how-to block ads
|
sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? I have the upgraded RR package. (15/1) For the past six months, my uploads and downloads have easily maxed out or have come close to maxing out those speeds. Over the past few days, my DC++ and Usenet uploads have dropped from the normal ~120k/sec to ~10-50k/sec. There are many periods where the speeds bounce between zero and 50k/sec - alternating back and forth. My download speeds are fine. Speedtest.net shows my up/down speeds being at their maxed limits. I plan on calling TW to see if there is a network problem in my area tomorrow after I get home from work if the problem persists. It'd be weird for them to only throttle my up stream and not the down, but since it's bothering me, I thought I'd post about it here first to see if others are noticing the same type issues in the Milwaukee area. | |
|  
Xizer
join:2004-02-05
New York, NY | Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? I am experiencing none of these issues. | |
| epickles
join:2005-02-18
Morrow, OH
| How very interesting. I am in the Cincinnati area, and have experienced the exact same situation. I've had 5 different guys come out, and all of them say everything is fine with my line, even though they see what is going on.
My upload bounces around tremendously, and they have seen that. They ended up putting a different cable modem on (twice) and it still has not helped. It is tied to the account.
I also pay for the upgraded 15/1 package.
I've given up at this point, because they can't find anything. It's my understand from the techs that have come out that there is a private group (abuse dept) that monitors heavy usage customers and can make modifications to their service without anybody else knowing. TWC considers heavy bandwidth usage (albeit using what you pay for) an abuse issue and automatically assumes that you are doing something illegal (ie. P2P, Torrents, Usenet, etc), and frown upon that. They can't, however, prove it... so they make it run horribly to discourage the use.
My symptoms started to occur about 1 month after I started using Usenet pretty heavily (and thus maxing my connection) and have not subsided even though I've stopped. | |
| sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Well, I ran Wireshark to check for RST packets and I didn't see any. I also ran about 4-5 speed tests and they all max out my upload stream. This has to be happening on Time-Warner's end. At this point, I'm planning on calling customer service, but I really doubt they'll either know about or admit to throttling my upload stream. Has anybody else ever had this type of problem and had it successfully solved? | |
| jarschmi
join:2007-07-18
Milwaukee, WI
| I don't have the really fast RR package, but I have a suspicion that RR's news server does, in fact, throttle, after periods of heavy use (UL or DL).
However, the news server subscription and access provided by RR far outweigh this factor. Many providers heavily sensor the newsgroup content and do not provide free access.
Overall, I don't have a problem with it, as the service dampers are infrequent and I only DL and UL a few hours at a time here and there (a few times a week). | |
| | sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by jarschmi  :I don't have the really fast RR package, but I have a suspicion that RR's news server does, in fact, throttle, after periods of heavy use (UL or DL). I could understand if it was just Usenet causing this issue, but it is effecting DC++ which I use quite a bit with a small group of friends. I don't know what Time-Warner considers "excessive use of bandwidth", but I know in the past couple months I haven't come near "hogging" more than my share. For the most part, we use DC++ as a place to chat as most of us are located all around the world.
If throttling IS what's happening, it would have been nice to get some sort of warning before the throttling happened, but I know I'm hoping for way too much from one of the major cable companies. I'll just cross my fingers it's a network problem and it works itself out over the next couple days. If not, I'll call them and complain. I'm not too hopeful about the outcome though... | |
| | | epickles
join:2005-02-18
Morrow, OH
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by sup191 :said by jarschmi :I don't have the really fast RR package, but I have a suspicion that RR's news server does, in fact, throttle, after periods of heavy use (UL or DL). I could understand if it was just Usenet causing this issue, but it is effecting DC++ which I use quite a bit with a small group of friends. I don't know what Time-Warner considers "excessive use of bandwidth", but I know in the past couple months I haven't come near "hogging" more than my share. For the most part, we use DC++ as a place to chat as most of us are located all around the world. If throttling IS what's happening, it would have been nice to get some sort of warning before the throttling happened, but I know I'm hoping for way too much from one of the major cable companies. I'll just cross my fingers it's a network problem and it works itself out over the next couple days. If not, I'll call them and complain. I'm not too hopeful about the outcome though... For what it's worth, I was NOT using TWC's news servers, I was using Giganews.
