Bub

sharke

I don't know why they don't just charge an extra few dollars to people who go over a certain limit. It doesn't seem fair that someone like me, who watches the occasional show on Netflix and a few YouTube videos, should be penalized because of the people who spend every evening streaming movies non-stop while having 20 Torrents on the go.

That never works.

For example ... when the guy was here hooking us up, he tried diligently to talk me in to the 1Mb plan. He said their network was so fast that 1Mb would be more than enough on their network to stream Netflix on one TV, surf the net on a PC, and use Vonage, all at the same time.

Of course, being around the block a few times, I didn't believe him, and told him I would be a heavy user and insisted he set me up with a 3Mb plan. Still slow by today's comparison, but fast for out here in the sticks, and faster than anything I've ever had.

Worked great for a couple months ... then slower, then slower, then slower. Called and complained because we were totally down 10 times. They said someone from the U.K. was doing a DoS attack on one of the three users on my section of the network and it shut the entire network down.

I don't consider myself a heavy user. I watch 2, maybe 3 standard definition shows a night on Amazon Prime, and during the day I just hang out here on the forum, and watch maybe 10 youtube video's a week. Long story short ... I paid extra for a faster connection because I considered that being a heavy user and I'm still getting crap service now, just like I would have got with the 1Mb connection. And I paid a year in advance ... and have it in writing that they will never throttle my connection down.

I pay extra for "Turbo" Roadrunner and while these online "speed tests" always show a speed of around 18-20mbps, I'm obviously not getting that when browsing sites. In fact it feels no faster than the Earthlink connection I had 5 years ago. Not only that but my monthly fee has gone up from around $48/month to $62/month. First of all they started charging $4/month for "modem rental" last year (a BS charge if I ever heard one), and then apparently some various "discounts" that they've been giving me before have expired, hence an increase of almost $15/month. And this, for a service which is getting worse and worse. They didn't even bother sending me notification of any increases, except the modem rental fee. 


I've also had shutdowns on a regular basis over the last 7 years. It just goes off. Sometimes it comes back on the next morning, other times I've had to wait 4-5 days for a technician to stop by. One time, they sent over this thug moron who told me that it was my computer which was at fault. I pointed out that I have a desktop and 2 laptops and they all have the same problem. He got right in my face, snorted, and said "are you calling me a liar? Are you saying I don't know what I'm talking about"? Luckily he was about 2 feet away from my open apartment door, so I pushed him hard and then slammed the door in his face. He kicked the door, yelled a racial epithet, and that was that. Time Warner Cable New York FTW!

sharke

I pay extra for "Turbo" Roadrunner and while these online "speed tests" always show a speed of around 18-20mbps, I'm obviously not getting that when browsing sites. In fact it feels no faster than the Earthlink connection I had 5 years ago. Not only that but my monthly fee has gone up from around $48/month to $62/month. First of all they started charging $4/month for "modem rental" last year (a BS charge if I ever heard one), and then apparently some various "discounts" that they've been giving me before have expired, hence an increase of almost $15/month. And this, for a service which is getting worse and worse. They didn't even bother sending me notification of any increases, except the modem rental fee.

That's just not right man! I pay $51 and change for a 3Mbps. It's more if you pay monthly, that's why I paid for the year in advance. The discount came to two months free. It worked fantastically at first. No problems whatsoever. One thing they do is, they give you 'bursts' for free, it's for downloading or streaming large files. It will randomly, based of network availability, boost your speed to 5MB (not bits, but bytes). I'm supposed to get this unlimited usage and bandwidth for up to 5 devices simultaneously, then they throttle me down. At the most, I've had 3 at once going.

I've also had shutdowns on a regular basis over the last 7 years. It just goes off. Sometimes it comes back on the next morning, other times I've had to wait 4-5 days for a technician to stop by. One time, they sent over this thug moron who told me that it was my computer which was at fault. I pointed out that I have a desktop and 2 laptops and they all have the same problem. He got right in my face, snorted, and said "are you calling me a liar? Are you saying I don't know what I'm talking about"? Luckily he was about 2 feet away from my open apartment door, so I pushed him hard and then slammed the door in his face. He kicked the door, yelled a racial epithet, and that was that. Time Warner Cable New York FTW!

That is CRAZY.

zungle

Well.............

I too was having major hiccups with "You Tube"...... Using "Chrome "

I'm having problems with U-Toob in FF and IE also, but ... I do have Chrome installed, although I don't use it.

I should try getting rid of it and flushing my registry.

I wish there was a browser you could run stand alone without installing it.

Reaper can be run that way, PeaZip can too (PeaZip is a free ZIP program. It also lets you mount, extract, and edit, ISO files.)

Bub

zungle

Well.............

