Vulturev4
join:2008-06-03
Denver, CO
| Qwest DSL, slow in the evenings (Denver)
I have had Qwest DSL for quite a while now. Recently, I upgraded to the 7mbps service, and got the Actiontec M1000 along with it.
The package came, I installed it, the net fired up right away.
My problem is I discovered from wanting to stream video one evening that my speed was really below what I should have been getting.
I run various bandwidth tests, mornings and afternoons, and late at night I get a great speed, around 4.5 - 6 mbps. Evenings, I get absolutely dismal speed, they average about 1.1 to 1.5. On a bad night, like last night, I was getting around 400 to 600kps.
I called Qwest, they told me I was getting good speed, I ran a test with them on the phone, it tested 600k, they wanted to run some tests and call me back, they never did.
Any ideas what would cause me to get such dismal speeds during the evenings? All the other times, the speeds appear good to great. |
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wingman99
join:2003-12-18
Bettendorf, IA
 ·Qwest.net
| said by Vulturev4  :I have had Qwest DSL for quite a while now. Recently, I upgraded to the 7mbps service, and got the Actiontec M1000 along with it. The package came, I installed it, the net fired up right away. My problem is I discovered from wanting to stream video one evening that my speed was really below what I should have been getting. I run various bandwidth tests, mornings and afternoons, and late at night I get a great speed, around 4.5 - 6 mbps. Evenings, I get absolutely dismal speed, they average about 1.1 to 1.5. On a bad night, like last night, I was getting around 400 to 600kps. I called Qwest, they told me I was getting good speed, I ran a test with them on the phone, it tested 600k, they wanted to run some tests and call me back, they never did. Any ideas what would cause me to get such dismal speeds during the evenings? All the other times, the speeds appear good to great. Sounds like they oversold your connection you could try and get them to put you on a different path |
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Bink
join:2006-05-14
Denver, CO | reply to Vulturev4
For the hell of it I just tried myself now and can report the same issue—730Kb/s up and 600Kb/s down and this is with my 7Mb/s service. Shame. I’ll monitor this over the next few days and see if the issue persists. |
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Bink
join:2006-05-14
Denver, CO | reply to Vulturev4
Have my full speed back this morning—and will try again tonight. |
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ppmolina
join:2005-12-16
Houston, TX
| reply to Vulturev4
It does sounds like the problem is likely network congestion, so keep on Qwest. Is the computer you are testing this on hard-wired or do you connect wirelessly? If you connect wirelessly, it is possible that it could be local interference causing slow downs (unlikely, but best to rule it out). If at all possible, run your speed tests hard-wired to the router. |
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dslisme
@qwest.net
| reply to Vulturev4
this happened to me with them - just call support (note you can ask for US support) then tell them it slows down only at night and that you would like them to check your path (could be DSLAM or 'gateway') - I think it's another group that does it since the xfer me
after that it was all good |
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Vulturev4
join:2008-06-03
Denver, CO
| reply to Vulturev4
My computer is hard wired to the modem, which is plugged into the wall.
I ran several tests last night, averaged between 8 and 11PM, 900Kps, this morning I had the full 6.1mbps back. Tested it just now, is back down to 900.
My parents live relatively close to me, and they have the 1.5 service, and on any given night, any time they average 1.2 easily. My uncle lives a bit farther away and he is upgrading to the 7 service tomorrow. I am anxious to see what he finds when he runs the bandwidth tests.
I know better, but what else could it be, besides overselling. Am I unreasonable to expect something higher than this during peak times. |
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Bink
join:2006-05-14
Denver, CO | reply to Vulturev4
Just tested now and same problem—730Kb/s up and 780Kb/s down. I will be calling Qwest tomorrow as this is unacceptable, even during peak times. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. |
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Vulturev4
join:2008-06-03
Denver, CO | I think I'll call too. I have enough tests ran up over the last week or two, I know it's been happening for a while now.
Let me know if you get any results. |
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bleagh
join:2004-03-11
Salt Lake City, UT
| reply to Vulturev4
I live in SLC. I have a 7 meg connection.
Yesterday afternoon I was getting speeds from just over 0.1 meg to just over 1 meg. At times I couldn't even load a web page.
