OptimumOnline → Should I always be getting about 15mb/s down?

I pay for 15mb/s download speed with optimum. During the hours when most people are home from work and school my download speeds plummet to 3 or 4 mb/s. I was speaking with a random optimum guy I met and he said nowadays you should always be getting 15mb/s and it shouldn't matter how many neighbors are online. I had someone come out to my house for the issue about a year ago and the issue was fixed for a week and came right back.

I'd make a service call. It's best to call when you are experiencing the slowdown. You should expect near or full speeds at all times.

I heard that it may just be that I have an older modem. Does optimum ship you a free new modem if you ask or do they have to send someone out on a service call with it?

You can try a new modem if you want. Take your old one to the Optimum store and swap it. Or, make the service call. If you have an older modem, the tech would likely swap it out during the service visit.

Unless you have a D3 Modem, you have only one 38Mbs download channel which you are sharing with the others on your node. Thus when your node is busy, there is lots of contention for that download channel. Once you get a D3 modem you will have 4 Download Channels (152Mbs) or at this point 8 Download Channels (304Mbs). With this much bandwidth, you should not have any problem getting the 15Mbs you are entitled to (10%/5% of the available bandwidth).

Thanks for the reply. Do you know if I can just give optimum a call and they'll upgrade me to the D3 modem for free or do I have to pay for it?

it's free just go in

Walk into your local CV storefront and ask for a swap. They will give you a 8Channel Arris modem. What model modem do you have right now?

I forget but it was 3 or 4 years old. I just walked into the optimum store and they gave me the Arris like you said. Set it right up on my own and I'm currently getting 18 down. Hopefully this keeps up through the hours when most people are home.

My experience since I received a D3 modem with 5 and now 8 DL channels is the speeds are consistently @18 and occasionally dip to @13

If they go much lower than that it usually means I need to reboot my wireless router and or modem.