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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.
Last time I checked, you get no SLA (Service Level Agreement) with consumer DSL or cable Internet accounts. To the best of my knowledge you get no SLA with commercial DSL or cable accounts either (at least I don't and don't know of anyone who does). You have to buck up and pay for T or Frame or OC lines before you get an SLA.
Yes they oversell their capacity. Some places it isn't too bad (my connection), sometimes it becomes as slow as dial-up. I'd vote with my dollars appropriately.
Who will guard the guards?
Yeah I wonder about that, I'm supposed to have DSL (Verizon), always suspected it to be a bit slow: here are my test results: download: 783kbs, upload: 138kbs. I don't have my contract here, but that seems slow. I'm moving from this house, or I'd check further into it. (I just checked, I'm paying for the high speed connections, my test results are about 1/3 what "up to" speeds should be...)
My download speeds feel sluggish, the upload speeds are a little painful. My biggest objection to the upload speed results is they are just barely better than ISDN. WTF?
(BTW, go here if you want to see what your speeds are... It's a test site to see if your connection speed supports VOIP. Mine BARELY could.)
Jesus Christ! Call Whine 11 or something!
...Anyway, I have 8 MB Comcast and I am very pleased. I just used http://www.testmy.net/tools/test/d_load.php to measure my connection speed and here is the result:
:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Connection is:: 8212 Kbps about 8.21 Mbps (tested with 5983 kB)
Download Speed is:: 1002 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (Server 1)
Test Time:: 2006/06/01 - 8:12pm
Bottom Line:: 143X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 1.02 sec
Tested from a 5983 kB file and took 5.969 seconds to complete
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Firefox/1.5.0.3
Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 62.71 % faster than the average for host (comcast.net)
Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-YLBMP5VFC
:)
My download speed really is that fast if I am downloading from a good webserver. And even when I'm not, the bandwidth gets used in bittorrent
Sorry you are having problems....
I haven't noticed that issue since getting fiber through Verizon. I can see a consistent 30Mbps when I download very large files. :-)
No real point to that. Just braggin'
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Use this to test your connection speed, and make speakeasy your ISP if you want to get the bandwidth that you pay for. It may cost you a bit more, but their technical support, speed, and service policies are more than worth it.
most of the time, companies like verizon will NOT guarantee advertised bandwidth. your real speed depends on how full the central office (c.o.) is, how saturated the dslam is, your distance to the c.o., and line quality. its a real racket. they can charge you full price but depending on those factors and more, you probably won't get the *advertised* speeds.
I've lived in 4 different places in 2 cities and have been able to consistantly recieve 80-90% of the advertised speed through cable. There's a reason why the ads on TV have speeds will vary written in fine print.
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
Someone's gotta seed the Matlock and Bob Hope torrents.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I usually use Bandwidth place which has a nice GUI and useful reports. Also goes without saying that you can find many bandwidth test sites by Googling "bandwidth".
SLA? Bullshit. If I buy a car called "Toyota 85MPH Blue Car" it had damned well better not be goverened to 55MPH. "But when you bought the car, the dealer never signed an agreement guaranteeing speed." Bull-shit.
I have Cox Cable, 5mbps down, 2mbps. I regularly download at 680 k/s (5.3mbps) and upload at 280 k/s (2.1mbps).
I have never had a problem with their service.
Registered Linux user #421033
Something I've heard from my friends a lot is that they don't realise companies sell their connection speeds in BITS per second.
Myself, I have 512Kb/s down, and as a rule of thumb I divide by 10 to get it in bytes. I get at best 54KB/s downloads, which works out by this rule.
I know, a byte is 8 bits, but as a rule of thumb, dividing by 10 seems to include overhead.
I know my 512Kb/s ADSL connection doesn't rate against these 3Mb/s cable connections, but, this is my experience, learn from it what you will.
What does gramma need with 3Mbps anyway?!
Irrelevant. They sold her on 3 Mbps, they aren't delivering it. It's not my business or yours what she wants it for.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"What practices and tools do you use to test your bandwidth speed and"
Download it here http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/ From the website: "Iperf is a tool to measure maximum TCP bandwidth, allowing the tuning of various parameters and UDP characteristics. Iperf reports bandwidth, delay jitter, datagram loss. "
I am not left-handed, either!
