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Poll

What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?

$%&#$
1 / 5
2 / 5
3 / 5
4 / 5
5 / 5
Heaven~!

Last post Author Topic: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?  (Read 82533 times)

alc

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #50 on: September 18, 2010, 09:44 AM »
]speed test[/url]

CleverCat

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #51 on: September 19, 2010, 03:32 AM »
nudone - I think I win!  ;D Cost is R369 pm (approx $50...) (includes adsl line rental) and sometimes, especially a Friday I get dialup speeds... >:(



« Last Edit: September 19, 2010, 03:34 AM by CleverCat »

Stoic Joker

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #52 on: September 19, 2010, 08:55 AM »


I usually end up doing battle with my ISP once every few years - Company has changed names several times, but I've had the account for 12+ years. Connection is quite stable for the most part.

I'm paying for (and getting) a 3.0/512 line.

I decided to vote 4/5 this morning, because it went offline for most of last night.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2010, 09:01 AM by Stoic Joker »

Renegade

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #53 on: October 31, 2010, 09:50 PM »
Today my Internet connection is blistering fast... relatively...



Sigh... I have to call these people and see if they can actually get it working. Our phone doesn't work with them either!
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Renegade

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #54 on: November 01, 2010, 08:21 PM »
Well, looks like the problem was outside the house with some wiring issues. Sigh...



Still not a blistering fast Korean connection, but pretty good. :)

I'll cross my fingers and hope that things keep up.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

skwire

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #55 on: November 02, 2010, 11:03 AM »
Here's mine.  Plenty fast and plenty stable.

« Last Edit: November 07, 2010, 08:12 AM by skwire »

superboyac

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #56 on: November 02, 2010, 11:13 AM »
After reading gothic's post about ISP's, I have a question...

I have $50 to spend a month (maybe more if the ISP is great).  Other than the typical options which are your cable provider and landline providers, what other companies offer are in my area and how do I find them?  Please don't just say Google, because google's a mess.  How would you explore the alternatives?  Do any of you know of lesser-known companies that are good?

Renegade

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #57 on: November 02, 2010, 08:46 PM »
After reading gothic's post about ISP's, I have a question...

I have $50 to spend a month (maybe more if the ISP is great).  Other than the typical options which are your cable provider and landline providers, what other companies offer are in my area and how do I find them?  Please don't just say Google, because google's a mess.  How would you explore the alternatives?  Do any of you know of lesser-known companies that are good?


I've found that asking knowledgeable people near you is usually the best way to go. And asking as many as possible.



Looks like I spoke too soon... My speeds the other day only lasted a very short time...

Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Gothi[c]

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #58 on: November 05, 2010, 07:33 PM »
Please don't just say Google, because google's a mess.  How would you explore the alternatives?  Do any of you know of lesser-known companies that are good?

Back then I actually did find localisp via google, but not easily. It took about a week of searching using non-obvious queries... That was quite a while ago. It may be even harder now, especially since the smaller companies are slowly vanishing or getting swallowed by bigger ones. The one major tip I could give you is to not confine your search within your area. The company I went with was actually from out-of-state.

JavaJones

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #59 on: November 17, 2010, 02:11 AM »
I don't find speedtest.net's results to be the most reliable either, but sometimes they sure can look good!



That's from a server in San Jose, but oddly I got a result around 4mbit/s download (similar upload) to a server in SF upon repeated attempts. So clearly the server matters *a lot*. In fact the SF result is so bad, I'd have to guess either a temporary bandwidth condition on the part of that test site, or some throttling on their end (I'm leaning this way). Here's a more realistic result from NY, cross country, not too bad:



and Baltimore, MD surprisingly good:



In reality I have a 22/5 connection, Comcast Business Class. It's $100/mo here in San Francisco. For the bandwidth I get, I have few complaints. Uptime is very good overall. And with Business Class they don't mess with my connection in any way - unthrottled, no protocol limiting, no bandwidth limits, nothing. I've downloaded over 1TB in a month before, and not a peep from them. :D