Secondly, I was under the same impression. According to TWC's techs, "excessive" usage(ie. what starts to raise their eyebrows) is any more downloading than 18-20 gigs/month. Mine was at 23-25, I was told that average household is 10-12 gig/mo. They also look at utilization, and anything more than about a 25% constant utilization (ie. connection maxed out for more than 25% of the time) sparks an "excessive" warning with their abuse dept. They don't, however, cut you off (not sure if they even legally can). In my estimation, they do, however, make it run like crap to discourage your use. | |
| | | | sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by epickles :For what it's worth, I was NOT using TWC's news servers, I was using Giganews. I use Easynews servers, not TW's. Uploads are still crap to both of them however.
So, once they "tag" you as excessive, do they ever put you back to normal status after a certain amount of time?
For kicks and giggles, I chatted last night with a live support person on help.rr.com. I knew nothing would come out of it, but tried it anyways. After the rep on the other end said that there were no network issues and she could ping my modem fine, I asked her why I was having my uploads throttled. After a minute or so, she comes back with "Sir, I assure you that Time Warner is not throttling your uploads". When I pressed for what else it could be, she referred me to an 888 number that helps with bandwidth problems. I plan on calling the number when I get home today from work. I also plan on testing tunneling to see if I have the same problems. If I don't, then it pretty much prooves that Time Warner is screwing with my connection.
I'll keep this thread updated on what's going on. | |
| | | | | epickles
join:2005-02-18
Morrow, OH
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? As far as I know, there is no time limit that they put you back. I was downloading from Rapidshare today, and had the same issue. It's funny how I can download from Microsoft, download.com, and some of the others, but when it comes to strictly Newsgroups, Rapidshare, and other "questionable" stuff, it is heavily limited. Now, if at different times of the day it were higher than others, I would believe the whole bandwidth saturation thing... but this is consistent. | |
| | | | | | sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? My download speeds are not effected by this throttling anywhere. Only my uploads are effected. I called TW customer service today and they said everything is fine on their end and that I wasn't being throttled due to excessive bandwidth usage. They said my account is in good status.
A few minutes ago, I sent a 10 meg file to a ftp site I set up at work. I got the full 120k/sec speed I used to get everywhere. I then tried uploading the same file to alt.binaries.test and was bouncing between 0-10k/sec. Sure Time Warner, you're not messing with my bandwidth...
I am going to try uploading to usenet through a VPN tunnel. If it works smoothly, that should pretty well prove that TW is responsible for my issues. If they are, odds are they have my account flagged for this throttling. I'm going to drop roadrunner and have my girlfriend sign up as a new customer. That should shed the throttling (hopefully) unless they are doing this to the entire node or area. | |
| | | | | | | epickles
join:2005-02-18
Morrow, OH | Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? After you upload via VPN tunnel to usenet, please let me know how that works out. | |
| | | | | | | | sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by epickles :After you upload via VPN tunnel to usenet, please let me know how that works out. After setting up a VPN tunnel, my uploads were smooth and without any dropped packets. Granted, I was testing using a free VPN service (well, $3 for 3 days or 100 MB's), so my speeds were set low by the VPN server, but I had no problem holding a constant speed without any dropped packets. The VPN was using PPP instead of the usual TCP protocol, but it still proves to me that Time Warner is interfering with uploads from me. DC++ also worked a lot better through the VPN. I tried uploading a 10 meg file to a FTP site and I got my usual max speed - 125k/sec. So, FTP is not effected. I even tried torrenting a 4 gig Linux ISO, just to see if that was effected, figuring that would be the MAIN thing they would want to limit. I did get a bit of packet loss, but the speeds ended up being exactly what I got before my other issues happened. I'm not sure why the torrent worked so smoothly. I'm guessing the large number of seeds/peers outdid the amount of packet loss I was getting.
I don't know what it all means so far, but I still feel Time Warner has something to do with this. The last things I plan to try out in the next couple days is to try my cable modem at a friends house and see if the same problems happen, and finally, swap the modem at a Time Warner store. After that, I've exhausted everything I can possibly do on my end.
