Anyone on Roadrunner in raleigh(specifically near campus). I am interested what your speeds are like.

I've done just about every bandwidth test and my connection is pretty much sucking.
My upload speeds have actually been faster than my download speeds at times.

No doubt my connection is slow. But it runs far better at non peak times. Which makes me feel like this may not be just me.

Im getting something like 500 down/300 up. oh...+ packetloss and really bad pings.

8/20/2008 10:00:37 PM

check your signal levels

http://192.168.100.1/signal.html

8/20/2008 10:14:53 PM

Got it..posting info in a sec

Obv I am going to google and see if I can figure out what this means, but:
Downstream Value
Frequency 609000000 Hz
Signal To Noise Ratio 41.0 dB
Power Level 2.5 dBmV
The Downstream Power Level reading is a snapshot taken at the time this page was requested. Please Reload/Refresh this Page for a new reading

Upstream Value
Channel ID 2
Frequency 33008000 Hz
Power 47.5 dBmV

[Edited on August 20, 2008 at 10:30 PM. Reason : problem solved]

8/20/2008 10:23:06 PM

mine starts out at 1.75MB/sec then levels out to bout 1.2MB/sec.

8/20/2008 10:40:23 PM

what was the problem?

your downstream snr is on the low end of normal, but that shouldn't be causing the slowdown you're describing...

8/21/2008 1:35:15 AM

I have lots of fun problems with my TWC roadrunner. It started after they announced that "speed increase". Since then I can't play games online any more without problems and the shit will randomly drop to about 3mbps. The signal we have isn't great to begin with, but this still kind of sucks.

Checking it on speedtest.net, I'm getting 6822 kbps down and 365 kbps up, which is how it should be. During peak hours (read: whenever I'm using the computer around nighttime) it tends to run fairly slow and can be downright shitty sometimes.

Try doing that test in the morning sometime on non-peak hours to see just how shit it is.

[Edited on August 21, 2008 at 6:22 AM. Reason : Your problem seems more serious than just network congestion though. Bug TWC about it.]

8/21/2008 6:18:33 AM

I get almost the exact same numbers in the morning(as you, 6800/300).

I don't really give a shit if its peak hours or not...
I should be getting better than 500 down on a test.
Plus I was getting 15%+ packetloss last night and super high pings.

Which makes anything other than browsing websites completely impossible.

[Edited on August 21, 2008 at 8:02 AM. Reason : mis-spoke]

8/21/2008 7:57:42 AM

Yeah, that's probably just congestion then. Bitch hardcore at TWC and tell them to fix the snag, then realize you'll probably have to switch to some other service if you don't want it to drop off so hardcore at the end of the day.

I doubt there's a fix for it, but if you bitch at TWC and tell them how bad it's getting, and all their customers bitch, they might be slightly inclined to fix the bottleneck. Of course, they may also tell you to get fucked and continue pissing on their customers as they are now. Who knows... I tried bitching and haven't gotten a proper response yet, so I'm probably going to bitch some more.

8/21/2008 10:51:12 AM

I never had this problem at all last year(I wasn't here all summer).

I got a new modem and can't believe their service has gone down this much.
I don't ever remember having ANY packetloss on TWC roadrunner before.
Nows its a ridiculous amount almost every night.

8/21/2008 11:03:33 AM

Not sure about Raleigh, but up here in maine RR just upped everyones cap to 8mbits. I wonder if they did it to you guys too, but they just cant handle the extra traffic.

8/21/2008 11:07:36 AM

^ they upped ours to 7, i think

8/21/2008 11:12:01 AM

^^ I think that's the problem.

I never had trouble like this before they upped the bandwidth. It has been a major difference in network quality and stability since they have done so. I'd rather they set it back to how it was than wait for them to try and improve their infrastructure so it'll handle everything.

I'm wondering if this isn't a tactic to try to offset the advances of verizon's FIOS service, which is a hell of a lot faster than roadrunner. I just don't think they planned it so their network would withstand a 40% increase in network traffic so now everything is just shit.

8/21/2008 11:17:54 AM

Verizon bailed out of maine so no fios for us. The new phone company, fairpoint, only offers DSL. Most people are pretty satisfied with their RR up here because it never has problems. I think they upped our cap because 1. it makes people even less likely to think about switching and 2. they have more than enough capacity to handle it.

8/21/2008 11:21:18 AM

Oh the irony. They try to compete with Fios...make my connection shitty by doing so and now I want to switch to fios.

