Switching ISP's Today from FIOS (back) to Cablevision

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Yep, you read that right, I am switching my ISP from FIOS to Cablevision, and it is currently causing me great angst. :/ :laugh:

The deals Cablevision are offering to current FIOS subscribers who were once Cablevision subscribers are just to good to pass up.

Due to how Verizon makes people do a new contract every 2 years, my Internet is now the slowest it has ever been in my house. Since I have the FIOS basic plan, I am getting 15/5. I know that is better then a decent amount of people, but keep in mind at one point I got 45/15. That used to be my "basic" service. But now that Verizon has changed their plans, the only affordable one is indeed the one I get currently.

I called FIOS to let them counter offer, and they offered a decent deal, but I would have lost several of the premium channels I currently have. But my internet could go up to 50/5. It is just the loss of the channels, plus the fact it would still be $25 more than Cablevisions offer, that is making me not choose to stick with them. I also have had less then ideal dealings with their billing and tech support departments.

Cablevision is offering all of the premium channels (except Cinemax, which is no loss), a free Wireless N Netgear Router, a free Amazon Kindle Fire, and a free 2 year subscription to the Major League Baseball Season Pass (if I only watched Baseball).

But the big change is I am now going to be a Cablevision Ultra subscriber, which the advertised speeds are 50/8. Now I know FIOS speeds are always very reliable, but Cablevision now claims to also have a mixture of fiber optic and hybrid fiber optic network, so their speeds are also supposed to be very reliable now. Even if my new Cablevision speeds to fluctuate some, they should still be higher than my current 15/5. However I am hoping the speeds stay constant. Also about 7 months ago at work we had Cablevision install a business line for us. It has been nothing short of ROCK SOLID. No downtime at all, and we get 110/15. Now obviously that is a business line, but due to the great experience I have had at work, I am much more open to trying them at home. A good example of word of mouth so to speak.

The main reason I have made this switch, is a $47 a month savings.

I have also been told that the install today is going to be incredibly easy, as Cablevision is just going to be able to "piggy back" on the current lines Verizon has installed. So everything should stay exactly the same inside my house, which is key. It is just the outside line that will change.

So wish me luck. Cablevision will be here between 8-11 (it is already 9 am). If everything goes smoothly, I should be up and running this afternoon with a new ISP and faster speeds.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Oh welcome then. :) We had that major outage the other day but besides that it's been great. Generally as long as you have a D3 modem you'll be fine. FiOS is pretty sweet and i'd hate having to switch to cable but for costs it's a no brainer to me (if it were available here, we only have U-Verse to compete :( )

You did say "ULTRA" which is usualyl the 101Mbps speeds, Boost+ is 50Mbps which is what I have now at home and work. They do a little over provisioning too as you can see here:

Other than that it's not bad at all, upload is the only place I wish it was better but maybe with the new FiOS Quantum stuff will kick CV in gear!

As for their claim of them having a hybrid fiber network, that's always been true but it's fiber to the node rather than to the premises as with FiOS. The node is the unit on the light pole then they run coax from there to your house.

I think your main angst will be the TV service, well in that I don't use their cable boxes, just ClearQAM on my HDTV so I get all the basics which is all I need for sports. I stream* shows instead but with fast internets, that's no problemo :shiftyninja:

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Oh welcome then. :) We had that major outage the other day but besides that it's been great. Generally as long as you have a D3 modem you'll be fine. FiOS is pretty sweet and i'd hate having to switch to cable but for costs it's a no brainer to me (if it were available here, we only have U-Verse to compete :( )

You did say "ULTRA" which is usualyl the 101Mbps speeds, Boost+ is 50Mbps which is what I have now at home and work. They do a little over provisioning too as you can see here:

Other than that it's not bad at all, upload is the only place I wish it was better but maybe with the new FiOS Quantum stuff will kick CV in gear!

