Review of DSL EXTREMEAll reviews of |  about |
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Order is set to go live on 09/01/2009, using my own modem. I run a telephone cable from the outside ATT/SBC demarc box to my bedroom and connect the modem, and note that I can't get on. After calling DSLX tech support and getting some rather awesome help from tech rep Rolando (this is a shot out to you, bud - you get double points for calling me back when we got disconnected) I manage to get online at 832Kbps down / 512Kbps up. Rolando did note that the downstream speed was quite low - especially since the line had already been provisioned at 100% of the 3Mbps by ATT. However, since I was very happy that I was online I thanked Rolando for helping me get my modem set up and ended the call. I then decided to try moving the modem to another phone jack, using a splitter/filter combo (your basic home DSL set up). After doing that I am now getting my full menu of 3Mbps down / 512Kbps up, so the slower speed I had before was due to my bad wiring job (I ended up removing the line I ran to my bedroom and will have ATT install a line instead). Service is rock-solid reliable and the speed remains constant; I will update this review after I have been online for a while and can better discuss how DSLX does long-term. For now however I am quite happy with the service. DSLX rocks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Update: I am having some loss of sync issues - you can read about these in the DSLX forum. They look like the telco's problem though - and George from DSLX has been quite responsive in reading about my issue in the forum and trying to help me out. My original review stands.  Update (09/07/2009): DSLX scheduled a truck roll with ATT and the technician came out today. He removed the MTU on the telephone circuit and now I am running smoothly. Not bad at all. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Update (09/16/2009): Last weekend we here in the Bay Area had some rather interesting weather in the form of heavy thunderstorms with light rain. For whatever reason - I am presuming that it was electromagnetic interference from the lightning - my downstream sync rate dropped from 3008 kbps to 1888 kbps. I easily fixed this by resetting my modem. Other than that the connection has been smooth. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Update (11/06/2009): It has been a little over two months now and after a few setup hiccups (bad line filters, an MTU that needed to be removed from the phone circuit by ATT) my connection has been smooth and speedy. I'm very satisfied. Followup comments:
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I've had Verizon's copper DSL for nearly ten years with Flashcom, SurfCity, and HyperSurf as my ISPs. Verizon installed FiOS in my neighborhood in 2007, but I didn't like the packages and prices, so I never subscribed. In late 2009, I discovered that I could have FiOS installed and DSL Extreme (DSLX) as my ISP, so I jumped on it. • What SPEED/package did you order, at what monthly price? Ultra 20M/20M residential fiber service for only $60/mo from DSLX. This is a much better bargain over my old 1.5M/512K copper DSL service for $33/mo. • How was the order & install process? The installation and installers were great. The subcontractor that ran the fiber from the junction in the street to my house was very proud of the drill they used. No trenches needed to be dug in my yard, and the fiber was run to my side yard without me needing to be home. The patches in the street are very clean, and they removed all their spray paint from my walkways and driveway. A very professional job. The Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) installation of the ONT and router did require my presence to let the Verizon installer into my garage. The whole process took about 2.5 hours. A very clean installation, but I wish the coax inside my garage was a little longer. The 2' run out of my wall doesn't leave me with many options for positioning the router. The installation of the fiber and CPE cost me nothing. • What brand/model was the supplied equipment? The original router installed was a Westell 9100EM. Due to troubleshooting (explained below), an Actiontec MI424WR was what I ended up with. • What good or bad experiences most struck you? Getting actual, full-speed connectivity over the Verizon network was a nightmare. I have friends who had DSLX/FiOS installed in their residences and they had full service immediately. I still had no service 18 hours after the installation, and only a yellow Internet light on my router. I called DSLX tech support and they said that, "Technically, Verizon has 24 hours to turn on their service." With still no service after 24 hours, I called DSLX back and, after eventually talking with a Verizon guy, they blamed it on some sort of "72-hour outage" occurring in the Verizon network, and that was causing my connectivity problem. This didn't give me a good feeling about the reliability of FiOS, but residential customers don't have an SLA, so I waited. 