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ISPs Offer Faster Speeds, Why Don't We Get Them?
Posted by
Cliff
on Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:12 PM
from the where-did-the-extra-bits-go dept.
from the where-did-the-extra-bits-go dept.
Ron Williams asks: "I'm infuriated every time I see that companies are raising their speeds when they can't maintain their current speeds. Here's my biggest issue: my grandmother signed up for the 3Mbps DSL plan through Verizon, however a speed test said she was only getting 750Kbps. Why pay for the extra bandwidth when she's not getting it? She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K. So, how about instead of companies constantly claiming to increase their speeds, they get their actual speeds correct. Comcast has done the same thing, I had their 6Mbps plan at one point, I got 2.5Mbps usually and sometimes 3Mbps, so they're all doing the same thing. In closing, with all these speed increases, why is my Internet not getting faster?" What practices and tools do you use to test your bandwidth speed and how have you approached your ISP when the performance repeatedly fell short of your expectations?
One thing to note is that you'll never get the top speed advertised for any connection due to transmission overhead; even so, you should be able to get close (within about 10-20%). Also, ISPs oversell their bandwidth, so if you run your speed tests when other customers are using their connection, you will notice the performance hit.
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No surprise here move along (Score:3, Informative)
Yes they oversell their capacity. Some places it isn't too bad (my connection), sometimes it becomes as slow as dial-up. I'd vote with my dollars appropriately.
SLA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Informative)
It's more like buying a Ferrari with a top speed of 196mph, and then finding that you can rarely go faster than 60 because other drivers are always in your way.
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Insightful)
She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K.
Using your example, the user has thus now bought a car that only does 60MPH and now magically the traffic has slowed to 30MPH
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
How about the Corolla Corollary?
*rimshot*
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
If we use 'Ford's Law', I would expect my computer to spontaneously flip over and catch on fire because of a faulty five cent connector.
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Interesting)
I might buy that for the overall issue of not recieving the bandwidth promised. However when you concider:
She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K.
Note that all the numbers are in bits per second since he referenced them that way earlier in his statement.
You can see that the problem is not a bottleneck issue. If your 3Mb/s connection generates 750Kb/s and the problem is a bottleneck, then dropping the maximum speed available to you is not going to change anything. Your throughput at the bottleneck will be just as fast - 750Kb/s.
This is more likely a QoS implimentation which assigns specific allotments of bandwidth to the various levels of service. "OK, we have 100Tb/s of bandwidth, our 3Mb/s customers pay the most so we will give them 50Tb/s, 2Mb/s gets 25Tb/s
You can see the difference between bottlenecking & segregated bandwidth issues. If there's a bottleneck, everyone up to the throughput of the bottleneck doesn't know it's there. Everyone over that limit sees it exactly the same. With the bandwidth segregation, each tier will show differently based on the load at the time.
Parent
Gas Mileage (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
Hell, you must be new to the human race :).
Parent
Re:Welcome to fascism, kid. (Score:5, Insightful)
In most parts of the world this is better known as 'corruption'.
Parent
Re:SLA? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:5, Informative)
Easy to do if you're in a broadband-competitive area (I am, and I have Comcast, and if things aren't working to my satisfaction I call them up and say the magic word "Speakeasy".) I know people that only have one option for broadband, and things can get a mite more difficult (I'm not picking on Comcast alone, seems like most broadband providers are only as co-operative as they have to be in a particular service area.)
Parent
My ISP undersell...!? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm paying for a 3Mb/1Mb connection, yet according to the speedtest on speakeasy's site i'm actually getting 4022kbps/1044kbps.
If I use more distant speed test locations then it seems to be closer to what i'm paying for, however it looks like they must have raised the cap on the local end so that I can get transfers at the speed i'm paying for. On top of that, my connection bursts to 9/3 which makes small transfers really snappy
Parent
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:4, Interesting)
Bye bye, Comcast.
Parent
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:5, Insightful)
My cable connection (Comcast) is the same, and specifically includes a disclaimer that no guarantee is made that I will actually receive the rated throughput.
In practice, it blazes in the off-hours, sludges out during prime time. And the most noticable effect when it's bad is latency, not throughput.
Parent
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:5, Insightful)
My cable connection (Comcast) is the same, and specifically includes a disclaimer that no guarantee is made that I will actually receive the rated throughput.
Doesn't matter. If they never give you the speed you pay for, it's fraud. Otherwise, why wouldn't they sell you 12M internet?
Parent
SLAs mandated on $$ lines (Score:5, Informative)
That's because the FCC mandates SLAs on T/Frame/OC lines.
Parent
Think speed limit, not average speed (Score:3, Insightful)
In my case, I consistently get speed measurements **faster** than my plan provides, but I'm with a new and small ISP and I expect things to get worse as more people sign up.
