Slow internet

[Tom]

Thought I would pass this along. It was frustrating for a while.
I was having very slow internet connection times with my cable. VERY slow.
Turns out, it was the cable from the junction box on my house to the modem.
The cable was well over 20 years old and had been laying partially under dirt outside before coming in through the wall.
The cable guy ( not Larry!) did a test on the wire and there was very little power? coming through it. A new cable made all the difference in the world.

[DJofSD]

What cable company?

[Tom]

Time Warner.

[bigmack]

I'd be curious what numbers come up for folk with this:
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Click on the city nearest to you

I get 5715 Down and 501 Up

[DJofSD]

4819/353 w/o any MTU optimization. Time-Warner.

[Steve 'StatMan']

25869 down, 351 up - Comcast Broadband - Rolling Meadows/Chicago

[Ponyplayr]

215kbps up--106kbps down Bell South

[Dan Montilion]

10331/749. RCN.

[bigmack]

25869 down, 351 up - Comcast Broadband - Rolling Meadows/Chicago
Is that right Steve? I've never seen anything like it.

[dlgreg]

5554 down
354 up

Comcast Hoffman Estates, IL

[DJofSD]

I'm curious to learn from both Steve and Dan what is the broadband service that allows them 10,000 kbs download speeds and what does it cost per month?

[gillenr]

15309/353 Mundelein, IL

[Tom]

6326/359 Canandaigua, NY

[Jeff P]

When I first moved into my new place in San Diego I signed up for high speed cable internet with Time Warner who is the local cable provider in my area. From day one my experience was anything but high speed. Service would intermittently cut in and out. Dozens of service calls (there was a point when it seemed like I was calling them at least once a day) led to technicians being dispatched who replaced my modem four or five separate times... re-wiring from the junction box to my apt four or five separate times... me proving to a technician that it wasn't faulty net cards or the like on any of my own machines by me trekking out to the local Starbux and dragging a random college girl from there back to my place with her laptop in tow so we could hook it up to my cable modem... conversations with neighbors in my building only confirmed that they too were experiencing the same shoddy on and off again internet service that I was... funnier still was the fact that some of them had cable phones and couldn't call the cable company to report a problem during an outage... This went on for about 3 months... and during this time Time Warner's on site techs would never even admit to me that there was a problem... obviously there was but it was clear whatever it was it was something beyond their ability to diagnose and fix.

It was really frustrating for me. I'm probably one of the few in my area who actually depends on having reliable high speed internet to earn a living. And apparently it wasn't really available in my area. I was actually considering breaking my new lease and moving to a different building or neighborhood just so I could have true high speed internet. Yeah, it was THAT bad.

Out of frustration one day I wrote a letter - the old fashioned kind - with pen and paper and a stamp - to the Time Warner company president.

The day she received my letter I was made acutely aware of that fact. I must have received a half dozen different calls to my cell phone... from the VP of Engineering who said he reported directly to the co pres... to the Field Operations Supervisor... to the guy who identified himself as the best service tech Time Warner ever had.

The next day they all came out - the VP, the Field Operations Supervisor, and the Master Tech... the VP and the Field Super shook my hand and unleashed their Master Tech... and then kept me informed along the way with every step their Master Tech took.... he pinged from my modem back through the line to the junction box. It was fine. He tested the junction box. Also fine. He pinged from the junction box through the main line hanging from the poles in the alley behind my building back towards Mt Soledad where their transmitter/receiver for my area of town is located.

He found the problem in the main line itself about a 100 yds from my building. Old wiring where the insulation had become brittle and started to break off allowing wires that weren't supposed to touch each other to intermittently make contact. They had a crew come out with ladder trucks that night and they restrung the main line itself. Problem solved.

Since that time I have not had one outage or slowdown - not one single problem at all. The Master Tech told me the problem he discovered meant that everyone in my little neighborhood had to be experiencing the same slow and intermittent type of service that had caused me to complain. And yet I was the only one who was compelled enough to take 10 minutes out of my day and write a letter to somebody who was equally compelled to do something about it.

