AT&T customer service - discuss please!

[auxilary]

cliff notes: my upstream drops down to a crawl periodically, I get 0.9 kbytes/sec (or 7.2 kbps out of possible 256, according to the tech). I am chatting with tier 3 support, and he tells me that it's completely normal, and they guarantee speeds UP TO 256 (max i have EVER seen was half that). He finishes up basically telling me I don't have a problem.

 

Here's a sample upload (this one dropped to 3kbytes/sec, or 27 kbps)

 

this is their TIER 3 (highest level, supposedly smartest network techs) support guy.

 

wt-Greg P has joined this session!

wt-Greg P says, Hello and thank you for contacting AT&T Broadband Technical Support, My name is Greg.

wt-Greg P says, Can you please give me a minute to read your previous chat?

You say, sure

wt-Greg P says, Hello Alex, give me a minute to open your account.

You say, sure

wt-Greg P says, I understand you are having slow upload speeds?

You say, yeah

You say, periodically the upload rate drops to almost nothing

wt-Greg P says, And this has been going on for three weeks now?

You say, about that

You say, you can check the log prior to this chat, and there's more info included

there

wt-Greg P says, Ok, give eview that chat.

You say, suire

wt-Greg P says, Did you have a tech come out to test the lines?

You say, yes i have

You say, twice, actually

wt-Greg P says, Are you using a firewall or router?

You say, no

wt-Greg P says, Is the slow upload all the time or just certain times of day?

You say, i notice it in the evenings

You say, the tech was here testing lines a while back on another issue - my cable modem would desync from the server periodically

You say, that hasn't happened lately, but he checked hte lines while he was here last time

wt-Greg P says, Give me a minute to test your connection, while I do that can you ping your gateway and www.yahoo.com for me?

You say, sure

You say, Reply from 66.218.71.198: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=242

You say, Reply from 66.218.71.198: bytes=32 time=141ms TTL=242

You say, Reply from 66.218.71.198: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=242

You say, that's to yahoo

You say, gateway replies are between 40 and 80

wt-Greg P says, Ok.

wt-Greg P says, One moment please.

wt-Greg P says, Ok, I am getting good pings to your modem "round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 63/64/65" but the pings to your computer are higher.I am getting

up to 250 ms to the computer.

wt-Greg P says, Have you tried changing your network cable?

wt-Greg P says, Or network card?

You say, yes

You say, it's a whole new system, actually

You say, and cable wouldn't matter for upstream downstream

wt-Greg P says, Are you using any kind of hub or switch?

You say, no

wt-Greg P says, When was the last time you powered cycled your modem?

You say, a few days ago when it was having similar issues

wt-Greg P says, You have the RCA DMC 245 cable modem correct?

You say, yeah

wt-Greg P says, Have you tried using the reset switch on the back of the modem?

You say, yup

wt-Greg P says, Do you have any splitters on the same coax line as the cable modem?

You say, yes

wt-Greg P says, Have you tried with these removed?

You say, 3 way splitter, line was tested and seemed fine

You say, no, i haven't

You say, but i need that splitter

wt-Greg P says, Right are no issues in your area, and I can not see an issue with your internet connection.

You say, well, just a sec

You say, let me go to dslreports and do a speed test

wt-Greg P says, We can not go by DSL reports, many people use this and it may not be reliable.

You say, ok, when i am uploading files to my site, my upload speed starts at 16kbps (normal) and drops down to about .12 kbps (point 12)

You say, and either finishes or times out

wt-Greg P says, I'm sorry but I can not see an issue with your internet connection, and we do not Guaranteed Upstream Bandwidth.

You say, what's that mean?

You say, i can send email faster with a 56k modem right now than i can with my cable modem

wt-Greg P says, You will get a max upload of 256 Kbps, we do not guarantee the upload, you will get anything up to a max of 256 Kbps.

You say, you mean, 128kbps

wt-Greg P says, No, 256.

wt-Greg P says, I am showing your max upload of 256 Kbps

You say, i have never uploaded anything faster than 16kbytes/sec, which is 128

kbps

wt-Greg P says, 128 is the old upload, they have changed it now to 256.

You say, well, i cannot upload faster than about 5kbps

You say, that's quite annoying

You say, if you ping my box, what replies do you get?

wt-Greg P says, Your computer?

wt-Greg P says, round-trip min/avg/max/mdev = 78.988/85.366/103.453/9.118 ms

wt-Greg P says, This is to your computer.

wt-Greg P says, I was getting up to 25 ms before.

wt-Greg P says, Sorry 250 ms before.

You say, and 250ms is not weird fora cable modem?

You say, [smile]

wt-Greg P says, No, that is within our specs.

wt-Greg P says, Anything over 300 ms we suspect a slow speed issue.

You say, right now i am uploading a 220kb jpeg as a test

You say, started at 16kbps

You say, dropped down to 2

You say, and still dropping

wt-Greg P says, You will get a max upload of 256 Kbps, we do not guarantee the upload, you will get anything up to a max of 256 Kbps.

You say, now it's at 0.9 kbps

You say, so this is absolutely normal for 50/month? You say, that i get upstream connections worthy of a 14.4kbps modem?

wt-Greg P says, Upload and download speeds vary from site to site, time of day, amount of people online.

You say, site i am uploading to is a free t1. it's my domain host. it's not occupied

wt-Greg P says, You say you notice the slow upload speeds more in the night, this is when more people are online.

You say, i haven't moved, and have had a cable modem at this apt for 2 years. i doubt that within 3 weeks, everyone in my complex decided to get cable modems and use them at the same time

You say, and this happens occasionally during the day as well

wt-Greg P says, I'm sorry but I do not see an issue with your internet connection, at this time there is nothing else I can do for you.

You say, so i am stuck with this problem with lack of support, and you won't aknowledge the issue

wt-Greg P says, I can not see an issue with your cable connection.

You say, so what's your take on what I am telling you?

wt-Greg P says, Was there anything else I can help you with?

You say, apparently not, since you haven't helped me.

wt-Greg P says, Thank you for contacting AT&T Broadb

[pparaska]

Incredible. I'd drop that lame service pronto. I wonder if those "support" (or is that jock strap) people like that can actually sleep at night, after feeding you such a line of BS.

 

How about Dish Network, or something like that? Cable modem out of the question?

[spotfitz]

Being I've gone through this very same thing recently I must chime in.

I use to have the previously mentioned co. lets call them @home, and had great connections with them, when I had a connection. Then I moved and it wasn't available, but DSL was available through SWBell if using their phone service. Always had a connection, but wasn't near as fast as the cable with @home. Then I find that earthlink has DSL in my area and the station is only 12000ft from my house and they were promising speeds "up to" 1.5mb download and 256k upload. I had to sign a contract for a year to get the hardware, which I already had, and the software, which I didn't want or need, but faster speeds is what I wanted. Ordered it and was going to wait until the hardware showed up(3weeks later) until I cancelled my other service. 2 days after my order my other service is not working because my new service put in the change order. Now I had nothing. Once the hardware got in and I basically installed the software to get the setup info and I uninstalled it, I was up and running and 500k download with spikes to 600k(twice as good as the other service, but no where near 1.5mb). Upload, which was suppose to be capped at 256k I would spike at 400k, Great! But then a week later the service went down, which was a day after you could get out of the agreement without paying anything. After a week of calling with no service I finally get someone out and they get it fixed. Now it will "time out" for about 30 secs for no apparent reason, which makes it almost as bad as a dail up.I'm back to where I was with the other service as of speed and I'm locked in for a year of service with them because I had to open the package to get the software out, just for the settings, or I can pay for the hardware$175.

So, with all that I have said(apparently I also needed to vent), what can you get out of it. After talking with the tech that fixed the connection, all the companies are using the same routers at the same station, but thats where the problem is. Thats their way out. If you can find the companies that don't require an aggreement, then go for them, especially if you already have the hardware. Big company/Little company, it doesn't matter. Your phone lines in your area and how far you are from the station is the main factors on poor speeds and sometimes it's the phone companies poor lines that can screw everything up.

angry dsl/cable/dial up user;

Johnathan Sanders

A.K.A spotfitz

PS. The more people that get into these connections, the worse it is going to get! And don't go for the dish, you use dial up for your uploads!

[Oltmann]

"I'm sorry but I can not see an issue with your internet connection, and we do not Guaranteed Upstream Bandwidth."

 

but...

 

"You will get a max upload of 256 Kbps, we do not guarantee the upload, you will get anything up to a max of 256 Kbps."

 

So really they guarantee that the service will be at least this slow. Possibly much slower!

 

I suggest you get a job at the University of California like me. My only problem is finding servers that don't cap their internet connection.

[BLKMGK]

Couple of things... Sat 'net sucks for a few reasons. The first is that latency is about 500ms - speed of light dictates this. If you do anything "realtime" like play FPS games forget this - it will suck. 2nd, they cap you. I don't mean at a specific speed, they look at your bandwidth usage and slow you to a crawl if you DL anything big Say you want a Linux distro for instance - you'd likely get capped midway through.

 

I've got 144K DSL. DSL is still shared just like Cable but it's not shared the same way and I do NOT have the restrictions that cable does. 3 static IPs and they onmly asked that I not run an IRC server or a P0rn site. My WEB site is hosted in my home office The guy told me that other than those few things I could do ANYTHING I want with my bandwidth "it's mine". You will NEVER hear a cable company say that because they oversell the hell out of their service

 

Having said that - I'm considering cable in addition to my DSL. I can now finally get it and DL speeds SCREAM when it's working However I wish to keep my WEB server and mail so I'll probably pay for both of them (sigh). Watch the wireless market, it's going to start taking off and wireless 'net service would ROCK

[biohzrd]

i'm probly about to open myself up here for a real "fun" time but let me tell you a little something about what you've got. and the way i know this is b/c it's what i do for a living. i'm a network tech for cox communuicationc and i work with this stuff every day.

 

1st of all a ping time of 40 to 80 ms is not acceptable. your ping rates should average about 10 to 20ms steady. these times can be effected by a lot of things. by him asking you to bypass your splitter he was simply trying to get you as much signal as possible. 300ms is total bull$#!%.

 

what it may be is a simple issue of an elevated common path shelf, or noise which is what they have techs to fix. i noticed that you stated you live in an apt. if your apts are like most it was probly wired with the cheapest rg-59 wire. it is horrible for passing signal.

 

BUT more then likely its a problem with them. off the top of my head without being at you node, hub, system amp, ect.... it sounds like noise. all of the " backfed crap" such as elec back feed, ingress or egress will hamper in the return signal back to the hub feeding you. the other problem i think it maybe is the fact of sheer overload.

 

you see the way it's set up is you have multiple forward fibers and usually one return fiber from each hub. ("a hub is where the fiber from the head end goes to a common point closer to you and gets split into multiple fibers to get to the node that feeds you. a node is what converts light to rf signal). sorry about that. i thought a little clarification was in order. they can fix the overload problem by basically activating more reciever/transmitter cards. it sounds to me as if they are just being a--holes.what i would do is call the local office and demand that a technician comes out a checks the service. if the guy they send out can't fix it then tell him/her that you would like to have your node checked for common path and noise. that blow thier minds more than likely. i hope this helps

 

bio

[biohzrd]

another thing that may help. try going to

 

www.speedguide.net

 

and download a patch for your o.s.

what it does is "tweaks" your registry for max flow in both directions

[auxilary]

i have some good reasons for keeping the cable modem, which is the reason I can't readily drop hte service. otherwise they'd be gone in a heartbeat

[denny411]

I would look into a Dish as Pete suggested, Or see if DSL is available. The only time I ever get upload speeds that low, is when I`m downloading videos and multiple mp3`s at the same time.

I suspect that they have not upgraded their system to meet demand and that this is the line of Bull$h!t that are instructed to feed you(with a big fork).