Ulta RoadRunner a PITA for BHN?

[SomeRandomIdiot]

I am hearing from Senior Techs all over the BHN areas that the new Ultra 40Mbps is turning into a bust as its is costing them considerable man/service hours - especially for their upper tier support people.

BHN can show them they are getting 40Mbps within their WAN, but once outside the BHN WAN, everything slows down to whatever speed the other sites can pump out (which isnt close to 40Mbps per user in 99.999999% of the cases). People are using the typical speed checking sites and only coming up with low double digits readings and complaining LOUDLY to BHN.

It seems that most John Q Publics think that because they are paying for 40 Mbps that EVERYTHING will now being coming to them at 40Mbps. Thus the subs are calling and complaining to BHN, who have to send out techs to the house for subsequent visits only to find no issues.

Then the customers are getting mad and only those that need the 5Mbps upload (very few for the price) are disconnecting to reduce their bills.

Ahhh, the education process.......

[AmelFl]

thats why we have the fcc :)

[SomeRandomIdiot]

your post shows why you are such a MSNBC fan - The Government has done so well on regulating cable thus far, let's just give them MORE power to screw it up worse. :rolleyes:

Yep, cablecard, ieee1394 ports and everything regulated by the FCC sure has worked great over the last 5 years! Let's pile more on.

Amazing.

The definition of insanity - keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

[ispgeek]

I am hearing from Senior Techs all over the BHN areas that the new Ultra 40Mbps is turning into a bust as its is costing them considerable man/service hours - especially for their upper tier support people.

BHN can show them they are getting 40Mbps within their WAN, but once outside the BHN WAN, everything slows down to whatever speed the other sites can pump out (which isnt close to 40Mbps per user in 99.999999% of the cases). People are using the typical speed checking sites and only coming up with low double digits readings and complaining LOUDLY to BHN.

It seems that most John Q Publics think that because they are paying for 40 Mbps that EVERYTHING will now being coming to them at 40Mbps. Thus the subs are calling and complaining to BHN, who have to send out techs to the house for subsequent visits only to find no issues.

Then the customers are getting mad and only those that need the 5Mbps upload (very few for the price) are disconnecting to reduce their bills.

Ahhh, the education process.......

Please do elaborate on where you are getting your facts (I would love to speak with those so called senior techs as well in case they happen to post here). I have lightning (have had it last December) and it consistently performs both on and off-net speedtests (BHN, Speakeasy, Ispgeeks, Visualware - you know..the only decent speedtests out there). without fail.

Just for fun I'll post my speeds from all those sites (I'll screen shot it for all it's glory). And for more fun over the next few days I'll try to get those during peak hours just to prove a point.

[ispgeek]

http://www.ispgeeks.com/wild/upload/ispgeek/ST1.bmp

http://www.ispgeeks.com/wild/upload/ispgeek/st2.bmp

http://www.ispgeeks.com/wild/upload/ispgeek/ST3.bmp

Sorry I got these late tonight...I'll try to get earlier in the day over the next day or so. I'd say these tests are all pretty consistent however.

[rossinfl]

didnt you all read that article in the papers talking about new wifi
coming? it said if it goes in effect it will blow away what is out there now.
im guessing that this new stuff theyre talking about is only for outside
public places but maybe for homes too. the article said in areas that dont
have high speed internet avl now this new technology would go there along
with wi-fi in areas that have high speed already avl.

i remember years ago there was a story that high speed internet would go
through the electric outlets in homes/apts etc. but it never got off the
ground. they were saying it would have made internet really really fast
all over america. its too bad that never worked.

[Jason]

i remember years ago there was a story that high speed internet would go
through the electric outlets in homes/apts etc. but it never got off the
ground. they were saying it would have made internet really really fast
all over america. its too bad that never worked.

Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) has been found to cause radio interference in different parts of the spectrum. Unless/until that can be corrected, I don't see it getting implemented on a large scale.

[ispgeek]

Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) has been found to cause radio interference in different parts of the spectrum. Unless/until that can be corrected, I don't see it getting implemented on a large scale.

Yup BPL is dead for all intents and while some of it was interference related the other issues was performance and susceptability (sp) to interference...meaning it was extremely sensitive to power line noise (and there are some real crappy power lines out there).

[LonghornXP]

My contacts sure haven't heard anything like that. The worst extent for service issues are calls to place the router into bridge mode. Beyond this the rest are installation issues such as old wiring, splitters etc that aren't dealt with my Knight hacks. These however aren't that common. Also the 50 buck install fee ticks some people off along with missed appointments. Also for some the price exceeds its worth based on their usage. Also some people get ticked off when they find out they have to have two modems to keep their phone service. Some people hate an extra box.

Now as far as the service it seems that everything I throw at it gets the max advertised speeds. For the few places that don't they can be easily fixed by using a download manager such as DownThemAll for Firefox etc. These allow up to 10 concurrent connections to the service and this gets you the max speeds. Some servers put a bandwidth limit per connection but don't put a limit per IP Address. These limits per connection are most likely what some of the customers might be upset about. User education sometimes is far easier than sending a tech out and would make the customers very happy. However this requires the entire call center staff to be trained and informed about download managers and how to install and use them. Lets just say that this is a nightmare waiting to happen when it comes to support.

BHN could at least ask and suggest they use a download manager such as DownThemAll. Just suggest a well known quality one and explain to them that this would allow you to resume halted downloads and also can allow multiple connections to increase your speeds. The customer doesn't care how they get the increased speeds as long as they do end up getting them.