I usually use SpeakEasy (an ISP) for their speed test and find it more consistent and realistic. But they only have US test servers, and there's no image to link to, you just have to copy/paste the text results like this:
San Francisco Server:
Download Speed: 46388 kbps (5798.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 7523 kbps (940.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

New York Server:
Download Speed: 7239 kbps (904.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 3927 kbps (490.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

Sometimes even a remote site will surprise you.
Washington DC:
Download Speed: 34149 kbps (4268.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4234 kbps (529.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with what I've got. My greatest condolences to those in this thread with really bad connections, ouch! But I guess it just means fewer inane Youtube videos mostly. ;)

- Oshyan

Renegade

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #60 on: November 17, 2010, 03:33 AM »
22/5?

I got that here too! 22 kb/h down, and 5 kb/h up. On a good day.

(Actually, it's not too far of the mark literally. I get about 0.10 kbps up normally.)

Got a support ticket in with the ISP now. They'll look at it in the next day or 2 then call me back.

I have GOT to get a cable connection on top of this ADSL connection. I'd heard about the Internet being bad here, but never expected it to be THIS bad... Sigh... ;(

But really, I'm jealous. And ready to cry... ;(

Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Renegade

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #61 on: November 20, 2010, 11:57 PM »
Cross fingers... Hope this is the solution...

After calling tech support a few times, I finally went out and bought a new modem/router.



I just hope this keeps up...
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

mahesh2k

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #62 on: June 10, 2011, 06:48 AM »
1335116808.png

Beat This Speed  :D
« Last Edit: June 10, 2011, 06:50 AM by mahesh2k »

Renegade

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #63 on: June 10, 2011, 07:05 AM »
(see attachment in previous post)
Beat This Speed  :D

Without disconnecting?
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Deozaan

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #64 on: June 10, 2011, 07:10 AM »
(see attachment in previous post)
Beat This Speed  :D

The scary thing is that you're faster than nearly 25% of India!

40hz

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #65 on: June 10, 2011, 08:00 AM »
I have ADSL from SNET... which became SBCGlobal... which became AT&T.

I'm generally happy with it since outages are few and far between, and what throttling they may or may not do is pretty subtle.

ADSL Runs about $20/mo for standard speeds. Higher "business" speeds are available for a higher monthly rate.  Cable is about $40, and a T1 goes between $300-$500 depending on where you are; who you get it from; and what additional features (managed router, boundary security, VoIP, etc) come bundled with the package.  Sprint's T1 has traditionally been the cheapest offering for us when it's locally available.

Rather than use artificial tests I use the download time for a CD ISO as a rough 'utility' for testing line speeds. Most ADSL connections in my area need about 1 hour and twenty minutes to grab a 650mb CD image. Optimum Online cable does it in about 15-20 minutes. And a client T1 in a lightly trafficked office can do it in about 65.

None of these are scientific tests, but I think they're fair representations of what people in my area can reasonably expect performance-wise in 'real world' terms.

As you can see the performance isn't stellar. But it's not bad for most purposes.

I'll give it a 3 out of 5 rating for my area.  8)

Addenda:

Just for completeness, here's my speed per speedtest.net

speed02.jpg

And the related quality test from the cousin ping.net site:

speed03.jpg

Note: I generally prefer using the MySpeed tests available here.

They're more detailed and possibly more accurate. At least according to the techs from the various ISPs and VoIP providers I've asked. At any rate, this is what they all seem to use when they're on a client site. See results for my home connection below:

speed04.jpgWhat's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?     speed05.jpgWhat's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?

According to this, a 650Mb ISO file should take approximately 71.5 minutes on this connection - which is pretty close to my previously mentioned ballpark average of 80 minutes for most people on a similar connection in my area.

 8)

« Last Edit: June 10, 2011, 11:44 AM by 40hz, Reason: Fixed T1 minutes typo. S/B 65 min - not 5! . Thx Stoic for pointing it out. »

Stoic Joker

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #66 on: June 10, 2011, 11:20 AM »
Most ADSL connections in my area need about 1 hour and twenty minutes to grab a 650mb CD image. Optimum Online cable does it in about 15-20 minutes. And a client T1 in a lightly trafficked office can do it in about 5.

