gaming in mind: SF Bay area internet

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chameleoneel

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 15, 2005
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hey guys, I will be moving to San Francisco soon. Any recommendations for internet providers and what types are available?

All I've heard is Comcast this and Comcast that....what are you guys using?
 
comcast or AT&T uverse.. those are your only choices.. DSL is worthless in the bay area..

im currently using Comcast 16/2 connection.. right now the bay area the only area in norcal to have comcast Xfinity.. and we will be getting 100mbit connections sometime this year.. the central valley will gets it later this year.. also the 250GB cap for comcast is bogus in california.. it is not enforced here..
 
chameleoneel said:
what is Xfinity? Comcasts site just says "faster" "more HD" Blah blah
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more HD channels along with the ability to watch shows and movies on your computer.. pretty nifty stuff when your gone you can access it from anywhere.. right now i think we are at 80 something HD channels.. there is also 3 HD channels per premium movie channel(hbo/starz/cinimax/encore).. to give you an idea.. the central valley(sacramento, stockton) only has about 45 HD channels..
 
Yeah Comcast pretty much has a stranglehold on the Bay Area. I can't really complain about our service; it's fast and mostly trouble free; I mean we had some connectivity issues in the past, but haven't run into that for some time now.

Customer service is pretty decent too; they can be reached almost any hour of the day and can fix most issues over the phone.
 
Comcast HSI is good. I'm paying $20/month with a promo that I got last year. But they're enforcing their 250GB up+downstream cap so I may get kicked off soon. But it's alright, there's aways AT&T DSL or U-verse. Price is about the same.
 
Depends on how much you're willing to pay. My friend who plays cod like 24/7 get's dsl extreme and says he's never had a problem with lag. The cap is 6gb/s tho, and that runs you 30 a month. I've heard xfinity works fine too but i dont know the prices
 
Att U-Verse is pretty much everywhere now, way faster speeds than comcast currently (we have the 24mb down package vs the 16 max we had with comcast) and they don't throttle or have bandwidth limits (yet :()
 
akirarat said:
Comcast HSI is good. I'm paying $20/month with a promo that I got last year. But they're enforcing their 250GB up+downstream cap so I may get kicked off soon. But it's alright, there's aways AT&T DSL or U-verse. Price is about the same.
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are you in the bay area? because i avg 500GB+ a month and comcast has never said a word to me about it..
 
This is all my experience:

I moved to North Beach in SF from Greenwich CT, and Comcast so far has fucking sucked; I've had all sorts of connectivity issues (be they the internet, the television, the telephone, or all at once), I've spent plenty of hours on the phone dealing with them having to trouble-shoot issues, I've had them incorrectly charging me for a tech to come fix the internet/tv/phone (which I lost connectivity for three days on), and they charge RIDICULOUS amounts on a monthly basis. Comcast makes the Charter cable I had at school in UW Madison seem like magic. In all seriousness, given my experiences with Charter, Comcast, and Optimum cable, Optimum was by far the best.

Unfortunately my place isn't getting FIOS, and the U-Verse I can get is only DSL, so I'm essentially stuck.

Xfinity, as far as I've seen, is just a rebranded Comcast trying to leave their tarnished name behind. The ability to control your DVR remotely has been a feature of other services for a long time, nothing they offer is different. My girlfriend's family is in Sacramento, and her family there has all the same channels we do.

To the OP: don't really worry about the up/down speed for gaming, just worry about connection reliability and latency. You don't need much throughput for gaming, just low-latency consistency.
 
Hey guys thanks for the help so far.

quadnad said:
You don't need much throughput for gaming, just low-latency consistency.
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Yeah I know. this leads to me being more specific:

basically I'm looking for decent speed, uncapped bandwidth, doesn't force me to bundle with cable and/or phone.
 
i use dsl extreme, which is just a reseller of at&t lines. only qualify for 3 Mbit in my area though. unlimited bandwidth at least.
 
I also live in sf. Anyways comcast used to be terrible but they have been alright the past year, I also took advantage of the new customer 20$ a month for a year. Don't know if they still have it but make sure you ask them for any new customer promos. Also keep praying verizon fios somehow comes here.
 