I've also seen many customers complain that when they download something they are only getting 4.8 instead of 40. This is a case of the user not understanding the difference between bandwidth and transfer rate when downloading. Transfer rate is expressed in Mega(byes) per second while bandwidth is expressed in Mega(bits) per second. 8 bits is equal to 1 byte. In this case you would take the transfer rate and multiply it by 8 and as long as that figure is very close to 40 your getting the advertised speeds.

I don't blame BHN here at all and quite frankly most users are very uneducated. Some like to throw around the word stupid but customers aren't stupid they just haven't learned what they need to know to take advantage of their computers.

[skottey]

http://www.ispgeeks.com/wild/upload/ispgeek/ST1.bmp

http://www.ispgeeks.com/wild/upload/ispgeek/st2.bmp

http://www.ispgeeks.com/wild/upload/ispgeek/ST3.bmp

Sorry I got these late tonight...I'll try to get earlier in the day over the next day or so. I'd say these tests are all pretty consistent however.

Unfortunately, those tests prove nothing about a sustainable download. If you download say a 4GB Microsoft Actionpack file you are not going to sustain that speed for the entire download. You are just not. It isn't because MS cannot handle your quick connection (original poster is wrong about 99.9999% of sites.. I would say it is probably more in the 80-90% of sites that cannot "handle" 40mbps on their ends.. but anyway), MS certainly can. It is because RR only gives you a "boost" in speed at the start of your download. They outright admit it if you ask. I have plenty of customers with Lightning or Ultra and believe me, they are not sustaining that speed anywhere. It is a gimmick to compete with FIOS who really can sustain the speed. Sure, RR modems can handle the speed but they aren't paying for all the bandwidth it would require for everybody to handle 40mbps all the time.

But anyway, in my case it would be worth it for the faster upload from 2 to 5 but as far as I know it isn't offered on virtual office and I pay enough anyway.

[HDOrlando]

The jump in cost is not worth it for me. I'm fine with the speed I have at the moment.

[JamesD]

It is because RR only gives you a "boost" in speed at the start of your download. They outright admit it if you ask. I have plenty of customers with Lightning or Ultra and believe me, they are not sustaining that speed anywhere. It is a gimmick to compete with FIOS who really can sustain the speed. Sure, RR modems can handle the speed but they aren't paying for all the bandwidth it would require for everybody to handle 40mbps all the time.

But anyway, in my case it would be worth it for the faster upload from 2 to 5 but as far as I know it isn't offered on virtual office and I pay enough anyway.

the powerboost feature of turbo does give a boost over the 20 advertised for a period of time

lightning doesn't do that, the powerboost is disabled

i have pulled files from a MS server and it sustained as much as they would give me (equiv of 30-32, occasional up to 39) depending on network load

if it couldn't sustain the advertised bandwidth, how could they support business class customers using the service for VoIP service? You have a customer with 20 or 30 voice lines requiring constant data, and if the advertised speed was a burst rate and not a near continuous stream, you'd have dropped calls left and right and some pretty P-O'd customers

[skottey]

if it couldn't sustain the advertised bandwidth, how could they support business class customers using the service for VoIP service? You have a customer with 20 or 30 voice lines requiring constant data, and if the advertised speed was a burst rate and not a near continuous stream, you'd have dropped calls left and right and some pretty P-O'd customers

The VoIP service (provided by BHN) has its own allocation of bandwidth. It certainly isn't dipping into your Internet bandwidth the way Vonage does. I know I couldn't run 20 or 30 Vonage lines at a time. They use the BHN Internet bandwidth, much like Netflix or anything else.

[JamesD]

The VoIP service (provided by BHN) has its own allocation of bandwidth. It certainly isn't dipping into your Internet bandwidth the way Vonage does. I know I couldn't run 20 or 30 Vonage lines at a time. They use the BHN Internet bandwidth, much like Netflix or anything else.

i didn't say business PHONE..

i am talking about customer paying for business ultimate and then running phone lines over the single internet connection

[ispgeek]

I am hearing from Senior Techs all over the BHN areas that the new Ultra 40Mbps is turning into a bust as its is costing them considerable man/service hours - especially for their upper tier support people.

BHN can show them they are getting 40Mbps within their WAN, but once outside the BHN WAN, everything slows down to whatever speed the other sites can pump out (which isnt close to 40Mbps per user in 99.999999% of the cases). People are using the typical speed checking sites and only coming up with low double digits readings and complaining LOUDLY to BHN.

It seems that most John Q Publics think that because they are paying for 40 Mbps that EVERYTHING will now being coming to them at 40Mbps. Thus the subs are calling and complaining to BHN, who have to send out techs to the house for subsequent visits only to find no issues.

Then the customers are getting mad and only those that need the 5Mbps upload (very few for the price) are disconnecting to reduce their bills.

Ahhh, the education process.......

I'm still waiting to hear from this poster and his (cough) sources of information...oh please do come forward :rolleyes:

[ramarc]

I'm still waiting to hear from this poster and his (cough) sources of information...oh please do come forward :rolleyes:

everything said is completely accurate. you'll meet your stated bandwidth inside the brighthouse wan. so if you've got a biz office in clearwater and another in brandon, you'll get that bandwidth between them. but if you hop out of the BH and test between clearwater and your miami office, you probably won't come near your stated bandwidth because of network congestion, switching, backbone routing, etc.

now if you tried to test speed against an akami or level 3 site, you might get close to your bandwidth since they have the fastest/widest pipes.

[ispgeek]

Skot you are referring to Turbo connections and to some degree you would be correct. Your download may start out somewhere around 28mbps but in a few seconds it will ramp down to your subscribed rate of 20/2. Lightning on the other hand is not turbo enhanced and you will get you entire available bandwidth for pretty much anything. It depends on the download method and obviously conditions between you and the server you are connecting to.