Not so fast
Some people are not meant to have smooth sailing on the internet. I would be one of them, apparently. Last week I disconnected Comcast broadband and hooked up with Verizon DSL. Comcast service had been really bad, with lots of prolonged outages and intermittently dropped connections. For the first day, with Verizon, things were just fine, although slightly slower than Comcast broadband—hardly enough to register.
But then, on Sunday, cruising speed dropped like a rock. Today it dropped even more—as the DSL speed test graph shows below.
My DSL connection is right around 56k modem speed, currently. I’ve looked around at various boards for discussion on Verizon DSL connection speeds—it seems that something awful has happened in eastern Massachusetts and there are a lot of really unhappy people. Some of whom have even slower connection speeds than mine (I can’t even imagine 21k download speeds!!). Some of them say this has been going on for the last three weeks.
Huh. Doesn’t it figure? Well, I still have Comcast service until the end of this month, if I choose to reconnect the modem and router. And I have 30 days to decide whether to keep Verizon DSL or unsubscribe with no penalty charges. I’m all for saving a few dollars a month, but 56k modem speed (or less) is awfully hard to get used to after lightning-speed broadband. Besides, I’m paying for nearly lightning-speed broadband, so I oughta get it, right?
51 Down and 263 UP? Now that’s odd. Usually down is much faster than up, by a wide margin. I’ve never seen it the other way around. Have you shared this info with Verizon? I’d be very interested to hear a technical explanation for that one.
Captcha word is ‘built’. Not for speed, apparently.
I have no idea if this has anything to do with it but, I heard on the news over the weekend that Internet connections would be wonky because of the meteors. ????
Posted by Jennifer AKA Me on 05/17/05 at 09:43 AM
FIOS is just starting to show up in Massachusetts, but around the Boston metro area, I think. It’ll take a while before it extends up this far, probably. But the people who have it are raving about it. Sounds as if it makes Comcast cable internet seem like a dial-up by comparison. I can’t conceive of anything that fast.
I’m about 11085 feet from the DSL CO, so I guess that’s okay.
I haven’t talked about it with Verizon yet, Dave. I figured I’d give it a day or two and see what happens. The speed appears to be widely variable, depending on time of day.
For example:
926/363 at 1:157AM
935/363 at 8:30 AM
620/362 at 1:28PM
Those aren’t as high as they’re supposed to be, but they’re generally fast enough for my needs.
The slow times occur when everyone is home for the day/evening and before most everyone has gone to bed. Verizon has scheduled several upgrades in the next two weeks, so we’ll see what happens and how consistently slow it is during peak hours for the next couple of weeks.
I went through growing pains with MediaOne and AT&T and Comcast, too, so I know it does get better and patience helps. It is hard to be patient when the 51k or lower download speeds hit, though.
I wonder if the meteors do have anything to do with it? They haven’t had any discernable effect on the satellite dish, so who knows. I think maybe Verizon has just added a ton of customers over the past month (massive ad campaign around here) and main trunks are overburdened.
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Alot of the speed will depend on how far you are from the “telephone” building that houses the equipment.
My verizon DSL speed is pretty good when I use Firefox… slower with IE. I don’t have the speed numbers but I can see the telephone building from my patio.
The only trouble I have had was with a “ground” noise, a loud buzz, when it is wet due to having buried cable. We fixed that by having a designated “pair” and it’s own jack for the DSL stuff.
Some Texas cities are being offerd FICO or something like that… a new service with lightening fast speeds. Yeah whatever. I might test it on Saturday at the FICO cafe in town.
I became a spider solitare addict when I was on dial-up.
Okay enough of the commercial for Verizon. I hope it starts going faster for you.