[Vision2020] Frontier (was Verizon) DSL

[Saundra Lund]

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the response, and thanks, too, to everyone else who is tossing
info out there -- I appreciate benefitting from those of you who know much
more than I do.  If you don't mind sharing, what symptoms did you see
indicating that your circuit was saturated?

Shawn, http://www.speedtest.net/ is what I've been using forever, and I also
use http://www.pingtest.net/.  Not that I understand the results I get other
than I recognize when something looks off.

Generally, I get download speeds in the neighborhood of 2.6-2.9 Mb/s &
upload speeds around 0.6 - 0.7 Mb/s.  For the past few/several weeks, I've
been seeing download speeds in the 2.3-2.6 Mb/s range & upload around 0.06
(no, that's *not* a typo) - 0.25Mb/s range.

When I use pingtest, I generally have 0% packet loss, ping in the 40-60 ms
range, and jitter below 10 ms.  More recently, I'm routinely seeing 2-5%
packet loss, pings around 90-100 ms, and jitter in the 50-75% range.

We've also been having intermittent phone problems (the problem is a line
run a few poles away) for 2+ years now, although I never noticed Internet
speed taking a hit when noise was particularly bad.  But, I can't say that I
ever specifically looked for it.  In any case, the repair guys have been
saying for 2+ years that the cable somewhere down the line in our
neighborhood needs to be replaced but that Verizon was too cheap to do it,
so they keep having to do "temporary" splices or something like that.

When I called Frontier today, static on the line was bad enough that I could
hardly hear (again), so perhaps there's a correlation I never noticed.
Kudos to Frontier for getting the magical repair dudes out to fix the noise
today, and I've noticed our Internet speed is back to normal.  Yay!  The bad
news is that the fix was yet another "temporary" splice.  It's amazing how
one gets used to a gradual increase in line noise over time -- after the
repair today when I was making a test call, the connection was so quiet I
thought the line was dead!

Ken, thanks for your detailed response.  I'm curious to see how things with
Frontier progress as well.



Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
~ Edmund Burke

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2010 through life plus
70 years, Saundra Lund.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside
the Vision 2020 forum without the express written permission of the
author.*****


-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Shawn Clabough
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 1:36 PM
To: 'Vision 2020'
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Frontier (was Verizon) DSL

Try checking your line speed at http://www.speedtest.net

Your circuit might be congested, or just resetting your DSL modem might
help.  A few months ago, I had to get them to move me to another circuit
because mine was 97% saturated.

Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Saundra Lund
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 11:12 AM
To: 'Vision 2020'
Subject: [Vision2020] Frontier (was Verizon) DSL

I couldn't think of a better place than here to ask . . . 

For those of you with Frontier/Verizon DSL "high speed" Internet, have any
of you noticed things being slower?

I don't know the technical details of my question so I'm not sure where the
problem lies (any explanation would be appreciated), but I've been noticing
that Web pages are taking longer to be "found" after I click on hyperlinks
I've been using -- I've checked, and the links are still correct.  Streaming
video often doesn't seems as smooth as it used to be, downloading songs from
Amazon & iTunes seems to be a bit slower, and uploading seems to have slowed
to a crawl.  At first, I thought it was just me/my computer, but I was
ranting to myself the other night, and my dh mentioned that he'd noticed it,
too.  I checked my laptop & I'm seeing the same thing there.

I'm getting various results on speed & ping tests, not that I know what
those mean, but they are tests that I've run fairly regularly (every month
or two), and I've never seen results -- especially ping & upload -- scores
as poor as I seem to regularly be seeing recently.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.


Saundra

=======================================================
 List services made available by First Step Internet, 
 serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.   
               http://www.fsr.net                       
          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
=======================================================

=======================================================
 List services made available by First Step Internet, 
 serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.   
               http://www.fsr.net                       
          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
=======================================================