I just moved to a new house. This time, I decided to do things right, and had a DSL splitter installed at the point where the phone line enters the house. [My splitter looks just like the one in the picture.] The previous owner had had unacceptably low DSL speed, but with the splitter installed, I'm within about 8% of the theoretical maximum on the 3 Mb/s plan. The phone line between the NID mounted on the outside wall of my house and the phone exchange is likely not perfect, which may account for the 8% degradation.
Note that the rated maximum speed (3 Mb/s in my case) accounts for not just the actual payload data being transmitted, but all of the protocol overhead as well: TCP headers, IP headers, etc (there are multiple protocol layers, each with overhead). Your typical internet speed test is not able to directly account for all of the protocol overhead, so your data will be transmitted slower than the rated line speed.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
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."
One "trick" they use is that in our area (Colorado, QWest), the DSL speed rates they quote are all the ATM frame rates. ATM has around 20% overhead, so this means that a 1.5mbps line will give you more around 1.25mbps throughput.
I don't recall that I've ever gotten anything less than that on DSL across the line. I've run routers handling the "megacentral", the ISP end of the DSL connection, and have had more than a bit of opportunity to test DSL connection performance.
As far as cable, we have Comcast in this area, and are paying for the higher service level. I do notice that when the school year starts, we tend to have performance issues for a month or two. This has happened on several occasions. So, instead of 6 to 8mbps (they recently upgraded to 8mbps, before that it was 6), we get more like 3 to 4. Annoying, but not a huge issue.
I have noticed that on the Comcast sales literature, they say "N mbps *" where the * links to something saying "No guarantees".
However, most of the time I'm able to get 8mbps, when the remote end can handle it. I have servers hosted at a location where I know I have plenty of bandwidth. I just downloaded the Ubuntu Dapper ISO over cable:
730740736 bytes transferred in 710 seconds (1005.4K/s)
So, that's right at 8mbps. This is not unusual.
It's important to realize that there are several places where there could be performance issues though. The line, the directly connected ISP bandwidth, the server you're downloading from, and everything in between.
Winging at your ISP for problems which are outside their control isn't going to be helping anyone. If you are downloading Dapper right now via FTP from the main site, the server is almost certainly not going to be able to handle 8mbps.
Another thing I'd wonder is whether maybe your grandmother might have a virus or two, or perhaps there's some file-sharing going on? All these lines have a fraction of the upstream bandwidth that they do down. If you are pushing out much data, it interferes with incoming data. If you do any performance testing, make SURE that you don't have anything else using it, either outgoing or incoming.
Hope this helps.
Sean
about grandma, and a webcam, and why that makes it our business
but i'm not telling that joke, nope
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My experience in this 65 year old apartment building is that the copper wire here won't support DSL above 4 megabits. I recently switched to cable internet (Comcast, Maryland) and saw a huge increase in available bandwidth. They originally promised a higher upload speed (I apparently purchased 6/384 and thought I was getting 6/768) and when I called to inquire I was offered 8/768 for 10$ more a month.
I'm able to pretty much get full speed out of my connection, but most of the times when I do speed tests on say Speakeasy.net or through other test sites, I frequently get reports that indicate half of my potential speed. I have been wondering if perhaps these tests are not very accurate at all, and would suggest connecting to a nice fast torrent to get a feel for how fast your connection is.
Works for me, anyway.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
On cable connections, you're sharing the connection
Are you implying that DSL is not shared? The only part of DSL that is not shared is from your house to the CO. From there it is shared as the bandwidth in and out of your CO is shared by everyone that terminates in that CO, I guess the only person you would not share that CO bandwidth with is if you were connecting directly to one of your neighbors.
On a side note. I have Comcast. I can always got my advertised speed any time of the day or night. Not all areas are maxed out or "oversold".
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Around here it seems everyone bashes cable, but it's not the technology that sucks, but the providers. I don't know what available in your area but here (Toronto, Canada) I have the choice of Bell (DSL) or Rogers (Cable) for highspeed. On a 3 Mbps DSL line ($40/month CAD) you'll likely pull 3-4Mbps from any decent server. Over one of the 6Mbps cable lines ($46/month CAD) you can generally pull about 10Mbps or download speeds of 1.25MB/sec sustained.
My suggestion to the poster is try a different ISP, they're not all bad. I don't know your location so I can't be more specific but if your in the US you're sort of stuck with the fact that all the ISPs I've seen down there suck.