As for their claim of them having a hybrid fiber network, that's always been true but it's fiber to the node rather than to the premises as with FiOS. The node is the unit on the light pole then they run coax from there to your house.

Indeed thanks for the correction, and you are right, it is Boost and not Ultra (Ultra is the business line we have at work). So do you always see the same speeds regardless of what time of day and what day it is?

I had Cablevision YEARS ago, and there was a major issue with the consistency of the speeds, which they claim to have fixed that issue, but would love to hear from someone who uses them if your speeds are indeed consistent.

And believe me, this was not an easy decision on my behalf. I overall love the reliability of FIOS, it is just their prices are outrageous. To get what should be the same exact services, and in some cases much better offerings overall, for $45 less a month, that just helps overall in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks for the fast response. They are not here yet so I am on pins and needles waiting for this all to go down. :rofl:

[Anibal P]

Unless it's changed in the last year since I worked for Cablevision's Tech Support, your speeds will be fairly stable and close to the max or better, our rule at the time was half or more and things were considered OK, less than half speed and there is a problem, if you have a problem and need Tech support, get past lvl1, they do all the basic stuff only, lvl2 is where things get done or you will need a lead/sup. Never dealt with the TV side but I heard their Cable Card setups were great and fast, but that the boxes were crap

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Unless it's changed in the last year since I worked for Cablevision's Tech Support, your speeds will be fairly stable and close to the max or better, our rule at the time was half or more and things were considered OK, less than half speed and there is a problem, if you have a problem and need Tech support, get past lvl1, they do all the basic stuff only, lvl2 is where things get done or you will need a lead/sup. Never dealt with the TV side but I heard their Cable Card setups were great and fast, but that the boxes were crap

Thanks for sharing. While I personally do not feel half speeds are okay, that is still better than my current connection, so I could in theory live with that I suppose. Maybe. :rofl:

Just got the call, they are on their way. if I am posting back in a few hours, it should be from my new connection, and no doubt I will be doing speed tests all day for multiple days. :D

[jerzdawg]

Ya know.. when I saw this on the front page I worried it was you posting this. Cablevision has been coming to my house on the regular trying to get me to switch. Usually I am just able to tell them no NFL network.. no deal. Well.. the sales lady must have taken notes because she came back the day the deal was made to bring the NFL network to Cablevision. Im currently getting 25/25 with Fios and I just cant justify the switch. I think cb's deal was $122 and I am paying $135 with Fios. I have a feeling you will end up back with Fios at some point...at least you should be able to keep the free swag.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Ya know.. when I saw this on the front page I worried it was you posting this. Cablevision has been coming to my house on the regular trying to get me to switch. Usually I am just able to tell them no NFL network.. no deal. Well.. the sales lady must have taken notes because she came back the day the deal was made to bring the NFL network to Cablevision. Im currently getting 25/25 with Fios and I just cant justify the switch. I think cb's deal was $122 and I am paying $135 with Fios. I have a feeling you will end up back with Fios at some point...at least you should be able to keep the free swag.

:laugh: We are currently paying $156 with FIOS, and that is with the 15/5, new deal is $115 through Cablevision (does also include NFL network) with claimed 50/8. So yeah, had to take the risk. You know I have loved FIOS, but just cannot justify the extra costs if Cablevision can pull off what they are promising.

As I said, FIOS did come back with a counter offer, which did include 50/15, but it then takes us down to their basic cable package. And was still at $137 after tax. Which is still $22 more than the OOL deal.

It is also a 30 day no risk trial, so that kind of helped solidify the deal.

The one thing that may mess the whole thing up, is we have to keep the Verizon line to keep her work phone, mainly fax. Or else it becomes a nightmare with the paper work every month. So yeah, if OOL cannot install while keeping the additional phone lines we have through Verizon, I am just going to tell them thanks but no thanks. They claimed it would not be an issue though.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Speeds are steady all day long as you can see from my posts in the speedtest.net thread on here as well as other post on DSLReports.com. I was just gonna mention the 30 day trial thing so you can even keep FIOS side by side and go from there.