All of this when fios isn't even offered in the area!

8/21/2008 1:14:20 PM

i'm switching to fios once raleigh legislation makes it possible

8/21/2008 1:49:35 PM

I'm wondering if there hasn't already been some sort of approval for it since TWC upped speeds everywhere and is trying to get all their customers in NC to sign up for that 2 year contract with digital phone, internet, and cable for $120/mo. I believe it has an ETF, too, so they don't want you leaving early either. Here's to hoping there's some change in the works.

8/21/2008 2:17:15 PM

yep, twc has been throttling the connections for 2-3 months now...

as for that FIOS comment, your wishing for a lot there, considering Verizon is not a provider in Raleigh, and they will not lay fiber just so 10% of the consumers will switch. the demand doesn't justify the cost of the initial investment they would have

enjoy your speeds to be randomly throttled for years to come, not to mention the PAY PER USE plans that they are about to shove down our throats!!!!!

say good bye to newsgroups and all those 4GB movies at 900KBps

8/21/2008 5:03:51 PM

Quote :

"and they will not lay fiber just so 10% of the consumers will switch."

i'm sure quite a few more than 10% of TWC's subscriber base would switch to fios if it were offered

8/21/2008 5:57:13 PM

6813/368 on the dc server for speedtest, 18ms ping

8/21/2008 6:15:57 PM

Weeeeeeeee.
I'm back at 400/300 again.

Maybe I have a problem here, but it seems convenient I get 6000/500 earlier in the day and connection goes to shit when their network is under load.

I would have called and had something done already. But I really don't feel like dealing with their shit.
The damn modem was just installed last week and it had this problem as soon as it was installed.

Why don't they take the 15 seconds to check to see if the connection is running as its supposed to when they install it.

This has nothing to do with my connection being throttled. I am having trouble even using firefox, much less playing PC games or anything even slightly demanding.

[Edited on August 21, 2008 at 6:57 PM. Reason : /]

8/21/2008 6:54:54 PM

^ yes, you will be experiencing "traffic-shaping" or Packet-Shaping, how ever you want to see it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_shaping

TWC and COMCAST are the big players that have implemented this technology to slow us all down. Like right now at 10pm, on my 7Mbps line, im getting 290KBps at the most, and it will fluctuate a little, but until morning or real late at night it will be 1/3 or what I pay for.

enjoy, and welcome to TWC!

8/21/2008 10:18:45 PM

^^ Some of the techs are incredibly lazy. I was having tons of issues with mine because each time they installed someone's cable in the appartments here they just kept daisy-chaining another splitter out in the box on the wall of our building (lucky me, mine was at the end of the chain.) After I'd been here for a year my connection went from decently reliable and 8 mbps or so to a week where I was getting 50% packet loss and speeds close to dial-up. Despite having months of reduced service quality and a week of nearly useless service, they refused to credit my bill. This was in spite of the admission of the tech that fixed it that it had been their fault entirely and that the laziness was inexcusable.

Compared to how companies like Netflix handle lost service, TWC is a bunch of sadists.

Quote :

"I never had trouble like this before they upped the bandwidth. It has been a major difference in network quality and stability since they have done so. I'd rather they set it back to how it was than wait for them to try and improve their infrastructure so it'll handle everything."

It might have more to do with their "PowerBoost" bullshit they implemented. It's a very brief bump to 16mbps for the first second or two of a download. Maybe they didn't implement it intelligently and it's fucking everything in the ass just a little.

[Edited on August 22, 2008 at 11:20 AM. Reason : ]

8/22/2008 11:13:37 AM

[Edited on August 22, 2008 at 11:20 AM. Reason : double post]

8/22/2008 11:20:17 AM

Quote :

"TWC and COMCAST are the big players that have implemented this technology to slow us all down. Like right now at 10pm, on my 7Mbps line, im getting 290KBps at the most, and it will fluctuate a little, but until morning or real late at night it will be 1/3 or what I pay for."

I'm surprized at this. Maybe it all depends where you live and what the local traffic is like. I can download from newsgroups at 1.2MB/sec (10Mbps turbo) 24/7 365. It's never once dropped below this. It's like it's a dedicated line.

8/23/2008 1:06:46 AM

We moved into a house from an apartment in RTP...We had roadrunner at both, but once we moved the connection really blew and we had roadrunner turbo and kept getting disconnected. Not only did that keep happening, but our digital cable box kept going out as well...