False advertising != lack of SLA (Score:5, Informative)
Now, there are certain exceptions. In general, you can't drive a dense network at much beyond 1/3 the rated speed - thin-wire ethernet was bad for that - so you can expect similar sorts of problems on a shared line such as cable. The entire design of cable - a single line with taps off it - is exactly what thick-wire and thin-wire ethernet were like.
However, the article mentions DSL. DSL is not a shared line, it is essentially a dedicated line. The service only becomes shared at the teleco's CO (as that's where the DSL modems are, on the other side). At that point, everyone gets plugged into one or more routers. Now, when you change the speed of the modem, they simply program the DSL modem on their end to take a slower connection. They do not (at least, if they are network neutral) mess with the routers to change the priority of your network traffic.
Interestingly, when I worked for a company that got SDSL installed (no service agreement), the engineer ramped up the listed speed beyond what we'd paid for, but the actual speed we ended up with was what we'd bought . This doesn't conflict with what I've just said - we were on the edge of the service area and the speed we were supposed to get simply didn't operate. At all. Apparently, if the copper is poor, not all frequencies are guaranteed to work, and it's not an upper limit - lower speeds can be affected too.
Anyway, to the poster of the original story, I'd strongly suggest getting an INDEPENDENT person that you can trust to check the phone wiring from the DSL modem as far out as practical. At the very least, check the wiring in the house. It is possible that poor wiring, a rusty connector or a loose connection somewhere is killing the speed. If that is the case, then fixing the problem would be very cheap and easy, and would save a LOT of money - you'd have more bandwidth without shelling out the extra cash.
If the wiring is good, then the fault lies with the ISP, and I'd suggest calling a consumer advocacy group for advice on what to do - if, indeed, you can do anything. If only a handful of people care enough to actually do anything, you probably can't - although there are usually multiple DSL providers in an area, and some are better than others.
If a LOT of people are VERY frustrated AND willing to spend hard cash to get this fixed once and for all, you might want to investigate the pros and cons of setting up a DSL cooperative. The teleco can't deny you equal access to the CO (that's law), but industrial-strength network equipment (DSL modems, high-end routers, T3 or T4 line) - that isn't cheap. And, yes, you probably would need to go to a T3 or T4 in order to make the whole thing fast enough to pay for itself. This is NOT a recommended option, without some serious funding behind it. However, if the funding is there, it is the one path you can take that (a) guarantees you the results you want, (b) guarantees the ISP has consequences it WILL notice, and (c) guarantees you the undivided attention of every disenchanted geek and abusive ISP on the planet - at least, for a week or two.
Parent
Re:False advertising != lack of SLA (Score:5, Interesting)
Broadband data networks over CATV are very different than shared-media Ethernet. Ethernet uses baseband signalling, everyone shares a common channel (CSMA). With cable, there can be multiple independent downlink channels. There is a single uplink channel that uses TDM to support multiple users. Each cable modem is assigned a shared 6 MHz downlink channel and a time slot on the uplink channel. There is no contention for access to the media.
Parent
Re:No surprise here move along (Score:3, Funny)
my dsl, my test... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah I wonder about that, I'm supposed to have DSL (Verizon), always suspected it to be a bit slow: here are my test results: download: 783kbs, upload: 138kbs. I don't have my contract here, but that seems slow. I'm moving from this house, or I'd check further into it. (I just checked, I'm paying for the high speed connections, my test results are about 1/3 what "up to" speeds should be...)
My download speeds feel sluggish, the upload speeds are a little painful. My biggest objection to the upload speed results is they are just barely better than ISDN. WTF?
(BTW, go here [visualware.com] if you want to see what your speeds are... It's a test site to see if your connection speed supports VOIP. Mine BARELY could.)
Re:my dsl, my test... (Score:5, Informative)
I have 3Mbit down/384k up service (and was getting 3Mbit down and 360k up on their test, and it still told me I couldn't use VoIP with good QoS, yet I use VoIP all the time on my network and get quality equal to or better than my cell phone. It's not clear to me that their test is all that useful - or their metrics are screwed up. If they consider 33 ms ping times bad, I'd like to know where they can find a better residential connection.
Really though, this whole story is a non-issue. I have yet to see an ad for any residential serviice that doesn't say "speed not guaranteed". The speeds they quote you are always "up to this number", not "you always get this number". For cable it's a shared medium between other users on your head end, so unless you're the only user, you're not going to be able to max out the line. 802.11b is supposed to be 11 Mbit per second, but I rarely get that, because it's divided among the other users of the access point. It doesn't mean Avaya and Enterasys are scamming consumers because their access points don't always give 11Mbit/sec. DSL is very sensitive to your distance from the CO and quality of the wiring, so of course it's not guaranteed. Even a LAN is not guaranteed. For short and medium transfers, I rarely get 100 Mbits out of my local network. These "connection testers" are mostly useless - a better test is to download large amounts of data (BitTorrent, for example) and look at the average throughput.