Um... 5? ...minutes? On a T1, which is only 1.5Mb. We've got a pair of T1's for a total of 3.0Mb both ways which works great ... but it ain't gonna pull a full CD in 5min. ...Unless it's a zipped copy of a blank one... :)

40hz

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #67 on: June 10, 2011, 11:31 AM »
Most ADSL connections in my area need about 1 hour and twenty minutes to grab a 650mb CD image. Optimum Online cable does it in about 15-20 minutes. And a client T1 in a lightly trafficked office can do it in about 5.

Um... 5? ...minutes? On a T1, which is only 1.5Mb. We've got a pair of T1's for a total of 3.0Mb both ways which works great ... but it ain't gonna pull a full CD in 5min. ...Unless it's a zipped copy of a blank one... :)

Yoiks! My bloody iPhone dropped the 6 in front of 65 minutes for the T1! Fixing it now. Thanks.  (Gotta stop posting to the forum off my phone. God do I hate touchscreens. Bad medicine. Give me a chicklet keyboard any time. ) :-[

« Last Edit: June 10, 2011, 11:49 AM by 40hz »

Stoic Joker

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #68 on: June 10, 2011, 11:54 AM »
^Okay, 65 sounds better...You're forgiven...Except for the iPhone part.  :D

Renegade

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #69 on: June 10, 2011, 05:25 PM »
^Okay, 65 sounds better...You're forgiven...Except for the iPhone part.  :D

In fairness, I have the same kind of problem on my Android. The problem is the form factor. It's meant for 10 year old girls, and not grown men with thumbs that are a half the size of the screen width. Chicklet keyboards are an improvement though. I wish my phone had one. I'd also like it if it had a slide out keyboard and the keyboard part were the heavily weighted one. (Better for balance.)
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

JavaJones

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #70 on: June 10, 2011, 05:45 PM »
I'm now on Sonic.net bonded ADSL2+, a change from the Comcast Business I had when I posted earlier in this thread. I moved to another place in San Francisco and even though I could have stuck with Comcast Business, I just really didn't like supporting them anymore. I've very seldom had to deal with their support, the few times I did it wasn't great, but it was more about just disliking Comcast as a company.

The other factor was that in my new place I finally had the option of using a different ISP that could offer theoretically equivalent speeds. At my old place Comcast was pretty much the only option above 6mbit, whereas here I have 2 other possibilities with significant bandwidth - Sonic.net's "Fusion" broadband and Monkeybrains wireless.

I only found out about Monkeybrains after I moved and had already setup my connection with Sonic. But it does sound intriguing - up to 20mbit/s *symmetric* through local long distance wireless. Unfortunately after talking with them a bit it sounded like the actual *amount* of data I transfer would be a potential issue at the low price they're offering to residential customers ($35/mo paid quarterly for up to 20mbit symmetric!). Even going up to $100/mo it was still questionable that they would want me as a customer, heh.

Fortunately Sonic's deal is fairly good too, and surprisingly they actually *reduced* their prices after I got service. They're also month-to-month, so aside the cost of equipment ($99 up front), if you opt out of install services, you're only out of pocket for the months of service you actually get, no contract. I can cancel any time. Comcast Business wanted a *3 year* agreement! Granted if you move to a location where Comcast *can't* provide service they'll let you out of the agreement without penalty, but still.

So what I get with Sonic is 2 phone lines with unlimited long distance (being live phone lines though they do tack on about $15/mo total for phone-related taxes and fees, unfortunately), and each line gives a theoretical 20mbit download, 2.5mbit upload speed. In practice it's more like 30mbit download between the two of them, and about 1.5mbit upload. There's a mode called "Annex-M" that trades some download bandwidth for upload and I currently have that enabled, giving me about 22mbit down and 3mbit up, which is pretty nice overall. That's pretty much what Comcast was offering on paper, though they routinely delivered more than that. But Sonic is a bit cheaper ($80/mo before taxes and fees) and, as I said, no contract, plus they're a *way* better company and local (their main office is about an hour away from here, my home town in fact).