Dammit Verizon! Where is FiOS in my area?!?  | |
| | | | | | | | | sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? I have also noticed a couple other slowdowns over the past couple hours. Videos streamed from YouTube are no longer buffering anywhere near as quick as they used to. Now the video plays with the buffered part only just past the point of where I'm watching. Also, I download from Usenet at times through Easynews.com. I can usually hold a 12-14Mb connection while downloading. Tonight, my speed started at 1.5Mb/sec and slowly worked it's way down to 150k/sec.
Why can't Time Warner admit to traffic shaping? | |
| | epickles
join:2005-02-18
Morrow, OH | It most certainly is traffic shaping. Actually, I believe it is more along the lines of user prioritization, or site prioritization. I have DSL ready to be reinstalled... It is slower, but on the other hand it may actually be faster. | |
| Dingleberry
join:2001-04-29
532xx
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| Just out of curiosity... what DNS servers are you being offered by dhcp?
I ask as I've recently started being offered 65.24.0.168 and 65.24.0.169. I don't know what's up with them, but they often can't resolve from valid domains (several .edu, and others I don't recall offhand), and are perhaps a lot slower in resolving than the servers I used to be offered. These new machines appear to be in ohiordc.rr.com. And the old machines offered were 24.94.163.32 and 24.94.163.33 which are in rdc-kc.rr.com.
I've wondered if this is related to rr's hijacking mistyped uri's/url's... but perhaps I'm just paranoid.
At any rate, I've since started appending the kc dns servers to resolv.conf and internety things seem to work a lot better. | |
| | sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by Dingleberry :Just out of curiosity... what DNS servers are you being offered by dhcp? I don't use DHCP. I use 169.207.1.3 and 209.153.128.4 for my DNS servers. I've been using them for over eight years. I honestly don't remember where I even got them from.
I'm going to try OpenDNS either tonight or tomorrow and see what differences that makes in everyday use. I've heard nothing but good things about them. Will this solve TW's traffic shaping, no, but it can't possibly hurt.
Hopefully the recent news of the FCC looking into Comcast's traffic shaping will lead to something. If they get slapped for doing it, other ISP's hopefully will. | |
| 
idigg
@alcco.com | I've been having similar issues with RR in Milwaukee (Biz class @ 8MB/1MB. I've just been using OpenDNS as it seems to be a better option at this point. | |
| | sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by idigg :
I've been having similar issues with RR in Milwaukee (Biz class @ 8MB/1MB. I've just been using OpenDNS as it seems to be a better option at this point.
Ok, I just changed my DNS servers to the two from OpenDNS. My ping rates went from ~60ms (my old DNS servers listed above) to ~115ms (with OpenDNS). I think I'll be sticking with my old DNS servers. | |
| | | 
MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by sup191 :said by idigg :
I've been having similar issues with RR in Milwaukee (Biz class @ 8MB/1MB. I've just been using OpenDNS as it seems to be a better option at this point.
Ok, I just changed my DNS servers to the two from OpenDNS. My ping rates went from ~60ms (my old DNS servers listed above) to ~115ms (with OpenDNS). I think I'll be sticking with my old DNS servers. try 209.244.0.3 and 209.244.0.4 | |
| | | | sup191
join:2008-02-24
Milwaukee, WI
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by MacLeech :try 209.244.0.3 and 209.244.0.4 Better than the ones that OpenDNS lists, but still slower than the ones I have been using. | |
| | | | tattoohead
join:2008-03-03
Kenosha, WI | What if you use different ports? I doubt they would throttle a gaming port, for instance. | |
| | | | |
MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by tattoohead :What if you use different ports? I doubt they would throttle a gaming port, for instance. They don't throttle based on ports. It's based on packet "signatures". | |
| | | | | | tattoohead
join:2008-03-03
Kenosha, WI | Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? What about encryption? There's gotta be someway around it. | |
| | | | | | |
MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by tattoohead :What about encryption? There's gotta be someway around it. Sure you can use encryption, but torrents have a definite signature when using network resources that can't be hidden.