72 hours later, I called back DSLX/Verizon and reported that the Internet light on my router was now green, my router now had a DCHP address from the WAN, and could ping its gateway, but I had no connection to the DNS servers, and I could not ping any hosts on the Internet by their IP address. It took Verizon several more days to fix why I couldn't get out on to the Internet, and I have no idea what the problem was. Anyway, I was now able to ping the likes of yahoo.com. However, I now had a new problem: the fiber connection speed was worse than dial-up! I called back DSLX/Verizon and the Verizon tech now decided that because no one else in my area was complaining about poor connectivity, either my brand new, fresh-out-of-the-box router, or ONT, was bad. The router was the easiest to replace, so they shipped me out one; it arrived four days later. I replaced my Westell 9100EM with an Actiontec MI424WR, but it could not get a DCHP address from the WAN. The Verizon tech didn't realize that the ONT is keyed to the MAC address of the router, and that the ONT needed to be reprogrammed for the MAC address of the new router. I could have fixed this by cloning the old router's MAC to the new router, but the ONT is apparently easy to re-provision from the network side. My new router's Internet light finally went green, but my connectivity was no better. I again called back DSLX/Verizon and another Verizon tech perform very lengthy tests and concluded that my CPE was likely not the problem (as far as he could tell). He put in a trouble ticket to "The Juniper guys" and I waited for several days. During that time, I received numerous "try your connection now" voice mails and emails from DSLX, but the problem was never corrected. Finally, exactly two weeks after my CPE was installed, Verizon fixed the problem and dslreports.com now displayed blazingly fast in FireFox. I ran a Java-based speed test from a direct-wired PC and got approximately 19000/15000Mbps, where before the dslreports speedtest Web page would never come up. What most DSLX/FiOS customers experience immediately from their new fiber connections only took me two weeks from the installation--or 23 days from when I placed my order--and many late night/early morning hours on with telephone tech support to achieve. Here are a few technical things to note for people thinking of the DSLX/FiOS combo: • Verizon owns the FiOS network and totally controls OSI layers 1 through 4. DSLX is only a bit of fluff on top that handles layer 7 stuff, like passwords and email addresses. DSLX techs can do very little for real network problems and must enlist the aide of Verizon techs for this. • You cannot get tech support by calling Verizon directly. If you do, you will be told that a DSLX representative must always be on the line because you are a DSLX customer, not a Verizon customer. You must call DSLX tech support and suffer through the questions and on-hold time to be connected to the Verizon peiople that can actually troubleshoot and solve your connectivity issues. (I can still hear DSLX's Windham Hill on-hold music in my brain.) • You cannot get meaningful reports via email of your trouble ticket status from DSLX--even though they say they will give you such. They want to talk with you on the phone; through email you will only receive form letters. In my experience, DSLX tech support does not respond personally through email at all. • All of the DSLX phone tech support people that I dealt with (at least eight) were courteous and knowledgeable. The Verizon techs were very good too, but varied considerably in their understanding of how Verizon CPE works (e.g., router capabilities, MAC authentication between router and ONT, how DHCP works). And my story does not end there... My Actiontec router on its 2-foot coax leash does me little good in my garage, so I bought a Linksys WRT610N to blast 802.11g/n throughout my house using WPA/WPA2-PSK/AES. I had read that the Actiontec MI424WR can be put into bridge mode, allowing the Linksys to DHCP with the Verizon network directly. However, Verizon does not support this configuration, so their techs will not help you in this regard. The thread on this subject at dslrepots.com (»How-to: make ActionTec MI424-WR a network bridge) was of great help, but there are a few things I needed to discover on my own to get it working: • Clone the MAC address of the Linksys to be the MAC address of the Actiontec so the ONT will talk directly to it. • Change the MAC address of the Actiontec so there will not be two devices with the same MAC address on the network to jumble the APR tables. (I simply incremented the last octet of the MAC.) • Cable the Internet (WAN) port of the Linksys to the switchport of the Actiontec. • You do not need to setup the Actiontec to be a DHCP relay. • I'm not sure why, but over my home wireless connection, the dslreports Java speedtest will report the upload speed is twice that of the download speed (e.g., 7500/15000). More updates to follow as I test this DSLX/FiOS combo over the next three months before shedding my slow, Verizon Frame Relay DSL for good. Followup comments:
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The initial contract is 12 months. I knew the price would increase after that. Then I read several people complaining they jacked it up 3X and put them on month to month at the end of the 12 months. Being somewhat concerned I checked the contract and lo and behold! it says they do that UNLESS you contact them in advance for another 12 month contract. So shortly before my year was up they sent me an e-mail saying they were putting me on month to month but at the 12 month price ($3 more). Can't beat that, I was expecting that price for a 12 month contract. The order and install was no problem, in fact it was up the day before the promised date. During the first year I had maybe 3 occasions where the speed would slow waaaaaaaay down for a few hours. Never figured out if it was them or me. The 3rd time I e-mailed Customer Service. After a while they responded that all was well on their end. My speed came back up so no problem. But then the shocker, later that day a tech called ME to see if everything was OK. After all the things I read about Level 1, Level 2 and hours on hold I thought that was pretty great. So after a year I started learning about modems, hardware firewalls, whole house dsl filters and CAT5 cable. I have old inside phone wire so I installed a whole house filter-splitter, ran CAT5 cable to the computer, upgraded the modem, got rid of the plug-in filters, tweaked etc. So now I have had no dsl problems for months. I did get static on the phone line. Had this problem with my other phone line a few years ago and after several rounds with SBC (now AT&T) got a smart tech who figured out there was water in the lines underground in the J-box across the street (they NEVER believe it's not my fault). He switched to a different wire pair and no more problem. So I waited until I saw the AT&T truck in the neighborhood, explained the problem and he took care of it before leaving. (Is that direct to Level 5?) The modem they supplied was a Westell 2110 (with individual plug-in filters), a basic stripped down model. It's easy to find modems with built-in firewalls on ebay so that's how I upgraded later. For about the same (delivered) price as their "self-install" kit you can do better on ebay. I don't use the dslextreme e-mail system. It comes with one default address which I maintain. Recently they outsourced the e-mail to gmail. Their helpful instructions for making necessary changes to various settings wasn't done very well but I think I did it right (time will tell). I use my own e-mail system through my webhosting service. First thing you discover is you can't send any e-mail because it has to go through DSLX and they have port 25 blocked. So once you get that taken care of then the e-mail goes both directions. It's one of those little details they somehow missed in the FAQ and voluminous set-up instructions. Bottom line you have to be willing to do a little work in exchange for the cheap rate. I give them 4.8 stars overall. Final thought: I want to thank all the people who have written reviews in the past. It was because of many of those I was able to go into this with eyes at least half open. I have avoided many unnecessary surprises. Thanks again! Update: 11/1/09 I have been a DSLExtreme customer for about 3 years now. Since I upgraded my phone line, installed the whole house filter and upgraded the modem (see above comments) I have had NO outages, NO slowdowns, NO problems!! SO I guess the problems I had before were all at my end. I remain a very happy DSLX customer. It is well worth the time to do what you can at your end. I don't think I mentioned before that they add $2.88 "Supplier Surcharge Recovery Fee" to the basic $14.95/mo charge (and that is month to month). Is that AT&T charging them to use the phone line? The ads never mention that. BUT it is still a great deal! Followup comments:
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Reliability has been going down over the last year in general. I've been getting outages lasting a minute or so once a week on average, not enough to bother calling in and anyway they usually occur when I'm not around. But there have been prior serious outages. While I have no delusions about Comcast -- I do get TV service from them -- the one thing they will never ever do is say the fault lies with AT&T and all they can do is file a ticket with them. UPDATE 1: tech support got back to me and they can't find anything wrong. So much for the "congestion" theory. They want me to callback during an outage. Never mind I already did that last night, and they couldn't find anything wrong then. Also note that the first time this happened, when I called tech support I was on hold for 30 minutes before I got through, and by then the problem went away. I was luckier the second time. The next time? We'll see. UPDATE 2: it happened again, so I called tech support. Got put on hold for 20 minutes waiting for level 2, and by the time they answered the problem went away. Not that it would have mattered, as when they answered, all I heard was a bunch of faint voices in the background, and after a minute they hung up on me. And now I'm having serious problems sending e-mail through their servers (recently outsourced to Google, BTW). To avoid having to pay for December, I have to cancel by tomorrow. UPDATE 3: I have requested cancellation. Reviewing the reviews over the past year, I am shocked at how negative the reviews have gotten. If they were anything like this three years ago, I would have avoided DSL EXTREME. If you are thinking of signing up with them, make sure you read them first. And pay attention to their refusal to waive the cancellation fee, even when their failure to provide a working connection reaches absurd levels. The terms of service make it very clear that they will resort to a collection agency if necessary to get that fee. Too bad they're more interested in getting that $250 than in making it unnecessary to cancel. Followup comments:
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2 Month Update How can I express this... I LOVE THIS SERVICE!!! Tech support people are amazing, call backs when promised, follow ups on a ticket was 2 phone calls, 1 email and a survey to find out how they did! If only all utilities and companies would have this kind of customer support it would be heaven! Have not suffered a single minute of down time, and speeds are constant, ALWAYS! I recommend this to everyone I know of that needs or is looking for DSL. I pray this company continues on it's successful journey into becoming the highest rated, valued and praised ISP in California! 3 Month Update After 3 months I can honestly say that I am very pleased with the quality of the service. The speeds are constant, the line quality is amazingly rock solid, and I haven't had a single minute of down time. I did run into a issue with email, I do a newsletter for a social club I belong to, and email out a "link" to the current month's edition to all members every month, but with nearly 200 members I can't email all of them at once because I get blocked by the servers for spamming. Called a couple of times and got told that they are very strict on their spam protection. So what once took me about 5 min to email my members now takes me hours because I have to wait 2 hours between each distribution list of less than 50 people I email. However, that being my only issue I still highly recommend DSLx to ANYONE that is in their service area that is seeking a broadband connection, you won't be sorry. I'm not! ! ! 4 month update! Repeat 3 previous month's reviews, add in a self imposed network optimization to give me BETTER service, add in timely email notifications of network maintainence, and mix well. Result, one WHOPPING good Internet provider that many other companies should emulate. Way to go DSL Extreme, George and crew, congrats on a fantastic 2004, and here's hoping 05 is better in spite of how "other things" turned out!!! 9 month update Okay I couldn't resist it, I bit on the 6Mbs package in December before it expired, and actually doubled my speed for a mere $10 more per month! How can I say it, I LOVE the speed, its staggering, phenomenal, hideously decadent!!!!! Upgrade was seamless, did it online, upgrade of course got delayed 1 day by SBC who instead of upping the speed, disconnected me totally. One call to DSLx tech support and was back up same day. I've referred 3 other people to DSLx and recieved 3 months free service to boot. Obviously I'm a big fan, and will continue to be as long as they continue on the same path they are. Thanks DSL Extreme, you rock!!!!! 5 YEAR UPDATE! What can you say about a company that provides a service that is so good that you forget that they are around?? DSLx has been solid, consistent and incredibly stable for all this time, I have ZERO complaints. Surprisingly even AT&T has been somewhat cooperative in keeping the connection maintained so I could enjoy the service I'm paying for. VoIP, E-Mail, streaming video, music and general surfing are a delight because I always know it's going to work, every single time! Keep up the great work you are doing guys, I will always be a customer! Followup comments:
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The initial sign-up was painless- a quick call and I thought I was set up- oh how I was wrong.... Apparently, DSL Extreme hooked up DSL service to my old roommates line without checking the name on the line - when I called AT&T to get service switched to my name, AT&T refused because they say they can't switch bill liability with service on the line. I called DSL Extreme and they took 2 days to temporarily unhook service, AT&T took another 3 days to switch the name, and then DSL Extreme took another 2 days to hook up service. After getting the service going, it only took 2 days to break down- I went to bed one night with the service working - next morning nothing - call DSL extreme and magically 2 hours later it's working- same thing 2 days later, and again the day after that. Whenever I call DSL Extreme it's always the same story 'must be AT&T's fault'. I sympathize because my interactions with AT&T haven't always been positive, but at the same time, prior to getting DSL Extreme I had AT&T DSL on the same phone jack, using the same cable, the same router, etc with no interruption of service in 3 years. Frankly, if you're a 3rd party provider on AT&T's line and you have vendor issues- IT"S NOT MY PROBLEM. Blaming a 3rd party isn't acceptable. As I continue to work towards getting my issue solved, DSL Extreme has dispatched an AT&T truck to look at the line (with possible additional charges). I was excited to go with the 'little guy' and I love the fact that DSL Extreme has nice, knowledgeable folks in the US that answer the phone, but at this point I have serious misgivings about my decision. It's the 20th of the month and I have yet to get 3 straight days of uninterrupted service. My other roommate runs a small business out of our home, so we don't really have the option of flaky internet service. As a stopgap, I've had to use a 3G data card as an internet connection and incurred overage as a result. I'm aware of DSL Extreme's ugly cancellation fee, but at this time I'm seriously considering going for it and getting service that works. Followup comments:
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My only complaint comes with varying stability. Although they, DSL Extreme, are reliable, the lines in the area are owned by Verizon and work done by them can sometimes disrupt my service. There's also never a warning about this type of work when contacting their tech. support about such outages. I have to talk to someone, inform them of my problem, and eventually they come to the conclusion it is an issue with Verizon performing work in the area. One particularly annoying event became even more frustrating when DSL Extreme's phone system was undergoing maintenance. Surprisingly, they had no prompt to inform you of this fact and thus, after navigating their phone system, the phone call would be dropped before reaching the tech. support line. I was calling around 2am CST so I suppose I can understand their need to upgrade/fix their phone system at a time with the least amount of traffic. One great feature is their ability to switch previous DSL services to theirs without any interruption in your DSL. The problem was, however, that for whatever reason, Verizon canceled my subscription after receive notice from DSL Extreme; something they claimed could only be done from the primary account holder. Verizon has yet to claim responsibility for this mess-up. DSL Extreme, on the other hand, was ready to pick up the slack and put a rush on my service-ready date. They quoted me about three days but due to my trouble with Verizon and while using my old DSL modem, we were able to set up my DSL within 1.5 to 2 days and allowing us to keep Verizon canceled. In conclusion, DSL Extreme is half the price for the same speed with an all American staff and extremely low downtime. I'm glad I made the switch to them as I predict it has saved me a large number of headaches. Followup comments:
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Update: 8/11: I've had my line upgrade to the 1500-3000 plan for about a week now, lovin' it, 1000x more speed than the other plan I had mentioned above. Nice and steady, Perfect for a person with one or two computers, and one or two lines of VoIP, (which I have) All run together, but usually one line and one comp at a time.... Much better for multiple VoIP conversations you'd be on the 1500 plan, just enough up for it, and perfect for an avid netter. Man, Only had DSL for about three years since Dial-Up, I'd never go back...... This is perfect and more for all my needs, phone lines and stuff, I'm good and close to the CO, so I have a good connection. Great pricing, wish I could get a dry line so I would pay a bit less for it.... I got a little Broadmax modem that's starting too have trouble keeping sync, losing link too the computer, spontaneously rebooting, I think I may need a new one, If any reps are around, a hand? Love the service, I especially would like too refer you the ~$24 1500 line. Update 5/8/08 Had a little more trouble a few weeks ago with my connection, we all agreed that it was the modem. Got a new Dlink modem a few days hater, sent the old one back and chugging along just fine on this new modem. Thanks for the great support, still going fine, had this connection for a good 3 or 4 years now, and it's perfect. Nice job, guys! Updated 10/8/2009 DSL still works great. Wish the Fiber and ADSL2 services were availible, !