Verizon is afraid of dslreports.com!

The BBQ Pit
1

If anyone has had to deal with the monumental incompetence of Internet service provider Verizon, you’re probably familiar with this scenario:

Get on your uber-fast DSL connection. Go and read something for a while. Decide to open up a link or change pages…

And wait until you’re fucking ready to die of old age. A while later, sometimes minutes, the new page opens up–pop!–as if it were faster than shit through a goose.

But you still waited, and if you’re like me you pay a shitload of money so that you don’t have to wait. This particularly sucks when playing online games after poking around reading the news.

I theorize that Verizon “stacks” its users, and relegates those users who actually take the time to read Internet content to a low-priority status.

However, I have discovered that by logging on to the speed test tools at http://www.dslreports.com , that annoying “feature” disappears entirely! Why? Well, I don’t know for sure, but one reason might be that DSLReports allows you to record your latency times, which could be bad for a company that is regularly ripping off its customers by not delivering the service they promise.

I think those fuckers at Verizon know about this.

I’ve been testing this theory for weeks, to the point where I’ve discovered that I can eliminate lag in Diablo II simply by popping up that page in a browser before I crack open the game.

What it also means is that those sonsabitches are watching me, despite the fact that I deselected and disabled all the spyware options I could find embedded within their service.

So, Verizon, you monolithic, incompetent, thieving Orwellian bastards, I believe I have your gonads firmly in my grasp–for now.

I encourage all of you who are suffering at the hands of these and other pricks like them to give this little trick a try. Tell me if it works, won’t you?

2

Sounds interesting. I don’t have DSL…I resisted the impulse to jump on the bandwagon. I have a friend who has it and loves it…but you can’t hear anything on the phone. The internet connection works great, I’m told.

I have dialup 56k at home and am plenty satisfied. I even bought another line, so for about $28 a month (12 for internet, and 16 for phone line) I have 24 hour dial up and it satisfies me. I have a t1 at work and it doesn’t seem all that faster surfing, only on downloads.

Personally, I think I’ll wait until some of this cable/dsl controversy settles down and we can have some reliable benchmarks. BTW, I’ve been to dslreports.com checking on things and it’s a neat site.

I live in central CA and my provider is Pac Bell, tho I see from the latest bill, its SBC Pac Bell now. :wink:

3

Phil, if they can’t talk on the phone then they don’t have their filters installed, or installed properly.

I, too, found a lag with Verizon’s service. What I found was that after my browser had been inactive for a period of time, it turns itself off. The first couple of times, I just rebooted and it worked ok. The last time this happened, I could not get online no matter what I did… and I came up with a 629 error - which means that there is trouble with the modem.

Having been working as tech support for Earthlink, I knew how to fix it, but all the software seemed to be in good shape - so I called their techs. I don’t like to tell them that I was also a tech because I was familiar with dial-up and not DSL. I suspected that the lines in this area were down like the time before when I called them. After we rebooted the system, and rebooted the modem (I’d already done it once), it connected. In the ensuing conversation where the tech was explaining WHY it had happened, I let it slip that I had been tech support too, and asked him specific questions about the service. He did, indeed, admit to the software kicking a user off after several minutes of no usage. He wouldn’t tell me how long it was, but I suspect that it depends on your usage.

I know that they are watching us, although in a limited capacity. You have to specifically target a user to do that. But the day is coming where the tech support people will be able to access your system by remote control to fix it. That software is already out, and is in some use - mostly private network systems. I guess that’s one way around the computer illiterate working on computers.

4

I own a Gateway computer, and it was having some trouble with the HD awhile back. Well I went to their website, and did the Chat with a tech support guy. It seems that he took control of my computer; in other words, he could use the mouse and move it around to access files and things to fix it. I was stunned. So obviously this technology is in use, where they can fix the computer by remote control. Spooky.

5

You should be able to test your theory by installing a program like autoping. If you can keep a constant ping out going it should keep you at the to of the list. Reread your contract and see if it lists your service as constant 256(or whatever you have) up and down, if it does you have a legit bitch. I have also found that my ISP limits me to 500mb of download a day. That was in very small invisible ink print written backwards on the second layer of paper in my contract.

Oh and… Qwest DSL can lick my sack.

