[colug-432] talking to your ISP

[Rick Hornsby]

Thanks for the various tips and advice.  I appreciate it.

I ran a few more speed tests, including one back to the Columbus rr speed test site that Bill mentioned (turns out this specific test, even from KC, happens to be recommended by TimeWarner).  I managed to pull in ~6Mbps from CMH.  The next day, magically things sped up - much closer to "normal".  Maybe there was an upstream issue for a few days that was making everything slow.

It wasn't the first time on TW out here that all types of streaming (and most general HTTP downloads) turned painful for several consecutive days for no apparent reason.  I know it wasn't/isn't a local wireless interference problem because in addition to my wireless devices, all of the devices that I use to stream content are hardwired.

I'll keep an eye on it and try to see if I can narrow it down any, and try to call them when the issue is acute.

On Nov 30, 2012, at 06:33 , davelist at mac.com wrote:
-[snip]-

> I've been considering switching since TW has raised my bill about 15% this year. The other options I have are AT&T UVerse and Wide Open West.


FWIW, Dave, I had really good luck with WOW on the far west side.  Their customer service was excellent.  On the few occasions I had an issue with the CATV or whatever, they're were right on it without any hassle.

I tried uVerse for a bit.  The DSL service was mostly fine.  Something to do with the fact that it was dry loop (no phone), a couple of times someone screwed up and stole my "pair" or something like that.  Otherwise, the speed was fairly steady and delivered as promised.  The uVerse TV - not so good.  Changing channels was dog slow.  For the warmer months of the year, the STB had some kind of weird overheating issue that would make it squeal very loud, and very high pitched.  As soon as it got cold out (which meant the avg room temp was down), the noise went away.  Had them replace the STB 2 or 3 times, but there was always that squeal when it got warm.  Putting a dual 12V fan on top of the STB helped some, but was really noisy itself.  Finally gave up.  Granted, that was a few years ago, so maybe they've fixed it by now.