(&^*'ing AT&T, I'm stuck at 6 mbit until they get their stuff together. One complaint about DSLx I do have is the modems they include (these Dlinks) are prone to overheating and failing in hot seasons, I have confirmed you can use pretty much any modem on the service, so if I have to get another modem replaced by them, I'm just going to go ahead and buy my own modem. $40 or so twords a modem I can keep forever, not that big of a deal. Overall, I still like the service, the network is a million times better than AT&T and they dont screw around with filtering stuff like FTP and bittorrent, perfectly legitimate protocols that shouldn't be limited. Followup comments:
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Here is an update of what's been happening so far. I completed my order with DSL Extreme for the 1 year subscription at $19.99/mo. I am switching from AT&T DSL 1500 Kbps / 384 Kbps over to DSL Extreme's 3000 Kbps / 512 Kbps Plan. Overall, I am very pleased with the transition. I did have to call DSL Extreme Tech Support once to configure my DSL Modem to sync. That went very well; the tech was very helpful and was able to fix the problem in about 10-15 minutes. Comparing the speeds: AT&T: 1260 Kbps / 300 Kbps DSL Extreme : 2479 Kbps / 427 Kbps However, I think at first my down speed was at 2560 Kbps and then stabilized to around 2479 Kbps. :/ I am very happy with the switch-over to DSL Extreme. I hope that DSL Extreme continue to provide excellent service in the year to come. Thank you very much Update: 10/7/09 Not a major problem, but a minor annoyance. It appears that my down speed has deteriorated to a 2250 Kbps; my up speed is still the same (~415 Kbps). I hope this does not continue to be a problem in the future. Followup comments:
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Lately, latency has becoming a problem for certain servers. DSL Extreme is receptive to my complaints, and is trying to resolve the issue. ========== Previous Review November 2002 ========== I ordered the service on 10/20/2002 for the 1.5mbps/256kbps plan. The modem (Arescom) arrived three days later on 10/23/2002. Plugged it in, no sync. No big deal since activation was 10/28/2002. Two days later 10/25/2002, got good sync but speed is pathetic at 50kbps down, 250kbps up. Called them up and was told to wait until activation date. On activation date, the speed is still 50/250. Called them up and was told to call back the next day because they can't open a trouble ticket with PacBell until *AFTER* the activation date. Called back the next day to open the trouble ticket. They scheduled a truck roll with PacBell to check my line. PacBell technician came to my house on the same day and said my in-house wiring "could" be the problem. The next day I ran a dedicated CAT-5 telephone wire from the phone box outside my house to the DSL modem. Speed was unchanged, thus my in-house wiring isn't the problem. Called up DSL Extreme and they agreed to send me another modem. New modem (BroadMax) arrived next day on 11/1/2002. Plugged it in, good sync. Speed test showed 800kbps/150kbps. Download speed improved, but upload is now 40% slower. It seemed the modem is also sending out "Span-Tree" packets (identified by a free packet-sniffing software). This added extra 50-100ms to packets at random. My guess is that the modem is misconfigured in the PPPoE mode instead of bridge mode. No matter, at this point, I've read a lot of recommendations for SpeedStream 5360 DSL modems. So I went to eBay and bought one for $60. It works great; speed test showed 1.1mbps/250kbps. Better and cheaper than the $99 DSL Extreme modems. Packet ping is now consistent and reliable. DSL Extreme is replacing the BroadMax with a SpeedStream 5260, which I will use as backup. Conclusion: good ISP, but buy your own modem elsewhere. Followup comments:
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DSL EXTREME
(26)
(30)
Concord,Contra Costa,CA
$23 per month (12 month contract)
about 8 days
AT&T
"Sickeningly easy to get provisioned, connection is smooth and reliable; tech support is top notch"
"None so far"
"GET IT!"
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