My expierence (Score 1)

was less than pleasant with @Home. It was quick at times, but the DNS and email outages definately ruined my hopes of it being a good service.

Here is one expierence I had. I usually kept myself secure shelled into my home machine from work. One day around noon I noticed I could not communicate with my machine. I thought big deal, this things always down. When I got home I noticed things were still less than perfect. Before really investigating, I called AT&T/@Home. They said that "we are not expierencing any network issues, your modem must have gone bad." Followed by, "we can have some one go out and check it for you. Our soonest appointment for your area (Dallas) is in two weeks." Angrily, I accepted.

As the night went on this didn't set will with me. So I started researching. Using traceroute I found that every packet I set died at the same location. I called @Home back and told them about my research. They said "OK, we can send out a service tech for you" ( again that two week thing! ). I told him no you don't understand the problem is on your end. Finally, told me I was "just speaking to a nurse, let me send you upstairs to the doctors."

The "doctors" were not much more knowledgeable. Finally, I convinced him I knew what I was talking about and he said let me go check that router. Sure enough after resetting the router the world was good once more, he even asked if he could call me next time they had a problem.

Who knows how long this outage would have lasted if I hadn't called. At that point it was 10 hours into the outage, and that router effected most the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

Fortunately, I moved about two months later and DSL is available in this part of town.

By the way, don't worry, the service tech did show up just like they said, two weeks after my original call!