I too was having major hiccups with "You Tube"...... Using "Chrome "

I'm having problems with U-Toob in FF and IE also, but ... I do have Chrome installed, although I don't use it.

I should try getting rid of it and flushing my registry.

I wish there was a browser you could run stand alone without installing it.

Reaper can be run that way, PeaZip can too (PeaZip is a free ZIP program. It also lets you mount, extract, and edit, ISO files.)

You can get a standalone version of Firefox that can be run from a USB stick. 


http://portableapps.com/a...ernet/firefox_portable

I read something recently (maybe here) about how google is trying to deliver "the best quality their servers can handle". Essentially what is happening is that when their servers are experiencing high demand they switch your streaming vid to lower quality to keep buffering down to a minimum. I think it's the constantly switching back and forth between stream quality that's causing hiccups. I've noticed it lately myself and have resorted to clicking on the Settings button on the playback bar and choosing a lower setting. You'll notice it says "Auto" in that list. The auto seems to be what makes it flop around between qualities. Even if I have it set to a lower quality and that auto thing is engaged it'll still hiccup. It's Google yet again being "helpful" with their new youtube acquisition. It is really annoying.

The reasoning is that people are so damned impatient these days that if a vid doesn't load instantly they navigate away to something else. I'll see if I can dig up the article.

That's not to say your ISP isn't throttling your bandwidth. That's another pile of annoyance. My new ISP is much better than my old one in that regard though. The last place I was at was fine until about 5pm-11pm. Trying to watch a vid on anything other than youtube during those hours was infuriating. What would usually take a minute to load would take 20 minutes and half to time drop out. None of that here thank goodness. The funny thing is my connection is supposedly SLOWER than in the old place.

Beepster


I read something recently (maybe here) about how google is trying to deliver "the best quality their servers can handle". Essentially what is happening is that when their servers are experiencing high demand they switch your streaming vid to lower quality to keep buffering down to a minimum. I think it's the constantly switching back and forth between stream quality that's causing hiccups. I've noticed it lately myself and have resorted to clicking on the Settings button on the playback bar and choosing a lower setting. You'll notice it says "Auto" in that list. The auto seems to be what makes it flop around between qualities. Even if I have it set to a lower quality and that auto thing is engaged it'll still hiccup. It's Google yet again being "helpful" with their new youtube acquisition. It is really annoying.

The reasoning is that people are so damned impatient these days that if a vid doesn't load instantly they navigate away to something else. I'll see if I can dig up the article.

That's not to say your ISP isn't throttling your bandwidth. That's another pile of annoyance. My new ISP is much better than my old one in that regard though. The last place I was at was fine until about 5pm-11pm. Trying to watch a vid on anything other than youtube during those hours was infuriating. What would usually take a minute to load would take 20 minutes and half to time drop out. None of that here thank goodness. The funny thing is my connection is supposedly SLOWER than in the old place.

That's certainly a plausible explanation and I will try adjusting my settings, but at the same time I did read someone on another forum say that when they set up a VPN, the problem disappeared, and since then other people have chimed in to say that it worked for them too. 


Regardless, I think sooner or later the ISP's are going to have to come to terms with the fact that they need to invest more money in upgrading their networks to handle today's bandwidth demand. They're still cruising along like it's 1998. 

Here's ther article... except it it claims to do the opposite of what I've experienced. I never had this problem with youtube until I noticed that "auto" setting...

http://www.npr.org/2013/0...t-is-never-fast-enough

I may not be understanding what that setting does but as I said I get better results when I force it to use a specific quality setting.

Well whatever they're doing, it's not working very well!

Regardless, I think sooner or later the ISP's are going to have to come to terms with the fact that they need to invest more money in upgrading their networks to handle today's bandwidth demand. They're still cruising along like it's 1998.

Until people start dropping the providers they'll drag their feet as long as they can. I'm not sure what the situation is down there in the US but here in Canuckerland there are some seriously monopolies going on so without any competition they can get away with whatever they want. Doesn't help the CRTC (our equivalent of the FCC) is stacked with active members of said monopolies or people groomed to cater to them. The big joke is the Canadian taxpayers GAVE those monopolies the money to set up the national network and yet they try to push things through law to gouge even more citing increased demand on the infrastructure. The average high speed internet bill up here is around $50 per month or more and they'll charge you $40 just to connect you which from what I can tell is just some droog typing your address into the system. It's a joke. Oh and heaven forbid you go over your allotted monthly bandwidth limit if you are with one of the two major ISP providers (which most are due to the rural nature of most of the country) or you'll get charged $2 per GB. They tried to write into law that the smaller companies pay them for overages which fortunately got shut down real quick despite our prime minister trying to quietly push the deal through. It's pretty sick.

Anyway... there's my rant for the day. Now back programming some sick beats in Sonar. ;-p