Are you moving to San Francisco or an area around it?

I used to have Comcast HSI and it was decent and fairly priced with promotions, but I always hated the step ladder price increases after the promotion. A few times I got away with reducing them again with the customer service rep, but eventually one CS wouldn't budge so I canceled my service.

One alternative for cable is Astound. They're a sister company to wave broadband up in Washington and I think bought RCN cable down here. They're not everywhere so you'll have to check if it's available at your address, but they do have their own network. Their services and prices are comparable to Comcast, but since I hate Comcast so much I'm happy to support them. I only subscribe to internet and have no complaints with their service - less downtime than I had with comcast and no limits yet. The only issue was that their DNSs was a little flaky a few years back, but that's easily remedied by setting them to Google's DNSs on the router. :)

Welcome to the Bay Area!

techpriest said:
Also keep praying verizon fios somehow comes here.
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Keep praying - due to government regulations, each telecom provider has a monopoly on their designated region. AT&T on the west, Verizon on the East, and I think Quest/Sprint?? is in the middle (whatever those baby bell companies were split into, but are now remerging together) Even if I pick one of those small 3rd party phone providers - they're still using AT&Ts lines. The only way we're getting FIOS is if AT&T decides to build out their network (they're too busy worrying about 4G), Comcast upgrades (they're not going to change anytime soon), or if Google's FIOS plan comes to the Bary Area. I'm betting on Google.
 
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Comcast is generally good in the bay area. They have black outs for no apparent reason occasionally, but other than that, its damn fast. I average 20mb/10mb and pay $90 a month for internet+cable.
 
Blue Knight said:
One alternative for cable is Astound. They're a sister company to wave broadband up in Washington and I think bought RCN cable down here. They're not everywhere so you'll have to check if it's available at your address, but they do have their own network. Their services and prices are comparable to Comcast, but since I hate Comcast so much I'm happy to support them. I only subscribe to internet and have no complaints with their service - less downtime than I had with comcast and no limits yet. The only issue was that their DNSs was a little flaky a few years back, but that's easily remedied by setting them to Google's DNSs on the router. :)
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I second Astound for Internet, if its available. Not only do they actually have customer service, but their service is much more reliable than AT&T's or Comcast's offerings.

There are some TF2 servers I frequent, and I usually get sub-10ms ping times to them.
 
Christopher said:
I second Astound for Internet, if its available. Not only do they actually have customer service, but their service is much more reliable than AT&T's or Comcast's offerings.

There are some TF2 servers I frequent, and I usually get sub-10ms ping times to them.
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ugh that sounds really good, but I need the upload speed to be better for upping to a server. This looks like a great solution for the OP.
 
lol all these companies everyone is bringing up dont even exist in SF.. all SF has is comcast and AT&T.. its a monopoly.. any other providers in the bay are are comcast/AT&T resellers.. its the same thing in sacramento.. surewest is an AT&T fiber reseller.

and i completely agree quadnad.. they are by far the worst company in america.. but when they have a monopoly in northern california your pretty much screwed.. we will never see verizon fios in norcal because this state doesnt allow competition.. the only way to get fios in norcal is to have an entire city vote to bring them in.. its how long beach in socal was able to get fios.. they voted to keep comcast out and bring verizon in..

Christopher said:
I second Astound for Internet, if its available. Not only do they actually have customer service, but their service is much more reliable than AT&T's or Comcast's offerings.

There are some TF2 servers I frequent, and I usually get sub-10ms ping times to them.
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thats because those servers you are on are based in Seattle most likely and astound probably has a better routing system then what comcast uses.. because theres no way you would get a 10ms ping outside the state..
 
I don't mean to hijack the topic, but I got a related question.

Anyone know what neighborhoods in SF has AT&T U-verse? I checked a few addresses on AT&T's website and it said U-verse isn't available :(
 
Personally I would try:

Verison Fios
Charter
Comcast

I personally only have Charter as Verison isn't available here but I've never had a problem with Charter. They've screwed up my bill a few times but I fixed it and got compensated for it too.
 
