Any experience with Earthlink cable?

MarekRozanski · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:41 pm

Looks like they offer cable broadband in Durham, and the monthly fee is slightly lower than standalone Road Runner, so I was wondering if anyone has experience with Earthlink. I'm thinking of switching from DSL -- the lure of 4+Mbs is hard to resist.

Other than speed, my concerns are reliability and service. I've heard stories about TWC/Road Runner going down occasionally and I have to admit that DSL has spoiled me in this area -- the last DSL outage I experienced was in 2004. Also, I know that Road Runner is cheaper than Earthlink when bundled with cable TV service, but I'm not interested in switching from DirecTV to Time Warner Cable.

Is Earthlink a better or at least as good an option as Road Runner?

Todd Breakey · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:47 pm

I've been happy with Earthlink since my dial up days. They do have issues everyonce in a while with email access. But that has only happened once or twice since going high speed.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:58 pm

We are in Wake County near I540 and Leesville Rd.

We have had Earthlink Cable since it was first offered. Since it uses TWC we actually get billed with our cable bill. We use the Earthlink spam blocker which seems to work well. We also use the Earthlink Web Mail from work or the road.

Other than during bad storms which sometimes take out the system "somewhere" when we still have power, we rarely lose cable but we do lose it briefly at times. Frequently it just needs a modem and/or router reboot.

We stayed with Earthlink even though we could have gotten broadband sooner by switching to Road Runner simply because we didn't want to change our old Mindspring email addresses. DSL was not available until about a week after we got cable internet.

We use cable TV also.

Jason Mauldin · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:59 pm

There's no difference between Earthlink and TWC except for the price. I have Earthlink, and when I've called their Customer Service with a Tech Issue, I always get transferred to TWC.

The earthlink bill even comes directly from TWC.

Carl Fisher · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:46 pm

Ditto all the previous comments- we've got Earthlink broadband via TWC also. We got it because it was a few dollars cheaper at the time, plus we got to keep our old email addresses. We've been happy with them.

Something else to consider if you travel a lot and find yourself using (sigh) dialup is that Earthlink's got a heck of a lot more local access numbers than RoadRunner does.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:51 pm

Carl Fisher wrote:

Something else to consider if you travel a lot and find yourself using (sigh) dialup is that Earthlink's got a heck of a lot more local access numbers than RoadRunner does.

Good point that I forgot to mention (haven't been traveling lately). Earthlink USED to allow unlimited dialup but a few years ago they put a limit on it.

Ash Nelson · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:05 pm

We have Earthlink broadband and voice over IP. Only had it go out twice in about 5 years. We still had cable service during the ice storm that knocked out power for a week. We would fire up the generator and watch TV or surf the intarwebs while cooking/running the fridge for a few hours.

Scott Johnson · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:08 pm

No complaints here. Earrthlink via TWC cable (the earthlink actually shows up on the cable bill, not a separate earthlink bill). It's been very reliable for the last few years. Certainly as reliable as the DSL we had before the cable.

Scott

Chris Halweg · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:33 pm

We have Earthlink cable as well. There is not difference from TWC. If your needs are not as strict, I think you can get roadrunner lite for ~$30/month IIRC.

steve remchak · **Posted:** Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:12 pm

5 years, no complaints to speak of. much much better than my current cable hi speed provider (Charter) as far as outages and customer service go.

MarekRozanski · **Posted:** Thu Jun 14, 2007 12:16 am

Thanks, everyone, for the responses. Sounds like Earthlink is a good choice.

MarekRozanski · **Posted:** Sat Aug 18, 2007 12:45 pm

So, I got Earthlink cable. Here's my one month report: :thumbsup:

I love the bandwidth. While regular web surfing was fine with my DSL, trying to watch videos or download large files was rather painful. No such problems any more. Watching high def movie trailers is no longer torturous.

Service has been good so far, too. That is to say I haven't needed any after the initial installation, which took all of 10 minutes.

One small nit-pick with Earthlink, though. Normally, when you type an incomplete address in the Firefox address bar (e.g. "thscc") and hit enter, Firefox figures out that it's a non-existent DNS entry and automagically forwards you to Google. Earthlink has its own DNS error page that is returned to the browser, thereby making Firefox think it's found the page you requested. So, instead having Google send you to www.thscc.com, you're looking at Earthlink's butt-ugly error page, full of ads. No a huge deal in the big picture, but it takes getting used to.

Ash Nelson · **Posted:** Sat Aug 18, 2007 1:05 pm

Have you downloaded the Google toolbar? I love it, I can just type in my search into a small box just below the address bar and it opens a new tab (IE Explorer) with the google results. That may help you out, although I don't know from experience if it will work with FireFox.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Sat Aug 18, 2007 2:20 pm

I have used Earthlink cable for years but I never use the Earthlink home page. With my new Dell, IE7, and the Google Toolbar entering "thscc" on the tab which uses Yahoo as the home page brings up a "Dell/Google" page with a bunch of choices including Tarheel. Ditto for the Google home page tab. Note that unless I have emptied the temp files since last visiting a site, the address and various recently visited alternatives are prefilled in on the address line and a drop down box. I actually had to delete ".com" in order to try this experiment.

Dick

MarekRozanski · **Posted:** Sat Aug 18, 2007 3:32 pm

Ash Nelson wrote:

Have you downloaded the Google toolbar?

Nah, I just use the Google search built into Firefox. I'm just used to typing in the site name and having Firefox take me there, but it's no big deal, since all I have to do is type the same thing into the search box. Really, not an issue.

BTW, I highly recommend Firefox for the IE users out there. Get it here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ or, ironically, here: http://www.ie7.com.

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