Actually, it's because the vast majority of their customers never use the promised resources and don't notice the fact that the ISP is technically fibbing. Unfortunately, since the advent of Gnutella and Bit Torrent millions of people are noticing that they aren't receiving the service levels they were expecting. Browsing, email and instant messaging don't give you any real feedback about line conditions ... but just run a few torrents and it becomes painfully obvious when the performance isn't there. The fact that ISP's business models (and profit margins) depend upon the bulk of their customers not using what they were told they were paying for doesn't change the fact that they are paying for it. If bandwidth-intensive applications continue to be popular (and usage shows no sign of slowing down in spite of numerous lawsuits to the contrary) the big ISPs may very well have to change their offerings. Either that, or build out their networks to the point where they can sustain the traffic. Neither option appeals to them, so they're trying to take the easy way out by labeling certain customers as "bandwidth hogs" or "account abusers" and maintaining undisclosed usage limits (to intimidate customers into limiting their consumption.) That works to a degree, but when the number of bandwidth hogs begins to number in the tens of millions there's definitely a problem.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That's because the FCC mandates SLAs on T/Frame/OC lines.
Please help metamoderate.
Your computer
connects to
Your 6MB Cable
connects to
Cable Company
connects to
A slow or oversold internet connection
Here is a basic "How to" for calling your ISP... it sucks, and its a tad humiliating for most alpha-geeks... but sometimes we have to play by their rules to get our pr0n and warze faster.
1. Connect one PC to your cable/dsl modem (nothing else...)
2. Reboot your PC and your modem
3. Retest your speeds using a major speed test site
4. Call your ISP and explain your issue
5. Listen and follow their instructions (even if its a painful script... do it)
6. Respond with kindness and friendly responses (remember, they hold the key to escalating your issue or closing it without resolution)
Hopefully your ISP will recognize their is an issue and resolve it. Otherwise - tell them to go pound sand and move on to the next.
In my case, I consistently get speed measurements **faster** than my plan provides, but I'm with a new and small ISP and I expect things to get worse as more people sign up.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Gas mileage is not determined by the companies, it is determined by a set of specific tests under federal law. If you were able to run those tests and find a discrepancy, then you would have a case as far as fraud/mislabeling/etc. goes. Tests are quite easy to run on bandwidth, so it's an entirely different situation.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
Why are you so sure the problem is your ISP? Do you know for a fact that the speed test is accurate? Are you doing the speed tests during a time of peak internet usage? Are other sites that you are connecting to serving fast enough to fill your pipe at full speed? If you are connecting to a site that can only serve 1 mbps, I don't care how fast your speed is promised to be, you'll never get anything from that site faster than 1 mbps.
And be careful when making claims "no ISP delivers the speed they promise". My ISP is Comcast on a cable modem. They claim they are giving me 6 mbps. And 99 percent of the time when I'm doing big video or Linux iso downloads or such like that and can see a good test of my actual speed, I'm getting the speed they say they're selling me...6 mbps.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Thank the bandwidth gods for UTOPIA, a community fiber-optic system. 15Mbit symmetric. I've had LAN's slower than this, and I get a 2ms ping time to XMission's border router. Logged on to counter-strike, and found a few games being hosted at my isp with under 10ms pings. It's amazing what can happen when you get the damn telcos out of the way. :::.. Download Stats ..:::
Connection is:: 14320 Kbps about 14.32 Mbps (tested with 12160 kB)
Download Speed is:: 1748 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (Server 2)
Test Time:: 2006/06/01 - 11:34pm
Bottom Line:: 250X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 0.59 sec
Tested from a 12160 kB file and took 6.956 seconds to complete
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060326 Firefox/1.5.0.3 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.3-1)
Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 85.68 % faster than the average for host (xmission.com)
Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-QIOGKAJMB
Now, there are certain exceptions. In general, you can't drive a dense network at much beyond 1/3 the rated speed - thin-wire ethernet was bad for that - so you can expect similar sorts of problems on a shared line such as cable. The entire design of cable - a single line with taps off it - is exactly what thick-wire and thin-wire ethernet were like.
However, the article mentions DSL. DSL is not a shared line, it is essentially a dedicated line. The service only becomes shared at the teleco's CO (as that's where the DSL modems are, on the other side). At that point, everyone gets plugged into one or more routers. Now, when you change the speed of the modem, they simply program the DSL modem on their end to take a slower connection. They do not (at least, if they are network neutral) mess with the routers to change the priority of your network traffic.