Needless to say, we dropped time warner and switched to Embarq DSL and Direct TV...Not only is it cheaper, but I think my internet speed is 19ms?...

8/23/2008 1:50:01 AM

^^ It is highly dependent on local traffic. If you live in an apartment complex with a large number of broadband users sharing the local copper then you're fucked. Also, if your technician installed your line like my original one did, you get extra-fucked during high traffic periods.

^Those cable boxes suck almost universally, but it's possible a shitty connection had something to do with it. While power surges over cable are uncommon, perhaps shitty wiring from TWC or excessive load on the local copper produced a corrupted or failed update to your box (or several)? That could explain both problems.

[Edited on August 23, 2008 at 9:02 AM. Reason : ]

8/23/2008 9:00:06 AM

^we do live in an apartment complex but i've never seen it drop below 10mbps from anything outside our line. I guess no one else uses internet in our apartment complex. I mean it doesn't even waver. Like i'll have a straight 1.17Mb/sec line all day.

8/23/2008 12:30:15 PM

^whoops MB. Come to think of it, i'm at my parents house in Charlotte, NC and they have RR regular but i'm still able to download at a constant 840-850kB/sec all day without any changes in bandwidth. So is this uncommon? I was always under the impression you get what you pay for with TWC, but i guess i've just been lucky.

8/23/2008 2:43:30 PM

^ If you're in an area where they have sufficient local capacity, then you do get your advertised speeds. A lot of times though the local capacity is insufficient for the number of users there. This is MOST common with apartment complexes since they're more densely populated, but it's not a hard and fast rule. It's just that there are some areas where they've got too many people on the local copper. It's a mix of bad planning and places that were once low demand sources turning into extremely high demand sources. Imagine an apartment complex near a university that went from having a poorer local population as tenants to mostly students. The built in capacity would almost certainly be lacking.

The solution is a combination of improved technology and TWC updating their infrastructure- both mean money. Unfortunately they have no huge incentive to do so until they're actually facing real ground-based competition for TV+Internet. In many areas satellite is just not a real option; perhaps this is why cable service at apartment complexes where trees prevented me form even considering satellite have always resulted in me being treated even shittier by TWC.

8/23/2008 7:12:19 PM

Quote :

"Those cable boxes suck almost universally, but it's possible a shitty connection had something to do with it. While power surges over cable are uncommon, perhaps shitty wiring from TWC or excessive load on the local copper produced a corrupted or failed update to your box (or several)? That could explain both problems."

Yeah, my husband said that it's the wiring outside in the neighborhood, because the Time Warner Cable wiring here is poorly put together in Wake Forest... Almost the entire town has cable wiring that is exposed to weather and twisted up on a pole instead of being protected...

8/23/2008 11:21:48 PM

Bumping this...
I had a tech here yesterday and another again today.
First guy did everything he could to inside my apartment and gave me a new modem, then put in a work order for something leading into my building.

That work order was just finished and my connection is shitty as normal. Last week or so speeds have been fine. Which would be great if I wasn't getting between 5%-40% packetloss around the clock for a week straight.

Anyone know of a utility online where I can get better info than tracert?
I am 100% I am not the only person affected by this and would be surprised if its only in my building.

Right now when i ping google my pings range from 40ms to 1400ms and have ~%10 loss.

Which is super standard right?

9/9/2008 11:12:36 AM

http://www.dslreports.com has a line quality test you can use for free if you create an account (and they don't spam you or anything, I have one there).

I've had more problems today with my connection dying. They're doing some "work" out there in the street. Our stuff is all slow as hell here, but I assume it's because the systems they put into these apartments 20 years ago weren't designed to deal with all these customers trying to run all this crap through their lines all at once. We get 20-40% of the speed we're paying for through this congested mess most of the time (3mbps is the norm, with that wildly fluctuating and sometimes plummeting to 0.8-1.4 mbps).

9/9/2008 11:36:50 AM

Instead of increasing the download speeds, they need to bump the upload. 512 Kb/s would be a nice start.

9/9/2008 12:22:11 PM

The only thing that might make sense is if your connections are crap anyway, might as well switch to RoadRunner Lite or RoadRunner 874. The speed might be the same but at half or less the price.

9/9/2008 12:22:22 PM

I can deal with not getting advertised speeds.
However, 10-20% packetloss with high pings makes it hard to play PC games(or do much of anything more than browse the web).

Ironically my speeds seem fine.

9/9/2008 1:19:20 PM