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koebner
join:2006-07-18
Lexington, KY

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koebner

Member

[Speed] At the end of my rope Lexington, KY

I've pretty much come to the end of my patience with my internet connection here in Lexington. I have had several service calls over the last few months to address ping and speed and nothing has helped. Signal level is good, router is not a problem, swapped out the modem to cover all the bases, etc. but I am still stuck with less than half of the speed I am paying for and poor latency... it seems as if "rolling a truck" is a last resort.

I have to wonder now if 12 meg DSL would actually be better for me at this point.
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airguy
@indigo.ie

airguy to koebner

Anon

to koebner

Re: [Speed] At the end of my rope Lexington, KY

I had Alltel/Windstream 12MB service previously for 3 years. Had many problems with speed fluctuations. A lot has to do with how far you are from the Telco Office. I was told about a mile max is it, and I was on the edge. After countless service calls to help, and technician visits to my premises, I gave up and went with Insight BB. It's been great so far. I am on the south side of Lexington. I can't see going back. I have the 20MB service, and it's always consistent.

What I am worrying about is if we'll see the bandwidth caps on service with this new TW buyout, like most people on the west coast are experiencing. If so, will go back to DSL.
koebner
join:2006-07-18
Lexington, KY

1 edit

koebner

Member

Yeah, everything I read about DSL is poor. Never talked to anyone with good luck with it, either.

Unfortunately, that leaves me with my sort of broadband-lucky-to-get-8 or 9 meg service.

To update my situation, an elevated tech visited and went through every avenue at his disposal. Evidently a card for the head or hub that services my area was giving a bad read, so the card was reset a few days ago.

I actually have pulled 20 down a couple of times, 14 or 15 a few times, and about 9 down a lot of the time. Ping is all over the place.
I'm sure they can string this out longer, while I keep paying for something less than I am supposed to get.
airguy
join:2012-01-08
Lexington, KY

airguy

Member

Well, hopefully that will help. Also, I know over the holidays, I did have some speed slowdowns, but I also realize all the kids out of school for the holidays, playing online games, streaming movies, etc probably put quite a load on things. Has picked back up to normal since.

Again, the critical thing about DSL is your distance to the Telco office especially for speeds over 6 mb/s. You are running over copper wires pretty much, not fiber optic, so lots of stuff can interfere from connections in your house, up on the pole, filters on each of your voice phones, etc. And lots of times after I would see a Windstream truck in my neighborhood up on a pole and my speed would just drop. They would fix a problem for someone else, and induce a new one for me. Then I would have to call for the truck! Got a little old after a awhile, so switched to Insight. So far so good. I would just suggest to stay on them. You are paying good money so you have a right to demand what you are paying for.

BlueArcher
Premium Member
join:2003-03-11
Lexington, KY

1 edit

BlueArcher to koebner

Premium Member

to koebner

My parents have Insight and for almost 2 years they had bandwidth issues during peak hours every single day.
BlueArcher

1 edit

BlueArcher to airguy

Premium Member

to airguy
BTW, cable runs over copper wires too.. that really isn't the specific issue. With DSL you have Remote Terminal DSLAMs that are deployed out in the neighborhoods. These are fed by high capacity fiber runs as well, OC3 (155 MBit), multiple OC3, or OC12 (622 Mbit) in some cases. These days, you really only have these distance issues in more rural areas, as most larger cities have fairly dense deployments of remote DSLAMs that push the copper distance closer to the customer's house.
smashcraft
Premium Member
join:2011-06-15
Louisville, KY

2 edits

smashcraft to koebner

Premium Member

to koebner
I have Insight and have not really had many issues with regard to peak usage problems. I'm not sure if it depends on the area you are in or how many different people are using the service at once.

We have AT&T DSL and Uverse services available here in Louisville and have pretty decent service. I had just had a small problem with price with AT&T. With Insight, you can get 10mg cheaper than what you can get 12mg service with Uverse. I'm happy for right now especially since Insight has good billing practices and far better customer service.
airguy
join:2012-01-08
Lexington, KY

airguy to BlueArcher

Member

to BlueArcher
I was always told I was right on the bubble as far a distance goes. Maybe I was, from whereever the DSLAMs ended and the copper started. Just never had good speed consistency with it.