There are very few protocols that make a "swarm" of connections in such a way and encryption doesn't hide that...
Imagine that cold medication commercial showing the rhino with the sheet thrown on top.... that's the affect of encrypting torrent traffic. | |
| | | | | | | | 
funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Skype
1 edit | Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by MacLeech :Imagine that cold medication commercial showing the rhino with the sheet thrown on top.... that's the affect of encrypting torrent traffic. Good visual! But these DPI boxes aren't as heuristic as human beings are -- so the sheet might fool them -- perhaps not at all, perhaps for a little while, or perhaps completely.
The thing with DPI and pattern matching, is that the patterns have to match or they not match. It is only as good as its signature file.
True case in point:
The DPI device installed in Comcast-land has a couple of quirks. Encryption definitely helps as the handshake pattern Comcast looks for has an extra exchange -- it's enough to keep Comcast from killing the connection during the handshake and the users make it into BitTorrent's file-transfer mode. Eventually, Sandvine acts exactly as you described and detects it despite the encryption, but you do get about 30+ seconds of useful data upload before Sandvine catches on. That's 30 seconds you only get if you use encryption.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
"We don't throttle any traffic," -Charlie Douglas, Comcast spokesman, on this report. | |
|
ggoldfingerd
@rr.com
| My connection seems to be throttled as well. I live in the Milwaukee area and just had my internet installed 1 week ago. My speeds tests last week showed 14000/1000, but now I am getting 5000/1000. I have been doing some heavy downloading with torrents. Mostly Linux files. At first with utorrent, I was getting speeds around 1.5mbps, now I max out around 100-200kbps. This has been happening for a few days now. I will retest my connection tomorrow, but speedtest.net shows my connection is down to 1/3 of what it was. Im not to worried about torrents, but I expect my speed test to be close to 15/1.
Anyway, Im just glad I have a new modem. My friend had an old Motorola cable modem and that thing would disconnect every 5 minutes when downloading over RR. My girlfriend also had the same modem and it would do the same thing. They are controlling the connections. They need to list this in the contact, because I pay for 15/1, I expect this connection speed unless they state otherwise. | |
|
chad17
@rr.com | I'm in West Allis and I'm finding that when I bittorrent, I have to cap my downloads at 200k if I let it run overnight, or I wake up and have to reset my modem. | |
| |
MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by chad17 :
I'm in West Allis and I'm finding that when I bittorrent, I have to cap my downloads at 200k if I let it run overnight, or I wake up and have to reset my modem.
More then likely that's the modem locking up or maybe your router.... throttling is done elsewhere and won't cause your modem to need a reboot. | |
| | | rocksolidit
join:2008-03-09
Milwaukee, WI | Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? ok...I changed the firmware in my router from DD-WRT to Tomato..I'll see what happens.
(I registered...I post earlier as chad17) | |
| | mooosenix
join:2004-01-09
Milwaukee, WI
| said by ggoldfingerd :
Anyway, Im just glad I have a new modem. My friend had an old Motorola cable modem and that thing would disconnect every 5 minutes when downloading over RR. My girlfriend also had the same modem and it would do the same thing. They are controlling the connections. They need to list this in the contact, because I pay for 15/1, I expect this connection speed unless they state otherwise. said by chad17 :
I'm in West Allis and I'm finding that when I bittorrent, I have to cap my downloads at 200k if I let it run overnight, or I wake up and have to reset my modem.
Strangely enough, I've been seeing this issue as of the last couple of months. I also swapped out my router and it appears to be the modem, or something else.
I'm seeing it with heavy downloading of "normal" things (SCP and HTTP).
Seriously, what's the point of Turbo if you can't use it without your entire connection locking up?
Blah. | |
|
alexfalkenberg
@rr.com
| I'd really appreciate it if any Milwaukee-area TW/RR users (or any other TW/RR users elsewhere, if you're having the same problems) would read about my issues with them here, in a lot greater detail:
»alexfalkenberg.com
and drop a comment; I'd like to collect as many data points as I can.
