O Canada! > Canadian > Shaw > Has Shaw become too Asymmetrical and is now falling behind

Has Shaw become too Asymmetrical and is now falling behind

I've all but given up on seeing my 10 Mbps upload speed on BB100 here in Victoria (View Royal). Although Shaw never made a formal announcement of the service date, the DNU was done long ago (at least 6-7 months). What is the delay?

It's a shame because 100 Mbps down deserves better upload for what is essentially a premium service. 5 Mbps is laughable. My cloud backups are painfully slow, Slingbox streaming impacts the network for others in the house, and so on.

Business 50 is 5 mbps upload, which is why I like it and recomend it to almost everywhere I consult to.

Business 100, has 5 mbps upload as well, for $150/month more, I would really like to see it increased to at least 10 mbps, expecially for the price increase.

Business 250 has the 15 mbps upload, but it is $350/month - $250/month more than the 50 mbps servce.

Residental 250 has 15 mbps, but in my opinion, the upload should be at least 10% or better of the download.

The 4x4 and 8x4 modems are definately capable (and if the 4x4 modems can offer 50 and 100 mbps download without too many issues) it shouldn't be an issue to really crank up the upload to 50 mbps or so on the big packages.
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Yes, I am not employed and looking for IT work. Have passport, will travel.

reply to Link Logger
The problem is upload bandwidth on cable is about 1/20th what the download is - for the most part, the upstream occupies channels between 0-54MHz, while downloads can occupy that all the way up to 1GHz. Now, a lot of it is used for stuff like TV and phone service, so it's not quite a 1:20 ratio.

The big problem is someone doing huge uploads slows everyone else on a node down because the TCP ACK packets don't go back to the server in a timely fashion, so latency and apparent speed go down tremendously. It's why Shaw had to do upload management (using the Ellacoya boxes to throttle Bittorrent uploads).

Now, DOCSIS 3 gives you more capacity for a given bandwidth but you're still limited to everyone in a node. Give people a 50Mbps upload and just a few people uploading at full rate will basically take down a node. Heck, I'm sure it'll happen at 10Mbps. Of course, the first thing to go would be Shaw's unlimited bandwidth plans because the only way to get them is at the higher speeds and uploads.

Of course, not too many people upload tons yet - I still bet a huge consumer of upload bandwidth is still stuff like Bittorrent - while most people actually consume downloads with stuff like Netflix, CinemaNow, YouTube and other download services. FaceTime and the like are still small time consumers.

The DPC3825 when I looked was 0-108MHz (where the FM stations went).

4x4 is 160 mbps down 160 mbps up, if 50 mbps is ok to offer downstream, the tech is also there to offer it up. Same thing happens with a couple people in the neighborhood maxing the 100 or 250 mbps downstream.

I think the bigger issue is transit costs for the upload.
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Yes, I am not employed and looking for IT work. Have passport, will travel.

reply to Link Logger
While I understand there might be technical reasons, or maybe a better word would be 'excuses', they don't really matter as consumers will go to companies who offer solutions. As we move towards 'cloud' based computing, upload speeds will become something consumers will want and as it stands now Shaw's solution isn't going to win or hold customers. I trust Shaw is looking for ways to improve this, and I look forward to their improved upload speeds in the near future, otherwise I might have to look elsewhere for a solution for my evolving internet needs.

Blake
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Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool

The problem is that there are no companies offering solutions to consumers for this, I am sure once there are, Shaw will speed it up
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Yes, I am not employed and looking for IT work. Have passport, will travel.

reply to Link Logger
Yeah, Shaw's not really threatened by that. They were at first with Novus (so much they were offering Novux customers $30 for internet/phone/tv).

Multi-user suites aren't exactly Shaw's core base - they know that companies like Novus can never cost-effectively serve neighbourhoods - hell, the only way to get fiber to the house is to have it as part of a new installation (I have fiber, but it's through Telus - you'd think they'd offer like 100/100, but no).

And cloud-services are barely on the radar - Shaw knows those things are rarely time sensitive - most users use Dropbox or something, dumping a few gigs of files? Most users don't care that it takes all night.

Hell, facetime? That thing's gotta work over 3G, whose bandwidth is even more restricted (in more ways than one). And heck, most cloud services have little upload, lots of download - iCloud, Dropbox, etc - you upload once, and download multiple times.

If you're on this forum, there's maybe what, 1000 Shaw users out of millions? As long as the 90% of Shaw users are happy with the speeds, that's all they care about. The bandwidth hogs (torrenters, etc)? They'd rather get rid of you - pawn you off to Telus or someone else. Leaves their nodes less congested so they can avoid splitting a node.

And Shaw's not going to update anytime soon - they know they're among the best in Canada (Rogers? Bell? Shaw outclasses them in speed, quota, etc. The only "competition" is Telus, and everyone laughs if you switch from Shaw to Telus. About the only way to go is Teksavvy. And they're small enough to not be a worry - at least not to the extent that Bell and Rogers had to cripple their service.)