You should be able to do 2 lines with CV with the 1 modem so you should be goood.

[Chris123NT]

Good luck with it, I know after all the problems I had with Cablevision back in the day I'll never go back. Especially after the whole capping thing and the way they treated me like i was some kind of criminal for using my connection.

[Roger H. Veteran]

What capping thing? There should be no caps at all on CV, I downloaded 182GB the other (in about 8hrs I might add :yes: (Y)) and didn't hear a quip from CV about it. Did about 400GB last month but normally I only do about 180-300GB though so maybe that's why.

I've had them for abour 2 years now and have had a few issues but nothing major in the way of days/weeks with the same issue, usually a few hours.

[Chris123NT]

What capping thing? There should be no caps at all on CV, I downloaded 182GB the other (in about 8hrs I might add :yes: (Y)) and didn't hear a quip from CV about it. Did about 400GB last month but normally I only do about 180-300GB though so maybe that's why.

I've had them for abour 2 years now and have had a few issues but nothing major in the way of days/weeks with the same issue, usually a few hours.

From 2003 until 2007 they would cap your upload speed to 150kbit for crossing some unknown limit that seemed to change based on node load. This is well documented on DSLReports, under the capping thread. It should still be there although it hasn't been an issue since FiOS got a good foothold in CV's area.

Worst of all it was a hard cap and you had to call in to get it lifted, and some doofus from their security department would call you back and scold you like a kid.

[BoneyardBrew Member]

I was a loyal Optimum/Cablevision customer for many years until I started having serious issues with them. Basically, the internet would drop out on a daily basis for minutes at a time on top of being only a fraction of the speed we paid for. Contacting support left the issue unresolved and when suggesting we may switch they simply let us. No counter-offer, no apologies for the issues, etc.

We switched to FiOS and couldn't be happier. Now we get better and far more consistent speed (actually more than we paid for), faster TV (the Cablevision UI was always horribly laggy), and your standard unlimited phone service. Cablevision representatives always come to our door trying to get us to switch but after our past experience with them we refuse to, regardless of how much they can save us (which in the grand scheme of things isn't much when the service barely works). I have a friend that switched back to Cablevision from FiOS because of a good deal and he has had nothing but problems since.

Anyway, I'll end my rant there. If Cablevision's service is more reliable in Jersey then it is in New York you've made a good choice. Best of luck!

[jerzdawg]

:laugh: We are currently paying $156 with FIOS, and that is with the 15/5, new deal is $115 through Cablevision (does also include NFL network) with claimed 50/8. So yeah, had to take the risk. You know I have loved FIOS, but just cannot justify the extra costs if Cablevision can pull off what they are promising.

As I said, FIOS did come back with a counter offer, which did include 50/15, but it then takes us down to their basic cable package. And was still at $137 after tax. Which is still $22 more than the OOL deal.

It is also a 30 day no risk trial, so that kind of helped solidify the deal.

The one thing that may mess the whole thing up, is we have to keep the Verizon line to keep her work phone, mainly fax. Or else it becomes a nightmare with the paper work every month. So yeah, if OOL cannot install while keeping the additional phone lines we have through Verizon, I am just going to tell them thanks but no thanks. They claimed it would not be an issue though.

yea... i get the price thing.. Verizon is def not as good as they used to be with their "deals" to keep customers. I feel like I used to get all sorts of free stuff (premium channels, $300 visa card, etc) whenever I threatened to leave. Now... nothing in comparison. maybe ill call today.. see if they can offer me anything... good luck with cablevision...

edit - do they have the multiroom dvr thing? cause that is still something I like to have with fios

[Roger H. Veteran]

From 2003 until 2007 they would cap your upload speed to 150kbit for crossing some unknown limit that seemed to change based on node load. This is well documented on DSLReports, under the capping thread. It should still be there although it hasn't been an issue since FiOS got a good foothold in CV's area.

