Question: Cox or U-Verse Internet?

Stormy, Cox is not Mediacom. Cox serves the Pensacola area and MediaCom serves Santa Rosa County and well as Navy Housing. Bright House Communications(a subsidiary of Time Warner Cable) serves the northern part of Escambia County.

2 completely different companies.[/quote]

Dammit You mean I can't consolidate my gripes?

Eric wrote:

Vettecor wrote:

On my 5 year old Gateway Laptop with 1.00 GB of RAM- Download is 1.26 Mbps, Upload is 3.38 Mbps.

My new Dell with 6 GB of RAM and 1 TB HD- Download is 47.04Mbps and Upload is 4.77 Mbps.

Thanks. That may have made my decision for me...

Any disruptions in service????

Once in awhile there are disruptions, not a lot though. Since we have phone, internet, and cable through Cox there have been times we lost all 3 services. Probably 3 or 4 times in 8 years at the most.

All in all pretty reliable.

The brand new DVR that Cox brought out to our new residence, failed after 2 months.

I picked up the phone and called Cox and the following day they brought out another one.

Eric wrote:

riceme wrote:

We had MediaCom when I lived there because it was the only service available in our area and it was AWFUL... if we could have switched we would have. The service went out or something went wrong pretty much every day.

Haha. Yep, I have read where Mediacom had a 96% dissatisfaction rating! That's incredible.

I sent you a PM, Ricey.

The only thing that surprises me about that is that the dissatisfaction rating is not higher. Probably the very most irritating thing was that pretty much anytime we would watch a movie, something on-demand or something we'd recorded (that was when Rome was airing and I really liked that show) the service would crap-out sometime in the last 25% of the program. It made me want to scream. In fact, I'm sure I probably did scream a few times, lol. The internet service sucked just as bad.

I got your PM, E (thank you, by the way) but am on my Droid 4 right now so I cant see the image that well so I was gonna wait to respond to you until I got home and could see it on my laptop.

still grumbling.......sorry

stormwatch89 wrote:

still grumbling.......sorry

Stormy. You can be an equal opportunity grumbler any time you want

Eric wrote:

Melissa B wrote:

As usual, I can't enter the image. We have 138 GB to go this month before we reach our 250 GB allotment.

Cox tried to say a year ago that we were going over 250 GB, which was absurd. We aren't doing anything different now. If anything, we have been watching even more Netflix programs this month.

Melissa, when you stream a Netflix program over the Cox Internet service, you are using Internet bandwidth. If you have been watching more Netflix programs, you are using more bandwidth...

When you watch a Cox TV program, the bandwidth you use is classified as used by Cox Cable TV and shouldn't be counted as Internet bandwidth usage.

Right, Eric, I know. I'm the first to say we eat up a lot of bandwidth using Netflix. No argument here about that. I did question it when Cox said we went over 250 GB, though. That was about a year after we started using Netflix.

My point is we've probably watched more Netflix this month than we have in quite some time, yet we've only used half of our allotted bandwidth. And yes, Ghost, we just finished watching a TV series two days ago (The Finder), yet our daily bandwidth usage on those days was relatively low.

Heck, I don't know how they figure out that stuff. All I know is we're quite happy with the Netflix arrangement. No tiling, no interrupted movies, no attempt on my part to receive credit for same. And no more harassment from Cox. Works for us!

Does anyone else here participate in the Cox townhouse panel through email?

Ghost_Rider1949 wrote:

Melissa B wrote:

As usual, I can't enter the image. We have 138 GB to go this month before we reach our 250 GB allotment.

Cox tried to say a year ago that we were going over 250 GB, which was absurd. We aren't doing anything different now. If anything, we have been watching even more Netflix programs this month.

But if you are streaming Netflix isn't that using your Cox internet connection to bring the movie to your TV?

Well, of course! Again, no argument there. Other than the tiling on the InDemand movies provided by Cox, we've had no problem with our connection. The internet service is great, as I've written before.

What bugged me was Cox's decision that the tiling in the movies was somehow connected to our television. Ultimately, Cox took no responsibility for it, and refused to refund our money on at least three movies we tried to watch because it was over the what - 10 or 15 minute? - time frame in which to request refunds when the serious tiling started. But it wasn't our television - our experience with Netflix proves that.

Melissa B wrote:

Ghost_Rider1949 wrote:

Melissa B wrote:

As usual, I can't enter the image. We have 138 GB to go this month before we reach our 250 GB allotment.

Cox tried to say a year ago that we were going over 250 GB, which was absurd. We aren't doing anything different now. If anything, we have been watching even more Netflix programs this month.

But if you are streaming Netflix isn't that using your Cox internet connection to bring the movie to your TV?

Well, of course! Again, no argument there. Other than the tiling on the InDemand movies provided by Cox, we've had no problem with our connection. The internet service is great, as I've written before.

What bugged me was Cox's decision that the tiling in the movies was somehow connected to our television. Ultimately, Cox took no responsibility for it, and refused to refund our money on at least three movies we tried to watch because it was over the what - 10 or 15 minute? - time frame in which to request refunds when the serious tiling started. But it wasn't our television - our experience with Netflix proves that.

Occasionally I will get some tiling just watching a regular TV program, no In-Demand, nothing. I will rest my box and the tiling goes away. It is a bit inconvenient, but it works for me.

Ghost, the only serious tiling we experienced was during the InDemand movies. The movie would start out great, but several minutes into the show, the screen would fracture. I'm not talking about the minor, occasional tiling that comes and goes quickly, but tiling to the extent that the screen became and remained not viewable.

The odd thing is this never happened on any movies on HBO or any other movie channel provided by Cox. Only InDemand. Even the Cox technicians, both the people who came to our house and the techs on the phone, were stumped, which is probably why Cox came to the conclusion it was our TV.

Cox switched our box out in hopes that would help, but it didn't. Nothing did. So we switched and never looked back.

One thing that just flew over my head in all this mess was Dynamic IP vs. Static IP addresses.

With Static IP, the address of your computer does not change, making it easier to contact via the Internet.

With Dynamic IP (which is what Cox "gives" to residential services), the IP or address of your computer will change every time you reboot or every 24 hours or so. Cox will not sell Static IPs except for business accounts and will not sell business accounts to a residence, from what I was told.

I read that there are work-arounds to Dynamic IP access problems, and will have to research it more before going with a new service. Such work-arounds would require a poll of my currently-assigned IP addresses and a system implemented to keep track of it for me.

Eric, you are more knowledgeable about IPs than I am. I understand the difference between Static and Dynamic. Above you said that a Dynamic IP changes every time you reboot or 24 hours. My IP remains the same ever time I check it and with Admin duties you are able to see it. It is always 72.213.xxx.xx. If I open the cmd prompt and run an IPCONFIG I get the IP address of my router.