I called Qwest and spent over and hour (off and on, she called me back twice) on the phone. She contacted a couple of different departments to see what they could do. They ended up switching me to a different server and was able to get my speeds up to the 3-5 meg range.
This is NOT the first time I have seen slowdowns with the 7 meg service. But it IS the first time I have seen them do something about it right away without having a service rep call me the next day.
I am supposed to do some speed tests at non-peak hours to make sure I can get 6+ megs (to make sure it is traffic congestion and not a wiring issue) and call them back today.
I tested last night after midnight and again today at 8 AM and 9:30 am, and am consistently getting over 6 meg download speeds again.
Guess I'll wait till this afternoon to see if I get slowdowns again before calling them back... |
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Bink
join:2006-05-14
Denver, CO
·Qwest.net
| reply to Vulturev4
I called Qwest this morning to report the issue, but they annoyingly told me not only do I need a new modem, but I also need to call back during the time of congestion so they may observe it firsthand. I mentioned just being switched to a new path/gateway, but they told me this is generally not allowed until a new supported modem was installed. Besides being extremely annoyed by the supposed new modem requirement (I’m very happy with my ultra-reliable no-longer-supported Cisco 678 damn it!), I was also annoyed about having to call back. However, I obliged and called back this evening to report the issue. The support person reviewed the issue and I, somewhat deceivingly, told him that the person I spoke with this morning told me that once they observe the congestion they will likely need to/just move me to a new gateway—and that’s exactly what happened. The support person noticed the congestion and immediately called the other department to proceed with moving me to a new gateway. He told me the process would take some time and that he would call me back in ten minutes. Thirty minutes later he called back, apologized for taking so long, told me I was on a new gateway and I was able to observe a little over 6Mb/s for the first time in the evening in a few days—and I’m quite pleased. “My” Internet is speedy again. Yay.
Sorry for all the detail, but this group tends to be quite supportive and I thought I’d give back by providing “full disclosure.”
Cheers—and good luck to those who are not getting the service they’re paying for. While no change in latency (as expected), for what it’s worth before and after traceroutes reflecting my new gateway:
$ traceroute -P 1 www.yahoo.com
traceroute to www.yahoo-ht3.akadns.net (209.191.93.52), 64 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 hlrn-dsl-gw10-202.hlrn.qwest.net (207.225.112.202) 34.140 ms 63.450 ms 41.246 ms
2 hlrn-agw1.inet.qwest.net (71.217.188.73) 33.308 ms 32.945 ms 32.256 ms
3 * dal-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.2.49) 54.988 ms 55.485 ms
4 dap-brdr-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.25.14) 55.496 ms 54.833 ms 55.129 ms
5 206.82.142.1 (206.82.142.1) 61.71 ms 55.681 ms 69.133 ms
6 if-5-0-0-31.core2.DTX-Dallas.teleglobe.net (66.198.2.37) 54.973 ms 55.275 ms 55.29 ms
7 ix-4-2.core2.DTX-Dallas.teleglobe.net (66.198.2.14) 56.33 ms 55.264 ms 55.217 ms
8 ae2-p111.msr2.mud.yahoo.com (216.115.104.111) 86.244 ms 84.90 ms ae1-p101.msr1.mud.yahoo.com (216.115.104.99) 119.500 ms
9 te-9-1.bas-c2.mud.yahoo.com (68.142.193.11) 56.318 ms 57.14 ms 58.766 ms
10 f1.www.vip.mud.yahoo.com (209.191.93.52) 56.217 ms 56.565 ms 56.262 ms
$ traceroute -P 1 www.yahoo.com
traceroute to www.yahoo-ht3.akadns.net (209.191.93.52), 64 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 hlrn-dsl-gw51-243.hlrn.qwest.net (207.225.112.243) 36.498 ms 31.334 ms 31.629 ms
2 hlrn-agw1.inet.qwest.net (71.217.189.145) 31.54 ms 31.6 ms 31.671 ms
3 * * dal-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.2.49) 54.740 ms
4 dap-brdr-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.25.14) 53.813 ms 55.371 ms 54.630 ms
5 206.82.142.1 (206.82.142.1) 63.581 ms 55.171 ms 54.583 ms
6 if-5-0-0-31.core2.DTX-Dallas.teleglobe.net (66.198.2.37) 54.974 ms 54.431 ms 55.88 ms
7 ix-4-1.core2.DTX-Dallas.teleglobe.net (66.198.2.10) 55.298 ms 55.137 ms 54.639 ms
8 ae2-p100.msr1.mud.yahoo.com (216.115.104.105) 55.904 ms ae2-p110.msr2.mud.yahoo.com (216.115.104.109) 55.512 ms ae1-p100.msr1.mud.yahoo.com (216.115.104.97) 55.261 ms
9 te-9-1.bas-c1.mud.yahoo.com (68.142.193.9) 57.105 ms te-8-1.bas-c2.mud.yahoo.com (68.142.193.7) 55.589 ms 56.888 ms
10 f1.www.vip.mud.yahoo.com (209.191.93.52) 55.398 ms 55.871 ms 56.73 ms |
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Vulturev4
join:2008-06-03
Denver, CO
| Yes, I just got off the phone with them too. I called during the slowdown time because of when I work. My uncle got his plugged in today, and when I was running 700k down, he was getting 5.5 mbs.
