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Heartland.net

Network Disclosure

The following Heartland Net disclosures are in reference to the FCC Open Internet Rules.

Service Offerings

Heartland Net via the Heartland Net brand directly offers broadband ISP services through NETINS in its markets. Please visit the Heartland Net website to check availability, speed options and pricing.

Performance

INS is the internet upstream provider for Heartland Net. INS offers a speed test site to any user or customer. It can be accessed here: INS Speed Test or http://netins.net/speed.htm. These tests are heavily dependent on a customer's home network configuration, modem, and computers, and therefore do not reflect the performance of the Heartland Net network only.

Your Internet Service Speeds

Heartland Net provides residential and commercial customers with a variety of high speed Internet plans from which to choose, ranging from our initial tier (with download speeds up to 6 megabits per second ("Mbps"), and upload speeds up to 512 kilobits per second ("kbps")) to our top tier (with download speeds up to 50 Mbps, and upload speeds to 25 Mbps). Heartland Net provisions its customers' modems and engineers its network to ensure that its customers can enjoy the speeds to which they subscribe. However, Heartland Net does not guarantee that a customer will actually achieve those speeds at all times. Without purchasing an expensive, dedicated Internet connection, no Internet Service Provider ("ISP") can guarantee a particular speed at all times to a customer. Heartland Net advertises its speeds as "up to" a specific level based on the tier of service to which a customer subscribes.

The "actual" speed that a customer will experience while using the Internet depends upon a variety of conditions, many of which are beyond the control of an ISP such as Heartland Net. These conditions include:
  1. Performance of a customer's computer, including its age, processing capability, its operating system, the number of applications running simultaneously, and the presence of any adware and viruses.
  2. Type of connection between a customer's computer and modem For example, wireless connections may be slower than direct connections into a router or modem. Wireless connections also may be subject to greater fluctuations, interference and congestion. Heartland Net does not recommend wireless modem connections for use with its higher speed tiers as many wireless connections do not perform at the speeds delivered by these tiers.
  3. The distance packets travel (round trip time of packets) between a customer's computer and its final destination on the Internet, including the number and quality of the networks of various operators in the transmission path. The Internet is a "network of networks." A customer's connection may traverse the networks of multiple providers before reaching its destination, and the limitations of those networks will most likely affect the overall speed of that Internet connection.
  4. Congestion or high usage levels at the website or destination. If a large number of visitors are accessing a site or particular destination at the same time, your connection will be affected if the site or destination does not have sufficient capacity to serve all of the visitors efficiently.
  5. Gating of speeds or access by the website or destination. In order to control traffic or performance, many websites limit the speeds at which a visitor can download from their site. Those limitations will carry through to a customer's connection.
  6. The performance of the modem you have installed. Modem performance may degrade over time, and certain modems are not capable of handling higher speeds.
This is the reason that Heartland Net, like all other ISPs, advertises speeds as "up to" a particular level, and does not guarantee them.

There are other speed tests that measure Internet performance. We have provided links to a few of these sites below for your reference. Please note, however, that all speed tests have biases and flaws. Each of these tests measures limited aspects of an ISP's speed and therefore must be seen as a guide rather than definitive measurements of performance.

Latency

Latency is another measurement of Internet performance. Latency is the time delay in transmitting or receiving packets on a network. Latency is primarily a function of the distance between two points of transmission, but also can be affected by the quality of the network or networks used in transmission. Latency is typically measured in milliseconds, and generally has no significant impact on typical everyday Internet usage. As latency varies based on any number of factors, most importantly the distance between a customer's computer and the ultimate Internet destination (as well as the number and variety of networks your packets cross), it is not possible to provide customers with a single figure that will define latency as part of a user experience.

Congestion Management

Heartland Net does not implement any congestion management techniques. Heartland Net operates our network to accommodate the necessary traffic requirements. In the event of congestion, all traffic is classified as best effort.

Our congestion management approach will change over time, as we continue to study and enhance our practices and as new technologies emerge. In the meantime, we will continue to invest in our network in accordance with our normal course of business operations, which includes installing technology that will increase the speed and capacity of our services.

Content, Applications, Service and Device Providers

As a full service Internet Service Provider, Heartland Net delivers a variety of Internet-based applications. These include:
  • Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
  • Email
  • Web Hosting
Heartland Net does not discriminate any customer traffic. Heartland Net utilizes the network management techniques that are equal and standard across all user applications. We do not modify our network to make our directly served applications perform better than applications a user would access over the general Internet. For example, Heartland Net does not manipulate our network to perform better for customers accessing Heartland Net email servers versus Heartland Net customers accessing Google’s gmail.

The network management practices employed by Heartland Net do not differ between our directly offered applications to those general applications offered over the Internet.

Security Measures

In the event of Denial of Service (DoS), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, spoofing or other malicious traffic, Heartland Net will implement inbound and outbound filtering on specific hosts. These actions will be performed to ensure reliability and availability of the Heartland Net Network. These actions will not be utilized for normal Internet applications and traffic.

INS may perform this action on behalf of Heartland Net equipment that is managed by INS.
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