Change of Heart
About two years ago I decided to change my ISP from Comcast on the grounds that their service was unreliable, their customer service was next to nonexistent, and their decision to throttle bandwidth at certain hours of the day. At that time I just recently had to switch from Time Warner’s Roadrunner service to Comcast because thanks to an agreement between both of those companies Time Warner sold their offices here to Comcast. As a result we lost about 10 channels on our television and lost about a megabit both ways on their internet service. Where I live there either is Comcast or AT&T for broadband service. We’re not given a good choice as neither company is really noted for their customer service or reliability.
I decided to make the switch to DSL with BellSouth (which was subsequently purchased by AT&T) because at that point it was faster and cheaper than Comcast’s offering even when we were required to maintain a home phone line. It was an excellent move. The service was noticeably faster, and I was even provided with a static IP address. The service was reliable as well. I can’t remember a single point in time where the service ever was down. The title states “Change of Heart”, so it’s to be expected that I switched services yet again. So, with this excellent service why did I decide to jump ship and sell my soul to Comcast? Things didn’t always remain that peachy with AT&T.
Two months ago I started noticing my connection was slowing up. Page loading was noticeably slower, download speed experienced similar properties, and my bandwidth was completely shot. I couldn’t download and upload simultaneously. Transferring files over FTP or BitTorrent while browsing was next to impossible even when limiting speed on both. In addition, I was experiencing quite a bit of packet loss. Naturally I called. AT&T couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and they said that it had to be the wires in my house. It’s bullshit because, well, phone lines don’t degrade that quickly. Even if the problem really was the phone lines I can’t just replace the lines in my house. It’s a major operation as phone lines are part of a house’s internal wiring. I decided to give Comcast a go again after noticing their lowered prices and the FCC’s ruling that Comcast isn’t allowed to throttle bandwidth — that the internet must remain neutral. I don’t believe that it’s good that a government agency is necessary to keep an ISP from performing evil actions upon its customers, but Comcast isn’t the only company guilty of such actions. AT&T would have done the same thing if the FCC didn’t act before they implemented their methods of bandwidth throttling.
Before I did anything I made absolute sure of all aspects of what I was purchasing from the price with TV service and without along with the presence of any penalties if I cancel my service. When I discovered all of the answers to the questions I had I subscribed to their internet service. I was even allowed to set it up myself, and the process was effortless to say the least. I kept DSL for a week putting my new cable connection through the ropes. My new internet connection through Comcast is on average 5 times faster than it was at its best on AT&T among other things. The inability to have or even purchase a static IP is something I’ll miss, but DynDNS and a nice Bash script takes care of that problem. As a result of their inability to properly investigate the methods of their service’s lack of agility, AT&T lost both a broadband internet and a home phone line subscriber. My home phone was cancelled because there was no need to garner a land line anymore.
Has my experience so far with Comcast been unblemished? No, there’s one caveat.
This is a screenshot of Comcast’s “Domain Helper”, marketing spin for DNS hijacking. DNS hijacking is a method many Windows viruses use to display webpages and content without a user’s consent by placing different DNS addresses in the system’s settings for such. This is, instead, being utilized on the ISP’s end by them and yet still without consent of the user. This shows up when someone types in an address that generates an HTTP 404 error and meet certain criteria for it — usually requiring it to be a 404 error from a working domain. It shows a page with search results and ads that is a ploy from Comcast to bring in revenue at the expense of their users’ purchased internet connection’s usability. It hinders usability by displaying a page that looks as if they just used a search engine to search for something rather than a page resembling the content they were attempting to reach; it doesn’t even resemble any sort of error page. It’s confusing, and it certainly drew a “What the fuck?” from me.
Thankfully, it can be told to fuck off. On the error page there is a hyperlink near the header which allows an annoyed user to log into their Comcast account provided they know their login information. They can change the setting with a couple of clicks there, and after restarting their modem, router, and computer they are presented with a bullshit free 404 error experience. It should end there, but it doesn’t. Comcast, in usual fashion, seems to forget the preference and will eventually revert to presenting the same bullshit again. That can be prevented as well, but like the initial methods of preventing the hijacking it’s not obvious.
Comcast maintains a list of their DNS server addresses. There’s a list for domain servers with or without “Domain Helper”. There’s two servers for each area of the continental United States. I picked the first ones listed as they corresponded with my region. The screenshot shows where I put them in my router’s configuration. Now, instead of automatically assigning a DNS server it will designate those two always. This should only be for advanced users because if these servers ever change and there’s no connection the user should know to check to see if the servers have changed first by reverting to receiving DNS server addresses automatically. OpenDNS could be used also, but in my tests it has proven slower than my ISP’s provided DNS servers; however, their paid-for service probably is much faster than the free one I tested. I haven’t had any problems since.
Now, am I disturbed by the fact that I have to use Comcast again? Yes. I find it disturbing that I have to use AT&T for my mobile phone service as well, especially since their promised UMTS (3G) system for my city hasn’t arrived yet. I believe finding an ISP that isn’t evil these days is like trying to polish a turd. We will, indeed, have to hope that governments can keep their telecommunications providers in check like the FCC has been successfully doing lately in the United States. Too bad they can’t do much about ridiculous prices.