Worst of all it was a hard cap and you had to call in to get it lifted, and some doofus from their security department would call you back and scold you like a kid.

Oooooh that sorta cap you mean. Yeah i remember those, but I thought if you were seeding torrents* or "being a server" which is against their TOS you would get that. Granted uploading stuff to Amazon/Dropbox/etc wasn't that popular back then but I never had issues with upload speed caps.

I should probably point out that I had OOL in 1998 also, ! I had 8Mbps service while most people were still on dialup, with some on DSL 768Kbps. I had a 3Com Sharkfin modem that i bought at Nobody Beats the Wiz back then. This was in the days of Geocities homepages though, not much to do with 8mbps back then. LOL

Their multiroom DVR thing is now Network DVR+ which isn't as good IMO but you can watch shows from any box however, it is sorta like OnDemand instead of "DVR" in the normal sense. :)

* = yes i know torrents weren't around back then :p maybe IRC servers or whatever.

OH and WTF, where is DL? Did it fail so badly he can't get back online? That's not a good sign if that's the case. :no:

[tsupersonic]

Lucky you, you actually have a choice of ISP's. Where I am now, I have 2 choices: 1) Time Warner (Roadrunner) - which offers fastish speeds but is unreliable. 2) Frontier - Really slow and extremely expensive. I'm with Time Warner now, and I have 20/2, for $45. It blows. They haven't rolled out DOCSIS 3.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Well, so far so good.

My Newsgroup connection has gone from 3.3 to 7.8, so I will also take that as well. (Y)

So I guess it comes down to how reliable this whole connection winds up being. Turns out they ran a brand new line from the street to my house, so I think that helps.

[Roger H. Veteran]

There he is, so what modem did they give you? Post some signal levels? http://192.168.100.1

Should be pretty good since both work and residential are run to the same CMTS and over the same lines/nodes. So if work is good then so should be home unless you jynx it or something by say it! :p

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

I guess I have this modem...

Hardware Information System: ARRIS DOCSIS 3.0 / PacketCable 1.5 Touchstone Telephony Modem

HW_REV: 2

VENDOR: Arris Interactive, L.L.C.

BOOTR: 1.2.1.48

SW_REV: 7.3.123

MODEL: TM802G Serial Number: BAVBPU679273531 Battery Charger FW Rev: 01.91 Options: Firmware Build and Revisions Firmware Name: TS0703123_090611_MODEL_7_8 Firmware Build Time: Tue Sep 6 18:01:19 EDT 2011

Is that good? I truly am asking, I really never knew much about specs of modems, etc., but in the little bit of research I did before making this switch I did find out something called Docsis 3 is good, but not sure why.

And I guess the signals were all that info on the first screen? You can make sense of that stuff? If so here....

Edited August 31, 2012 by SHoTTa35
since you linked it via dropbox i'll remove the attached one ;)

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

So quick question to the Network gurus.

Right now the router I got for free is a Netgear N600, seems decent enough, at least for now.

So my first question is it is Dual Band, I should name both bands the same name, is that correct?

So if my SSID is DLNetwork for the one, it should also be DLNetwork for the other correct? Same security, etc.

Also, should I change DNS Address? Set it to whatever that one free service is I know I am signed up for? :laugh:

Gonna forward some ports now, may have questions about that, will see.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Ok few things:

DOCSIS 3.0 is good because it allows channel bonding - Think of it as a 8 lane highway vs 1 lane :D. If a truck jackknifes in the 1 lane highway nobody is going anywhere. On a 8 lane highway they just push the traffic over to the rest of the unaffected lanes and keep going. This is why there used to be slow downs back in the days because EVERYONE was on the same channel. So when neighborhood kids decide they wanna start raping some torrents everyone would suffer. With D3, you just move over. Right now you (and me) only have 5 active channels but they are moving to 8 channels now. 8 Channels also give you options for more speed (8 x 43Mbps each).

