What's Are Differences in Levels of RoadRunner Service?

[Jack 1000]

Sup All?

I would like to know the differences in Road Runner service levels and stand-alone prices.  To my knowledge, we now have the following:

Road Runner Lite

Road Runner Standard (recommended) and included with TWC package bundles.

Road Runner Turbo

Road Runner Lightning (Wide-band)

What are the prices for each?  I currently have Road Runner Standard as a part of my All The Best Cable, Phone, Internet Bundle.  I use the Internet for not only basic E-Mails and message communications as well as downloading of videos (i.e You Tube) and movies.

How much of a drop in speed and service is Road Runner Lite?  Is Road Runner Lite, comparable to DSL?  What about the other services that are higher than Road Runner Standard?

Jack

[Bebop]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_Runner_High_Speed_Online

The upload and down load speed might be a little off.

[ddeerrff]

RR tells me I'm provisioned for 7 Mbps down, 512 Kbps up.  Have no idea what they call that plan.  Believe about $45/Mo.

[duncantuna]

You will be absolutely fine with RR Lite if you are just surfing, emailing.

If you are streaming video to TVs or something, yeah, you'd want a higher tier.  Otherwise, save your $$.

[Ralph Kramden]

RR tells me I'm provisioned for 7 Mbps down, 512 Kbps up.  Have no idea what they call that plan.  Believe about $45/Mo.

That's the "Standard" plan. I have that.

[Mark Strube]

We don't have anything above Turbo available in this area yet right? Also I have heard "Lightning" referred to as "Extreme" in other areas.

[kevbeck122]

We don't have anything above Turbo available in this area yet right? Also I have heard "Lightning" referred to as "Extreme" in other areas.

No I don't think we have Lightning/Extreme/Wideband available to us yet.  I think for now it's only in some areas where you can get FiOS (mainly NY).  We don't have good enough competition between providers here, so I'm sure they'll take their time.  They have to upgrade the backbone to support DOCSIS3 and we would need new modems to get the service.  The DOCSIS2 modems they currently use can only go up to about 30Mbps.

Sup All?

I would like to know the differences in Road Runner service levels and stand-alone prices.  To my knowledge, we now have the following:

Road Runner Lite

Road Runner Standard (recommended) and included with TWC package bundles.

Road Runner Turbo

Road Runner Lightning (Wide-band)

What are the prices for each?  I currently have Road Runner Standard as a part of my All The Best Cable, Phone, Internet Bundle.  I use the Internet for not only basic E-Mails and message communications as well as downloading of videos (i.e You Tube) and movies.

How much of a drop in speed and service is Road Runner Lite?  Is Road Runner Lite, comparable to DSL?  What about the other services that are higher than Road Runner Standard?

Jack

The regular prices according to the rate card are:
Lite (768 Kbps): $29.95
Basic (2 Mbps): $39.95
Standard (7 Mbps): $49.95
Turbo (15 Mbps): $59.95

I've been on turbo for the past two years at $39.95.  I just call every year asking if there are any deals and they give me the same price for a year.  Internet is the only thing I have with Time Warner.

If you use YouTube/download movies a lot, I'd say stick with what you have (2Mbps or 7Mbps should be fine).  I've used YouTube on Lite and it does get annoying sometimes waiting for the video to download.  If you watch HD video at all (Netflix, VUDU, etc.), you will need at least the 7Mbps service for the best picture.

[duncantuna]

One of the problems with that "higher is always better" thinking .. is that you are at the mercy of the internet, from your home, to the node, to every hop, and finally at the server.

If I test my RR connection, it tests out at around 8m down  .. yet very often, Youtube videos take forever to load and will often catch up to the buffer.  This should not be, with that kind of bandwidth.

That means the bottleneck is somewhere else.  That happens quite often.

So .. even if you had 2m or 768k service, you might have the exact same experience as the 8m down people -- as well as the 50m down people.

[Xizer]

Time Warner Cable's Turbo service has been sucking *** lately. They clearly are oversubscribing. During peak hours my 15 Mbps drops as low as 3 Mbps. It seems like I'm lucky if I can max out my connection for more than half the day.

Needless to say, I am looking into AT&T U-verse... when you said they don't have competition here you are quite wrong. AT&T offers 24/3 Mbps service for just a few dollars more per month than Time Warner Cable's 15/1. I think I will be jumping ship very soon. They are just rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 too slow for my liking. The ONLY positive thing I can say about Time Warner Cable is that they don't try and jew you over by implementing bandwidth caps like Comcap. You can actually use your "unlimited" connection you pay for 24/7 unlike Comcap, which, if you have their 50 Mbps tier you get to use it for 12 hours in a whole month before you hit your cap. :rolleyes:

[LoadStar]

Time Warner Cable's Turbo service has been sucking *** lately. They clearly are oversubscribing. During peak hours my 15 Mbps drops as low as 3 Mbps. It seems like I'm lucky if I can max out my connection for more than half the day.

Needless to say, I am looking into AT&T U-verse... when you said they don't have competition here you are quite wrong. AT&T offers 24/3 Mbps service for just a few dollars more per month than Time Warner Cable's 15/1. I think I will be jumping ship very soon. They are just rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 too slow for my liking. The ONLY positive thing I can say about Time Warner Cable is that they don't try and jew you over by implementing bandwidth caps like Comcap. You can actually use your "unlimited" connection you pay for 24/7 unlike Comcap, which, if you have their 50 Mbps tier you get to use it for 12 hours in a whole month before you hit your cap. :rolleyes:

Wow. You've been generally disagreeable on this board so far, but racist now? Really?

[ddeerrff]

I'm certainly no expert, but from looking at various tracerts over the years, it seems like the biggest bottleneck is usually between the RR network and the rest of the world.  I think RR has gotten themselves very low on the (priority) food chain.

[Bebop]

Are you guys using RR's DNS server or a third party that's more efficient?

[techguy1975]

I'm certainly no expert, but from looking at various tracerts over the years, it seems like the biggest bottleneck is usually between the RR network and the rest of the world.  I think RR has gotten themselves very low on the (priority) food chain.

trace routes are not always a good indication of speed, as some routers will place a lower priority on ICMP traffic (the type of traffic a traceroute uses) so the results can be a bit misleading.

[duncantuna]

Are you guys using RR's DNS server or a third party that's more efficient?

RR's DNS servers used to have a ton of problems .. really slowed down surfing, so I switched.

I used to run my own, a small program called TreeWalk, which was blazing fast.  Eventually, I started to use Google's DNS server (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4).

I run a public hot spot, and use OpenDNS for that.  

Both Google and OpenDNS are as fast as necessary.  I haven't tested RR's lately, though, so they may have fixed their issues.

[ddeerrff]

some routers will place a lower priority on ICMP traffic

Yes, I was aware of that.

Are you guys using RR's DNS server or a third party that's more efficient?

I've been using 24.160.227.25 (milwwi-dns-cac-01.wi.rr.com)and 24.160.227.32 (milwwi-dns-cac-01.wi.rr.com).  Have also in the past used 209.18.47.61 (dns-cac-lb-01.wi.rr.com) and 209.18.47.62 (dns-cac-lb-02.wi.rr.com).  The first group listed seemed a bit faster.  

Got 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 set up now - will give those a try.