TWC "Turbo" internet; Is it worth an extra $10 a month.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I currently have standard internet which works okay, the only time I have trouble is when my son comes over and he wants to play games online (PS4) at the same time I want to watch Hulu or Netflix.

Apparently, if I upgrade to turbo that should fix any problems I’ve been having. (Which is basically, everything freezes up. I then have to reboot the modem to fix it.)
What I don’t get is how the science of it works. How do they actually give me more speed? And how do I verify that my internet is actually faster?
Thanks.

2

Did they tell you that? A problem that requires a modem reboot generally would not be resolved by increasing your speed tier.

They give you more speed by not limiting your speed as much on their end. If you change to a tier that is over 25Mbps, they would also upgrade your modem to one capable of DOCSIS 3.0 (versus the default DOCSIS 2.0). You can check your speed with their tester.

3

When TWC seems to be working well, I do appear to get just about all of the 50 MBps I’m paying for. I’m not sure the “turbo boost” is worth it unless you can upgrade your base speed at the same time.

4

Yeah, test your speed. But not just with their test, as those can be biased. Also try speedtest.net.

The reason I say this is that, if you aren’t getting the maximum 20 Mbps speed from Standard, upgrading to Turbo’s 25 Mbps may not help. All the upgrades do is increase your maximum speed.

Plus I know people who use the PS4 on slower connections. There just seems to be a well known problem with the PS4 choking your bandwidth in some cases. Reasons range from bad routers, routers with bad QoS support, routers mistakenly thinking your PS4 is a DOS attack, ISP problems, etc.

The first thing I’d look into is setting a QoS for the PS4, and limiting it to say 4MBps less than your maximum so you’ll have room for Netflix. (You need 3Mbps for HD, but a little headroom is helpful.) If that doesn’t work, you can give the PS4 a static IP and have it in the DMZ. (This means it won’t touch your Firewall.)

And I just realize this may seem like Greek to you. Walking you through it is a bit beyond my abilities right now, but I’m sure someone who knows what I’m talking about and uses TWC as their ISP could help you through it.