[psmith2.0]

What gives?



We had a power outage about three days ago and everything had to be reset/restarted. It just "felt" like things were slower and less responsive...loading a webpage - even one as streamlined and clean as AppleNova - took noticeably longer. There is this slight catch/delay, it seems. It's still fast, but nothing like before when as soon as you hit return/enter, the site was loaded, in full. Now it waits a bit, and on an image-heavy site like CNN or Yahoo, a few things drop in, one at a time. Very strange.

I'm not griping, mind you. Just pointing out how it's different now, these past few days. I ran the test above just to see, and the numbers are half what they've been on my last several postings (on the download).

[Eugene]

Comcast's western region finally updated their speeds:

[Yontsey]

Geez guys. I was just going to come on here and mention that I just got upgraded to 30 down/5 up "Extreme" Speed from Time Warner but never mind, haha.

[psmith2.0]

Yikes, it's dropping more every day (the download)...something's definitely going on.

[SpecMode]

Looks like I'm seeing the same download boost as Eugene; I was on the 50Mbps tier. Upload speed hasn't changed, though...

[psmith2.0]

Dammit to hell, it's worse every few days!

[Eugene]

Have you called your ISP about this? It could be physical damage at a plant or something.

[psmith2.0]

Things seemed to be improving the past several days. Just ran it, and here are the latest numbers:



Much more like the speeds I've been enjoying prior to the past 1-2 weeks.

I'm in a rental situation where I don't control the ISP, or I'm not the name on the primary account. However, the homeowners are in Washington until mid-October so if it all goes to crap again, I'll contact them and ask them for any needed credentials so I can contact the local ISP myself, directly.

Oddly - and this seemed to coincide with the overall slowdown a week or two ago - AppleNova is the one site that "hangs" when loading...for a few noticeable seconds. Everything else - CNN, Apple, Fender, YouTube, various other forums and sites, etc. all snap into place pretty much instantly. But AN has a weird hiccup or lag before it'll load/display the forum homepage. Once I'm here, bouncing around from forums to threads works fine (as does posting and editing)...it's just that initial main page loading. Does that point to something specific? Anyone else experiencing this?

[PB PM]

I noticed similar behaviour on this site lastly as well.

[Eugene]

DB issues on the AppleNova server most likely.

[psmith2.0]

The one thing I forgot to add...this is only on my iMac. When accessing AN on my iPhone, it loads instantly.

[InactionMan]

Wildly inconsistent speeds from Rogers. This morning it was below 2Mb/s, this afternoon it was closer to 95Mb/s and now it's settled at 56. I've been exchanging pleasantries with them for the last week or so to sort why it's so unreliable.

[psmith2.0]

Things are like they used to be. Crazy...

[Eugene]

Looks like they decided to up the overprovisioning a little bit...

[psmith2.0]

My Mom had Comcast for years - and had really decent Internet speeds - but she got fed up with them on a couple of issues (performance, billing, reliability, etc.) and dropped them after years of being with them, and went with AT&T U-verse without asking me about any of it (or even delving into the numbers or about speeds with AT&T, etc.). It's pretty lousy.

I think they gave her the "Just a Piss-Hair Above Dial-Up™" on the Internet portion.

It gets around 16Mb/s download and about 1.5Mb/s upload. I was setting up her new Air yesterday and was wondering why some of the pending system updates from Apple (about 300MB total) were taking so long, so I ran Speedtest from both her Macs, a couple of times each.

I would've toughed it out with Comcast and made them act right, vs. just throwing up my hands and switching services without really looking into the specifics and numbers/details. Her Internet speed took quite a dip, going from Comcast cable model to AT&T DSL(?). They also supplied their own wifi router and I can't seem to keep her Time Capsule working reliably in tandem, and I don't know enough about networking to know what I can remove (they have two boxes they've hooked up, a large, tall one that appears to be TV, Internet and phone(?), and then a smaller one (with fewer lights) that might be the wireless router? I've thought about removing that smaller one from the chain to see what would happen. It used to be easy...the Comcast setup just featured a single box, and I came out of that to the Time Capsule and everything worked fine for years. Now Time Machine will just randomly throw up backup error messages or "can't connect to the Time Machine backup", etc.

[Bryson]

This thread prompted me to test my connection at my new house. I was impressed: 57mbps where I only pay for 25. ....and the I realised: my wi-fi was turned off and the 57 was coming over LTE. Crazy: my mobile connection is double the speed of my home connection.

[Wrao]

Supposedly I'm due for an upgrade along the lines of what Eugene just got. But the timeframe is undetermined other than my neighborhood is on the list and it should be before the end of the year. I did just upgrade my modem though so supposedly whenever it happens it'll basically just 'happen' and one day my internet will be 6x faster

[Wrao]

My update just came through. Now clocking in at ~210mbps down and 21mbps up. Downloading a game on Steam right now, says the 20 GB file will be available in about 15 minutes, it's peaked at 25MB/S

crazy.

[Wrao]

Gotta say, having very fast internet all of a sudden has been very anticlimactic. Don't get me wrong, it was neat to see something download at 25MB/S and all but day-to-day usage feels much the same as my old 30mbps connection and then stuff like, say this iOS 8 download because it's so popular is still downloading slow enough that it's basically no different.