Interestingly, when I worked for a company that got SDSL installed (no service agreement), the engineer ramped up the listed speed beyond what we'd paid for, but the actual speed we ended up with was what we'd bought . This doesn't conflict with what I've just said - we were on the edge of the service area and the speed we were supposed to get simply didn't operate. At all. Apparently, if the copper is poor, not all frequencies are guaranteed to work, and it's not an upper limit - lower speeds can be affected too.
Anyway, to the poster of the original story, I'd strongly suggest getting an INDEPENDENT person that you can trust to check the phone wiring from the DSL modem as far out as practical. At the very least, check the wiring in the house. It is possible that poor wiring, a rusty connector or a loose connection somewhere is killing the speed. If that is the case, then fixing the problem would be very cheap and easy, and would save a LOT of money - you'd have more bandwidth without shelling out the extra cash.
If the wiring is good, then the fault lies with the ISP, and I'd suggest calling a consumer advocacy group for advice on what to do - if, indeed, you can do anything. If only a handful of people care enough to actually do anything, you probably can't - although there are usually multiple DSL providers in an area, and some are better than others.
If a LOT of people are VERY frustrated AND willing to spend hard cash to get this fixed once and for all, you might want to investigate the pros and cons of setting up a DSL cooperative. The teleco can't deny you equal access to the CO (that's law), but industrial-strength network equipment (DSL modems, high-end routers, T3 or T4 line) - that isn't cheap. And, yes, you probably would need to go to a T3 or T4 in order to make the whole thing fast enough to pay for itself. This is NOT a recommended option, without some serious funding behind it. However, if the funding is there, it is the one path you can take that (a) guarantees you the results you want, (b) guarantees the ISP has consequences it WILL notice, and (c) guarantees you the undivided attention of every disenchanted geek and abusive ISP on the planet - at least, for a week or two.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
But that's not what I'm concerned about. They finished installing the Project Lightspeed box just up the street a few months ago, and I'm close enough that if they really do use VDSL2+, I can get 50-100 Mbits bidirectional. But guess what? They're only offering 6M down / 1.5M up for the near future. The rest of it is reserved for their stupid cable-over-IP service, and I really don't want pay TV, no matter which company or technology it's coming from. I'm quite happy with free over-the-air ATSC, especially PBS.
However, I am aware that the DSL I get is technically a business class DSL (it's the same price as the equivalent business class service), so maybe in a few months when they start hooking it up, they might have a business class option that's a bit faster.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Trust me, I would if I could. Most of the apartments in Dallas have "single provider" agreements. I can't even have a T1 or something like that dropped in because the apartment owners sell the wiring rights to single companies, and those companies will only give you one option and will not allow anybody else into the equipment closets or walls. The apartment owners have the right to refuse access to anyone they want (it is their property, after all), and the telco secures and utilizes that right in a contract with the owner.
:-)
//I, for one, welcome our monopolistic communications overlords.
////Besides, some of the phone repair people are hot.
I could install satellite, but it would cost me.....a LOT.....a WHOLE LOT!!!!! Try a $1000 non-refundable damage deposit to put the dish on the building plus a minimum of $75000 in renters liability insurance.
I can't get cable, because the same owner that sells the rights to the phone lines also sells rights to the cable...and guess who buys them....the phone company.
Even in the case that the owner sells the rights to two different people (phone and cable to two separate companies), the two parties generally get together and reach a side agreement. In my current building, I am supposed to be able to get Comcast cable and internet....but Comcast and SBC got together and swapped rights on several complexes. Now SBC controls phone AND cable in my complex and Comcast has the same in another (reselling someone elses phone service).
You can't win for losing.
This is pretty much the case at every apartment I have EVER lived in within the Dallas metroplex. The only exception was the apartment in the high crime district where we couldn't even get cable or DSL.
In the end, you are technically correct....I could get a satellite. But it is prohibitively expensive. To me it is simply easier and cheaper to put my ego and my temper to the side and suck up. It works. Its easy. Its cheap.
It is kind of like why I stay at my current job.
I figure patience with these inconvenient things now will pay off by saving me much energy and stress while working on my own things/ideas. Different priorities, I guess.
I just look forward to buying a house in the next few months so that I can have the illusion of provider choice for at least a few more months before the telcos and cable companies manage to legislate their monopolies back into (stronger) existance.
