Sonic vs. MonkeyBrain

Internet access discussion, including Fusion, IP Broadband, and Gigabit Fiber!
8 posts Page 1 of 1
by CuriouSonic » Tue Sep 04, 2018 9:10 pm
Lately I've been getting an ad on Facebook about Monkeybrains, a San Francisco based ISP, offering "galactic speeds" for only $35 (taxes/fees included). Does anyone have any past experience with them or care to explain how their service works and how they compare to Sonic?
by larns576 » Wed Sep 05, 2018 4:51 pm
Let me preface that i do not have Monkeybrains or Sonic fiber.

According to the web site, it appears that Monkeybrains installs a receiver antenna or dish on your roof, if you live in a single family home. Yelp reviewers states that they receive anywhere from 75Mb to 450Mb/s. I assume our foggy weather can impact the speeds.

My friend does have sonic fiber and actual speeds are consistently around ~900Mb/s. He states that his service and support has been great. If given the choice, he would pay a gladly pay more to have Sonic as his ISP. He highly recommends them.

My personal opinion is that 1Gbp/s is overkill. Netflix streams HD at ~50Mb/s or less. Not many sites actually let you download at such incredible speeds. But given the choice of $35 for 75-450Mb or $60 for ~900Mb, i will undoubtedly choose SONIC just for fiber bragging rights, stable, connection, and stellar support (at least what i've been told)!

But then again, this is a Sonic forum so our opinions might be biased just a little.
by Bjjazoresrule » Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:00 am
larns576 wrote:Let me preface that i do not have Monkeybrains or Sonic fiber.

According to the web site, it appears that Monkeybrains installs a receiver antenna or dish on your roof, if you live in a single family home. Yelp reviewers states that they receive anywhere from 75Mb to 450Mb/s. I assume our foggy weather can impact the speeds.

My friend does have sonic fiber and actual speeds are consistently around ~900Mb/s. He states that his service and support has been great. If given the choice, he would pay a gladly pay more to have Sonic as his ISP. He highly recommends them.

My personal opinion is that 1Gbp/s is overkill. Netflix streams HD at ~50Mb/s or less. Not many sites actually let you download at such incredible speeds. But given the choice of $35 for 75-450Mb or $60 for ~900Mb, i will undoubtedly choose SONIC just for fiber bragging rights, stable, connection, and stellar support (at least what i've been told)!

But then again, this is a Sonic forum so our opinions might be biased just a little.


50Mbps is not correct. To stream 4K quality video it takes around 25 Mbps (probably just slightly higher). To stream HD 1080p it takes around 5-6Mbps. You are right that Gigabit is overkill though.
by theyipper » Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:20 am
Gigabit is futureproofing.
Gigabit is helpful when having more than a few people hitting the net all at once, kids quickly downloading their multi-gig sized games, preloading (buffering) movies, work-at-home videography/photography file transfers...its absolutely not overkill.


Be happy that high speed is available for some customers, I'm still stuck on DSL speeds! :roll:
by Coopr » Fri Sep 07, 2018 6:45 pm
I just switched from Monkeybrains to Sonic Fiber today - so far, Sonic is of course much faster :)

Monkeybrains was pretty good for the past few years - cheap, decently fast - my main complaint was that it seemed inconsistent. Mostly my internet worked great, but sometimes it didn't, and I could never resolve the issue. Hopefully Sonic Fiber is more consistent.
by steelgaze » Sat Sep 08, 2018 10:03 pm
The main difference for what I imagine most people would see is the price difference.

Sonic is nearly twice as much a month for service, but the consistency of service is probably 99.9% uptime due to brand spanking new fiber infrastructure that's been built. I think I've been 'down' a about three times I've had service, and they were all planned maintenance work done at midnight.

Monkeybrains delivers over rooftop antennas, and while mostly not affect by fog, I've heard there are intermittent issues for whatever reason. I think high winds can be a culprit if the antenna is not secured enough. IMO not a huge drawback if you don't need an always on connection or connected to real-time servers that need the uptime. Another drawback I hear from some people is added microwave signals concentrated over a home? I don't think it's a big deal because it's chances are it's already being shot over your roof top, but there's no antenna to catch the signal. Either way you're exposed to the microwave signals anyways. For those wondering about speed, I had a recent talk with them, and while they do not advertise speeds, they tend to offer a minimum service guarantee of 100mbps. Should be enough for most people. I also think they have a soft cap of 1tb before they will consider throttling down your speeds.
by cooper.marcus » Wed Sep 26, 2018 4:18 pm
Follow-up post - things are better with Sonic, but... our internet lives haven't changed in some magical way.

Speeds are certainly faster now that we are on Sonic fiber, compared to Monkey Brains. Sadly, the Internet nirvana of having everything load instantly always has still not been reached - between slower web servers, more distant servers, and distance from my router at home.

Some things are clearly and consistently better, most notably video streaming - no matter how many streams we are running across our various devices, my family members now consistent experience instant stream starts, always HD quality, and no buffering/stuttering/glitching. That is nice :)

If it were just me, I'd say the improvements were not worth the higher cost. The wife and child happiness, however, makes it worthwhile.
by snert » Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:59 pm
I had Sonic DSL for seven years, paid $65/mo (including a zillion extra fees), and on a good day I got 6Mbps. But I stuck with Sonic because I like the company and I refuse to deal with Comcast. But then three years ago I heard about Monkeybrains and switched. $250 installation, then $35/mo (including all fees). So including installation, I've averaged $40/mo so far, and it'll keep creeping lower. I get 40Mbps, which is a huge improvement. I miss having a landline phone, but not much.

Compared to DSL, the speed is a huge win.

Monkeybrains is less reliable. In my experience, they have downtime more often than Sonic. They communicate, and they resolve it. I'd say every few months it goes down for a couple hours. I've been lucky and it's never interrupted anything important, so it's not a big deal.

Sonic has great privacy policies, Monkeybrains doesn't appear to have any. It seems to be a tiny operation. Good people, good service, focused on delivering the product, less focused on the business side.

Someday Sonic will offer me fiber and I'll switch back. It'll cost twice as much, but it'll be more reliable and I'll have privacy protections I trust*.

* https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2017#sonic-report
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