Very poor DSL speeds

Pagan Wizard

Pagan Wizard

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 12, 2002
Messages
2,634
As the thread header says.....I have very poor DSL speeds. I am downloading at a blazing 20KBps. I called SBC to see if they would send me a new modem thinking that that was the problem.....well, they do a quick "line test" and say that I should be getting speeds of 196.8KBps. Then they tell me that they can send someone out to inspect my phone lines in the house (which are all new BTW) and they want to charge me to do this....I say NO FREAKIN WAY........you will not bill me for anything. I ask if they can send me a new modem and they say "no, as long as you can access the internet, we will not send out a new modem". any suggestions?????????????
 
first off do you still have youre case number. if so call them back, and immeadiatly ask to talk to a teir three tech, tell them you have talked to teir one and they couldnt help but demand to talk ot teir three. theyll put you on with one. then explain to the guy that you are getting bad dl speeds, dont ask for a new modem because there are any number of things outsid the modem that could be causing the problem. if the line test is good hell probably have to send a tech out to test, if it happens to be the house wiring that is the problem then you are responsible for the price of repairs, or you can dothe repairs yourself.

but before you call them back try this, find the phone company service box on the outside of your house, open the customer access panel on the bottom. inside is a phine plug that is plugged in. unplug it and plug your dsl modem in there. if you still get bad speeds you can be pretty sure its not the house wiring.
 
If you only have a few months left, you shoudl just order Comcast for $20/month for the first three months, that'll get you about half way till the end of your DSL contract... I get 3.0 Mbps down and 256kbps up. Over twice as fast as my DSL line and Half the price :D
 
Originally posted by SB22
If you only have a few months left, you shoudl just order Comcast for $20/month for the first three months, that'll get you about half way till the end of your DSL contract... I get 3.0 Mbps down and 256kbps up. Over twice as fast as my DSL line and Half the price :D
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Unfortunately not everyone can get Comcast, like myself, I am stuck with Charter or DSL. I chose DSL because Charter offers terrible service (at least that has been my experience)...
 
I'm on DSL and it's perfectly fine here, theres no "cable is faster" or anything, because it all depends on where you are, sometimes cable is great, sometimes it's crap especially when it's peak hours and not properly maintained or setup.

Personally, i'm loving 4mbit DSL, no slowdowns, no peak slow downs, nothing.

You say you were only getting 20kb/s? Is that from one or many different sites? It's quite possible the site your getting it from is slow or loaded. If not, check for anything uploading through your connection, the contention ratio could be killing you if something is sending out a large amount of data. Don't be fooled by this, i've had clients come in with virus' that keep sending out data as fast as they can, and it was all junk but never theless it still killed their internet speed.

Good luck.
 
Originally posted by Pagan Wizard
As the thread header says.....I have very poor DSL speeds. I am downloading at a blazing 20KBps. I called SBC to see if they would send me a new modem thinking that that was the problem.....well, they do a quick "line test" and say that I should be getting speeds of 196.8KBps. Then they tell me that they can send someone out to inspect my phone lines in the house (which are all new BTW) and they want to charge me to do this....I say NO FREAKIN WAY........you will not bill me for anything. I ask if they can send me a new modem and they say "no, as long as you can access the internet, we will not send out a new modem". any suggestions?????????????
Click to expand...

20KBps is 160kbps, which is close to what they say you should be getting.
 
i hate dsl, one thing about dsl that is better than cable is that you can get a much more powerfull dsl line for more money, but your just looking for residential, call comcast and have them come out to your house, they usually do it for free, and have them test your line for a digital signal, if you have the signal tell them to give you the service, cable is much better, i've had both ADSL and broadband cable, i love my cable, my speed is about 500KB/s down
 
Originally posted by Pagan Wizard
As the thread header says.....I have very poor DSL speeds. I am downloading at a blazing 20KBps. I called SBC to see if they would send me a new modem thinking that that was the problem.....well, they do a quick "line test" and say that I should be getting speeds of 196.8KBps. Then they tell me that they can send someone out to inspect my phone lines in the house (which are all new BTW) and they want to charge me to do this....I say NO FREAKIN WAY........you will not bill me for anything. I ask if they can send me a new modem and they say "no, as long as you can access the internet, we will not send out a new modem". any suggestions?????????????
Click to expand...