In the end, the telcos have millions of lobbying dollars and congressmen have giant holes in their pockets to fill. One day we will all have to bow to our evil communications overlords, may as well start practicing now.
1. It says "Speeds Up to" Somewhere somehow someone gets the speed advertised, under ideal conditions.
2. Why doesn't the internet get faster:
a. I can't download faster than you can upload. So the Asynchronous lack of speed means nothing moves faster than the slowest side.
b. The more people with high bandwidth connect to the net the slower the sites they go to becomes, including popular bandwidth testing sites!
c. Bandwidth capping, many sites cap their speed so as to not overwhelm the customers they had in 2000 (meaning the same companies who code only for IE 5.0)
d. Poor router configuration. Not by your ISP but by the "backbone" providers in between. I've actually worked at an ISP where customers dropped peering agreements because bandwidth was better if we didn't peer with them.(bad routers at our peering provider)
e. Poor site design. I spent a whole day trying to explain to a company why a 1mb webpage was slower than a 30k page from their competitor.
f. You get used to speed. Much like how you used to buy this really great sounding stereo, only to realize 6 months later that it sounds like crap.
g. Poor quality bandwidth testing. Just because you only get 750kbps between you and the testor doesn't mean that's all the bandwidth you have, it means that's all the bandwidth you can get. Switches, Nics, Routers etc all affect what happens.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
I ditched comcast for a local fixed wireless ISP (Mesa Networks) who seem to be holding customers despite having both DSL and Cable in the area.
:)
I'm paying for a 3Mb/1Mb connection, yet according to the speedtest on speakeasy's site i'm actually getting 4022kbps/1044kbps.
If I use more distant speed test locations then it seems to be closer to what i'm paying for, however it looks like they must have raised the cap on the local end so that I can get transfers at the speed i'm paying for. On top of that, my connection bursts to 9/3 which makes small transfers really snappy
I pay for a 20Mbps connection, yet I get barely 1.5-2Mbps. That's the thing that sux about living in a poor area of town. Nobody can be bothered fixing up the local telephone exchange. :/
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
DSL signals drop off because they demand better quality from the line. A typical telephone reproduces audio frequencies between 300 and 3,400 Hz - the acoustical range necessary to understand human voice. (In comparison, a typical studio mic probably picks up sounds between 20 and 20,000 Hz.)
The reason you can piggyback DSL on a telephone line without affecting voice calls is that DSL uses frequencies outside of the human voice range to transmit the data. The farther away you get from the central office, the worse the signal gets, and speeds are impacted.
In other words, the reason you can call somebody in Japan is because the audio quality does suck.
I have a 10Mbps cable connection. Sure, most 'net servers aren't able to give out files that fast. But the ones that are..
3-4 weeks ago I downloaded a 142MB file. Firefox reported it as coming down at one megabyte/sec. I'm not sure whether it lied, but the file was downloaded in under 2 minutes.
Surprised the hell out of me. Made me happy.
Cable company is NTL. Their technical support is absolutely atrocious. Luckily their connection is very stable, so I rarely have to call them. And the download speed is very nice indeed.
Something I've noticed from a quick scan of the comments is that people are talking about how you'll never achieve your rated line speed in practice because of the overheads associated with TCP/IP, etc.
Here in the UK, what companies sell as (eg) a 512Kbps connection is actually (from memory) a 572Kbps connection, with the extra few Kbps to account for that overhead. At least, that's how it was at least until recently; I can't tell any more as I upgraded to my ISP's 8Mbps service, but my phone line (as expected) can't handle that rate. (Still, the ~3.6Mbps I get is fine for now, and the upgrade was only £1/month more)
It always makes me laugh when I see companies advertising 16Mbps or even 24Mbps services; I can't believe that more than a handful of people actually have the line quality needed and are close enough to their exchange to achieve those speeds. Now if only BT would start improving the lines...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
That you dont even live in developing or 3rd world countries as I do ;)
Where I am right now, we're lucky to have 24/7 broadband at all, a whopping 64kbps cable connection which is SHARED with 15 other consumer per node for only ~USD35/month, but if you want the speed for yourself, there's the 128kbps for only ~USD130/month, oh, some ISP around here announced a speed improvement to up to 512kbps few months ago, weeee! I hope that gets to my area soon :P
It's the problem with humanity, they never get satisfied :D
PS: I studied in the states, so I experienced the joy of 1.5 Mbps broadband ;)
I've heard of this phenomenon. I think they call it "lobbying".