Parent
Not the case for me! (Score:3, Funny)
My download speed really is that fast if I am downloading from a good webserver. And even when I'm not, the bandwidth gets used in bittorrent
Sorry you are having problems....
I'm also getting my full bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)
Connection is:: 14320 Kbps about 14.32 Mbps (tested with 12160 kB)
Download Speed is:: 1748 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ [testmy.net] (Server 2)
Test Time:: 2006/06/01 - 11:34pm
Bottom Line:: 250X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 0.59 sec
Tested from a 12160 kB file and took 6.956 seconds to complete
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060326 Firefox/1.5.0.3 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.3-1)
Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 85.68 % faster than the average for host (xmission.com)
Validation Link:: http://testmy.net/stats/id-QIOGKAJMB [testmy.net]
Parent
Municipal Broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Municipal Broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's municipal broadband as my subject line said. That means that the city runs it. We, the people, collectively own the assets of the city since we are the voters and the taxpayers and this is a democracy. Since they only provide service within the city, then everyone that is able to receive service owns the network. We "own" it in the same we that we own the parks and other public spaces.
If I don't like the way the network is run I can vote to change it. Now, you may argue that I can "vote with my dollar" if I am customer of MegaCorp Broadband. The problem with that logic is that not everyone has an equal vote. In a democracy, everyone gets one vote no matter how much money you have. We, the citizens, decided we were tired of getting screwed by MegaCorp Broaband (Adelphia or Verizon as the case may be here and now) and that we would have provide our own service. Now, I can get my Broadband, my electricity (yes, the electric company is run by the city here too), and my water from the city and I can feel confident that I, as a citizen, can have a say in how these services are run regardless of how much money I may have.
Parent
Re:Municipal Broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer is in the link that the original poster provided. But since this is
Are my taxes going into this project?
No.
Bit Versus Byte (Score:5, Insightful)
Myself, I have 512Kb/s down, and as a rule of thumb I divide by 10 to get it in bytes. I get at best 54KB/s downloads, which works out by this rule.
I know, a byte is 8 bits, but as a rule of thumb, dividing by 10 seems to include overhead.
I know my 512Kb/s ADSL connection doesn't rate against these 3Mb/s cable connections, but, this is my experience, learn from it what you will.
Re:Bit Versus Byte (Score:3, Insightful)
Looking at the submitter's ratios, it doesn't look like they did the conversions wrong, though. 3 Mbps is around 400 kb/s max, not 750 kb/s max. So they actually do have a problem, but it's always good to remember these conversions when discussing ISPs.
my solution: I installed a DSL splitter (Score:5, Informative)
I just moved to a new house. This time, I decided to do things right, and had a DSL splitter [homephonewiring.com] installed at the point where the phone line enters the house. [My splitter looks just like the one in the picture.] The previous owner had had unacceptably low DSL speed, but with the splitter installed, I'm within about 8% of the theoretical maximum on the 3 Mb/s plan. The phone line between the NID mounted on the outside wall of my house and the phone exchange is likely not perfect, which may account for the 8% degradation.
Note that the rated maximum speed (3 Mb/s in my case) accounts for not just the actual payload data being transmitted, but all of the protocol overhead as well: TCP headers, IP headers, etc (there are multiple protocol layers, each with overhead). Your typical internet speed test is not able to directly account for all of the protocol overhead, so your data will be transmitted slower than the rated line speed.
Doug Moen
Re:my solution: I installed a DSL splitter (Score:4, Informative)
There's no reason to pay $57 for what your DSL provider gave you for free plus a fancy plastic enclosure. Just cut the RJ-11 jack off one of the filters they give you and wire up your own 'splitter' in a $2 junction box.
Parent
I suck up. (Score:5, Interesting)
It may not be as satisfying as being intelligent or righteously indignant on the phone, but it gets great results. I consistently get a tech out same day (from ATT (SBC), no less). I have problems where my circuit speed will drop drastically (from 3Mbps to 145Kbps) on a regular basis, and now that I have started being saccharine sweet, it is generally fixed almost immediately.
Simply point out that it is running incredibly slow (say something about images and pages taking FOREVER to load, don't sound techie) and that you logged in following THEIR instructions (thank you guys for giving me those previously, oh thank you thank you) and checked the speed and saw that it was slower than normal (from what you guys told me before), and that you would greatly appreciate it if they could fix it (since I am so helpless and LOVE you guys), and please help me, and oh lord thank you so much for giving me your time.