I'm tired of the BS of my cable modem constantly rebooting. I've been paying for their "premium" service for a long time, and getting no real use out of it. I snag a couple of TV shows here and there via BT, but that's really it. Linux ISOs here and there, too, and some audio/video streaming, some remote-desktop stuff, and moving pictures around online. Nothing I'd personally call excessive; the connection's supposed to be used, isn't it?
Happens with wget/http. Happens with bittorrent. Happens with ftp/scp. Consistently, any sustained download trips my stuff up so badly that I'm forced to reset -everything-. Multiple times an hour. Sometimes _dozens_ of times an hour (sometimes every 1-2 minutes).
If all I'm doing is uploading, that often seems fine, but I still get random disconnects when there's nothing in particular going on.
I can't rely on my Vonage line to make/take phone calls. I can't reliably get downloadable Tivo content or guide data. I can't count on getting Windows updates, Linux updates, OSX updates... I can't do any remote-support work. Can't listen to podcasts or watch vidcasts. I'm sometimes be forced to relogin to ssh sessions dozens of times in a day. Online gaming? Forget about it!
You name it, connection-wise, and it usually sucks.
It's been going on a long time. Everyone I've talked to (including 2nd and 3rd tier) denies there's any flagging or throttling, and they've really gone out of their way in the past to blame everything but themselves for the problems...if/when I can get anyone at Time-Warner Milwaukee to reply at all in the first place. (I can't.)
I have gotten tired of explaining the problem over and over and over again to first-level CS people. Techs to the house...are a joke. I've done plenty of pointless tests, logging, cablemodem swaps, spent time on the phone, written letters, and.... nothing. I've had a bright orange cable line across my lawn for more than a YEAR now when they spent hours here replacing everything all the way out to the pole (with no improvement).
The problem seemed to start in Dec 2006 (yes, 2006) when we got voluntarily bumped up to 8MBps "Turbo" service for an extra five bucks/month.
The problem seemed to go away last year finally around the time we got bumped up to 15MBps speeds.
The problem seems to have returned about 3-4 weeks ago now, and I've not identified any causes/changes. I know we're also lucky to see 10MBps down for a few minutes at a time, if that, when the connection IS working and the cable modem's not constantly rebooting.
Bottom line: the problem is not in my house, period.
If they're messing with my connection, or if I'm somehow abusing their mysterious (and apparently ridiculous) limits, then just TELL me. I'm an adult. Give me the chance to drop the service and end a relationship they've apparently ALREADY decided isn't working out for THEM, instead of, well, plainly and deliberately _stealing_ from me, taking money for service I'm paying for and not getting.
Messing with my connection is effectively ending our business relationship. And then continuing to pocket my money is somehow OK? No!
They've cost me a TON of money in wasted time alone...and it's gotta stop.
Thanks for reading along and any assistance.
-agf | |
| |
See 13 replies to this post | |
georgeu
join:2001-08-06
Racine, WI
| Have you thought about moving to the business class side of the house? I used to have turbo but when they came out with the home business product I moved to it, you get a business SLA and 24/7 business tech support. I live in Racine and pay around $63 a month for 2megs up and 15 down, works like a champ. . .
I still have digital phone running on the residential modem, but got a new one for the business class (SB5100). Everything seems to work well. | |
| mooosenix
join:2004-01-09
Milwaukee, WI | Connection just cut out twice playing TF2 and listening to a shoutcast stream.
This has gotta stop.... | |
|
Xizer
join:2004-02-05
New York, NY
1 edit | All I have to say is: It sucks to be you guys.
I am experiencing zero of these problems, and I get turbo service for $40 a month. I almost always get my full connection speed off of Time Warner's Usenet service.
During online games I don't experience any problems and my ping is always less than 50. Yeah, that includes Team Fortress 2.
I can also download and upload hundreds of gigabytes every month without getting "flagged."
Maybe it's your cable modem? They gave me a garbage SB4200 when I signed up for service. I quickly replaced that with an SB5120. | |
|
thezfunk13
@rr.com
| I have been having huge problems as well. I have turbo and the past two weeks have seen time outs just generally surfing the web. I ping the new DNS servers and I am running 150ms+ which is pretty slow. Some ping requests time out. Even google is seeing 200+ sometimes. When I try a independant DNS server they get even higher. Looks like I have a long, hatefilled, frustrating phone call with tech support ahead of me.