In most parts of the world this is better known as 'corruption'.
To be honest, part of this problem is just the fact that the agents themselves are not fully trained half of the time, the other part of the problem is also the fact that the customers themselves are not by any means computer literate, I finding myself teaching people what the difference between 0 and O is on the keyboard often. Though the method of acting sickly sweet and just "agreeing" to do what the agent has asked you to do should usually get yourself an tech truckroll or something similar from the company that you are getting your service from, the main reason for this being a better solution at all is that many people who call believe that they do know everything that there is to know not only better, but also believe that they already know the answer to the problem to which they have been trying to fix. Arrogance can cause just as much dispute and idiocy. Another thing is when dealing with a larger company, (SBC,At&t, Verizon) how do you really expect to make a point about them losing your business, when in fact you are speaking with a peon at the bottom of the organization that is mostly likely someone that is part of an outsource(scab) company. These people who are techs, as stated before do not have the sufficient trainging for this job, however, that does not change their need for their income, so what do they have to go on but the script that is there. And if you do not follow that script then what can they do; of course, this does not dismiss their incompetence. However, they can only do what is given to them, if they do more and it is incorrect then they are fired, if they do more than the specific support boundaries and bypass protocol, that is the job that they are taking into the hands.
Don't join someone like Verizon or Comcast. Join someone like Speakeasy or (what I use, highly recommended) Sonic.net. Check out DSL Reports before signing up.
So, when I have an issue I suck up.
Unfortunately what you outline is the only effective tactic in dealing with someone that makes $10 per hour, is reading from a script, doesn't really care about their job and knows that they will not get in trouble no matter how nonsensical they are as long as they are reasonably following written procedures. Be nice, and you might land on the nice side of the procedures. Be angry or uncooperative... You'll be following the worst parts of procedures to the letter.
I'm a big tall mofo.
this is absurd. Of course your speeds with DSL might suck depending on your location, and the way they determine what speed you get, of course a speed decrease will lower your actual bandwidth. You'll note the speed decrease is actually a bit less with the lower speed, but they are actuall still comparable and probably somewhat attributable to other networking factors.
Before complaining about your DSL line being slow, I think you really should read up on how DSL (and most likely ADSL to be specific) works. You are hardly ever going to get max bandwidth out of a service line though I honestly cannot complain about the speeds I am getting with Cable. So, remember, before starting a bitch-fest...know what the hell you are talking about...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I found that using Brighthouse Networks Roadrunner service, I was promised "Up to 7Mbps" for $44.95/mo. and that's what I've used for a long time. Recently they started to offer Roadrunner Lite, which was advertised as 512Kbps down and 256(or 128?)Kbps up. I ran some speed tests and found that typically I was only getting 512Kbps down already even though I was promised "Up to 7Mbps". Guess what. I switched to Roadrunner Lite at $14.95/mo. Now, of course I'm getting 50Kpbs down. Yes FIFTY Kbps. What gives?!?!
Let me tell you a story about my ISP. So at one point I manage to mangle my password by using the change password form on their web site. Actually, I'd swear that it was the crap web site that mangled it, and thereafter neither the old one nor the new one worked. With or without capslock, etc. But ok, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was my fault.
So I call their tech support, am as nice as it gets (it's not that guy's fault anyway), follow the instructions so he can be sure that indeed I can't log in (can't he just reset my password anyway?), and dutifully recite to him all what software I'm using and how when he asks about that. (With the small hickup of him running out of pre-scripted answers when I tell him I'm using RASPPPOE on Windows 2000. Apparently his sheet only included that under XP.) He also asks for my invoice number to be sure it's really me. Remember that detail, it will be crucial in a jiffy. Since it's a daughter company of the telco here, I get the invoices combined, and he aggrees that the one on the telco's invoice is all he needs. I read it to him, he's satisfied with it.
Anyway, we have a nice civilized talk and he promises that he'll change my password right away and, as is their (idiotic) policy, I'll get the new one by post. Ok, so I'll be without net for couple of days, but I thank him kindly anyway.
Now let's think about it for a bit, before we delve deeper in this Lovecraftian madness:
- DSL is a P2P connection, so even if my password were to get to someone else, they can _only_ log on from my apartment. It's not like someone can trick them into giving them a password that'll work from somewhere else.
