| Author | Message | ||
     86129squids |
OK- I use AT&T and their 2wire box to do the Internet thing- been noticing a few things: a- If it starts raining/storming, I'm likely to lose service... b- I'm about 30' from the road, in my office- beginning to wonder if the RF's from traffic interfere with the 2wire box, I know they do with my digital TV box... c- In terms of timelines, in the early evening I'm more likely to lose service- since I only use AT&T for the 2wire, might I be a "lesser citizen" at their peak hours? Most of the time I'm hardwired in with Ethernet, but I'd like to think my wireless connection would be as good, and normally it is... Funny, but I listened intently to a very good NPR piece about cel phone and media companies today, how the tech is converging across media sources, devices, and markets... Discuss, good buddies... | ||
| Froggy |
Can you post a picture of your box so I can get a better idea of what we are dealing with? Do you know if it is any of the following: DSL, Cable, Fiber, WiMax, Satellite? | ||
| 86129squids |
Thanks Frogs- DSL. Sorry not to have mentioned that. | ||
| Froggy |
Ok good. ATT has multiple services depending on where you are, so that helps. DSL should be reliable, you should not be experiencing and dropouts depending on weather or peak volume. DSL is a dedicated line, it isn't shared with others like Cable or WiMax so even during peak times (evenings) your service and speed should remain the same. The main limitation with DSL is that you need to be within a close proximity of the switching station, after a few miles of cable run the signal degrades. I'm thinking you may be on the borderline of the distance, and then normal environmental changes are the straw that breaks the camels back so to speak, and would be what is causing your dropouts. Just speculation. | ||
| Sarodude |
From a guy who's wrestled with AT&T a little.... When there's a problem, call & open a ticket. Write down the ticket number. They'll tell you they'll be out there in xxx days. You'll tell them the problem only happens when it's wet - and they'll ignore you. That's fine for now. 2 days later it'll stop raining and your service will resume - 1 day before the tech shows up. At this point, you need to figure out how not to possibly get charged for a possibly bogus visit. It's fine. 3 weeks later when it rains again, call up & re-open your old ticket. Fight to reopen the old ticket instead of getting a new ticket. You'll want to explain again that this only happens when it rains - and it's raining now, yada yada yada. If it happens to affect your phone service, that probably helps. If you do it right, you'll wind up further up in the queue since you've already waited. This is how it worked for me. Your post was a little vague on something though. I'm not sure if you only have problems with the 802.11x or with your internet connectivity in general. If the former, you can probably ignore this post. If the latter, it's time to make your call. One other thing regarding equipment: There seems to be this perception that an all in one box is a nice thing. In my experience, it's not. It's usually a crappy modem boxed in with a crappy router. Not familiar with what AT&T is handing out these days, but is your 2wire box DSL on one end and a full consumer pseudo-router (ie - wifi & a few lan ports) on the other? If so, you really may want to consider going out and getting yourself a dedicated modem and a dedicated home router. -Saro | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
Problem might be as simple as "squirrel chew" if you will pardon the use of a technical term:-). The wiring of cable tv and similar networks can be very light duty. A cable guy cut the wire coming into my house, and about a quarter of a cup of water drained out of it. Sure enough, some rodent had chewed through the cable at the pole. Another problem can be RFI caused by improperly terminated wiring. That is to say, if someone on your network disconnects their box, and doesn't terminate the wire, the wire can act as a radio frequency antenna, degrading your signal. Saro has the method of getting the Phone company to focus in on your problem down pat. I followed this route for a couple of months, and doubled my down load speeds from about 15 mbps to 34 mbps. Long story, but worth it. Running Speedtest.net tells you, and the Phone company what is, and is not going on, at least with Cable modems.  | ||
| 86129squids |
Thanks all- "squirrel chew" might be likely... When I got the "2Wire" box, I immediately wondered about the name... generally I do OK with the service. The irregularities tend to set into the clock in my mind- being in restaurant work, I've had a "clock" kinda hardwired in for a while... And, of course, as I began this thread, a steady rain sets in... NO interruptions... Oh well. The GF just pulled in the driveway, now time to observe any other irregularities to the RF.. | ||
| Sarodude |
2wire may be a reference to the fact that dsl uses a single pair or 2 wires for service. -Saro | ||
| Fahren |
Gentleman Jon, I am a bit further east than you, but my speedtest.net are truly horrendous, compared to yours:  Is this the kind of poor service you were getting earlier? | ||
| Froggy |
Hmm mine is running a bit slow today, I'm gonna have it looked into  | ||
| Fahren |
Holy Flaming Unicorns, Frogman! | ||
| Guell |
 | ||
