Metronet vs Mediacom

BigBake

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What you'll want most out of both situations is network stability, which is the strength LAN/wired provides. Ethernet eliminates the instability of wireless, which is what causes things commonly perceived by people as "lag". Lag = a ping/connectivity spike, or prolonged spikes. Good routers and good connections still help here even our wireless, but they won't defeat the consistency of wired.

Yeah, one of the constraints of an early 90s home. No LAN cables other than what I want to run across the floor to trip over.

I did get one addl eero 6 that I connected to my PS5 via a LAN cable. That's probably the biggest boost I saw to something over 500. Now I'll just be fighting my son as he tries to use it on his PC.
 
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Trice

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Your wireless speeds will vary greatly from device to device. Different WiFi cards and hardware, etc. will all perform differently, and you'll probably also notice different performance on tests around different parts of the house. Now will you actually notice anything bad without looking for it? Probably not with that speed.

Working and play both don't depend heavily on speed -- download speed only matters when actually downloading large files, and on top of that, many sites out there won't push 1GB full data to you anyway (they'll throttle your download on their end). Upload isn't meaningful to most people with normal use cases. Could you move down in speed? Likely, but there's a cost/perfomance ratio component. Example, is it really worth it to you to save $10/mo. to go down to 200mb/s versus just staying at 1gb and never having to think about it again? Thats more for your to personally decide based on your needs.

What you'll want most out of both situations is network stability, which is the strength LAN/wired provides. Ethernet eliminates the instability of wireless, which is what causes things commonly perceived by people as "lag". Lag = a ping/connectivity spike, or prolonged spikes. Good routers and good connections still help here even our wireless, but they won't defeat the consistency of wired.
I've been trying to decide myself what Metronet speed to get. Metronet only offers 100, 500, or 1GB. Without ever really thinking about it, I'd always just assumed higher speed is better and you should get as much as you can afford. A closer look suggests that after some point, perhaps 100-200Mbps, very few people are really able to take advantage of higher speeds.

Mentally though I'm still struggling with the idea of bandwidth vs. individual device speed and how to put it all together to decide.
 
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JP4CY

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Yeah, one of the constraints of an early 90s home. No LAN cables other than what I want to run across the floor to trip over.

I did get one addl eero 6 that I connected to my PS5 via a LAN cable. That's probably the biggest boost I saw to something over 500. Now I'll just be fighting my son as he tries to use it on his PC.
I have an additional 6 as well (wifi). Coverage has been great.
 

flynnhicks03

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Just curious, if you're using their Eero router, can't you just purchase your own Eero "satellite" router(s), rather than paying more for their "whole-home" wi-fi?
 

Legothug

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Yeah, one of the constraints of an early 90s home. No LAN cables other than what I want to run across the floor to trip over.

I did get one addl eero 6 that I connected to my PS5 via a LAN cable. That's probably the biggest boost I saw to something over 500. Now I'll just be fighting my son as he tries to use it on his PC.

You could look into MoCA adapters if you want to try to extend a wired network. If you’re like me, your existing coax network is going unused with no mediacom. MoCA can use your existing copper to give you a consistent hard line connection to wherever you have a coax connection in your house. It’s helpful even for your eero routers as well as it gives them a wired backup backhaul to free bandwidth on your wireless connection as it doesn’t have to send data back to your main router/modem wirelessly.

You can do powerline adapters as well, and that uses your electrical copper, but it’s more prone to issues with breakers and power draw
 

urb1

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I switched from Mediacom cable to YouTube TV last year and put in MetroNet three weeks ago to completely get off Mediacom. My only regret is losing Bally Sports Midwest and the Cardinals games. YouTube TV shows White Sox games through Bally Sports Chicago.
 

JP4CY

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You could look into MoCA adapters if you want to try to extend a wired network. If you’re like me, your existing coax network is going unused with no mediacom. MoCA can use your existing copper to give you a consistent hard line connection to wherever you have a coax connection in your house. It’s helpful even for your eero routers as well as it gives them a wired backup backhaul to free bandwidth on your wireless connection as it doesn’t have to send data back to your main router/modem wirelessly.

You can do powerline adapters as well, and that uses your electrical copper, but it’s more prone to issues with breakers and power draw
Also, you could install an outdoor antenna and then use coax outlets for antenna hookups to individual TVs. I did that years ago when I ditched dish.
 

dmclone

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Just passing this along for anyone interested in purchasing eero units, there's a sale going on right now. It appears to be for original eero units themselves, not the extenders.

