Suddenlink → What are SL's current speeds?

Just curious...is the below correct?

1/384
8/512
12/768 (select areas)
20/1 (DOCSIS 3)

Or is the 12 Mbps tier 1 Mbps on the upload side?

Also, I've been seeing speed tests that seem to suggest that on the highest-end plans the nodes are wide open on download speed? I'm assuming 12 Mbps gets this treatment in non-D3 markets? Does 20 Mbps have this in DOCSIS 3 areas?

In my area, right now, it's 12/768. Don't know about lower end plans.

it's
1/256
3/512
8/768
12/1

here in WV

8/512, 12/768, and there's a 1 mbps tier, not sure on the upload for this market.

The most I can get is 10 (Nashville, NC) and the price diff from 8 to 10 is in no way worth it.

I am happy with the 8 mbit and have been using it for over 2 years with very few problems.

I would like much faster speeds but I'm not holding my breath and CenturyTel only offers 3 down at my house...ugh.

Netposer, something you might find interesting. I've noticed that if you purchase the highest tier available at your location you tend to get way over the default speed. For example, I've got the 12mb service and normally get in between 20mb - 30mb. So its just something to think about... you can download/stream all the new vids that are posted at justskate.me so much faster... lol.

Yeah. I chatted (online via browser) with a Suddenlink rep and he quoted the 8 and 10 mbit speeds but when I called the 800 number the CSR (who was awesome btw) told me I could get 12 mbit at $59.95. So I went with that since it was adding 4 to my 8.

And she told me that in Jan they are bumping the area up to 20 and it sounded like they are moving to docsis 3 so speeds will go up across the board. I think Suddenlink might step up their tiers like they did in 2007 where the default speed might be 10 or 12 with the option to get something much much slower (low end) or much higher as in 20 mbit.

Speed tests have shown I'm getting more than the 12 mbit down most of the time. I'm guessing it's because they don't throttle it down to some artificial speed?

I was talking to one of there techs the other day and he told me that they are upping there speeds all across the board, rolling out more HD channels, and VOD. From what i understand they are going to be upping the speeds to 15/1.5, 12/1 and the lower tier will be 1.5/256, also they going to have DOCSIS 3.0 with a speed of 20/2. From my understanding KInston, New Bern, Washington, will be first because of the bandwidth capacity they already have there and Greenville and Rocky Mount will be next year do to them upgrading those systems to 1ghz.

So far in D3 markets the top two tiers to my knowledge have been 20/1 and either 12/768 or 12/1. So you aren't going to see a 1.5 Mbps up tier on the residential side if your market mirrors what's happening everywhere else, sorry to say.

I think the 1 Mbit, 8 Mbit and 12 Mbit speeds will stay where they are right now, since the 20 Mbit tier (1 Mbit up) is aorund $80 per month.

Also, apparently SL, at least in some markets, doesn't cap the download speed of customers on its highest tier. So uploads sit at 768-1024k, but downloads can take up all "slack" node capacity if they want. This is actually what Cablevision does with their "Boost" service in the NYC metro, except that tier has a nominal 30 Mbps download speed and 5 Mbps on uploads.

Personally, I'd rather have 10/2 than 30/.768 but you take that you can get. I'm on Comcast here (860MHz plant I'm pretty sure, DOCSIS 3 and I'm on the 22/5 tier) but I know what it's like to be on a connection with lousy upload speeds. Hopefully, for everyone on this board's sakes, SL will get their plant upgraded enough to support better uploads than 1 Mbps.

By the way, what are you guys registering as the upload channel modulation on your cable modems? If it's QPSK then SL only has about 3.6 Mbps of upload capacity per node, which explains their low upload speed caps. You need 16QAM or preferably 64QAM to get higher upload speeds (around 10 Mbps per node) and DOCSIS 2.0 upstream channels beyond that. Believe it or not, you *can* have a DOCSIS 1.0 (not even 1.1) US channel while you're bonding multiple DOCSIS 2.0 downstream channels (aka DOCSIS 3). Actually happened to me a month or two ago...I must've been the only one on the channel because I was pulling about 3.6 Mbps up, but my package advertises 5 Mbps so I had Comcast put me back on the normal (DOCSIS 2.0, 30 mbps of capacity) channel ASAP.

The two markets that i've lived in were both 16 qam. We are upgrading to docsis 3.0 here in a month or so. So we are about to see the new 20 meg speeds.

Okay, so sounds like you may end up with 10 Mbps of upload capacity spread among everyone on the node, hence the low provisioning on upload speeds across packages (though other providers do 5 Mbps with that sort of thing from what I hear).

Out here in WTX the 20meg tier already has 2mbit upload, and we are the D3 test bed for SL.

Really? When did this happen? I heard 20Mbit was only 1 Mbit for uploads...glad to hear y'all aren't stuck with super-low upload speeds with even the highest tier.

