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Astound / RCN Broadband Internet in Chicago - is it trash these days?
I‘ve been an RCN (rebranded as Astound Broadband) customer for both cable + internet for at least 10 years now in the North Center area. In the early years, it was great and reliable outside of the occasional modem hiccup / replacement.
These days, it seems like absolute trash in the North Center area. Download speeds seem reasonable at around 200 mbps using their own Astound speed test here (http://md.speedtest.astound.com/).
Upload speeds however is where their Achilles heal is apparently, they drop to 0.5 or even 0 mbps upload speed out of a promised 20 mbps upload speed, which causes hiccups, stutter and complete audio drops during video conferencing with my company, causes lags, freezes and rubberbanding during games, even simple browsing and DNS lookups seem to stall out throughout the day and night.
I’m a Sys Engineer myself so I’m well aware of stuff like Pathping and other tools to further pinpoint the issue to RCN. Had my network guys at my company (a pretty large one) look at it and they could see unreasonable lag spikes as well.
I’ve done the following:
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Replaced the modem around a month ago, it’s a brand new one
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Had RCN come out and run a new line from the pole to my house (last year) when they thought that was the cause of similar spotty internet issues.
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Of course, rebooted current and previous modems many times
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Ran an Ethernet cable directly to the modem to confirm it wasn’t just my wifi router, my cables / wiring or anything else causing issues
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Called them a number of times to no avail where all they seem to be able to do is either reboot the modem or send a guy out.
So now they are sending a guy out to my house on Monday and I’m starting to get near “last straw” territory and weighing options to switch to a different ISP. If it’s Comcast, I believe I may still have issues depending on the area and that RCN is using the same equipment and lines - is this true?
Either way, their Quality of Service is garbage and if they can’t maintain a simple Zoom or Teams meeting without hiccups, jitter, stutter & lag, and my own managers are noticing how poor my internet is over the VPN, then I feel they are not worth my time to go through the painfully slow process of proving to them that their network is trash. :)
TLDR - RCN / Astound seems incredibly spotty internet-wise. (Cable is fine.) Anyone else similarly frustrated?
Edit: They did finally resolve my issue by running a fresh line from the pole to my house. It sucks that it took three service techs and several months before I got a good pole / line guy, but service has been great ever since as of Feb 2024. If you’re in a similar situation, keep at their customer service!
Comments Section
1.6 Gbps / 25 Mbps stable here. I don’t think it’s their backbone.
What you’re describing sounds a lot like a line levels issue. DOCSIS is just prone to these types of things. A good field technician should be able to check all of that in a few minutes and identify the issue. Nine times out of ten, some cable is the wrong length for the gain, there’s an improper splitter, etc. In some rare cases, the local node is out of whack. In even rarer cases, there’s some external interference.
Have seen all of the above with previous cable connections. Most likely you’re in the first bucket.
my astound / rcn has zero issues. Wrigley area
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I had RCN for 5 years at my old place. I had very few issues. I'd call them every year to renegotiate my rate and speed. Rarely had issues.
Then I moved and RCN was absolutely useless. Their wiring was fucked but tried to blame it on my router and modem (so they could charge me to rent theirs). But then they couldn't get it working even with their modem. They refused to run new cable to my apartment. Switched to Att fiber and it's been the best internet I've ever had. Maybe 4 or 5 drops in 1.5 years and super fast (300/300 package).
850 down / 25 up here. Gold Coast. I really want their symmetrical service but that would involve upgrading the wiring in my entire building. No timeout or interruptions in service yet. Very pleased with their service. Way better than Xfinity.
call a technician, its with the power settings on a docsis 3.0 modem. ive had the same issue several years ago living in edgewater. It tends to go wonky in the heat - mainly due to higher powerload on the grid
Mines been very good the last two years. Two complaints:
Getting it installed was beyond frustrating, and had me near tears. Took them like 3 appointments to realize they needed to wire my place.
They jack up the price unannounced by 15 - 20 bucks every year, I hate that fucking call and negotiate routine. Just lock it and increase by a buck or two for inflation. My cost doubled from 40 to 80 before I yelled at them to take it back down to 40.
Customer service aside the actual internet's been good.
Getting solid 500 up and 500 down here in West Town. One brief service interruption in almost three years. It's new fiber line tho, so I doubt it's representative of their offerings as a whole.
Yup, DSL. Best that’s available from ATT is “45 megabit” which typically maxes out around 5-8 on a congested weeknight. 15+ years of promising fiber expansion and still nothing. Not sure why they don’t switch to comcast, which is their other option.