I told them the problem, they guy had me wait maybe 10 minutes, asked what modem I was using, they changed my gateway too, and I ran another test and I test over 6 mbs now.
Maybe we both talked to the same guy. I barely had to say much to him besides slow in the evening, and he knew what to do.
I'm happy too! |
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rgdigital
| I just switched to 7mb DSL here in Colorado Springs and it's been up and down so far. I almost cancelled it right away when it was horribly slow. I talked to a great tech who helped tweak the 2wire modem settings. Still, and especially at night, the speeds really vary. Sometimes it will just time out and can't connect to anything, other times it's great. One weird thing, is downloads on my PS3 are 10x faster than they were with Comcast cable...
I think I'll call about the varying slowness as well. |
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Bink
join:2006-05-14
Denver, CO | Interesting observation with the PS3… and it might be because Comcast is openly in the business of mucking with packets; I wonder if they throttle everything to Sony’s servers and I hope Qwest never takes this route. |
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wingman99
join:2003-12-18
Bettendorf, IA
·Qwest.net
edit:
June 19th, @12:03AM
| reply to rgdigital
said by rgdigital :
I just switched to 7mb DSL here in Colorado Springs and it's been up and down so far. I almost cancelled it right away when it was horribly slow. I talked to a great tech who helped tweak the 2wire modem settings. Still, and especially at night, the speeds really vary. Sometimes it will just time out and can't connect to anything, other times it's great. One weird thing, is downloads on my PS3 are 10x faster than they were with Comcast cable...
I think I'll call about the varying slowness as well.
Dose your Dsl light on the modem start blinking and do you have all your filters on your phones fax and satellite tv |
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RMKyote
join:2000-12-21
Beverly Hills, CA
 ·ViaTalk
| reply to Vulturev4
Last week I had many problems with my Denver connection and the rate that my M1000 with the latest Firmware would connect at, which was a different speed every time I rebooted or power cycled it. I tried a brand new 2Wire 2701HG-D and it connected faster more often, but has no features (or at least regular ones that one normally needs and I have read nothing but negative comments on this unit) and was as slow as the M1000 but on the LAN too. The M1000 which is supposedly their low end unit out performs their next step up unit. I wonder how the Top-of-the-Line modem works. But then this all curiously started as they rolled out the new 12 and 20 MBps services, which is not available in my area yet. Hmmmmmmm.
When I called Qwest, the rep I got was a genius. She could see the link up speed changes on her end as I was seeing them and not giving me any BS. She really knew her stuff and got connected to the right people in the right order, not as they're scripted to do so, and WOW! things got done. AND when the guys at the CO dropped the line to check it and we got disconnected, SHE CALLED ME BACK! The first time I have ever been called back by rep after being cut off. I can not think of any words to describe my shear joy of this rep.
Oh, all during this my upload speed did not change at all. So . . .
