[ale] Verizon and Comcast both offer faster speeds to customers

[krwatson at cc.gatech.edu]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
> Michael B. Trausch
> Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 11:27
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] Verizon and Comcast both offer faster speeds to
> customers
>
> On Sat, 2008-06-14 at 21:53 -0400, Chris Fowler wrote:
> > I use MUCH SSH remotely and I use VoIP.  To me if my calls suck and
> > typing over SSH sucks then the latency is not acceptable.  Latency is
> > critical in real-time protocols such as those.
>
> Absolutely.
>
> Of course, you know it's really bad when ping is nearly 1000ms, and even
> telnet lags every time you type something.  You'd think that there'd be
> no reason for that...
>
> But I seem to get it pretty often, even within the country.  Of course,
> when I call the problem in, I must be on crack, or have some wiring
> issue, or be mentally distressed, or have some problem *other* than the
> ISP... at least, according to the ISP... :-)
>
>         --- Mike
>
> --
> Michael B. Trausch                                   mike at trausch.us
> home: 404-592-5746, 1                                 www.trausch.us
> cell: 678-522-7934                       im: mike at trausch.us, jabber
> Ubuntu Unofficial Backports Project:    http://backports.trausch.us/

<soap box>

I'm currently using Earthlink but plan on moving soon for this very reason. Usually I get 23ms to 25ms ping times to Earthlink's DNS or the first router on their network. For some reason my ping times will suddenly jump to 450ms+ despite having no in bound or outbound traffic. Occasionally it will go as high as 1300ms. No amount of rebooting my DSL modem sovles the problem. I've had it stay between 400ms and 600ms for days.

When I call in to Earthlink I get the usual "it's your wiring, router, a virus, spyware, patches out of date, please reboot" mantra. I finally have to just get irate so they escalate me to a supervisor who never calls me back. Then "magically" an hour later my ping times return to the low 20ms range despite no changes on my end.

I've called the problem in multiple times only to get the same run around. The part that REALLY irritates me is when they tell me it's my wiring and  that I should check my phones and their filters. I explain that I have a dedicated CAT 5 cable running from the DEMARC directly to the modem and they repeat "it could be your phone wiring". I politely ask if they know what CAT 5 network cabling is only to find out they have no idea.

That and Earthlink disabling my ability to test for invalid domains using DNS because they redirect all invalid DNS queries to an Earthlink ad page has led me to firing Earthlink.

</soap box>

keith


--

Keith R. Watson                        Georgia Institute of Technology
Systems Support Specialist IV          College of Computing
keith.watson at cc.gatech.edu             801 Atlantic Drive NW
(404) 385-7401                         Atlanta, GA  30332-0280