If I may paraphrase the words of the immortal Scarface, “Qwest/CenturyLink has some ‘splaining to do”
I pay Qwest.net (now CenturyLink) for 7Mb/s. My results, following the fiber optic upgrades in my area, have been abismal. One might think they would improve following equipment upgrades, but no.
Tonights results are indicative.
SpeedTest 8/23/2011, The speed grade is "F+" (Is the plus for effort at not being completely dead?)
SpeedTest 8/23/2011, 57 minutes later, "D"
PingTest 8/23/2011, the line quality grade is "D"
So, what shall I do about this? Perhaps cancel my DSL through Qwest.net, which has been unstable since I “upgraded” the speed at the house. This would free me to go back to Southwest Cyberport (SWCP), which was always solid. I actually like getting what I pay for.
Addendum:
I maintain my prior position that the DSL has been spotty. But, tonight, instead of spending half my life on the phone with some person who knows less than I do about networking, I opted for the Email support. The response I got was predictable.
“In reviewing your service information, I discovered that your signal strength is extremely low. This is causing your connection speed issues. Typically, when signal strength drops like this, it is due to interference inside the premise.”
Okay, so I filter the ENTIRE HOUSE, except for the jack where the DSL model is plugged in. So no filters in the way.
What I did do, was to unplug every other telephonic device in the house and this is what I got:
SpeedTest 8/23/2011, After unplugging just about everything
PingTest 8/23/2011, after unplugging just about everything
Is there a lesson here? Is Qwest right this time? Tomorrow, during non-vampire hours, I will plug those other telephones back in one at a time (there were only two). One of them has to be offending the laws of electronic karma in some way and consequently will be discarded.
Am I ready to abort my plan to retrograde back to an independent ISP. Nope. I still believe I get better service and a more stable signal when cheapo ISP service is out of the loop.
Forgive my unprofessional aphorisms tonight. This freaky Internet Speed affects every aspect of my personal and professional life, so I need more reliable service. I need to get the service level I pay them to give me, which is 7Mbps, or at least over 6Mbps on any given day.
When I have to admit I am happy to see 5.3Mbps (75% service level), that is a sad commentary on how far my expectations have fallen. Would you accept it if your kids were doing C- work in school? Yeah! Let’s cheer for all the underachievers over there at Qwest.net who provide C- quality services.
Would that another vendor would push into this market and make them compete.