Edit: Yes, the gear can go to 108MHz. Doesn't mean Shaw is using it, in fact, they probably aren't because that obliterates the lower analog channels (which is why uploads went from 0-54MHz - it went below channel 2 and none of the amplifiers or other distribution equipment needs to be modified - you just stick on an reverse amp and you're good to go. Expanding it to 108 means Shaw needs to add filters to the intput and output of every distribution amp so they don't try to amplify the 54-108MHz span "backwards" (the output filter is to prevent amp harmonics from corrupting the upstream), and either replace or add upstream amplifiers. Plus go and screw everyone over because now they need to move channels 2-10 somewhere else, or basically redo the entire channel map).

88-108MHz is where the FM stations were, but they have taken those away already, they stopped offering the FM stations, I can only hope, they are using the frequencies for something else

Channels 2-6 are 54-88MHz yes.
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Yes, I am not employed and looking for IT work. Have passport, will travel.

reply to Link Logger
I Hit 250/15 easy on my BB250 connection. No reason they can't offer better uploads for the lower tiers.

Issue is no one else for example Telus can offer any thing near the speeds Shaw can to even X%(we all know) of their customer base.

TELUS can offer high upload speeds. Look at Internet 50. Let's wait and see whats in the future.

reply to Link Logger
I don't pay anything near $200 for 250mbps, LOL!!

I'm sure Telus will up their speeds when they start enforcing caps!!

reply to Link Logger
Shaw's uploading sucks! They should match it or at least make it half of the download speed. At least then their expensive internet prices would look good. If the uploading was right.

reply to Link Logger
Blow's my mind that someone could say that Shaw is falling behind on speeds when the only "competitor" just finally released a 50x10 tier and isn't even pushed to their entire foot print. Shaw has had 50x5 to their entire foot print for quite a while at this point. Just finalizing the upgrades for 250x15. Even If you only get 100Mb out of that, the 15Mb upload would be huge. Node saturation can happen just as much as line issues with VDSL2, here to tell you. Distance is a huge factor for VDSL2, as well. At the end of the day, get what you want and if it doesn't work, switch. I love my Shaw biz well more than Telus biz side.

Shaw isn't the industry leader it used to be and maybe Shaw's unbelievably bad competitors have something to do with that, but it doesn't change the fact that Shaw's upload speeds need to improve to keep up with the direction that technology is going. If cloud computing really is the future, then upload speeds are going to be a big component of that as now you are not just bring data down, but you have to send it back up as well and that will become an issue for Shaw customers (my Son in-Law has a cheaper plan in the US with a 3x faster upload speed then my Shaw service) and if Telus could get a clue they could use that to get back some market share (however Telus hasn't had a clue since Alexander Graham Bell moved to Canada).

Blake
For years when video conferencing with others, when problems arose I could wave them off with a 'your network connection sucks', but now they laugh and tell me its my network connection that sucks. Shaw ain't driving like they use to.
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Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool

reply to Link Logger
Regardless of whether upload speeds need to be bumped up, that's a North America wide issue, not directly related a single ISP. If you want to single Shaw out, they are well beyond the so called "competitors".

If you want to complain about the lack of upload speed across North America, try the Canadian Broadband forum. The issue is far from a single provider. Shaw is actually doing quite well compared to the general speed.

reply to Link Logger
This is nothing new to me, I have hear of this happening from time to time I remember the racing cars ads on shaw and miss that sort of funny russian commercial. Which is faster shaw or karneval? I think both connections are indistinguiseable and perhaps the secret success of shaw.

This can't all be about bandwidth though. Look towards Telus I had a arguement just the other day but I know there is nothing they can do its a bad setup from the beggining. The packaging is all wrong on the 6 meg , lite packages and " Highspeed " the packages seem to change the faces but never exceed 30-40% of the overall promised bandwidth.

When your right your right and if slow is the way to go I agree to a point but when your unethical business is stealing 60% from the customer the eithics is out the window. Even talking to the CEO , The directors , or someone at corporate will just reveal multiple levels of fraud. Overal dsl is hopeless but forcing someone into a choice because " There are no alternatives " is a pathetic way to get business.

Or harrasing someone daily by rotating there ip until they pay extra just so they can play there games online properly with game servers. Its all a game we seem to play but no matter how you slice it your paying for something that doesn't exist. Whether its a business package they can't deliver, a connection they can't install the ethical business model is gone.

You will find that scalable 3x figure model available but I think the updates on line speed is always the same little boy in there mommas basement.

With internet its difficult with other countries are involved and perhaps we are all guilty of hiding behind a language barrier when things go bad. Perhaps we even lose control of the ecential canadian component that needs to exist to remain legal and customer service becomes more like fraternizing with the enemy than a true connection.

Whether your internet is in Syria or Canada you would think you could expect to get a adult in customer service. It just starts looking silly when you have to make yourself look ridiculously uninformed or incapable of doing something when its just cost prohibiting you from delivering what you are legally entiteled too.

Dont take my reality of looking at 90% of speedtests from telus that demonstrate no one getting over 3 megs a second, coincidence? Bonded dsl different from regular ADSL? No NO its hpna... or PPOE or the DSLAM is overloaded.

IF coporate had to do there own collections for fraud and do customer service you would think things change. But since last I checked in 2008 there still wrong still incapable of reality and believing something that doesn't exist and I had to pay 3x for which never happened. But who cares right what do I know.

Sometimes I wonder if talking on here is useless and you all seem to hate the customer equally and will say or do anything for a dollar and couldn't care less whether its a human being or anyone that doesn't work at there ISP.

reply to rustydusty