Signals are TERRIBLE!!! Can't believe they left you with that. Obviously it's working but you want to be in the range of -10 to +10, 0 being PERFECT. -13 while can work (up to -15) is bad in general. Since they ran a drop from the pole new to your house, they put splitters on it I would assume but did they put a 4 way or 3 way or what? Remove the splitter and see what signal you get directly connected at the original cable, if it's better (closer to 0) then put a 2 way splitter there, 1 going to the modem and one going to the other splitter which splits to the TVs as they are more easy going with weak signals.

Make sure all the connections are screwed on TIGHT also.

See some FAQs here; http://www.dslreport...m/faq/optonline

So quick question to the Network gurus.

Right now the router I got for free is a Netgear N600, seems decent enough, at least for now.

So my first question is it is Dual Band, I should name both bands the same name, is that correct?

So if my SSID is DLNetwork for the one, it should also be DLNetwork for the other correct? Same security, etc.

Also, should I change DNS Address? Set it to whatever that one free service is I know I am signed up for? :laugh:

Gonna forward some ports now, may have questions about that, will see.

For this part, that netgear should be dual band :) You can do both as the same or name em different - DLNetwork and DLNetwork-5G if you want to specify. That way you'll know which one is 5G and connect to that one (say Xbox360 and other 5G devices). However if you don't want to bother with all that you can just name them the same and the devices will connect to anyone that's strongest (odds are that will be 2.4Ghz) - my laptop however you can specify which one to make higher priority so that's 5Ghz.

If the same network security so you don't gotta tell people different one based on which they are connecting to. Just say if yous ee DLNetwork-5G choose that one, if not then their laptop doesn't have 5Ghz and they'll just have to take the 2.4Ghz :D

DNS Address - honestly it doesn't matter so much. OOLs are good, and never have issues. You can however change them to: 4.2.2.1 or 8.8.8.8 or 208.67.222.222 or a combination of all those that way if 1 goes down you have the rest as backup :) Which one you use as #1 is up to you.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Thanks Shotta.

I had a funny feeling those negative numbers were not good. :/ :laugh:

So here is my splitter situation.

I do not think the issue is with the splitter, but the rest of my house. When I tell you there are I believe 5 different coax lines running throughout it to get everything running, I am not kidding. 3 of them happen to be through the crawl space that it literally is probably around 120 degrees in right now. I really do believe the issue probably lies with the cabling within, as it is an absolute mess. I was not the owner of the house when the switch was first made to FIOS from cablevision a few years back, and the FIOS guys truly did a pretty atrocious job with the wiring. So I am only hoping right now those signals do not provide a whole lot of issues, as it is a pretty major project finding the source of the bad wiring I believe.

With that said, if I can call them up and complain, and they will come out and fix it, I will definitely try that. (Y)

And actually after I posted my question, I pretty much came to the conclusion you recommended. Just going to throw a 5 after the one SSID and try connecting to it. Like I am sure my Macbook Retina can connect to it. Will just see how things work out from there.

Forwarding ports so far was a breeze, however something funky happened when I opened up TCP Port 53 up for my Apple TV, the router kept reporting to me that "device 192.168.1.6 is controlling this point" and I could not log into the router at all. I am not even sure what device .6 was either, so I typed it into the browser address for the hell of it, and nothing happened. But I do know it is not my 360, PS3, HP Printer, Apple TV, or my Synology NAS DS211j, as they all have assigned static IP's. And it was not my Macbook and iPhone, I did check that. It could have been my Vita, two different iPads, iPod, wifes macbook, my gaming PC, or something else. :laugh: Just realized perhaps I can go through the logs of the router to get some info. But that was a bit weird losing control of the router like that already and not being able to log in. :huh:

[Roger H. Veteran]

High temps will cause ingress on the lines, that's why you want your number to be closer to 0 because in summertime they'll creep up. Heat causes expansion and attenuates the line or something. The good thing though as I said is -13 is technically within the limit so that's why you are fine. The upstream of 51dBmV also is within the limits as well. I have the same modem as you at work and some bad wiring had it up to 58 before it would drop. Changed that now and we are 48 which is better. Hopefully this is your top end so keep an eye on it. If at night when it cools down (since today is such a scorcher also) your temps looks better then guess you can breathe a little easy. Cables in the attic though definitely push those temps up!