BTW...my TF2 has been lagging real bad too...even though on the server my ping is supposedly 50 or so. | |
| |
thezfunk13
@rr.com
 from:
funchords
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? I think I might have solved my problem in regard to lag. I spent literally my entire Monday night testing all of my hardware just to double check and found that my LAN interface on my pfsense box seems to be kicking the bucket. What was suppose to be a simple swap and reloading of rules turned into a complete rebuild. Everything is back up and running and I am getting advertised speeds and low latency again. Torrents are an unknown as I haven't tried that yet. | |
| Andypro
join:2007-05-11
Milwaukee, WI
| I'll go ahead and hop on this thread too.
I live in Milwaukee and am having largely the same issue. My modem doesn't reboot randomly, but it does reboot during moderate downloading. It's anywhere between 1 to 20 minutes, but when I download a file the modem will reboot every time. If I don't download anything large then it stays up just fine. Some youtube videos can even cause the reboot. Not good.
I'm going to get a tech out here and I'll let you know if he gives me any insight into the problem. I'd like to propose that there has been so much snow this year that there could be moisture problems with the cable outside at any of the connection points. I also notice that the box I'm plugged into, which is in my neighbor's back yard, looks to have been tampered with as the cable is sort of strewn about and the plastic cover is just sitting on top without being snapped in. | |
| |
See 8 replies to this post | |
Dingleberry
join:2001-04-29
532xx
·RoadRunner Cable
| Hi,
I'm jumping back in with a suggestion that I don't think I've yet posted in this thread, but think I may have posted in another...
One other thing people may try when they're having problems is to vary the size of the icmp/ping pkts... I was having a VERY odd problem last fall that TWC would not acknowledge even existed, but I was able to show that something outside of my house was indeed wrong when I started twiddling with the ping sizes...
I wrote a little script that would some number of times (if you're bored, do something like 100 pings) ping an address with packets of increasing size (increasing by 50 bytes) up to 1500; this gave data that showed a correlation between packet size and probability of failure when pinging the default router supplied by dhcp server. I could ping the modem's interface all day with no problems. When I tried pinging the default route, the probability of failure increased with packet size. The probability of failure stayed the same trying to ping the default route, anything on TWC's network, or anything else on the internet.
My problem turned out to be that someone had supposedly attached some bad equipment to the node I was on; but it would occur sporadically? | |
|
Abilor
@rr.com
| I'm pretty vexed in Albany, NY with "turbo" premium. My usenet speeds used to hum at 14 Mbps, and over the past week, I get slowdowns. It always starts at 13.9 or so, and then dips slowly to 10, then 8, and occasionally zero. There are "burps", where I lose internet but maintain LAN; reading here I'm guessing now that the modem is resetting.
I changed my modem, router, and wireless adapter since I was blaming the equipment, but the problem persists. I'm encrypting my usenet traffic, which helped thwart shaping previously, but now... New sheriff in town?
My speakeasy speed test is 1 Mbps, while I'm on usenet, jumps to 4, right after I close newsbin, and then I gain another 1Mbps a minute until I'm back up to 14. Whenever I boot cold in the morning, I'm always at 14...
FIOS where are you? | |
| |
funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC | Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? What you're describing isn't your ISP (directly). It's probably your modem.
Post some signal levels and logs -- particularly as its dipping "slowly to 10" | |
|
OLD MAN of FAITH
@rr.com
| For the past month, I have watched my uploading speed dwindle to a point where if I try using AOL mail, I lose connectivity to AOL and it automatically reboots to the Welcome Screen. I have Earthlink mail also and every one of my uploads get dropped. I can send text mail, but attachments NEVER MAKE THEIR DESTINATION. I tried using basic webmail for Earthlink, Yahoo, AOL, and GMAIL, all with identical results.
I had Time Warner to the house with two "techs" who replaced everything from the pole to the single splitter and still the same. Pinging various cities using SpeakEasy to measure up and down speeds gave perfect results. Yet when submitting larger files of around 6MB for upload, ALL MAIL delivery systems FAIL!
