Need NYC ppl's help with internet

[KR1156]

hey, what are you guys using for upload/download files over the net? (home use, not your companies connection)

i only know about verizon (dsl) and roadrunner from time warner, and i have a shitload of problems on my block in brooklyn with time warner for the past 2 years....i'm just getting frustrated with their service and really need to get a service that will give me a decent upload speed. i do all my work with someone in LA, so FTP is crucial.

i get a upload reading of like 30kbps on my ftp, and cant deal with it anymore.

any suggestions??

[cricket1961]

Isn't Verizon Fios out in your area now? I know when I left Ct last month it was starting to be deployed.
Is Cablevison in your area? That's what I had in my home and it was 30mbit dl and 5 mbit ul. And cheap too.

Chris

[Ant]

Cable is purported to be horribly slow on the upload, but faster on the dl. I feel you, I've got cable myself, and it's supposedly the faster version option. It isn't bad enough that I'm switching, but Chris probably nailed it with the Fios. See if it's available to you yet.

[madclark]

I've been very happy with Time Warner cable internet in Queens, especially since they did a silent bump up to top download speed of 8 MBs and I still get top uploads in the upper 500-700 KBs range.

Your situation seems very unusual. It's more difficult to guarantee upload and download speeds for cable but you really should be getting much better than that and should call Time Warner to get a technician out to check it out. There's something not right with you connection somewhere or someone is major bandwidth hogging which seems more unlikely.

Otherwise FIOS and Cablevision and/or RCN are in limited areas of the greater Metropolitan NYC area. But if you live in an apartment building you're probably out of luck. As I understand, they pretty much will only install in private homes for FIOS unless the building pays for installing the infrastructure upfront. Cablevision/RCN too is more limited in its distribution areas. Check both the websites for Verizon and Cablevision/RCN. You can put your address in and they'll tell you instantly if you can receive their service.

[KR1156]

I keep checking every week for FIOS, but it's not available yet. I have to ask a friend of mine who works for verizon to check it out for me.

can't use cablevision, when you check availabilty on their site, it just sends you to time warner.

i had a tech. come check the wires and connections, says it was a little loose, and tightened it up, then had a guy run my #'s on a field test...said it was all clear, then ran a online speed test, said everything was great...so i go to upload a 3mb test file…took like 2min! 30kbps!!!

it's just frustrating dealing with time warner....now i have to schedule another guy to come in and check the outside polls and connections....they're a pain in the ass though, they actually asked me to go around knocking on my neighbor's doors and ask them if they have any problems.....i'm like, i'm the only person who speaks english on my block!

[Ant]

Time Warner has been spotty for me in the east village too. They just stink and are the only game going. You could always move...

luck.

[madclark]

Have you tried online speed tests? Are you sure the problem isn't with the server you're uploading to rather than your own connection? A speed test should be able to check.

Try the Speakeasy speed test and choose the NYC server to test with. Just make sure that you've closed all other programs that use internet bandwidth:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Also, you only have one computer connected to your service, correct? You don't have a wireless router that someone might be leeching on, right?

[KR1156]

thanks for the link madclark, i will run the test tonight when i get home.

i do actually have a router on their for my laptop, let me disconect that and try upload test to see if theres a difference.

i set that router up a while ago and lost the papers on it, i have to check to make sure i have a password set up so no ones clogging it.

[Kraellin]

a common mistake when rating speeds is to only consider your end. THROUGHPUT is what matters. in other words, it's the total connection from your end to where you are sending that matters. i have a 3 megabit line with decent upload speed, but that doesnt mean that everything i download is going at 3 megabit or everything i upload will go at that rated speed either.

throughput is the total connection, your end, the various nodes/junctions/routers you go through over the internet and where you are sending to. i can download at 350 megabits at times from one place and go to another a few seconds later and maybe only get 60. that one with 60 just doesnt have the bandwidth to send things that fast. the same is true with uploads. you may have a super fast upload speed, but if the recipient doesnt have a super fast download speed, your upload may crawl.

and, you're using the internet. that means your upload may go from new york to denver, to chicago, back to florida, over to kansas and down through arizona before it finally gets to your recipient in L.A. every single node you go through may be good, bad, or kinda fuzzy. i used to have a program that traced the various routes and showed them on a map of the u.s. you wouldnt believe how convoluted things can go at times.

now, routers are a lot smarter today than they were back in the early 90's. normally, bad points in the system tend to get re-routed around these days. but this isnt always perfect. i recall a major junction in chicago going down one day and this was indeed a MAJOR junction. traffic that day all over the u.s. got rather bad with lost packets and slow speeds.

so, the point here is, even if you test your speed on one of those sites that do this, it may still not guarantee your connection with your recipient will be as good as your test speed.

isp's are repsonsible for what is called 'the last mile'. this is your connection from them to you. that's it. that's all. so, having a service technician come out and check your 'last mile' is good, but may not fix your overall throughput. they only look at 'the last mile'. and it used to be that the FCC only required phone lines to be of a quality of 1200 baud. that was before dsl and i'm not sure what it is today. dsl also degrades based on distance to the isp's nearest terminal/switching box to you. the rated distance until degradation is 3 miles. if you're further away than that you're going to see a fair loss of speed.

cable is somewhat worse. cable has more to do with how many subscribers are on the same cable. the more users, the less bandwidth per user. dsl doesnt really care about how many users. cable does. and, it used to be that with cable, if you were the last guy at the end of the cable, you tended to get even less with everyone sequentially ahead of you on the cable having a better speed than you. that may have changed, though. it's been quite a while since i've looked into cable.

you might also look into wireless. wireless speeds are much better today than they were even five years ago. and, they are more secure now than they were five years ago. we've got a whole new wireless system coming into our county that is rated much higher than it was a few years ago when i tried it out. and this isnt satellite wireless, which can degrade or even go down with a heavy storm. this is a very high band wireless that can see through storms and not be affected.

i also had satellite internet for a while. but, the uploads suck on that and the FCC wont change the upstream limits for some reason. the downstream is incredible, but the upstream is barely over dial-up speeds.

it pays to look around for new isp's occasionally. the technology is still evolving. regulations governing the internet change. there is currently a new wave of broadband hitting rural areas due to a change in federal policies. this is being likened to rural electrification of years ago. so, some of you folks that have always been stuck with dial-up may find new broadband companies opening up in your areas.

but basically, the bottom line here is throughput. never check just one end of a connection. here's a simple way to see what your total connection to someplace else really is...

in windows, open up a command prompt.

type: tracert www.retouchpro.com

you will get back a display in milliseconds (ms) of your route to retouchpro.com and where you were routed through to get there. that is a summation of your throughput. mine is 22 milliseconds as of right now. that may change if the site is heavily trafficed, experiencing difficulties of some type or if where i have to go through is having difficulties. i had to go through 15 different connections to get here. three were local to my machine, seven were local to my isp and the rest were other junctions on the way here. you can do this with any known address on the internet.

now, one caveat to all that i'm saying here. i've been on the internet since the early 90's and other networks before that. so, some of my information provided here may be outdated and feel free to correct anything you know is such. but, basically, the idea of throughput is still true. so, always check the whole connection.

[KR1156]

I was able to get it up to 60.0 KB/sec transfer rate. which is double what i had last week.

-roughly 10-15 sec. per meg. which sucks for me since my files, compressed, are never under 250mb!

got no choice but deal with it 'til FIOS shows up to the party.