- the new password is sent by post to my home address, so they can freakin' know that _I_ am going to be the one receiving it anyway.
- my phone line is from the same telco and goes through the same exchange, so they could jolly well know that it was me who called, or at least it was from my phone.
A week goes by and I still don't have my flippin' password. By now I've dug out the old ISDN card and I'm using an expensive call-by-call account somewhere else to even read my emails.
So I call again, get someone else on the phone, read them the invoice number, they say "yep, I'm changing it now, you'll get it by post." A week later I call again. Then twice a week. Then every 2 days. The same freaking circus repeats every single time. Read them the invoice number, get told "yep, I'm changing it now, nothing happens." Eventually, after a month and a half, it becomes bloody obvious that they're lying shamelessly and they won't do anything.
So I'm annoyed, escalate it to hell and back, until eventually someone tells me what's the problem: my invoice number doesn't match the one in their database. Apparently when I moved they gave me a new invoice number, but here's the catch: the telco and their ISP department had given me different ones.
So for a whole bloody month and a half, the retarded tech support drones had just lied to me. None of them bothered telling me "oi, that number doesn't match." None of them bothered using their freaking brains, and figuring out that there are ways to authenticate me otherwise (e.g., tell me to come personally to one of their offices, if they're that paranoid, or call back to my home number to make sure it's me, or whatever) instead of following a script like a lobotomized robot.
That's what a month of being nice and polite and patient to lying idiots did for me. Yeah, it soo helped.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Remember for DSL that it's critical to have a good line filter between every phone in the house and the wall jack. If I take just one filter off it immediately halves the line speed, with no other obvious symptoms or flakiness.
My goodness, Grandma, what a fat pipe you've got!
Also remember that when it is 3 am here in the states it is daytime in other parts of the world. Many high-profile websites are still getting tons of traffic from Europe and Asia. In my experience it is best to do several speed tests at different times of the day and night to see if you can find a pattern in the reported speeds.
As an aside, it is probably the ISP. I used to have SBC (now AT&T) DSL both in Houston and in South Texas. Both times I paid for the high speed connection and never got the speeds I was paying for. Both times after three months I called and complained and lo and behold the SBC rep told me that my DSL line had somehow been "accidentally" locked at the lower speed. That means that I paid for six months of high speed service and got the low speed instead.
Coincidence? I think not, it is just that SBC are a bunch of lame assholes. The reason I say that is because when I last had SBC DSL we had a thunderstorm in the area and the nice clean line I had somehow got affected and I started to get noise in the line. Called SBC tech support and the tech monkeys in India refused to believe me and never did anything to fix my problem. Eventually I got through to a second-level SBC tech (a White guy in Texas) and he verified my line noise problem but again the problem never got fixed.
Eventually I got disgusted with SBC and got rid of my DSL line. I then got Roadrunner cable service which is advertised at 6 Mbps; I consistently get 5.5 Mbps downloads (I live in a low-income barrio and am the only one on Roadrunner so I get all the bandwidth for myself
A man who wants nothing is invincible
When doing DSL installs for customers, my strategy is always to place the DSL modem closest to the point where the telco wiring terminates on the side of the house. I then use ethernet, powerline, or wireless to get the signal to the computers. Also, I've noticed that some DSL modems are much, much more sensitive to line conditions than others. For example, in Florida, Bellsouth offers a base Westel 6xxx series modem, a Versalink 4-port ethernet with WiFi DSL modem/router, and a Netopia 4-port ethernet with WiFi DSL modem/router. The new Netopia seems to be the most resilient in terms of connection drops and line quality tolerance.
I also picked up a SunSet DSL test-set on eBay for just under $100. This is the same equipment that Bellsouth uses to test the line. I've found it to be very, very useful. I unplug all the phones in the house and test jacks until I find one that produces no errors.
no one mentioned the fact that the speed of DSL decreases the farther you are from the central office. If you are a fair distance from the CO you will have a much slower connection.
They're advertising metric bits, but giving you imperial bits. It's up to you to do the conversion. Something along the lines of "hogsheads per forthnight"(?)
What?
What works for me is to show them immediately that I know a fair bit about networking. That is, I'll be logged in to my Linux router, and I'll say things like "I'm not getting a DHCP response." They'll say "Reboot the computer" and I'll say "How about I just restart the interface?"