| Sarodude |
Froggy, stop taunting us with your freakin' fiber, please! Those were LAN speeds not all that long ago. Sometimes it sucks living in the boonies. | ||
| Rkc00 |
Here is mine  | ||
| Froggy |
 | ||
| Ohsoslow |
not bad considering i only pay for 12meg service  | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
Fahren, you have a real problem there. Even my iPhone does better than that at home:  I forgot to mention, that I pay extra for "Boost" an extra cost item that it supposed to give me what I was originally paying for. With Boost, Optimum claims up to 30 down, 5 up, and about half that with out it. Yours seems rather low even by that standard. I would keep a record of these speeds, saving Speed Test files, then open a case, report regularly, and try to get them to get your speeds up. In order to do this, they need to come out to your neighbor hood, and check for problems on the poles. Unfortunately, most of the net work is not up to par, and only the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Mike,- that's about normal for Boost. Hard to get the company to come out to do anything about those speeds, and you probably wouldn't notice anyway:-). Frog man - Nice upload speeds!! Are you on Fios or what? I could have really used those speeds yesterday, I uploaded an entire art book to the printer, took about 12 hours to an FTP. | ||
| Jramsey |
I think I need to up grade.   | ||
| Froggy |
Yep it is Fios 35/35megabit plan, for some reason they have always given me 10mbps more than I'm paying for, even when I had slower plans. The upload speeds are a must, I don't know how anyone can justify giving their customers 5mbps or less. I will probably be upgrading to the 150 (yes 150)/50 plan soon, as 35/35 isn't always cutting it. It currently takes a whole 2 hours to download a 40GB uncompressed blueray file. Upping to 150mbps would drop that time to around 40 minutes. | ||
| Fahren |
Did you hear that? It was the sound of my jaw dropping. | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Lots of places for DSL to go bad. Is your line underground or on a pole? How far are you from your CO (central office)? DSL is normally limited to around 19,000 ft from the DSLAM at the CO. However they have recently (last couple of years)come up with ways to extend that by about 5,000 ft. Keep in mind that the "two wire" connection is over the same wires as POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) uses, just at a higher frequency, that's why you have to use a filter if you are using the same pair as your wired phone. Any connection along the signal path that can get moist during a rain is going to cause problems. Could be something as simple as a bad punch down in a neighborhood box to a cable splice that is leaking. I've seen it where everything worked fine until the day after it rained. Took that long for the water to work it's way into a leaky splice. Phones worked fine but DSL started getting errors and drops. Working with Telco's on this is a bitch. You just have to keep hounding them and fighting them over billing. They will eventually get sick of hearing from you and dig into the problem. Brad | ||
| Sarodude |
I'm still, eh, enthralled by Froggy's animation.  | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
IS BAD WEB THE ABSOLUTE GREATEST, OR WHAT?  Ok, I gotta admit it, I was maybe just a little cocksure with my 5mbps upload speed, and here come da' Frog Man and he's calling out thirty three up! Dang! I check with Fios, and no, it ain't just Photoshop, and no, I can't get it in my village!!! I mean, first Steve Jobs kicking the bucket and now this! Is nothing right on planet iEarth? So I call up my ISP and go "Yo, my man gots 33 up, what you doin' for ME?" "No problem my man", says Harold, the salesman, "we would be delighted to send you a new higher speed modem, got 8 up, lots down." "How much" says I? "Nuttin"say Harold, "and with your permission we will send it out next week, express mail, with a return label for your current unit?" Talk about the squeaky wheel:-) (We take a little break here whilst Harold endeavours to sell me a Cablevision entertainment package with a dozen or so movie channels and such like. I respectfully and gratefully decline.) "Deal" says I, but I noted, in passing, that whilst 8 up beats five up, it aint no thirty three up, no way! "Well my good man", say Harold, " how about a gazillion down and a HUNDRED UP". "Now we're talking" says I, things are being to make a little sense here. Harold says that is going to require still a different model modem, and some forty bucks additional per month, which I do believe is less than the high speed FIOS deal, which I can 't get anyway. Now being a retired old gent in a old house in a little ol' village, I am not even thinking about getting into some kind of up load competition with any of my brothers here on the board. Of course not Simply wouldn't be seemly for someone my age. (My birthday was yesterday, so one was thinking of such things:-). But I was wondering, at what point does download speed become so fast it doesn't make any difference? I know you can never have enough upload speed, especially for uploading large art books. Anyone? Frog Man? | ||
| Fahren |
I need dat Harold's numbah! | ||
| Froggy |
What? Unless your modem is older than me, it is just a matter of them pressing a button to change your speeds.
