AOL than on Adelphia power link.
I hope they can do something soon, or I am going to cancel power link!
Dave
It's As If Adelphia Broadband is Competing
with AOL Phone Internet Service For Speed
I've noticed times within the past month where I'm getting absolutely nothing I am requesting for on my browser, but my Surfboard s83100 Cable Modem will be blinking wildly with "activity" -- Sometimes it will looks almost as if the yellow "activity" light is on solid, suggesting there is a lot of something either going up or down. I saw this between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. (when I left to go to a meeting).
When I called in a couple weeks later, I got a recording stating, "Some customers in the Burlington may have some trouble surfing the web. " Some trouble? When I talked to the man, he said they were having server issues. The files on the server are all messed up, and it is sending some of the Internet traffic somewhere besides where it is supposed to go. They don’t know how it happened, but it is possible someone might have hacked into their server. The man also assured me, "We have technician working on the problem."
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