Qwest Thinks 100 Mbps Is 'Just A Dream' > It's a Chevy, alright ...

reply to Juan Valdez

Re: It's a Chevy, alright ...

Sorta similar situation here in Golden, CO. We're right outside Denver but I swear that Qwest only has a DS3 feeding their DSLAM here, with ADSL (no 2+, no VDSL) coming out of the DSLAM. This is despite the fact that they have a 100M circuit to my university for backup and probably another 20M+ to the city.

The result: nobody can get above about 6.1/700 on Qwest, though that service is a mere $35 per month (plus applicable taxes and fees, of which I don't know). More than likely though you're at 3 or 5 Mbps tiers minus 14% for overhead (ATM, IP, TCP). These speeds and prices would be okay if the network was good, but it isn't really. Comcast has a more solid backbone than Qwest here, and Qwest is a freaking Tier 1!

The above speeds would be cool in a rural area, but in those areas you get 1.5 Mbps max. Back to square one...

reply to iansltx
I have 12/896k from Qwest, and at a lower price ($45/mo promotional price; I don't have phone) than Comcast's 12/1.

It's nominally "slower" than Comcast (I only see about 10Mbps after overhead) but it's more consistent and more reliable. Comcast was unable to provide me with service that didn't constantly disconnect due to DCCs.

When my promotional rate for Qwest expires, I'll be happy to give Comcast another chance.

Interesting. I guess Comcast's service (and Qwest's) vary by area. Here I'm sitting on Comcast 12/2 and really appreciate the added upload speed versus Qwest's non-VDSL service. Could I be paying less for internet? Absolutely, but I'd lose more time waiting for stuff to download and upload than the difference in my bill is worth.

Would I switch to Qwest if they offered VDSL in my area with 5 Mbps uploads? Almost guaranteed, though I wouldn't sign a contract and would try to squeeze Comcast for another promotional price before leaving. If they offered me 50/10 for $50 per month like they have with some customers, I would of course stay. But Qwest does do "cheap" pretty darned well on their lower-end (non 40 Mbps) tiers so I'd probably switch.

The 896k is kind of a pisser, but less than Comcast's frequent dropouts in Boulder. 3-5 second DCC connectivity hiccups aren't a big deal for most people, but if you're playing online games they'll get you killed.

No hiccups here in Golden. Id know even though I don't game; SFTP updates transfer rates every second from the command line, and whether it's local or on a remote shell you can tell when the data isn't flowing through.

Well, either they fixed it, or it was only a problem on certain CMTSs or with certain CMs. I have a friend who lives in Golden and they definitely experienced the same issues. With his old Motorola SB5100, it would need to be power cycled before it would connect again; with a Thompson DCM425 it only lasted 4 or 5 seconds.

I would suspect line quality, except for the fact that I had the exact same issue and I know for a fact that it's not a line issue (I had at least 8 or 9 technician visits and had every cable/connector from my CM to the box on the side of the building replaced). My signal was great (38dB S/N, +0.5 downstream power level, 42dBmV upstream power level) and I still had issues.

Heh, I'm borderline on signals (hot) but my connection has been rock solid...

My understanding (according the the 10th or so Comcast tech I spoke with) was that it was a CMTS configuration issue, not a signal issue. Apparently high upstream channel load would cause a wave of DCCs that would cause CMs to briefly lose connection while they switch to the other channel; this causes TCP to enter either fast recovery or slow start (depending on implementation), cutting bandwidth usage and causing more CMs to be switched to the other channel. Then, TCP starts increasing the window size again, bandwidth usage increases, and the CMTS swaps modems back to the other channel.

The net result is that CMs get flipped around from channel to channel several times an hour (instead of very rarely).

Got it. We only have one main upstream channel here (on my node anyway); the other is 16QAM so everyone gets put on thhe 64QAM one AFAIK. So no disconnects due to loading.

My friend in Golden would bounce between 16QAM and 64QAM all the time. I'm not sure whether we have multiple 64QAM channels here in Boulder, but it's certainly possible.