[ale] What is OVERUTILIZATION? Slightly OT: AT&T Fiber upload failures.

Fri Jul 17 09:22:36 EDT 2026

A side note: on every phone call to Bangalore, they have repeated 
insisted that we have OVERUTILIZED our fiber connection, and are getting 
penalized as a result.

I have never heard of such a thing in 35+ years of various internet 
access.     I have only exchanged emails with a couple of AT&T staff in 
the continental US, and they say this is just a guideline for when you 
might consider a higher speed.   But apparently their staff in India 
believe it.    Mass hysteria?

I figure my router forwards the packets, and their router handles it as 
fast as it feels like.    And if two PCs fire up Windows Update at the 
same time, what am I supposed to do about it.

Anyone heard of this?

regards,

Neal

On 2026-07-15 12:39, neal at mnopltd.com wrote:

> hmmm.  Generally good idea.
> 
> Escalated the ticket 4 weeks ago.   Finally got to Level 2 support 2 
> weeks ago.  Nada.
> 
> Got a Friend of a Friend to raise with the President, so now I'm 
> getting occasional calls from Office of the President, and they 
> escalated 2 days ago.   Still Nada.
> 
> On 2026-07-13 19:49, dj-Pfulio via Ale wrote:
> 
> The term you need to know is, "I want to escalate this issue."
> That tells them they haven't met your needs and you want to talk to 
> their boss.
> 
> On June 29, 2026 10:56:25 AM EDT, Neal Rhodes via Ale <ale at ale.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the pointer.  I understood the AT&T Business Fiber SLA to be 
> 37ms max latency.   We have typically seen 200, and sometimes over 500.
> 
> Thus far I haven't gotten past level 2 tech in Bangalore.    AT&T 
> managers are avoiding me; perhaps just blocking me.
> 
> That's kinda why I wanted to figure out how to apply for a credit on 
> our bill due to them not meeting the SLA.  Figured that MIGHT get 
> someone's attention on this continent.
> 
> On 2026-06-28 16:51, Jim Kinney wrote:
> 
> See if google has an iperf3 reciever. I've found the tool tracepath to 
> give very good info about all the hops between start and end points.
> 
> Ask to speak with their manager because the SLA is not being met. It 
> doesn't seem to be on your end but between your entrance to AT&T and 
> their exit point.
> 
> Test against here:
> https://speed.cloudflare.com/
> 
> The cloudflare test is something AT&T will care about as they also rely 
> on them.
> 
> And there's other testing sites as well.  Get the numbers and the data 
> from tracepath so you can show a rout problem.
> 
> Thanks for being Tier3 training support for AT&T . <facepalm>
> 
> --
> James P. Kinney III
> 
> Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you 
> gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his 
> own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
> - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
> 
> http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
> 
> On Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 3:11 PM Neal Rhodes via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> 
> We've been chasing AT&T on streaming upload failures on a Business 
> Fiber setup for about 6 weeks now.
> 
> We've been streaming Sunday Morning services to Youtube for years on 
> Comcast.
> 
> Switched to AT&T in March.   And........ increasingly were having 
> Youtube abort the stream.
> 
> We were sending 60fps video, which amounted to about 6mbps; this is on 
> a 20mbps Fiber connection.
> 
> We dropped that to 30fps video, which is about 3.5mbps.
> 
> I ran the Speedtest CLI every 5 minutes from a script for several 24 
> hour periods, and found Max Upload Latency all over the highway, from 
> 5ms to 528ms.   (BTW, we understand the upload SLA to be 37ms)
> 
> Granted, the Speedtest test tries to shove 20mbps upload; whereas we 
> are trying to get consistent 3.5mbps.  this is to an AT&T Speedtest 
> host in Atlanta.
> 
> I'm getting close to nowhere arguing with AT&T.    I recently took the 
> church completely offline, disconnected our Unifi router, connected 
> directly to the AT&T Calex box, ran the same tests, had roughly the 
> same results.
> 
> AT&T level 2 support is asking ME to tell THEM where in the hops from 
> us to THEM that THEY are bottlenecked.     Kinda hard, since MTR or 
> TraceRoute gets 2 hops in, and then it's just stars with no data.  
> 'cause their equipment isn't replying to me.
> 
> Anyone have ideas, either on troubleshooting, or finding anyone within 
> AT&T that actually knows anything about testing their own equipment?    
> I was wondering about iPerf3, if they had a server for it.   It would 
> be better to test a realistic 4mbps upload.
> 
> Anyone know the process to file a formal request for a failed SLA 
> credit with AT&T?   The minimal docs I have apparently are no longer 
> correct?
> 
> regards,
> 
> Neal  _______________________________________________
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