Slashdot Mirror
ISPs Offer Faster Speeds, Why Don't We Get Them?
Ron Williams asks: "I'm infuriated every time I see that companies are raising their speeds when they can't maintain their current speeds. Here's my biggest issue: my grandmother signed up for the 3Mbps DSL plan through Verizon, however a speed test said she was only getting 750Kbps. Why pay for the extra bandwidth when she's not getting it? She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K. So, how about instead of companies constantly claiming to increase their speeds, they get their actual speeds correct. Comcast has done the same thing, I had their 6Mbps plan at one point, I got 2.5Mbps usually and sometimes 3Mbps, so they're all doing the same thing. In closing, with all these speed increases, why is my Internet not getting faster?" What practices and tools do you use to test your bandwidth speed and how have you approached your ISP when the performance repeatedly fell short of your expectations?
One thing to note is that you'll never get the top speed advertised for any connection due to transmission overhead; even so, you should be able to get close (within about 10-20%). Also, ISPs oversell their bandwidth, so if you run your speed tests when other customers are using their connection, you will notice the performance hit.
Do what the city I live in did and start your (the citizens) own ISP. I get the speed I pay for on a fiber optic connection. Plus they offer TV and telephone service. Better service, cheaper rates, and it's owned by the people that use it.
Bradley Holt
To be blunt, where I am there is only one choice for internet service. The single provider may change, depending on what municipality, but in the end you only have one choice in your apartment. So, when I have an issue I suck up. I act stupid and helpless and ultra sickly sweet. I thank them profusely every step of the way.
It may not be as satisfying as being intelligent or righteously indignant on the phone, but it gets great results. I consistently get a tech out same day (from ATT (SBC), no less). I have problems where my circuit speed will drop drastically (from 3Mbps to 145Kbps) on a regular basis, and now that I have started being saccharine sweet, it is generally fixed almost immediately.
Simply point out that it is running incredibly slow (say something about images and pages taking FOREVER to load, don't sound techie) and that you logged in following THEIR instructions (thank you guys for giving me those previously, oh thank you thank you) and checked the speed and saw that it was slower than normal (from what you guys told me before), and that you would greatly appreciate it if they could fix it (since I am so helpless and LOVE you guys), and please help me, and oh lord thank you so much for giving me your time.
Other than that, make sure your router isn't causing you problems. Swap it out with a borrowed one or something. I had a bad one that was destroying my throughput. Check cables, wall sockets, everything. Make sure you can eliminate everything on your end before you call them.
However, if they ask you to test things again, gleefully (pretend) to do it. It makes them happy and gets you better service later. After all, it is not really that hard to sit there reading the newspaper and drinking coffee and simply saying "Nope, still doesn't work."
To be fair, you ISP only owns parts of the highway: the on ramp (some might own a bit more than that). I bet you'd find that a bandwidth test against a server in their network would probably report numbers very close to what they're selling you. But there are quite a few bottleneck on the internet, including the bandwidth connection of the website you're trying to reach (including the bandwidth test sites I have seen). ... Oh, and that sucker paying $20 a month for his dialup ... ehh, cut him off & tell him it's his modem is broken."
I might buy that for the overall issue of not recieving the bandwidth promised. However when you concider:
She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K.
Note that all the numbers are in bits per second since he referenced them that way earlier in his statement.
You can see that the problem is not a bottleneck issue. If your 3Mb/s connection generates 750Kb/s and the problem is a bottleneck, then dropping the maximum speed available to you is not going to change anything. Your throughput at the bottleneck will be just as fast - 750Kb/s.
This is more likely a QoS implimentation which assigns specific allotments of bandwidth to the various levels of service. "OK, we have 100Tb/s of bandwidth, our 3Mb/s customers pay the most so we will give them 50Tb/s, 2Mb/s gets 25Tb/s
You can see the difference between bottlenecking & segregated bandwidth issues. If there's a bottleneck, everyone up to the throughput of the bottleneck doesn't know it's there. Everyone over that limit sees it exactly the same. With the bandwidth segregation, each tier will show differently based on the load at the time.