Differences of residential class, and business class cable set up?

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jctusmc03

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Dec 8, 2009
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Hi all,

I have a noob question I think, I'm not very well versed in networking knowledge first of all, so pardon me if this is noob. My computer know how is in other areas, which is why I'm reaching out to you all.

I'm going to be getting Charter business class internet installed at my house possibly as I handle a lot of things for several different business's and Charter business class allows unlimited upload/download. Sometimes the PDF's and other things I have to download and upload to business's get fairly large. I've gotten notices a few times from Charter thus far about breaking my bandwidth allocation, and they said for the third strike I'm going to have to start paying extra per GB used. Business class for them offers unlimited upload/downloading, so this will solve that problem. I'm going to be getting the same speed I have now from them, 16/2 w/ turbo boost, just switching to a business account for the unlimited. I didn't get hosting or any of the silly little ad on's they always offer either, I have my own things I use for all of that stuff. I only inquired about internet.

Now to my questions.

Is there a huge difference between business class and residential set up? They are telling me there is going to be another set up fee, but this one is larger than my residential set up fee. $149 vs. $49.

They are also telling me I need another modem due to getting business class internet, is this needed? You guessed it, another fee ($25) I'm going to have to pay.
 
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With Comcast and Time Warner....the business class setups get a combo modem/router (gateway). Your setup varies based on what package you're getting, dynamic, or static, and how many IPs you ask for. You can still use your own router if you'd like, the steps to change the "gateway" you're given to pass the public IP to your own router and not have firewall features blocking it are quite simple.

More time is usually spent on the business setup, the tech making sure it's all setup properly.
 
I'm just getting a dynamic gateway. Thanks for your time in answering this, I learned something new today. I've also gotten in to contact with Verizon today about fiber internet, so I may be going with that. Fiber internet is much better yes?
 
jctusmc03 said:
I'm just getting a dynamic gateway. Thanks for your time in answering this, I learned something new today. I've also gotten in to contact with Verizon today about fiber internet, so I may be going with that. Fiber internet is much better yes?
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I'm not overly familiar with Charter.....I deal with Comcast mostly, sometimes Time Warner, Metrocast, and Cox. So I don't know Charters speed packages compared to Verizon. It's not a cut and try answer. If you were comparing Verizon to Comcast...I'd probably go with Comcast. Eh, hard to say. See what speeds you want, what bundles you want (TV 'n stuff)...budget, etc. Fiber is nice, the cable company that services my town is rather slow in speeds, so I went with fiber...hands down. It is good.
 
I have Verizon FOIS, its nice and fast, the only problem is that they give you a router to use that just sucks, if you just get the internet you can get rid of it but if you go for the full package you have to use it for the STB.

I am using the 25/25 package and it screams, can watch more then one HD 720p+ youtube vid at once but at theses speeds i needed to build my own router to fully unlock it's potentiality. Using Pfsense.

Hope this helps.
 
I can't speak for Charter but here is my experience with Time Warner Cable Business class.

1. Supposedly they provide QoS for all business class customers over residential. Meaning your data becomes more favorable for immediate service by TWC's CMTS and network infrastructure. Probably doesn't make much of a noticable difference.

2. Supposedly it isn't capped. But then again, I haven't heard of residential TWC in my area being capped.

3. Better phone and technical support. I call them, 90% of the time I get right through to a support agent, and usually they are in my State and not outsourced to another portion of the US or world.

4. Guaranteed same day truck rolls for service outages/issues.

5. Umm... ability to have static IP addresses? I don't think that is available to residential users.

I've had TWC Biz for a couple of years now. Roughly 15Mbit download and 1.5-3Mbit upload. My area is still DOCSIS 2.0. No wideband yet.
 
Poplap said:
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FIOS isn't available for me unfortunately, I've already looked into it. Would going with a custom router for cable make any difference? If so do you have any recommendations?

hawk82 said:
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I've already gotten a warning for breaking my cap with residential. My business I run from home requires transfers of very large files sometimes to and from business. They have told me for certain that business class is uncapped.

The move favorable data is pretty awesome, and same day truck is cool too. You get a dynamic IP with regular internet, and you can get extras with business class. I may be getting a static at a later point, but I'm not really worried about a static IP currently, however they have told me about it, it's $5 a month. You get a free website as well. Also, no it's not available for residential customers, at least in my area. Pretty good speeds for you. I have the 16mb (26mb turbo) plan, and 2mb upload. But I'm rarely getting 3-4mb download, I believe because most of the people where I live have it so it's really congested...dsl sucks fat nut's here, but I think that's everywhere.

Anyways, thank you both for your input.

Poplap, please get back to me on if I should get my own router, it would be nice to know and have one here or on the way when I get this installed this coming week. :D
 
The TWC Business Class installs in this area are a modem only. No router or gateway solution. Not sure if they even offer that to a business. Some of the installs, they provide an Ambit 4 ethernet port modem (I originally had one), others it is a SciAtlanta/Cisco 1 port modem (what I have now). Again, I can't speak for Charter. Good luck!
 
consumer grade routers are great to a point. They are easy to setup and maintain and they fit the bill for most people how ever most of the time they use very low end hardware that cant handle multiple high bandwidth connections at once and keep up, in high bandwidth environments a custom router can give a great boost because it can handle all the incoming connections and not slow down, this is because they use desktop CPUs instead if the 300-500mhz embedded CPUs found in most consumer routers.

I am using a pfsense based router rocking a intel atom D525 at 1.8ghz and it handles the the high bandwidth environment i an running and the VPN connections i use as well. another good router distro is m0n0wall, is has a few less features but is easier to set up.

this wont fix your cap problem. and with ether cable or DSL slow downs will be common due to these systems being dependent on usage levels, ex. one person on a street uses the 100mb cable connection, they will get the 100mb they pay for, but the moment the whole street uses that same 100mb plan the single cable running down it gets bogged down and cant keep up. this cant be help if the cable company does not upgrade the infrastructure but business class Internet will get priority over everyone else allowing for a larger part of the Internet connection pie.

Hope this helps. :D
 
Only difference I've noticed is dedicated IP address - charter wouldnt give me one without paying for business....
 
I know for sure you get unlimited bandwidth, and you pay considerably more than the residential; I don't remember if it was static IP but I wouldn't be surprised. If you intend to use a lot of bandwidth, get the business class. I had the lowest plan, 12/1 I think, I got a call from Charter saying, "well, you used more than the 100 Gb cap, this is your first warning. 2 more times in the next 6 months, and we'll terminate your service." I've upgraded to a higher package, 18/2 I think, for 250 Gb cap. You don't need to worry about this in business or get the highest internet residental plan if this is your specific concern as it has a better price/download ratio.
 
i was reading the top of this thread wondering what the bandwidth "cap" was that you were hitting by downloading PDFs lol

i could see hitting 100gb a month, but normally there are consumer packages with larger caps then that. for my area, the only difference between a top tier consumer package and the business package, is; static ip, better tech support, mail server ports opened, stuff like that. and actually, the package i have at the house which is non-business, is faster then the 'business' packages available from charter.
 
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