The one problem I've had with the service is the combination mode, router, wireless device that they provide. It's the only one available for bonded ADSL2+ (from Comtrend) and it works ok as a modem, maybe even a router, but when you add large wireless use on top of it (e.g. if you're using it as the main router and there are multiple wireless clients trying to copy files between each other *and* do large web downloads at the same time), then it seems to overheat and crap out. Fortunately Sonic was nice enough to help me bridge to another wireless router I have with Tomato firmware on it, and now everything is working smoothly. I think just taking some of the load off the Comtrend helped it cope with its heat/CPU/memory load. I wish there were a non-combination device available to support this service, just a "dumb" modem, but apparently that's not where the money is now because nobody seems to make one.

So overall I'm pretty happy with broadband in San Francisco, between the 3 places I've lived here all over the city, but I must say many neighborhoods are still without reasonable competition to Comcast due to the limitations of POTS-based connections. Verizon is not our phone provider here and so FOIS is not an option unfortunately. It sounds amazing though, I'd love to have that available (though I don't like Verizon as a company either). Comcast admittedly does a decent job with bandwidth, and if you're savvy to the consumer line limitations and don't care about service bundling (e.g. TV, phone), then you can get an unlimited connection for a fairly palatable monthly sum. It's the long contracts on the business side that put you off, but for what they give you it's a tough call - after all, you're not likely to want slower bandwidth in a year or two, are you? And if you know that other systems aren't likely to compete in the area any time soon (which is sadly true), it's not such a bad gamble, unless you run low on funds and find yourself unable to justify the monthly fee in which case canceling still incurs a hefty penalty. Yeah, I don't like Comcast, despite their fast connections. :P

Ultimately I'm quite happy to be able to get good bandwidth at a reasonable price from a company like Sonic.net that I like and respect. That's a rarity these days, regardless of how much bandwidth you have. I'd love a little more upload bandwidth though...

- Oshyan

mahesh2k

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #71 on: June 11, 2011, 02:51 AM »
(see attachment in previous post)
Beat This Speed  :D
The scary thing is that you're faster than nearly 25% of India!

I wonder what they use for that much slow speed.  :D I'm using this USB stick to access  the internet.

Stoic Joker

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #72 on: June 11, 2011, 10:01 AM »
^Okay, 65 sounds better...You're forgiven...Except for the iPhone part.  :D

In fairness, I have the same kind of problem on my Android. The problem is the form factor. It's meant for 10 year old girls, and not grown men with thumbs that are a half the size of the screen width.

Right, understood. Typos are normal/human/part of life (is perfectly O-Tay). But... Having an iPhone, Well now that's a (Ehm...) Curable Condition. ;)

Chicklet keyboards are an improvement though. I wish my phone had one. I'd also like it if it had a slide out keyboard and the keyboard part were the heavily weighted one. (Better for balance.)

Being that I just got my first one a few months back (HTC WMP7 Arrive) I am new to the whole smart phone game. And I do find myself using the slide-out KB more than the on screen one. Not so much because of a scale issue, as they really are about the same. But more because of a layout issue; the slide-out has a much more familiar feel to it.

I'm really just surprised that I've gone this long without wanting to throw it out a window. Especially considering that I hated them to start with and was looking for an excuse to toss the thing when first I opened the box.

40hz

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #73 on: June 11, 2011, 11:15 AM »
^I sometimes think the main reason why Apple prices it's products they way they do is to make you think twice before tossing them through a second story bedroom window onto your driveway.

Which is more than I can say for my nephew's Asus EeePC when it started giving him "big stones" one otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon.  ;D


Deozaan

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Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?
« Reply #74 on: June 22, 2011, 12:56 AM »
Speedtest.net recently overhauled their website. Now you can create an account to track your speed tests over time, and do other things.

Such as Speed Waves.

A speed wave is a gamification of speedtest.net where a bunch of people test their speeds and it compares them and you get "badges" for being fastest or having the biggest improvement, etc. Let's all try out the DC Speed wave I created!

http://www.speedtest...ave/645a30064de33271