I’ve had cable internet since moving to Longview about 3 months ago. For most of that time, my upload bandwidth has been stuck at around 100k (download is fine) even though I’m paying for 4.0m/256k. I’ve called them about the issue more times than I can count. The first few times, they sent people over to check things out. They couldn’t figure out a damn thing and never followed up on it. Now I call and they say network ops is handling it, but I never get a call back or any resolution. It has to be the worst service I’ve ever received. The main problem is that I use VoIP (or try to…) and while it hasn’t worked very well since these issues, I live far enough away from the central office that if I switched to DSL, it probably wouldn’t be much better. So basically I’d have to drop my cable internet and VoIP and go with a much slower internet connection (on the download side at least) and a regular landline phone (both with a company I dislike) and probably pay about the same price for a lot less service. So even though I called to tell them I was about ready to drop their service, I would be shooting myself in the foot if I did so. It’s going to be hard mailing off the next bill when I haven’t been receiving what I’ve been paying for though. So my question is what can I do to make them actually do something to actually fix my issue instead of giving me the run-around? Should I contact the Better Business Bureau? (I went to their site today but decided to hold off momentarily.) If there’s anything I hate more than paying for more bandwidth than I’m getting, it’s paying for a phone that’s difficult to communicate over.
Do you use P2P software like BitTorrent, Emule, Kazaa or Gnutella? Sharing large files (especially torrents) takes up a lot of upload bandwith. The ISP will then throttle back your usage.
The normal call center monkeys don’t appear to be aware of the problem so you generally have to ask to speak to a supervisor to find out.
I occasionally use Gnutella, but not enough for them to care. It’s not often I transfer even a few hundred megs. Besides that, their second level support should have seen it by now. They have something configured incorrectly and aren’t in any hurry to fix it.
Well, it sounds like they have your modem throttled down. That’s what happened to me. It also took a couple calls until I found someone who actually knew what was going on.
Peer to peer file sharing programs can still eat up most of your bandwith even if you aren’t actively using the program. It may very well be running in your system tray, and even sometimes only as a process in the background. Be aware of this, as it’s an issue I often see doing tech support for another broadband cable company.
Do you have a router? Multiple computers? Are you scanning frequently for viruses and spyware? Any computer that has viruses/spyware on a network can clog up the bandwith quite a bit. If you do have multiple computers, also make sure no p2p programs are running on those.
Wireless router? Make sure it’s as far away from the cable modem as possible. They can cause interference. If possible, ask neighbors who are nearby that also use the service if they are having slow speeds. This would determine if it’s an area problem.
If the techs have already been out there, chances are it’s not an issue with the cable. But, they could just be lazy and performed horribly.
Hey, we may throw feces at each other, but that doesn’t make us monkeys.
Sorry for double post. Sort of.
I looked through my IRC logs earlier today and found out that I realized it was going slow the day after I got the service. I didn’t do a bandwidth test the same day, but I would bet that it was running slow to begin with. Besides that, does it make sense that they would throttle my upload bandwidth down to around 100 kbps and leave the download at 4 mbps?
I have FreeBSD so this isn’t applicable. I know when gtk-gnutella is running.
I have only one computer. Again, it runs FreeBSD so I don’t have to worry about viruses and spyware. I have a wireless router, but I aquired it after this problem arose.
I don’t think most of them knew what they were doing. The guy who connected it was getting inconsistent readings on the signal. (I don’t know if he was checking the voltage or what honestly.) I was getting connectivity though, so he let it be. I wish I had performed a bandwidth test while he was there, because he seemed like the smartest tech of the bunch. I’m thinking it’s either some poor wiring outside my house or they have something set wrong which is limiting my bandwidth. Several people I talked to on the phone said they looked and it was set to the correct values, so they don’t seem to have done it intentionally.
Anyway, I doubt you guys are going to figure out what is causing the issue. I won’t say it’s impossible I overlooked something, but it’s unlikely. It’s almost definitely on their end. I just wanted to know how to make them worry about it a bit more. I filed a report with the Better Business Bureau today. It may take a while, but I’ll get what I’m paying for.
Can I just say your user name in conjunction with your problem of speed is rather amusing?
Actually yes. It’s the high upload bandwith they have an issue with. They don’t want people using their computers as servers on their network.
What actually throttles the speed? My ISP is a DSL service and I noticed playing with my router there were info fields that reported my upload speed being faster than I’m being billed for. It was reported that there was some sort of optional speed boost, but I never paid for that. Anyway, its quite funny. I assume its something on their end, not built into the modem, right?
But, if you are having VoIP problems at 100k maybe there are latency issues as well. I am not really sure about all of the things that can go wrong with an internet connection, but my Voip worked fine when I had slow upstream. How does streaming content work? My connection is garbage in this area, yet I can easily download files at a very high rate. I think it could be a latency issue on my part. I guess I’m saying that maybe its not simply a matter of a throttled connection?
Well I called the office and they temporarily set it to the next higher bandwidth option (same download but 1 meg upload) and my problem persisted. I think that’s pretty convincing proof that they didn’t intentionally throttle it to 100k. It’s convincing to me anyway.
I usually ping Yahoo at about 50 ms. That’s pretty good latency to me. In fact, I had about double that latency when I had DSL. The VoIP quality isn’t terrible though, as long as I’m not uploading anything. A friend called once while I had Gnutella open and it sounded so bad, he wouldn’t talk to me for long. Most of the time though, we can hear each other fine but there’s just a bit of hesitation so we interrupt each other a lot. I think the phone is just barely using all of my pipe, so that roughly all the information is getting through, but it’s saturating the bandwidth and making the latency bad. That would make sense since a friend who knows a bit about VoIP told me the lines usually consume around 90k to 100k, practically all I have. On the other hand, when one of the techs replaced my modem and I got full bandwidth for a few days, the phone seemed exactly like an ordinary landline phone, even when I was uploading.
And if you think VoIP is the only way I’ve tested my bandwidth, you’re mistaken. I have ran actual bandwidth tests, both at DSL Reports on multiple servers and on my ISP’s site. No matter what time of day it was, I consistently get between 80k and 120k, except for the few days I mentioned when my modem was replaced. Something is telling these modems to go slow and I can’t do anything about it. I’m not worried about finding out what’s causing the problem. I have no control over it. I’m worried about my ISP finding out what’s causing the problem. If I had another choice for broadband, I would drop them, but I’m stuck with them. So much for my dream of doing away with SBC…
I forgot to put a name in that last quote. Hopefully you all know who said it.