Internet options in Twin Peaks (Oakland, San Bernardino: renting, house, utilities)

[Brok3n Halo]

Hi everyone!

I'm new to SanFran, coming all the way from Rochester NY, and just started renting a house up in Twin Peaks.

Now that I got all the basic utilities set up I'm looking to figure out what internet provider I want to get, what are the best options for the Twin Peaks area?

I found High Speed Internet Twin Peaks (http://www.broadbandexpert.com/high-speed-internet/california/twin-peaks/ - broken link) which makes it seem Charter and Qwest are the two best options at 25/3 and 40/0.896 (down/up Mbps) respectively. Are those realistic estimates for those providers? Are there better numbers from someone else?

I do a lot of downloading and streaming so bandwidth down is important, as well as not having caps. I also host a small private game server so a good upload is also desired, though in the worse case scenario I can probably get someone else to host it.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[mayorhaggar]

I could be wrong but I don't think those are available in SF. It might be referring to the town of Twin Peaks in San Bernardino County. I think Comcast is the only high-speed internet available in SF, otherwise you'd have to go with DSL. I heard they want to roll out AT&T U-Verse in SF but as usual the locals are raising a fuss because it requires signal boxes built above ground. I have U-Verse in Oakland, it's pretty fast and I pay $40 less a month for cable and internet than I ever did with Comcast.

[Refrigerator]

You might want check out Sonic.net. They are a relatively small company based in Santa Rosa. They are my ISP right now, and so far they have been treating me great. However, I am not sure if they can provide the speed that you need...

[Brok3n Halo]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

I could be wrong but I don't think those are available in SF. It might be referring to the town of Twin Peaks in San Bernardino County. I think Comcast is the only high-speed internet available in SF, otherwise you'd have to go with DSL.

Oh, looks like your right. I'm also suspicious that site didn't provide real results. I tried a few different zip codes from around SF and it gave back pretty much the same results. Apparently Qwest doesn't even offer service in CA, so yeah...

Personally been trying to avoid Comcast, never hear good things about them, looks like choices are pretty limited though.

Originally Posted by Refrigerator

You might want check out Sonic.net.

Sonic.net is a very good possibility, the 40Mbps service sounds promising and they claim to service my new address. Only issue is it says I'm 13,557 wire feet from the local serving office. I'm fairly certain that's going to degrade performance pretty bad, but it may be acceptable. I'll definitely be looking into this one.

Thanks for the info, any other suggestions out there to check out, how about any DSL providers that may be comparable to Sonic.net but possibly closer?

[kguru]

You could get Sonic.net or DSL Extreme's service over the traditional DSL lines, though it would be slower. You should not get ATT DSL as they are beginning to implement a 150 GB cap that if you go over 3 times during the life of your service would result in additional usage surcharges that could get steep. Sonic.net and DSL Extreme do not limit your usage. Comcast has a soft 250 GB cap that is applied if you are on a congested area of its system and are a heavy user (especially if you do a very high amount of uploading as cable internet was designed mostly for downloading rather than uploading). They have a business class service for a little more than the home service that doesn't have a stated cap and is intended for people to run their own servers.