Broadband service should be better, I agree. But I think the system is starting to really get tested since companies like Netflix come around. The demand for bandwidth is higher than ever. And companies keep overselling past their true bandwidth capacities, figuring that things will be ok because not everyone will streaming movies, etc at the same time.

I just hope we don't end up getting capped on bandwidth as some areas of the country are. It's probably just a matter of time.
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UKStewart82
@insightbb.com

UKStewart82 to koebner

Anon

to koebner

Re: [Speed] At the end of my rope Lexington, KY

Having the same problem as OP here in South Lex. I'm being told it's "Third Level Network" and out of Insight's hands. I'm no expert by any means, but the traceroute shows it's an Insight IP with the problem. The server address (174 ms 74-131-0-141.dhcp.insightbb.com [74.131.0.141]) is extremely bad. It's the hop right after the first Insight server I'm directed to; 74-137-96-1.dhcp.insightbb.com [74.137.96.1].

1 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms [192.168.1.1]
2 6 ms 6 ms 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms 5 ms 6 ms 74-137-96-1.dhcp.insightbb.com [74.137.96.1]
3 7 ms 56 ms 6 ms 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms 174 ms 74-131-0-141.dhcp.insightbb.com [74.131.0.141]
4 17 ms 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 21 ms 18 ms 18 ms sl-crs2-akr-.sprintlink.net [144.228.22.21]
5 19 ms 17 ms 19 ms 26 ms 19 ms 20 ms 19 ms sl-crs2-chi-0-0-0-1.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.187]
6 20 ms 20 ms 21 ms 28 ms 21 ms 18 ms 19 ms sl-st20-chi-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.19.144]
7 19 ms 17 ms 18 ms 21 ms 18 ms 21 ms 17 ms [144.232.19.174]
8 22 ms 20 ms 17 ms 31 ms 23 ms 18 ms 29 ms vlan51.ebr1.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.138.158]
9 50 ms 47 ms 49 ms 50 ms 48 ms 50 ms 48 ms ae-3-3.ebr2.Denver1.Level3.net [4.69.132.61]
10 49 ms 49 ms 48 ms 50 ms 50 ms 49 ms 50 ms ae-1-100.ebr1.Denver1.Level3.net [4.69.151.181]
11 70 ms 66 ms 68 ms 74 ms 67 ms 69 ms 68 ms ae-3-3.ebr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.132.57]
12 68 ms 68 ms 68 ms 68 ms 68 ms 73 ms 69 ms ae-72-72.csw2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.153.22]
13 67 ms 68 ms 69 ms 67 ms 264 ms 75 ms 72 ms ae-23-70.car3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.152.69]
14 69 ms 69 ms 68 ms 69 ms 69 ms 148 ms 73 ms YAHOO-INC.car3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.71.112.14]

AnonPerson
join:2000-08-26
Lexington, KY

1 edit

AnonPerson to koebner

Member

to koebner
To the OP, did you decide to go to Windstream? Did you keep insight? I'm thinking about making the switch to Windstream myself, the only thing making me wait is because other people complain that Windstream is also bad.

I have very intermittent problems. My latency spikes from the 20's to the multi-hundreds, my speeds drop from 10MBPS to 1-2MBPS, or if I'm lucky it 'only' drops to 4-5MBPS.

I've made numerous calls to Insight. Some of the people I talk to subtly call me a liar by saying they see no issues, and the complaints I'm making sound really strange. However 2 separate people on the phone have verified that my modem is getting a weak signal with unusually high packet loss, yet the issue cannot be resolved because the problem is so intermittent. As one tech may see a weak signal, the other tech sees a strong one.

Now, the problems can occur at any time, but they 'ALWAYS' occur during prime time. That is, 7pm - Midnight, and all day Saturday and Sunday. Since I like to relax once in a while by playing online FPS, this is incredibly frustrating.