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Review by rdunant 
Posted: 32 days ago
member for 7.1 years, 3 visits, last login: 32 days ago
 Grass Valley,Nevada,CA
 $59 per month (month by month)
 "Can be good value-per-dollar (see caveats)"
 ""Local" IP address, poor technical support, poor technical know-how"
 "Give them a try if only option, worst case you loose $199 installation"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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Customer for almost 3 months
$199.95 -- Standard installation (one time fee)
$59.95 -- Monthly charge (month-to-month, no minimum commitment)
1 Mbps/512 kbps
Unlimited bandwidth
"Local" IP
Executive Summary
Central Valley Broadband (CVB) offers a good value-per-dollar service; read important caveats. The IP address is neither a static IP nor a dynamic IP. The access point has one public IP address that is shared (using IP address translation) by all customers on that access point. Pre-sales calls are returned very quickly, support calls, on the other hand, are not. The technical staff, from phone support to the highest level, does not seem to be equipped to handle difficult problems. CVB states in their contract that "... CVB reserves the right to interrupt and or disconnect service of customer at any time for any reason."
"Local" IP Address
Most ISPs assign customers a static IP or dynamic IP address. Other ISPs, including CVB, choose to assign customers a non-routable "local" IP address. As a result true end-to-end connectivity is not possible. CVB technical support told me all customers on my access point share the same public IP address.
What does all this mean to you, the [potential] customer? First, you cannot access, for example, a security camera when away from home by pointing a browser to "your" IP address. Next, gamers will find it is not possible to host things such as TeamSpeak or on line games such as Battle.net for the same reason. And possibly most important there is a potential security risk. Security mechanisms that rely on an IP address will not be able to differentiate between you and your neighbor, as the IP addresses are the same.
There is another side effect of "local" IP addresses which I discuss below in "the five-minute-failure" section.
Pre-Sales Calls
Calls were returned quickly and all questions were answered to my satisfaction. In fact one day I called close to 5:00 and had to leave a message; I said I'd call back the next day, not leaving any contact information. They used caller ID information and returned my phone call within a few minutes -- I was impressed.
Support Calls
Office hours are from 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday; the majority of the time nobody answers the phone. Support says the phones are monitored 24/7 and people who are off line have their calls returned. I have spoken with people after hours, but not very often. I've been off line with no return phone call.
The Five-Minute-Failure
Shortly after starting with CVB my family and I noticed failures while browsing the Internet. Web pages would only partially load or the browser would just time out and display a connection error. After 3 to 5 minutes a reload would successfully display the page. Technical support said they would look into the problem.
For over two months I have experienced this problem. During this time I observed that file downloads and surfing through a proxy were not affected by the five-minute-failure; I passed this information on to technical support. CVB finally decided my radio was bad and replaced it. However, the new radio did not fix the problem.
I believe I've figured out the problem. There are a finite number of ports that can be used when doing IP address translation. Keep in mind that everyone on the access point uses ports from the same pool. Many connections (ports) are needed when surfing the Web for the various elements found on a Web page. After a five minute timeout either the ports are released or the port pool is reset. I left a message for technical support describing my theory.
For further information see "Network Address Translation" on Wikipedia.
Intermittent Radio Failure
Less than a week after my radio was replaced we had our first rain storm along with high winds. Since the storm my connection suffers intermittent failures. Sometimes the connection is slow, sometimes it just quits all together. For a few days the failures were related to the outside temperature.
I was told my radio would be replaced last week. Still no new radio, and CVB is not returning my phone calls. We're due to have more rain in the next few days.
Technical
I contacted Tranzeo, the manufacturer of the radio. My radio installation is missing a gasket and waterproof network cable strain relief. Tranzeo technical support says these items are critical for a proper installation.
With information from Tranzeo technical support I also determined that my first radio was installed with horizontal polarization and the second radio with vertical polarization. CVB technical support did not know the polarization of the access point. Since I'm only about 3,500 feet from the access point, the 20 db loss from incorrect polarization has probably not been an issue. However, the installers should know the correct polarization.
Conclusion
If you browse the CVB web site you'll see that the management team is basically the one from QuikNet. QuikNet was acquired by SureWest. CVB has already completed four acquisitions. If CVB plans mirror those of QuikNet and the company is being grown for an eventual acquisition, 2000 customers on the books is much better than 1000 happy customers. Looking at the books there is no way to distinguish between customers and happy customers. It's like fattening up the pig before taking it to market.
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Central Valley Broadband