Other than that, make sure your router isn't causing you problems. Swap it out with a borrowed one or something. I had a bad one that was destroying my throughput. Check cables, wall sockets, everything. Make sure you can eliminate everything on your end before you call them.
However, if they ask you to test things again, gleefully (pretend) to do it. It makes them happy and gets you better service later. After all, it is not really that hard to sit there reading the newspaper and drinking coffee and simply saying "Nope, still doesn't work."
Some things I've found. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't recall that I've ever gotten anything less than that on DSL across the line. I've run routers handling the "megacentral", the ISP end of the DSL connection, and have had more than a bit of opportunity to test DSL connection performance.
As far as cable, we have Comcast in this area, and are paying for the higher service level. I do notice that when the school year starts, we tend to have performance issues for a month or two. This has happened on several occasions. So, instead of 6 to 8mbps (they recently upgraded to 8mbps, before that it was 6), we get more like 3 to 4. Annoying, but not a huge issue.
I have noticed that on the Comcast sales literature, they say "N mbps *" where the * links to something saying "No guarantees".
However, most of the time I'm able to get 8mbps, when the remote end can handle it. I have servers hosted at a location where I know I have plenty of bandwidth. I just downloaded the Ubuntu Dapper ISO over cable:
730740736 bytes transferred in 710 seconds (1005.4K/s)
So, that's right at 8mbps. This is not unusual.
It's important to realize that there are several places where there could be performance issues though. The line, the directly connected ISP bandwidth, the server you're downloading from, and everything in between.
Winging at your ISP for problems which are outside their control isn't going to be helping anyone. If you are downloading Dapper right now via FTP from the main site, the server is almost certainly not going to be able to handle 8mbps.
Another thing I'd wonder is whether maybe your grandmother might have a virus or two, or perhaps there's some file-sharing going on? All these lines have a fraction of the upstream bandwidth that they do down. If you are pushing out much data, it interferes with incoming data. If you do any performance testing, make SURE that you don't have anything else using it, either outgoing or incoming.
Hope this helps.
Sean
Your link is probably fine... (Score:3, Insightful)
connects to
Your 6MB Cable
connects to
Cable Company
connects to
A slow or oversold internet connection
Here is a basic "How to" for calling your ISP... it sucks, and its a tad humiliating for most alpha-geeks... but sometimes we have to play by their rules to get our pr0n and warze faster.
1. Connect one PC to your cable/dsl modem (nothing else...)
2. Reboot your PC and your modem
3. Retest your speeds using a major speed test site
4. Call your ISP and explain your issue
5. Listen and follow their instructions (even if its a painful script... do it)
6. Respond with kindness and friendly responses (remember, they hold the key to escalating your issue or closing it without resolution)
Hopefully your ISP will recognize their is an issue and resolve it. Otherwise - tell them to go pound sand and move on to the next.
too many ways to point the finger of blame (Score:3, Interesting)
And be careful when making claims "no ISP delivers the speed they promise". My ISP is Comcast on a cable modem. They claim they are giving me 6 mbps. And 99 percent of the time when I'm doing big video or Linux iso downloads or such like that and can see a good test of my actual speed, I'm getting the speed they say they're selling me...6 mbps.
my cable provider delivers (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a 10Mbps cable connection. Sure, most 'net servers aren't able to give out files that fast. But the ones that are..
3-4 weeks ago I downloaded a 142MB file. Firefox reported it as coming down at one megabyte/sec. I'm not sure whether it lied, but the file was downloaded in under 2 minutes.
Surprised the hell out of me. Made me happy.
Cable company is NTL. Their technical support is absolutely atrocious. Luckily their connection is very stable, so I rarely have to call them. And the download speed is very nice indeed.
Yeah, it is DSL... (Score:4, Insightful)
Before complaining about your DSL line being slow, I think you really should read up on how DSL (and most likely ADSL to be specific) works. You are hardly ever going to get max bandwidth out of a service line though I honestly cannot complain about the speeds I am getting with Cable. So, remember, before starting a bitch-fest...know what the hell you are talking about...
Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Funny)
Someone's gotta seed the Matlock and Bob Hope torrents.
Parent
Re:Shocking! (Score:3, Insightful)
Irrelevant. They sold her on 3 Mbps, they aren't delivering it. It's not my business or yours what she wants it for.
there's a joke somewhere in here (Score:4, Funny)
but i'm not telling that joke, nope
Parent
Re:Shocking! (Score:3, Interesting)
My suggestion to the poster is try a different ISP, they're
Re:Don't have that problem with my fiberoptic (Score:5, Funny)
Just curious...
Parent
Re:Don't have that problem with my fiberoptic (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in the northern VA suburbs of DC and I know that Verizon's already in a wide variety of towns in the area.
Parent
Re:Why? I'll tell you why. (Score:3, Insightful)