I'm in east bay, Comcast 250GB limit is enforced. They called me up after I went over a few times saying they were going to cancel my account. F them, I got Uverse. I really like Uverse, it works great for me. I told a friend how much I liked it, he got it, and he hated it. I guess it could depend where in bay area you are, but performance for me is great.
 
quadnad said:
ugh that sounds really good, but I need the upload speed to be better for upping to a server. This looks like a great solution for the OP.
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I just did a speed test, the download is a little lower than usual (I've seen up to 3 megabytes/sec from steam downloads, typically 2.5 megabytes/sec) but the upload is on-par for what I usually get.

 
Christopher said:
I just did a speed test, the download is a little lower than usual (I've seen up to 3 megabytes/sec from steam downloads, typically 2.5 megabytes/sec) but the upload is on-par for what I usually get.

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That's interesting -- their website shows substantially slower packages available. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong area?
 
quadnad said:
That's interesting -- their website shows substantially slower packages available. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong area?
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I'm not sure how they're measuring, but I've always gotten more speed than advertised on cable, whether Comcast or Astound.

I'm currently signed up for the Astound 10/1 at $35 a month, but in speedtests it's actually closer to 15/2. (The local steam servers are great - 8gb in under an hour)

The odd thing is that the speedtest.net results are faster when I use a server in Oregon or down in Los Angeles than the one in San Francisco (I'm on the souther border of San Francisco). :confused:
 
Blue Knight said:
One alternative for cable is Astound. They're a sister company to wave broadband up in Washington and I think bought RCN cable down here. They're not everywhere so you'll have to check if it's available at your address, but they do have their own network. Their services and prices are comparable to Comcast, but since I hate Comcast so much I'm happy to support them. I only subscribe to internet and have no complaints with their service - less downtime than I had with comcast and no limits yet. The only issue was that their DNSs was a little flaky a few years back, but that's easily remedied by setting them to Google's DNSs on the router. :)

Welcome to the Bay Area!
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Astound sounds like what I'm looking for. Especially after a couple of other posters chimed in after you.

I'm actually from Washington and had Wave Broadband's cable service in my hometown, Port Angeles. I loved it.

I will be living in the area of San Francisco known as "Mission". Just leased a place the other day. I'm moving down from Anchorage, Alaska. Stationed here with Air Force, but my 4 years is up and I'm not going to renew. Honorable discharge, proceed to college!

Thanks everyone.


*Internet service in Alaska is terribly expensive. I'm paying $50 a month for clearwire. Its THE CHEAPEST service available at $50 and also happens to be unlimited. Its also really slow and has prevented me from PC gaming online. PS3 gaming works fine, however.

The next cheapest unlimited plan is some very very average DSL for $80. The next after that is ok cable forced into a mega package for like $130 a month or something crazy. Oh real world, I have missed you.


***oh man, that Paxio does look interesting. I'll have to talk to them. In coming to California, I envisioned fiber everywhere. Sadly that doesn't seem to be the case, but Paxio may be the solution!
 
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bexamous said:
I'm in east bay, Comcast 250GB limit is enforced. They called me up after I went over a few times saying they were going to cancel my account. F them, I got Uverse. I really like Uverse, it works great for me. I told a friend how much I liked it, he got it, and he hated it. I guess it could depend where in bay area you are, but performance for me is great.
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hmm interesting.. they have never said a word to me.. could also be that im the only comcast customer on this node in my neighborhood.. the day uverse went active here 6 months ago everyone switched.. but there isnt much of a difference in cost for me to bother switching.. right now im just waiting to find out what cities get googles 100mbit test connection and plan to move to one of them.. i just hope its outside of california so i can get out of this crap hole state..
 
chameleoneel said:
***oh man, that Paxio does look interesting. I'll have to talk to them. In coming to California, I envisioned fiber everywhere. Sadly that doesn't seem to be the case, but Paxio may be the solution!
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Sadly, very little fiber in the area, damn you AT&T...

PAXIO ls really nice, but extremely limited availability. They pretty much only exist in new residential developments that have signed agreements with PAXIO to roll fiber as homes are built.
 
if you're moving into a condo, get webpass.

http://www.web-pass.com/

No contract either, and $400 a year. Gives double the speed of comcast. It's what I currently have, and it is awesome.
 
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