I don't know if they will up the speeds on the upstream very much. Probably 1 meg if we're lucky. But hey that's better than the 512 we're getting now. Maybe they are starting to toy around with higher qam rates for upload in other markets. It's something they can do anywhere, but most people are reluctanct to because noise is a much greater issue then.

It's not "official" yet. When I had a technician come out to work on my line, he had just come from a 20meg install and the speed test (he said) was 18ish/2, because they just double the 20's upload speed.

He also said that there aren't many takers for the 20meg, and SL's current goal is to move all of the "premium" customers (10meg, prior fastest tier) that have VOD, HD, etc. onto the 20meg because that frees up bandwith for the lower tiers, and there is PLENTY available on the D3 side of the node.

A few weeks ago they were selling 8/512 for $30 for 1 year, but no promotions are offered for the 10 or 20, the next two highest. I'm hoping that since they doubled the 20s upload, we will be next on the lower tiers.

Interesting. So 20 Mbit is now $70 per month? Is there a 12 Mbit tier, or is it just 10 Mbit? What's the upload speed there?

By the way, if SL sets up their network correctly they could load-balance all customers 9not just D3 ones) over multiple channels. Folks without a D3 modem wouldn't get channel bonding, but that doesn't mean the channels can't be open for everyone. Of course the decision may be to keep D3 channels wide open so high tiers will get advertised speeds 24x7.

Rather interesting that now pricing on SL isn't that bad compared with my Comcast. 16/2 on CC would be $65 per month without TV or phone, and 12/2 is $55. So 20/2 for $70 o that scale is reasonable. That said, TWC offers 15/2 for $50 in central TX, so in comparison SL is doggone expensive.

I'm not exactly sure what the price is. Online chat said it was still 20/1 for $80, but the technician assured me that all new installs/upgrades have 2mbit upload, they just aren't advertising it yet.

The online chat said standalone prices were 52.99 for 8, 63.99 for 10, and 79.99 for 20. If they raise the 8->10 and 10->15 then the prices are more reasonable, because right now it's not worth the difference in price for the 8/10.

All customers will be on the same docsis 3.0 CMTS. The only difference will be whether or not they have a docsis 3.0 modem. All customers with a d3 modem will take advantage of load balancing. So it would be in SL's best interest to move everyone to a d3 modem. And for people with 20 megs it should almost be a requirement. Other modems can get the full 20 megs but you don't want them getting it from one channel and completely saturating it on that particular node.

Other providers have 20 Mbit single-channel packages but Suddenlink tends to have more people per node so they have to do more conservative speeds it seems. Apparently 15 Mbps iwll be the highest non-D3 tier soon.

Also, while it would be in SL's interest to hand out D3 modems for load balancing, if you have multiple channels and use all of them or all customers (D3 gets load-balanced for better speeds/reliability, everyone else doesn't) then you should have enough per-channel capacity for lower-end customers with D2 modems, which cost about 60% less than a D3 modem.

One channel only has about 36 mps worth of bandwidth available on it. So at 20 megs per person, if their utilizing the full bandwidth that whole channel is used up. I just don't see how anyone can provide speeds like that and have people actually get the full amount all the time. I know their not counting on everyone using the full amount but even 10 people using half their connection would still just about use it all up. No wonder you see companies worried about caps etc.

The thing is that most of the time people won't use half their connection at the same time. As capacity goes up so do contention ratios. That's the nice thing about DOCSIS 3.0; you can pile on dozens of 50 Mbps customers on 152 mbps of capacity and everything will be fine since the probability of everyone using their bandwidth at the same time is insignificant.

There's a lot of math going on there, but it actually works out, as long as you don't get too aggressive. Particularly if you have a DOCSIS 3 tier at the top end so all heavy users go there...leaving lighter users sharing single channels. That's how Midcontinent Communications was able to ratchet non-D3 speeds up to 25 Mbps down...it's their second-highest plan so people wanting to use their internet connection heavily will all be on the 50 Mbps plan.

I have a Linksys RV042 Dual WAN router with a 12 mbit and an 8 mbit Suddenlink subscription.

Hmmm, I would expect a little higher result than that with bonded 12 & 8, I regularly get those rates with just the 12, think gatorkram does as well.

Yeah, you won't be using both channels doing a standard speed test.

Duh, I'm drainbead today, should've realized that...

I've gotten bonded results before with 2 8mbit connections. Now it's a bit difficult to get better results because I'm not sure which IP is getting the majority of the data.

the RV042 doesn't bond the WAN links, and it's impossible to run a speedtest over two lines at once and combine the speed.

The RV042 does bond the WAN connections. It can also do fail-over.

netposer is correct, bonds the WAN links:

"Its twin WAN ports concede you to settle a second tie for backup or to enlarge bandwidth and change traffic. "

"The second WAN pier can be used for backup or to bond to a second provider to enlarge bandwidth"