Interesting. I'm in the process of building a new PC and the mobo has wifi 6e, which I had never heard of.
 

Agclone91

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Anybody in Ames be willing to share what their actual billed amount is with Metronet on the 500/500 plan? I just got mediacom to knock $20/month off, so that drops my 200/10 plan to $60/month (no tech rental fees since I own a modem).

Metronet's current promo price for the 500/500 plan shows $55, but I know they seem to have "hidden" fees for tech and such, so I'm just curious what people's true bills are.
 
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AllInForISU

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Anybody in Ames be willing to share what their actual billed amount is with Metronet on the 500/500 plan? I just got mediacom to knock $20/month off, so that drops my 200/10 plan to $60/month (no tech rental fees since I own a modem).

Metronet's current promo price for the 500/500 plan shows $55, but I know they seem to have "hidden" feeds for tech and such, so I'm just curious what people's true bills are.

I don’t have 500/500 but I have 200/200 and it’s 66.16 a month with the promo price. That includes an 8 dollar whole home fee (have an extra eero) and a $10 technology fee…whatever that is.
 
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3TrueFans

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Anybody in Ames be willing to share what their actual billed amount is with Metronet on the 500/500 plan? I just got mediacom to knock $20/month off, so that drops my 200/10 plan to $60/month (no tech rental fees since I own a modem).

Metronet's current promo price for the 500/500 plan shows $55, but I know they seem to have "hidden" feeds for tech and such, so I'm just curious what people's true bills are.
I'm on the 1Gig plan, and still on a promo price through September so my bill probably isn't a good representation but I pay $80.60 currently. The tech fee isn't hidden though, it's $9.95/month and it shows you that when you add the product to your cart when you sign up.

My bill looks like:

1 Gigabit/1 Gigabit (promo) $69.95

Technology Service Fee $9.95

Taxes $0.70

Total Due $80.60
 
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MeowingCows

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I've been trying to decide myself what Metronet speed to get. Metronet only offers 100, 500, or 1GB. Without ever really thinking about it, I'd always just assumed higher speed is better and you should get as much as you can afford. A closer look suggests that after some point, perhaps 100-200Mbps, very few people are really able to take advantage of higher speeds.

Mentally though I'm still struggling with the idea of bandwidth vs. individual device speed and how to put it all together to decide.
There's definitely diminishing returns after certain points (and they vary by use case...), so I usually say to go for the "price to performance" approach. If it costs $50 for 100 or 200Mbps, but only another $20 for 1Gbps, you might as well grab the gig for that (assuming budgeting isn't a problem with it). Now if it's $50 for 200Mbps and $100+ for Gbps, well...maybe not.

If you really want to minimize cost, start at the lowest plan and add more later if you notice you're bandwidth limited.
 

Agclone91

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Thanks folks, that gives me a decent reference point. Sounds to me like the new promo from Mediacom isn't terribly out of line, I just need to decide if no data cap is worth the hassel of switching to Metronet.
 

AllInForISU

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I'm on the 1Gig plan, and still on a promo price through September so my bill probably isn't a good representation but I pay $80.60 currently. The tech fee isn't hidden though, it's $9.95/month and it shows you that when you add the product to your cart when you sign up.

My bill looks like:

1 Gigabit/1 Gigabit (promo) $69.95

Technology Service Fee $9.95

Taxes $0.70

Total Due $80.60

Just out of curiosity, what is the purpose of 1Gbps internet? Not trying to be an ass or anything, but what can you do with 1Gbps that you cant do with say, 200MBPs?
 

3TrueFans

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Just out of curiosity, what is the purpose of 1Gbps internet? Not trying to be an ass or anything, but what can you do with 1Gbps that you cant do with say, 200MBPs?
Download things faster, that's pretty much it. I'll probably drop down to the 500mbps speed after my promo is up because that's probably "fast enough", but I do like when games, movies, etc. download quickly, just paying for that convenience I suppose.
 

BigBake

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Just out of curiosity, what is the purpose of 1Gbps internet? Not trying to be an ass or anything, but what can you do with 1Gbps that you cant do with say, 200MBPs?

If you have multiple devices downloading then you could see one benefit. There is just more available bandwidth for those devices to share.
 

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