6

You may be interested in this article:
http://www.worth.com/content_articles/articles.cfm?id=86

Basically, there is no economic incentive for the providers to improve DSL service.

7

Two months before Marcie and I bought our new house, Verizon swore to me that DSL was currently available at our new address. I was very clear with Verizon that, since I worked from home, I absolutely needed DSL, and they continually assured me that there would be no problem. After I placed an order for DSL, I was given a specific installation date. One day before that date, I received a phone call from a Verizon representative, informing me that the service would not be connected as “there is a problem with the equipment.” When pressed for specifics, I was told that DSL service was not available in my neighborhood. So, being solidly behind the eight ball, I bought a second phone line. Two months later, Verizon began charging me for both DSL and internet service, neither of which they were providing. Of course I refused to pay and after three solid months of threats (on both sides), the charges disappeard from my monthly statement. I have lived in seven states during the course of my life and have had phone service in all of them. I have never had a phone company experience that came close to the horror of dealing with Verizon.

8

  1. No DSL provider will guarantee ANY kind of bitrate for a residential customer. Ever. The only time you will get close to a guaranteed level of service is with commercial/business service which costs up to %50 more.

  2. A program like Autoping is easy to detect, and will most likely get your service shut down…especially if you’re pinging someone who hasn’t given you permission.

  3. DSL is not a stacked service. Traffic is traffic, and if your router(at the CO) is busy, it’s busy.

  4. LouisB- A provider CANNOT guarantee service until you have a phoneline already connected. If someone guaranteed you, based on your address, he lied.

  5. I am not a telcom employee, I’m not a supporter of Telcos, I have Verizon, and I hate them, I’ve had PacBell/SBC DSL as well, and I still hated them-I’m simply offering advice based on some comments in this thread, being that I’ve had more than enough experince in the last 3 years with 2 provders in 3 locations(2 Verizon lines and one PacBell).

Sam

9

Thanks for the cogent replies, all. I suspect that I might be a unique case because I lit a fire under their asses by threatening to submit testimony to the House Commerce Committee because they kept me disconnected–and paying–for nine months. Man, you should have seen those motherfuckers jump at that e-mail I sent 'em.

At any rate, I really can’t complain about my service, now that I have it up and running. The online gaming lag seems unusual to me, though, as I should be sending out a near-constant data stream when I’m playing.

I’m pretty sure something is happening with that particular page, though. My latency doesn’t change when I open a random page–only that site.

Nevertheless, this ain’t science, so I’m leaving myself plenty of room to be completely mistaken.

10

GaWd said:

Absolutely my point: Verizon LIED, not once but repeatedly and then had the gall to begin charging me for services they were not providing, nor couldn’t provide, per their own representatives.

In fact, though, we bought a town house and since the sales office/model is next door to our unit, Verizon supposedly tested availability of DSL to the phone number of the sales office and based their promise of service on the results of that test.

I absolutely hate and despise Verizon, the most f*cked up phone company I have ever encountered.

11

That simply means that the unit next door is on a different circuit. I’ve done this way too often not to understand what all of you guys have gone through…it sucks!

At my new house, it took 3 fucking weeks to get my line hooked up and I came from Verizon and moved right into a verizon location again!

So I feel ya guys, but don’t read too much into slower service on DSL, cause it’s really not a huge conspiracy to fuck you on your bandwidth.

Sam

12

DSL is a fucking mess, the ISP I work for used to provide it but gave up, it was more trouble than it was worth. Part of the problem is that sales reps try to say it’s something it’s not - despite what they told our customers, it’s nowhere near as reliable as a leased line, that’s part of the reason why a DSL customer will pay $800 a month less for the same amount of bandwidth as a real dedicated connection. Read your service agreement from your ISP, anybody who provides DSL makes sure the contract pretty much absolves them from any responsibility as far as providing a reliable connection is concerned.

I’m happy with my free dialup account. For regular web surfing it’s not that much slower than a faster connection - at work I surf on an OC3, much faster than the fastest DSL lines, and pages like these forums still load slowly at times - no amount of bandwidth is going to help with a slow server or the latency over 14 hops across 3 ISPs.

13

This is a pretty standard Tech support tool actually. It rocks quite a lot. :wink: