Foo - Telco Company BS (quick rant)

Ditched cable, got ultra-cheapo dsl. I know I know, you get what u pay 4. :notamused:

Sped test showing 0.11Mb/sec instead of the promised 1.5Mb/sec. Tech support lady makes me reboot the dsl modem 17 times. They also expect me to believe that, even tho the copper wire runs for miles between home and CO, a few feet of cable between jack and modem is gonna make a difference. whatever.

*waits for tech*

/rant

PS: No, I am not downloading prom.

Umm...are you sure you have your unit conversion right? Browsers will show the download speed in MB/s. Mega BYTES per second. Telecom companies advertise in Mb/s. Bega BITS per second. If you've got a 1.5Mb/s line and your browser is showing ~110KB/s, that's about right.

Umm...are you sure you have your unit conversion right? Browsers will show the download speed in MB/s. Mega BYTES per second. Telecom companies advertise in Mb/s. Bega BITS per second. If you've got a 1.5Mb/s line and your browser is showing ~110KB/s, that's about right.

wow.. that's sucks.

What DSL modem? And if you know how, what do the signal levels look like?

Also, as hickeydog said, you sure you got the conversion right?

If you go to speedtest.net, what do the results show?

ok... attached, the screenshoots for the speed test and the advertised/promised speed.

146012

146013

I have no idea about the signal strength. The modem is an "embark 660"... God knows who really manufactured it.

wow.. that's sucks.

blame it on the bandwidth gods. They made the metrics stupidly similar to the eye. I have been doing this for decades and can still screw it up if I haven't had enough coffee :)

That's way to slow on the download. Should never have more upload than download.

Also, those speedtests are measured in bits, the same measurement used by your ISP.

Something's wrong.

That modem sounds like its a Zyxel modem. Take a look at this page: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/14209

If you see something similar, get some screenshots. We'll build evidence against your telco.

ok... attached, the screenshoots for the speed test and the advertised/promised speed.

146012

146013

I have no idea about the signal strength. The modem is an "embark 660"... God knows who really manufactured it.

That display indicates Megabits (lower-case "b").
Megabytes use an upper-case "B".
Also bizarre is that your upload speed is more than twice your download speed.
Normally it is the reverse.
I've never heard of a consumer link being provisioned like that.
It really does look like something is messed up.

http://web.forret.com/tools/bandwidth.asp?speed=.19&unit=Mbps

Friendly conversion tool for you :) Also, don't look at the stupid graph the grid below does a better job of explaining

Have you tried slapping and yelling at the modem? This is what I do first. No wait, second. First I have a beer to three. Try yelling at in english and spanish, just for fun.

Well... telco tech on the phone said something looks wrong and sent a field tech to investigate. The field tech should be here somewhere in the afternoon. Lets see...

Good! That's exactly what should be done.

Don't let them charge you money either for a shoddy installation job. This should have been found and cleared up before the tech left.

Well... telco tech on the phone said something looks wrong and sent a field tech to investigate. The field tech should be here somewhere in the afternoon. Lets see...

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT use my method on the repair guy. It will not end well if you do.

Yes, there is hope, Ruben!

I had always gotten 1.311Mb/s on my 1.5Mb/s service, so one day when it dropped to 635kb/s I called them up and they switched my connection speed by mistake. Another time it was my fault--I had the wireless modem/router between two CRT monitors and the intereference killed the signal.

Also, running any type of torrents or peer to peer programs will effect the perceived bandwidth.

This is more like it... :D

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn53/RubenX_Longwood/Other/speed-test3.png

The field tech was awesome, gave me no BS, made a few phone calls, yelled at a few people and fix it.

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT use my method on the repair guy. It will not end well if you do.

It would have worked for Allen. :innocent:

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn53/RubenX_Longwood/Other/speed-test3.png
Now that is more like it.

This is more like it... :D

The field tech was awesome, gave me no BS, made a few phone calls, yelled at a few people and fix it.

A coworker was having issues recently with his cable modem service.
After going around and around the script-reading (non)support people, and a couple equally-useless field techs, they *finally* sent out a field tech with a clue who located a damaged coax cable in the neighborhood distribution box.

I remember at our old house in Golden, CO when the field tech discovered the reason why our Internet was extremely unreliable was because a neighbor had broken open the box on the pole and finagled his own coax into the box. We weren't the only ones on the block to complain about crappy internet or TV.

It apparently took four different field techs to discover the problem.