Anyway, we ended up having a Tech come out, but the night before all was back to speed and beautiful so I called and got a box of rocks that left the decision whether to cancel the call to dispatch, which they didn't cancel, but the speed continued through the time he was here all was great still and he canceled the call. BUT we had a real nice chat about all things DSL (another Genius, of which I will never see them again – I was asked in a survey if he had left a card so that I could get a hold of him is anything popped up and no he didn't leave one. Damn!) and what I should watch for and sure enough . . . they're happening. So after a couple of days and having the kids complain that their Webkins site was too slow (and those critters were limping - but they're on XP Pro. I use a Mac.) and even my 90 year old Father can see a surfing speed difference and all he does is check his stocks. That means real trouble!!! So after a couple of days, I'm back to connection variances all over the place that while the speeds are up there, there is an obvious operational slowdown.
I would have called Qwest today, but wanted to gather some info and examples first and will see, fingers crossed, if I can get the same rep that I got before or least the same Field Tech (which is more likely). |
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buaku
join:2007-02-11
Colorado Springs, CO
| reply to Vulturev4
I had the same kind of problems when I first signed up for the 7mbps about 2 years ago in Colorado Springs. It was super fast early in the morning and like really late at night, but sometimes slowed to a crawl during the day or right after work. Took many many phone calls to Qwest to get anything done. Eventually a tech came out and he tried some stuff, but it didn't seem to help much. I think he had some people monitor my lines and it turned out me and someone else on the node or whatever were using the bulk of the bandwidth. I think at one point they switched me over to some other board in the USAM. I eventually gave up incessantly doing the speed tests because it was driving me crazy. The regular surfing seemed smoother and my downloads seemed to be going at decent speeds. I can still pull like 500-600+ k/s from certain websites, so that's cool. I figure this type of DSL is really no different than cable. All the people in the neighborhood have to go into some box which then goes back to the main place. So it's shared just like cable, no one here has a dedicated line back to the CO as I understand it.
I must say the tech I got was a really awesome though. He said to call him if I ever had any issues, so that made me feel good. He seemed pretty in the know and he apparently didn't live too far away from me, so he was familiar with the issues I was having. Also I seemed to get better customer service when I got a call center located in the US.
That dude tried a lot of stuff for me. I don't know if it was a higher tier or what. I forgot how he described it. |
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RMKyote
join:2000-12-21
Beverly Hills, CA
·ViaTalk
| reply to RMKyote
UPDATE:
I got the same Tech back out two weeks ago or so and he checked everything and I connect to the DSLAM at 7.1/896 all the way to the house. Prior to him checking I had bad speeds. We discussed that maybe I put an RJ-11 on the end of the Cat5E feed and run right to the modem. But before I did that I ran speed tests and all is great again and has been since. I have read here a lot that you need to call and have them kick the tires every so often. This was a little more than kicking the tires, but all is fine now and has been since without touching anything from the box to the modem.
BUT . . . my next door neighbor just got the same thing I have. As of last Thursday I was able to get her up and running at half my speed. She did have two activation dates, the second being last Friday, a day later. I haven't checked, but am hoping that after the second activation all is well now. She should have the same as me. We'll see. |
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erok2112
join:2008-08-19
Englewood, CO
| Howdy-
I had the same problem-
7meg down..maybe, if your lucky. And another odd issue with some pages just failing to load (MSN/Microsoft/myspace to name a few) after working with a qwest tech, a surprisingly painless, if only long experience, I was finally getting the 6+meg I'm paying for.
However the pages not loading issue was still bothering me.
quick google found an old link to someone working with a dlink router and the same no page loading issue.
The fix they suggested was changing the MTU from 1500 (default on my linksys) to something a little smaller- like 1484. Just a little tiny smaller. Being incredibly frustrated by something as stupid as random pages not loading, I gave it a try. And what do you know...
Every page I had an issue with was flying in. WTF man?
This has never been an issue with any other broadband I've had. (comcast/centurytel)
I just hope this helps someone from going prematurely bald. |
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dynodb
Premium,VIP
join:2004-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
| reply to Vulturev4
If this happens- slow speeds at certain times of the day, particularly evenings and late night- with no change in train rate- call Qwest. Ask the tech to check for "congestion". They have the tools to do so. 95% of the time, the problem can be resolved if they contact higher tier support (and no- you can't contact them directly).
The average bandwidth per customer is constantly increasing; the trunk that was perfectly fine one day can be overloaded 6 months later, even with no changes to the number of customers riding it. |
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