Ok that makes sense needing a new modem, different network technology to break the 100mbps barrier, plus on the cable side it is different too.
It really depends on your usage. Web browsing feels the exact same to me at both 20 and 35 and the 140mbps I have at work, because you aren't going to find a website that can saturate that bandwidth. Most websites are so small that they will load instantly regardless. The extra BW comes into play when you start using content heavy services. Netflix for movies, Steam for games, torrents for various things like game mods and free inde films, all become painless to download. No more buffering or waiting a month for large files to come in (assuming the host can keep up). The biggest benefit of the fatter pipe is that you can have multiple concurrent users doing many things at the same time, and you wouldn't notice any impact. I'm sorry to hear you can't get Fios. I had Cablevision for about 3 months while I was living in Jersey, they terminated my service because they don't like the fact that I actually used it. I'll go back to dial up before going to cable again! | ||
| Jandj_davis |
I had connectivity problems with my AT&T DSL too. It definitely got worse in the rain. A little investigation unveiled that me dog had chewed on the cable that the ••••••• home security installer ran outside, along the bottom edge of the siding. Elimination of that loop yielded MUCH better performance and I don't fall off in the wet any more. | ||
| Acgwolfe |
I would say that there is a light ground or short on your line that is getting wet. If it is worse in the morning that is probably because of the dew that has settled and dries up as the day warms. Call ATT and have them send a tech out, tell him/her to check the longitudinal balance, should be above 60db. As far as dedicated dsl lines that is not the case anymore, I know of multiple dslams being fed by 4 t1's and ATT offering customers 3 meg out of that system. Since a t1 is only 1.5 that means they could only serve 2 people reliably. But it sounds like your problem is a cable issue. Good luck. | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
Sooo.................. My new modem arrives, and I got her hooked up in two minutes flat. I run a quick speed test and......nothing.......nada......not connected to internet. Modem needs to be registered. I call Cablevision, and they are happy to assist, and after waiting about a half hour altogether, I am on line. I run a quick speedtest and voila:  About half the speed I had before upgraded to the new high speed modem! How cool is that? I get back on the horn with Cablevision. "ah - hah", says my congenial tech, we "forgot" to provision you with Boost Plus" we'll do it right now, you'll be good to go in fifteen minutes. I run a second speed test, and voila: big improvement, I now have the exact same speeds I had before I started this upgrade. Starting to get just a bit irritable.  Get back to Cablevision. I am assured that 35 down and 5 up is within spec for a promised, (but not guaranteed), 50 down, 8 up. Must be the router. And nothing further can be done. Nothing at all. It is not the router. I ask to be transferred to supervisor. Guess what? Supervisor is the most surprised guy in the world to discover that I am still not "provisioned for Boost Plus Service". Funny, I am not in the least surprised. I am beginning to think that standard operating procedure is to give the customer the lowest possible band width, and see if he complains. Anyway, as Frog Man pointed out, it is only a matter of pushing a button at the central office. Finally Sweet Victory.  Actually, it was worth it. Almost. Took about three hours from start to finish, but the web cruising is noticeably faster , and there is a huge improvement in watching streaming videos. Whew.......... The sad thing is that I came to the inescapable conclusion that his company has a standard operating procedure that appears to me to almost rise to the level of a criminal activity. Sad isn't it? Especially since this type of behaviour is not at all uncommon amongst our largest public companies. | ||
| Froggy |
Boost is a scam, it is there to make speedtests look great, but it is useless in the real world. On downloads, it will be at the higher speed for about a minute, then it gets cut in half for absolutely no reason to not provide the speed 24/7 like I get with Fios. Try it, watch your bandwidth meter, then download a large file, you will see it will download fast for a few seconds, then drop in speed like you lost a few cylinders. It is such a shame. |