Port 53? Isn't that DNS? Why would you even open that? :blink: Oh wait, you said TCP - not UDP :p

OH and for those Netgear routers, they are a pain in that only 1 person can be "logged in" at a time. SO odds are your machine was .6 and then you or the router changed your IP address then it wont let you in because it stil believes .6 is logged in. You aren't locked out however, just gotta wait for it to timeout which is like 3 mins I think then you can get in again. This is standard on Netgear stuff, dunno why they do that but I guess. You can slap DD-WRT on there though like I mentioned in one of the linked posts :D Just make sure you download the right version ("CV" version) of the firmware to upgrade it.

OH and hot damn you got a lot of stuff on that network :o lol... I definitely wouldn't use static for all that stuff - well not manual static anyways - i'd set Static DCHP addresses so that way the it's easier to track, that's just me though. Stuff like the printer and the NAS need that but not the 360 or PS3 unless you are trying to avoid using UPnP or NAT-PMP. ;)

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Cool thanks again for all the help. I will definitely monitor it all and see if things drop, it was hot as hell out today here in Dirty Jersey, so maybe that had something to do with it, but yeah the attic definitely does not help. I recall at work they added a few things to the line to boost the signal strength. They may have even just been called amplifiers but I almost feel as if that is so obviously the name it is dead wrong. But one was just like an added little onnector at the end of the coax, and the other was like a full blown box. I will take a picture of exactly what I mean at the office. My point being is perhaps they could add one or the other on my connection to get the signal a boost and get it closer to 1.

And Ive just always assigned an IP address to my devices and then opened up my ports so they have the best possible connection. If there is an easier way to do it on this router, by all means share. (Y) Although everything is now setup.

Also registered the mac addresses for 3 out of the 4 devices I can use on their Wireless service for Auto Login. Really interested to see how that whole thing pans out. That is definitely a nice little feature IMO.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Usually they'll add an amp (yes that's what they are called) when the signal is bad but at the cost of some return, your return (upstream) is already high so adding a amp will push that over the edge. In your case it's usually either old splitters or loose cables and such. Maybe when it gets cooler in the winter you can head up there and check lines. If your modem is close to that ground block (picture of the outside connection with the green ground cable), you can split there then connect the modem right from there and the other connection continues on.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Thanks again for the responses/help. As soon as it cools down some (I hate heat), I will investigate all my connections and see if I cannot find the culprits.

Been doing periodic speed tests since I got the install, and all have stayed at...

Amazingly, I get the same results through a wired connection or wireless, that test is from my wireless Macbook, so that seems a bit strange, I have always gotten a bit faster speeds when wired. So not sure what is going on there. I mean I will take it, but it does make me think there is something up if my wireless is as fast as my wired connection. Almost like I am peaking out at the above.

I did have one little hiccup overall, non internet related. The HD DVR I was given was a POS. I moved it to get to a switch I have behind it that is connected to the router, and it just made an incredibly loud whirling noise like it was either a fan scratching against metal or a shot hard drive trying to spin. Image would freeze until I tapped the box again to stop the whirling noise. :s :/

I live about 2 miles from an OOL store, so I just drove in and exchanged it. Asked if there was any way I could get a new box since I am after-all a new subscriber, and they said there are no new HD DVR boxes anymore. So yeah, that kind of sucks. First day issues and I had to resolve it (I did call, they were willing to send someone out on Sunday to switch out the box), so hopefully this is the only issue I encounter for awhile.