The service has been rock solid. My ISP simply delivers, except when they don't. Thus, when I have no Internet, I raise hell. No, I won't plug in another computer, I just tested this network card, plugged in a crossover to my laptop, and it's fine. Hell, I even set up a DHCP server on my laptop to make sure that works. Now, could you tell me who pulled the plug on your end?
And invariably, whoever I was talking to eventually checks with the Powers That Be and lo and behold, they're doing something on their end, and I'll have Internet back in a day or two. I express my annoyance at being cut off, and I wait, and in a few hours, I have my connection again.
Playing stupid doesn't work with techsupport people. Being nice might -- a little empathy, a little humor, I know it's just your job, I know your script, but trust me, let's just skip to the part where you call someone else at the company. Most importantly, if you're not a clueless user, prove it.
Maybe it's arrogant, maybe some techs won't like you acting smarter than them (even if you are), but really, they don't like going through the script any more than you do.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This rives me fucking crazy. I work for an ISP, we have plenty of bandwidth, our service is nice and peppy(I have it at home, and our main office uses it for bandwidth as well). Yet, we get customers constantly calling, "why am I only getting so much speed from this ?" I got news for you, they don't fucking work.
1) When you access a speed test, it is not very likely that the webserver running said speed test is directly on the other side of your link to your ISP. It far more likely that you accessed a test running on a web server on a different network than your ISP's. SO, you are not testing the speed of your line, you are testing the speed of the slowest/most congested link between you, and the speed test site. Or, to put it a better way, you are testing your connection speed to a speedtest. If a speedtest's feed to the internet is only a T1 line, got news for ya, it will never show anyone's speed as anything faster than 1.5 mbit, even if they have 3 mbit dsl.
2) Speedtest enthusiasts (and yes, some people click them like mad, it must be fun, I dunno), seem to believe that just because they have a 7 mbit download, that every web server on the planet is willing to send 7 mbit at you, just because you can potenially see it. Got news for you, that web server is busy servicing god knows what else, and if you get 1.5 mbit, consider yourself lucky. a 7mbit connection is not about having 7mbit to any _one_ site, because it is just not going to happen. It is about having 7mbit capacity TOTAL.
You want a decently (and not good mind you) acceptable speed test, go to freebsd.org, select four different ftp mirrors, and download four different isos at once. A better method is simple, "let the merits of the service speak for themselves." If you can do many things at once, without any noticable speed hit, you have a nice fast connection, with a lot of capacity, be happy. If you can slug it out with little to no effort, you're hitting your upper limit, whip out a calculator, and do some actual math, because a speedtest will not tell you your connection speed.
The question is ignorant, moronic, and doesn't belong here.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
If we use 'Ford's Law', I would expect my computer to spontaneously flip over and catch on fire because of a faulty five cent connector.
Actually, Ford sued to have this renamed the Bridgstone Law.
The correct Ford Law was coined in the 1980's and early 1990's: "You can have any color so long as it's beige."
In part, this is just the natural result when highly technical products and services are sold to a relatively ignorant public in a competitive system.
When the users aren't clued-in enough to appreciate real differences between service/product A and service/product B, claimed differences become more important, from an economic point of view.
If provider A claims N Mbps, provider B better counter with similar speeds or lower prices. If the users, by and large, wouldn't actually know a Mbps if it hit them on the head, then the easiest and most profitable way to compete is claim to provide N+1 Mbps. After all, for most light web browsing / chat-room / e-mail users, 1Mbps and 10Mbps connections provide similar experiences. What the service really is capable of is less important than the way the users feel about it.
The same circumstances drove claimed CD-ROM drive speeds into meaningless exaggeration in the late 90s. The same circumstances drove Intel to chase gigahertz rather than real-world performance in the Pentium IV line. The same circumstances cause Wi-Fi equipment vendors to make wild claims of 100+ Mbps speeds, when users will be lucky to see a tenth of that.
The phenomenon applies to other fields as well. Digital cameras make a big deal about megapixels, because that's easy to measure and compare, even though image quality is about more than megapixels, even though other, non-image-quality issues may be of far more importance. Plenty of owners of status-symbol watches have no idea what "jewel" means in that context, but are confident that more is better. Few owners of cars with badges like "DOHC" or "VTEC" can give a coherent explanation of what those badges mean, but the badged cars sell for a premium anyway.