I do, or have done a lot of file transfers for extended periods of time and over time the upload speeds have dropped to .81Kb from around 50 to 89Kb. My download speeds are continuously variable, from 65Kb to 775kb.
I spoke to Time Warner at their Mid West Tech Support "Hub" and the rep told me there was a "massive email failure" throughout the city. He spoke of a "couple of complaints" from customers regarding the same thing. As we spoke the term increased to a few. When I pushed him, he said "massive". He said to wait as a "Major Team of Technicians" were trying to solve the problem and to try again in 24 hours. He spoke of identical complaints going back over a month.
Earthlink was no help at all. LIVE chat produced script readers with canned answers. This and Earthlink leases Time Warner's cable yet they too were "acting ignorant" or actually didn't have any idea as to what was/is going on.
Thoughts of trying to ask the media to investigate this phenomenon seems a likely next choice. Maybe camera and television exposure will bring some truth to light,and substance to many beliefs that some form of throttling IS GOING ON.
As I press begin to press the "Post Now" button, I wonder if this post will even make it to the forum. | |
| |
See 9 replies to this post | |
Dampier
Phillip M Dampier
join:2003-03-23
Rochester, NY
| I went through a bad period with what I could only assume to be throttling with Giganews and TW here in western NY back when the first admissions about traffic shaping were coming out of TW. Essentially downloads would begin quickly and then just as quickly slow down to a crawl.
I got around this by basically creating as many connections with Giganews as my account level would allow, and this got things at least close to normal speeds. I noticed as the brouhaha got loud, the throttling seemed to be either eased back or stopped, at least in my area. Now I can max out my connection during what is peak time for me - late afternoons. I am rarely on much during the early evening hours.
My occasional unresponsive connection seemed to correspond with doing a lot of high traffic (multiple downloads, torrents, etc.) But for me, I suspected my Linksys router to be the culprit because I could not reach it using the remote access menu. If I unplugged the router and plugged it back in again, I could restore service once renewing an IP address.
Seasonal signal problems can also present themselves, especially during spring when moisture seems to get into all sorts of equipment. I've had to have a drop replaced (and some rewiring done upstairs) because of signal levels which deteriorated during wet weather. Often, a connection on the pole itself can be the problem when freeze-thaw cycles coupled with moisture ingress can do in connectors. Signal ingress from other transmitters in high signal areas can really create issues. Often these will also be apparent on your cable television signal (for me worst noticeable with on demand programming taking forever to load or timing out with errors plus program guide updates not occurring regularly) as well.
If you are on good terms with a nearby neighbor, using them to help test theories about localized traffic shaping might be useful. I suspect most CSRs wouldn't be able to tell you the status of your account even if you did ask. | |
| |
Darth Meatloaf
@rr.com
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? Going back to the random modem reboot thing that was talked about on the last page...
I have a Linksys WRT54G connected to an AMBIT U10C018 modem. Until recently, I have had issues with random reboots - about once a day unless I wasplaying games. If playing games, about once an hour.
The problem stopped due to a recent change in my network setup, but I can't find an explanation for WHY...
The only change I made was to add a Linksys EG008W Gigabit Switch. Basically, the switch is now the only thing connected to the router. All of my computers and other devices are now connected to the switch.
Somehow after that I am getting no more reboots.
Can anyone offer any explanation as to why? | |
| | |
MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? said by Darth Meatloaf :
The only change I made was to add a Linksys EG008W Gigabit Switch. Basically, the switch is now the only thing connected to the router. All of my computers and other devices are now connected to the switch.
Somehow after that I am getting no more reboots.
Can anyone offer any explanation as to why?
How were things setup BEFORE the Gigabit Switch was installed? | |
| | | |
Darth Meatloaf
@rr.com
| Re: [TWC] Throttling in Milwaukee? Before the switch, the following items were connected directly to the router:
PC
PC
MAC
XBox360
Now the switch is the only thing connected to the router. All of the above items were disconnected from the router and are now connected to the switch. | |
| | | |
|
