- Report: #409679
Complaint Review: WOW Internet And Cable - Carol Stream Illinois
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WOW Internet And Cable
PO Box 5715 Carol Stream, 60197 Illinois, U.S.A.
Phone:
866-496-9669
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WOW Internet And Cable Changes ips of their backbone routers to hide downtime. Worst ISP in the USA Carol Stream Illinois
WOW Internet and Cable is one of the worst ISPs I've ever used. I changed service from their 5mbit pipe, to the 15mbit pipe. Big mistake. Their 15mbit pipe was more like 10mbit, and I started noticing that I couldn't access certain pages. Well... as a computer technician, I tracerouted the urls, and found a certain 12. class-a backbone router down and the problem. I called them, and at first after denying the problem, they admitted that this issue did exist, and it effected over 500 clients in the Columbus Ohio area. I told them I couldn't run my business without internet, that I needed this back up, and they told me that it would be back up within the next few days.
This persisted for 10+ days, where I could not do even the simplest tasks online. I finally was forced to change service. When I called WOW to disconnect the service, their routine of switching me from person to person got so old that I was forced to file a complaint with the BBB. They continued to bill me for 3 months, even after service was disconnected.
traceroute to yahoo.com (206.190.60.37), 30 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 0.240 ms 0.201 ms 0.556 ms
2 * * *
3 172.31.34.238 (172.31.34.238) 11.180 ms 12.466 ms 15.390 ms
4 12.118.224.29 (12.118.224.29) 25.724 ms !A 23.887 ms !A *
I have days of tracelogs where this 12.118.224.29 router is down. Then it mysteriously changes ip on another day:
3 172.31.34.238 (172.31.34.238) 8.991 ms 7.906 ms 12.207 ms
4 * 12.118.224.25 (12.118.224.25) 21.155 ms !A 19.941 ms !A
Same router, same route. I've filed a complaint with the FCC against them, and with my local news station. They changed the ip of this router multiple times to make it look like everything was ok with their service.
Daniel
Columbus, Ohio
U.S.A.
This persisted for 10+ days, where I could not do even the simplest tasks online. I finally was forced to change service. When I called WOW to disconnect the service, their routine of switching me from person to person got so old that I was forced to file a complaint with the BBB. They continued to bill me for 3 months, even after service was disconnected.
traceroute to yahoo.com (206.190.60.37), 30 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 0.240 ms 0.201 ms 0.556 ms
2 * * *
3 172.31.34.238 (172.31.34.238) 11.180 ms 12.466 ms 15.390 ms
4 12.118.224.29 (12.118.224.29) 25.724 ms !A 23.887 ms !A *
I have days of tracelogs where this 12.118.224.29 router is down. Then it mysteriously changes ip on another day:
3 172.31.34.238 (172.31.34.238) 8.991 ms 7.906 ms 12.207 ms
4 * 12.118.224.25 (12.118.224.25) 21.155 ms !A 19.941 ms !A
Same router, same route. I've filed a complaint with the FCC against them, and with my local news station. They changed the ip of this router multiple times to make it look like everything was ok with their service.
Daniel
Columbus, Ohio
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Karru
USANot WOW! IP Addresses
#2Consumer Comment
Thu, May 13, 2010
I would like to point out, that the IP addresses of 12.118.224.29 and 12.118.224.25 are not owned by WOW!, and are in fact owned by AT&T. Sadly, this customer's route through the internet just happened to hit an AT&T router as it was hopping along to Yahoo. The reason the IP address would change, is his connection to Yahoo was finding another route through the internet, and thus not hitting the bad router some of the time. Once your traffic leaves your ISP's network, the ISP has no control over what hops are made along the way.
This is why a trace route is useless for testing your internet connection for trouble, as it never gives the full story. Trace route is great for intranet troubleshooting, that's about it.
