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Review: RCN Mach-7 Broadband Cable


junkieXL

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RCN has been this speed-junkie's ISP for almost 4 years. What i like about RCN is their proud & blatant claim to be the "fastest broadband available to the home user".

While other ISP's were installing throttlers, speed caps & data transfer limits, RCN provided customers with a 5 Mbps upgrade, then released the current 7 Mbps "Mach-7" modem, with no hike in the monthly price.

Advertised upload speeds remain at a respectable 800 Kbps; although i have not been able to get higher than ~300 Kbps. This is a definite drawback to me, as i run fileservers on EFNet & this upstream speed provided with the awesome 7 Mbps downstream, proves embarrasing if not pathetic at times.

The top-shelf bundled package "Power CPI Plus" includes unlimited local, regional & long distance phone service; 10 Mb webstorage, 5 email boxes, modem rental, webmail access & optional static ip (nice). Also, Digital cable service & 4 premium channels on the idiot box. i currently pay $169.00/month for all this service.

Service has been bulletproof, one incident last year caused 5 or 10 minutes of signal downtime.

2 thumbs up to RCN's products, premium except for the upload pipe; I can live with that i suppose.... :twisted:

-JxL

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Actually, RTB i am positive that the silly upload speed is caused by my registry settings, as i was getting 500-650 Kbps BEFORE i was plagued with the dreaded "10053 software caused connection abort" winsock bug.

After succesfully modifying the registry to rid the bug, upload pipe went south also. :(

==============================

All around 9:30 a.m. EST....

:::.. Download Stats ..:::

Connection is:: 7163 Kbps about 7.2 Mbps (tested with 12160 KB)

Download Speed is:: 874 KB/s

Tested From:: http://www.testmy.net/

Bottom Line:: 128 times faster than 56K you can download 1MB in 1.17 second(s)

Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/cgi-bin/get.cgi?Test_ID=V0VUGA5QP

:::.. Download Stats ..:::

Connection is:: 6586 Kbps about 6.6 Mbps (tested with 12160 KB)

Download Speed is:: 804 KB/s

Tested From:: http://www.testmy.net/

Bottom Line:: 118 times faster than 56K you can download 1MB in 1.27 second(s)

Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/cgi-bin/get.cgi?Test_ID=960WT4IR8

:::.. Download Stats ..:::

Connection is:: 6789 Kbps about 6.8 Mbps (tested with 2992 KB)

Download Speed is:: 829 KB/s

Tested From:: http://www.testmy.net/

Bottom Line:: 121 times faster than 56K you can download 1MB in 1.24 second(s)

Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/cgi-bin/get.cgi?Test_ID=J5N87M6AU

=====================================

:::.. Upload Stats ..:::

Connection is: 338 Kbps about 0.3 Mbps (tested with 1013 KB)

Upload Speed is: 41 KB/s

Tested From:: http://www.testmy.net/

Bottom Line: 6 times faster than 56K you can upload 1MB in 24.98 second(s)

Validation Link :: https://testmy.net/cgi-bin/get.cgi?Test_ID=WNHT72USV

:::.. Upload Stats ..:::

Connection is: 204 Kbps about 0.2 Mbps (tested with 386 KB)

Upload Speed is: 25 KB/s

Tested From:: http://www.testmy.net/

Bottom Line: 4 times faster than 56K you can upload 1MB in 40.96 second(s)

Validation Link :: https://testmy.net/cgi-bin/get.cgi?Test_ID=OC4KHL5H3

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  • 2 weeks later...

:) If you are having a winsock problem here is a compressed file that fixes that, I'm not sure if this came from Kelly's-Korner or not but she does have a few things to fix such issues and I have used successfully b4.link is in link section on this site.....as always you assume all responsibility for using this file....good luck.....

8) Microwave

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  • 3 weeks later...

I would kill you for that download, but that upload just made me laugh out loud. :twisted:

Ever asked your ISP why it is so horribly slow?

Indeed yes, many times badgering the minimum-wage customer support people revealed what has been the monkeywrench since cable internet's day 1: Upload speed is throttled/capped to distract any home users from running websites/webhosting on the cable service.

A ridiculous theory, but is surely the downside of cable ISP's.

-JxL

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