Something I remember from a Strategic Management class at A.S.U a long time ago applies here. The people in charge of most corporations actually do give a shit. The main difficulty in getting satisfaction often lies in reaching the right person. Unfortunately in some corporate cultures that right person is surrounded by layers and layers of yes men too afraid to let a real complaint or bad news make it through.

Tom, consider yourself lucky that the cause of your problem was something well within the scope of the first service tech they dispatched to your place. Nobody should have to go through what I did.

-jp

.

[DJofSD]

Excellent story and write up, Jeff. Thx.

[Dan Montilion]

I'm curious to learn from both Steve and Dan what is the broadband service that allows them 10,000 kbs download speeds and what does it cost per month?
DJ,

This is the outfit I use. http://www.rcn.com/index.php

[kenwoodallpromos]

Time Warner.
_________
20 years? Better stsrt calling them Time/Machine!

[trying2win]

983 down/356 up.....Shaw Cable.....Edmonton, Alberta, Canada


T2W

[Hosshead]

In my area (S. Ca.) Time Warner has bought out both Adelphia and Comcast.
They're running commercials showing Adelphia/Comcast trucks vanishing, to get us used to the monopoly, .... I mean... change.

[chickenhead]

6100/360 Comcast Northern Cali

[bigmack]

This is the outfit I use. http://www.rcn.com/index.php
Shazzam. In Boston, Phile, & DC you can order high speed with a down of 20,000

[Steve 'StatMan']

25869 down, 351 up - Comcast Broadband - Rolling Meadows/Chicago

www.comcast.com info and pricing pages

www.comcast.net customer home page

I'm paying $42.95 a month, which includes a discount for having their Cable TV as well. I believe they said their current rate without the Cable TV discount would be $57.95 per month, but they likely run promotions, etc.

[bigmack]

Steve - Just to see if it varies in Rolling Meadows/Palatine at certain times of the day could you run it again.

25000 is astounding.

[Steve 'StatMan']

Steve - Just to see if it varies in Rolling Meadows/Palatine at certain times of the day could you run it again.

25000 is astounding.

Turns out the city of the servers one chooses is key.

Rolling Meadows IL (Near AP) to their Chicago Server at 10:35CDST
(about 26 driving miles from downtown Chicago)

28857 kbps down, 352 kbps up


But drastically different to other cities:

To New York City:

9761 kbps down, 351 kbps up

To Los Angeles:

7564 kbps down, 350 kbps up

To Seattle:

6639 kbps down, 350 kbps up

Admittedly 26 miles is a lot shorter to travel than well over 1,000 miles to each coast.

[PaceAdvantage]

12945 down 1481 up

[bigmack]

12945 down 1481 up
Freud was wrong - It's bandwidth envy we're plagued with

[JimG]

Mine was 5041/1981 with Cox Cable. I have what is called Preferred internet speed which is their mid level service. 5MB download and 2MB upload. They have a quicker service 15MB download and 2 MB upload for $15 bucks a month more (Premier Service) I was thinking about getting it if it would improve video for Brisbet/Youbet etc whereby I could use a larger screen without significant video blurring.

My question for guys with the faster download speeds. How is your streaming video of horse races look? I know you cannot hope for TV quality although mine is fairly close if I do not increase the screen that pops up when WMP starts streaming the video. (about 4 inches by 4 inches on the screen)

Jim

[PaceAdvantage]

My question for guys with the faster download speeds. How is your streaming video of horse races look? I know you cannot hope for TV quality although mine is fairly close if I do not increase the screen that pops up when WMP starts streaming the video. (about 4 inches by 4 inches on the screen)

Jim

My video quality has not gotten all that better despite higher speeds. I think most here quickly reach the limit of what BrisBET and YouBet (especially YouBet) are sending out of the pipe....

[NoDayJob]

Time Warner.

:lol:

[Ron]

4117/3913 Verizon Fios.


The down seems slow?