Cable Modems and ISP Badness...

inactionmaninactionman
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Before I call my ISP again and threaten to rip their heads off, I just wanted to ask a few questions. I'm currently using Rogers High Speed cable in Toronto, Canada. The service is sold as 1.5Mbs/256kbs but I've never had speeds above 150kbs/20kbs, is this normal/the average? I ask this becuase I've heard of other Roger's subscribers actually getting speeds close to their stated speeds(1Mbs/100kbs). Could anyone alse tell me what their speeds are on Cable compared to what the ISP states as maximum speeds? I've heard that your speed depends on the Cable modem supplied to you and unless you were given a DOCSIS modem, you have no hope in hell of getting the speed stated. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could relate their experience with cable access and if anyone in Canada has used Rogers/Shaw/Cogeco, what kind of speeds they got.



Much thanks in advance.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    tulkastulkas Posts: 3,757member
    I am using Rogers in the K/W area. Speed varies a lot through out the day. I have, when doing many mp3 downloads simutaneously, clocked the total at about 1.3Mb/s. Rating speeds using one download from a single site won't give any indication of your current bandwidth. Try starting a bunch of downloads from multiple sites and see when sort of speeds you get. I have used 2 different modems from Rogers, a LanCity and I think a Motorola. As I said, speeds varied through out the day. I get the best speeds late at night.



    Speed on cable depends on how much bandwidth people local to your local switch are using. My speed started sucking when Rogers put a big push to get into my neighbourhood and lots of people were using the same switch I was on. It seems to have improved a lot lately, as 3 new subdivisions are going up within a 2 KM radius of my house. I think Rogers upgraded their lines close to me and also offloaded some of the people around here to new switchs and alliviated the load near me.



    Call rogers and bicth about your speeds if they continue to lag. First test it out at various times of day with mulitple downloads. I have heard the Rogers will sometimes re-route customers or install additional switched if enough people in an area bitch about speeds.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    inactionmaninactionman Posts: 618member
    If I have one download, it'll max out at 150kbs, if I have five downloads, they'll each max out at 30. There is nothing I can do to get speeds over 150/20. I have a terayon 200 modem. I have never seen speed close to their claim.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    tulkastulkas Posts: 3,757member
    try this site to get a quick rating of your bandwidth. Clear you cache after and try it a different times of day. I usually get between 700Kb/s and 1+Mb/s.<a href="http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/idtr.html"; target="_blank">speed test</a>



    If you continue to get low speeds, call rogers.



    [ 01-31-2003: Message edited by: Tulkas ]</p>
  • Reply 4 of 5
    der kopfder kopf Posts: 2,275member
    [quote]Originally posted by Tulkas:

    <strong>try this site to get a quick rating of your bandwidth. Clear you cache after and try it a different times of day. I usually get between 700Kb/s and 1+Mb/s.<a href="http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/idtr.html"; target="_blank">speed test</a></strong><hr></blockquote>



    That doesn't appear to be really correct. Maybe because I'm in Europe and all, but they only give me between 700 Kbit and 1.2 Mbit (about 100 KB) whereas other servers do allow me to download 320 KB, and my news server allows me to download two binaries at more than 100 KByte/s each, at the same time.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    My fav bandwdth test is <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/tools/"; target="_blank">DSL reports</a> Just click on the "Speed Test" button and choose the closest server.

    Just did one:





    Oh, and there is probably a Megabit/Megabyte thing going on. Your bandwidth is mesured in Megabits, and your download is in Megabytes. (Multiply by 8)



    [ 01-31-2003: Message edited by: Ebby ]</p>
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