A lot of people criticized TWC and others for being woefully behind the times when Google introduced Google Fiber, and I'm not about to defend TWC here but at the same time, I'm not convinced the average user would notice/care at all about having 100mbps+ internet let alone something approaching 1gbps. Not yet at least, the net just doesn't seem to be really 'ready for it overall.

Amazon video streaming has been a bit more reliable though

[psmith2.0]

I think that's just it...your typical user, downloading software updates or apps, probably wouldn't tell the difference or care. But as more folks get on the streaming entertainment (Netflix, etc.), they do notice less sputtering, buffering, lags, etc. and a better overall experience. My friends in KC just had their neighborhood set up for the Google Fiber thing, and they've currently got Time Warner but will be dropping it ASAP. They use Netflix, Hulu, etc.

This fiber stuff has spoiled me. Aside from that glitchy, slow-down period a month or so ago (still not sure what happened), it's amazing. I wait for nothing...so impressive!

I'm at the point where I'd take fast Internet over any TV or entertainment package, hands-down. I can do more with it, and as someone who only watches 2-3 shows on TV, I don't know what I'm missing anyway. I'd sit and watch an hour or so of YouTube stuff before I'd ever sit through stuff like Modern Family, Grey's Anatomy, Tim Allen's latest laugh-track fest and all the "competition reality" nonsense (weirdo, off-putting individuals acting like tough-talking, drama-queen a-holes for 30-60 minutes).

[murbot]

Originally Posted by murbot VOMIT. Of course this is at work, where years ago we couldn't get cable, so it's a satellite fuckaround. We pay $50 for 3 Mbps down and 1 up. My phone is about 10 times as fast.

Man, I finally get some decent high speed at work, and it's still embarrassing as hell compared to most here!



Oh well, it's lightning fast in comparison to what I had. Paying $60 for 25 down and 5 up, so I'm getting a little bonus.

Man I'm happy to toss this old shit ISP. The highest download speed I've seen in a week is 1.02 Mb/s, upload around 0.88.

[Wrao]

I can dig it.

[Ryan]

Every evening when the everyone starts watching Netflix.



Boulder is a tech mecca but somehow has terrible internet *everywhere*. Even at the office—which supposedly has a fiber line—I can barely stream video.

[psmith2.0]

Mine is all over the place these past few months. Down in the teens back in the early summer, then up to the 80's/90's, the 30's, etc. Here it is tonight, right now:



It's fast, can't complain at all. It's just not very consistent. In the course of a month, it'll go through some wild swings. I do notice that my upload speeds are always better than the download, since switching from Comcast to EPB fiber optic a few years ago. Which is fine with me, as I'm often sending or uploading some project files. So that works out okay for me.

I think this aging iMac (which certainly isn't running Yosemite and the new Safari as well as spiffy new Mac) is my biggest hit. I think the ISP numbers are there, but I think any slowdown/lag I experience is based around stuff on my end.

I'd love to bring my Mom's new, current-generation MacBook Air over here one day and run the test (or just use the thing in general, while surfing and stuff like that). I can't ask for, or expect, too much zingy snappiness (and top-notch performance on the latest OS) on a machine that was released/sold new in the last half of 2007, can I?

Not sure what the future holds for me, Mac-wise, at this point. So I'm reluctant to sink the money into something new right now until I figure several things out. Part of me is like "just spend $750 on a refurb, last-generation Air and at least have a somewhat-current Mac", but I just can't follow through for some reason.

[Ryan]

VICTORY!



I've been assuming for months that my lousy speeds (<6mbps download) were Comcast's fault. I just upgraded the firmware on my Linksys N600 and my wireless speeds jumped from 5-6mbps to 48!

[psmith2.0]

Awesome. It's really cool when something that simple (and free) is the cause of such a big improvement.

8x is nothing to sneeze at!

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Awesome. It's really cool when something that simple (and free) is the cause of such a big improvement. 8x is nothing to sneeze at!

Yeah, it's pretty sweet to get that sort of upgrade for free. Just wish I'd thought of this ten months ago!

I was digging through a drawer and found an old USB-Ethernet adapter I'd forgotten about. Out of curiosity, I plugged my MBA directly into my cable modem and ran a speed test, getting almost 60mbps download. That prompted me to do some research about my router and I found multiple forums talking about an old firmware update that fixed some issue with 802.11n connections. There was another set of posts talking about how this router enables a really crappy quality-of-service feature by default that does more harm than good.

[turtle]

I had a similar issue with my Linksys/Cisco Small Business router. Thing for mine was there was no fix with firmware. I ended up having to build my own router.

My test just now:

[kieran]

Originally Posted by kieran Moved from right outside of Philly to right outside of Boston. Got a nice little upgrade in speed with this one.

Moved again, this time into Boston proper, but switched from Verizon FiOS to Xfinity.

[beardedmacuser]

In deepest darkest Wales right now and missing my BT bandwidth at home; 70 Mbps down and 19 Mbps up last time I tested. Right now; 0.15 down and 0.48 up...