Call them back (same ticket) and ask what they have your line speed setup for.
 
Originally posted by skritch
20KBps is 160kbps, which is close to what they say you should be getting.
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Over 3 hours to DL a 239MB Battlefield 1942 DC upgrade from fileplanet (as a registered user) is waaaayyyyy below what l should be getting.


Edit.........I will be checking my modem after plugging it into the box outside of the house over the weekend.
 
Originally posted by USMC2Hard4U
DSL sucks compared to cable....
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Shut up, no one asked you for your comments. My business grade DSL is better than any cable service, trust me.
I have had one of my cable connections get as slow or slower than my home 56K dial-up. Cable's one major flaw is that it is a shared technology, the more people in your area online, the slower it is. Cable speeds are never guaranteed, DSL generally offers a more stable connection.

A quote from insightbb.com
"Since Insight Broadband High-Speed Internet has download speeds up to 50 times faster than 56k dial-up and up to twice as fast as 640k DSL, you can surf, shop and download files in seconds.**

**Speed comparison based on downloads only. Actual speeds may vary and are not guaranteed. Many factors, including traffic on a particular website, may affect download speeds."

Originally posted by SB22
If you only have a few months left, you shoudl just order Comcast for $20/month for the first three months, that'll get you about half way till the end of your DSL contract... I get 3.0 Mbps down and 256kbps up. Over twice as fast as my DSL line and Half the price
Click to expand...

Good for you, we are happy for you. Now how do you know that Comcast is in the original poster's location? Do you know something that we don’t, like what city and what area of said city the guy’s house is located in? I didn’t thank so.


Originally posted by skritch
20KBps is 160kbps, which is close to what they say you should be getting.
Click to expand...

Correct, right on the money. With DSL you pay for bandwidth, if you want more you gota pay for it. As already asked do you know how much bandwidth you are paying for? Call and find out. If you are running bandwidth speed test pages and they are returning "196.8KBps", then they mean 196.8 kbps or kilo bits per second, not Kilo Bytes per second, which would be your download speed. As skritch says 20KBps is 160kbps, so check with SBC about your package. A quick look at SBC's current residential DSL packages reviles that most of the basic package is 384 kbps for $39.99 and 768 kbps for $59.99 a month, so don’t expect anything higher than that, depending on your bill.

Originally posted by Pagan Wizard
Over 3 hours to DL a 239MB Battlefield 1942 DC upgrade from fileplanet (as a registered user) is waaaayyyyy below what l should be getting.
Click to expand...

Not really. Again call SBC and verify how much bandwidth you are allotted in your contract. If it's 256 kbps, which is what I suspect, then it's not that far off. I would say it's a little past the acceptable low side though. I have a business grade DSL line for my web server and it's rated at 384 kbps sync, generally I test around 350 kbps and my upload and download speed is about 35 KBps, which I am happy with. O and the monthy fee for 384 kbps is over $200, big difference over residential service.
 
Originally posted by Pagan Wizard
Over 3 hours to DL a 239MB Battlefield 1942 DC upgrade from fileplanet (as a registered user) is waaaayyyyy below what l should be getting.


Edit.........I will be checking my modem after plugging it into the box outside of the house over the weekend.
Click to expand...

239MB=1912Mb=1957888kb.

Over three hours, that's 652629.3kb/hour, 10877.15kb/minute, 181.2859kbps.

Almost exactly what they said you should be getting.

Ain't math fun?
 
Originally posted by Veonik
196.8KBps

Doesn't a capital 'B' mean "byte" not "bit"?
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Yes, it does, and he was almost certainly mistaken in using it, as 198.8kBps is 1590.4kbps, which is higher than the fastest typical DSL speed offered.
 
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