[colug-432] talking to your ISP

[Jeff Stebelton]

Can't give you a lot of details but they did the same thing for Turbo about
a year, year and a half ago (15 to 20). Never saw any practical difference
in anything sustained. Bursty speed tests looked good (18-19 Mbs down),
where streaming video is still chancey. I can tell over the years the
saturation has gone up and Friday/Saturday nights can feel like a  noisy
DSL line. Same time frame a tech came by and told my wife they had heard
the complaints (I hadn't made one, strangely ) and would be wiring the
neighborhood for higher bandwidth and all our issues would go away. That
should have been spring of 2012. Crickets. No fiber. Another insult to
injury; they just raised my bill 10 for the same sub par, not meeting the
SA service (I have phone with them too).
This was Insight, now owned by TW. For whatever diff that makes cause I'm
in SE Columbus area out by Canal. I'd like to change, got no viable
options. Tried AT&T DSL once upon a time out here. After two weeks of them
trying to get me provisioned at the 6 Mbs speed I was signing up for and
failing to even hit 3, the service guy actually asked why I would need 6
Mbs anyway. Told him for starters because that's what I was buying,
secondly wasn't any of his business and thirdly the Death Star was once
again an epic fail.
On Dec 27, 2012 8:24 PM, "Rick Hornsby" <richardjhornsby at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Got an unsolicited email from Timewarner.  They're bumping my speed from
> 10 to 15 for free.  Supposedly.
>
> Here's where I can't figure out what I'm supposed to tell them, or the
> best way to show evidence that something is seriously wrong(?):
>
> KCMO to the following locations, downstream speeds right now:
>
> -> Columbus RR speed test: 30Mbps (?!)
>
> Via the speakeasy.net tests at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
> -> Chicago: 6Mbps
> -> Dallas: 15.3Mbps
> -> Atlanta: 1.05Mbps
> -> New York, NY: 26.65Mbps (?!)
> -> Washington, DC: 0.91Mbps
>
> Via the dslreports flash speed test:
> -> Denver: 2.5Mbps (other than Kansas City itself, the geographically
> closest of all)
> -> Los Angeles: 4.0Mbps
>
> Via speedtest.net:
> -> Kansas City: 2.67Mbps (this is where I start to get kinda pissed)
> -> Kansas City: 3.11Mbps
> -> Indepedence, MO (~30mi from KCMO): 25.6Mbps (...?)
> -> Overland Park, KS (basically, SW Kansas City): a really sucky 0.34Mbps
> (was 1.0 on a re-test)
>
> I know there are a lot of factors that go into a download speed, and that
> download speed itself isn't everything.  I know that some servers can be
> overloaded, and that some links can get saturated.  These figures are all
> over the map - both the location/distance and the speed.  I expect
> something far more consistent than this mess - even it is 3Mbps, or 6Mbps,
> or the full 15.  I certainly don't expect the kind of nonsense for the
> numbers for Kansas City[1].  Am I wrong?
>
> Is this even TimeWarner's fault?  I can't figure it would be the local
> office, unless they're somehow fudging the numbers or doing something else
> nefarious to make the Columbus and NYC speeds seem way faster than they
> really are --- maybe there is something really screwy with my cablemodem?
>  It seems like whatever this is, is well beyond my modem?
>
> Could the TimeWarner "speedboost" caching nonsense be throwing the numbers
> off (I haven't and refuse to intentionally subscribe to that bit of
> marketing BS)?  Does anyone know if the speedtests take that sort of thing
> into account?
>
> Maybe I just need to call during the day and talk to technical support as
> suggested?  Is there a way to increase my odds of getting a tech support
> person who might be knowledgeable?
>
> -rick
>
>
> [1] I recall, some many years ago, a time when Ohio State and Time Warner
> had a peering agreement.  All was happy in the land of the remote X
> session, so few hops that it was.  Then something happened.  The peering
> agreement went away.  Packets from two blocks north of campus flew all over
> yonder on their way over to KRC (Ohio State's main data center where all
> traffic goes in and out of, or did at that time) - Chicago, Cleveland,
> sometimes New York City!  X sessions were now slow and nearly impossible.
>  I don't know why it happened or what went down, but it was annoying to say
> the least.
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