[Speed] Frustrated in New York

[Speed] Frustrated in New York
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AndyD2k @ 7th Nov 12:53PM:
[Speed] Frustrated in New York

I'm getting tired of my speeds being affected the majority of the time while I'm still expected to pay the same amount every month.

File size transferred : 29.5 MB (30937448 bytes)
Total time taken : 39.98 seconds (39983 milliseconds)
Throughput : 773.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 0.77 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 6184.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]

That to me is ridiculous when I'm paying for 20! And calling support is an unbelievably frustrating experience now

Your Modem Mac 00:11:ae:c7:42:a6
Forward Frequency 735000000
Return Frequency 24816000
Forward Modulation qam256(4)
Modem TX Power 38 dBmV
Foward Signal to Noise 37.2 dB
Downstream Ratelimit 22000000
Forward Power Level 4 dBmV
Upstream Ratelimit 2200000

EDIT - Mod - I preferred my subject title / sentence =P But I understand why you changed it
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AndyD2k @ 7th Nov 01:31PM:
Re: [Speed] Can we get from someone at RCN to comment on speeds

They are sending a tech out next Saturday. I'm sure a lot of good will come out of that.
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claygreenber @ 7th Nov 05:20PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

Does the "data" light on your modem flash even when you aren't transferring any data? That is happening to me along with my decreased speeds, and it is definitely something new.
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cdr1000 @ 7th Nov 08:34PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

Did they offer you a credit?
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AndyD2k @ 7th Nov 08:39PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

claygreenber - it does but I have several things connected to my router. I'm sure something is causing the light to go off

cdr1000 - they didn't. should i have asked for one? at this point i feel like i should get something but they said they don't have any logs of me calling in the past and I've called at least 5 times this year to complain. i think i have to talk to customer service about this
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anon @ 7th Nov 09:35PM:
msg deleted

deleted by a moderator
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AndyD2k @ 7th Nov 09:46PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

I know I'm not. It's been all over this site for a better part of this year. They are just playing ignorant and I'm pretty damn tired of it to be honest.
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AndyD2k @ 8th Nov 01:07PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

Still slow speeds - I really wish someone from RCN would comment instead of just announcing upcoming content. If anything, it just proves that they know there is an issue with the network and are avoiding commenting on it
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AndyD2k @ 8th Nov 05:01PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

Funny - there was an outage and you would think that it might help things but nope it gets worst

------------------------------------------------------------------
File size transferred : 14.75 MB (15468724 bytes)
Total time taken : 75.66 seconds (75656 milliseconds)
Throughput : 204.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 0.2 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 1632.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
= 1.63 Mbps [Megabit-per-second]

A joke
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nycityny @ 8th Nov 05:49PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

said by AndyD2k :

Funny - there was an outage and you would think that it might help things but nope it gets worst

To what outage are you referring? There was an outage a few nights ago that I noticed at around 1:15am. I phoned RCN and was told that maintenance was being done in my area (Upper West Side) and that Internet service would resume at 6am.

The tech coming to your home might ultimately help. In the summer of 2008 I was having a serious problem intermittent with packet loss. I had two techs come out, one of whom changed a splitter and another who changed the modem. Neither noticed packet loss while they were here before or after their "fix" (like I said, it was intermittent) and neither one fixed the problem. But because I kept calling tech support somebody obviously found the issue because it ultimately went away.

Also in summer of 2008 I had serious cable TV problems. There were a lot of audio/video pops occurring. Every time I phoned tech support they would send signals to my cable box and tell me to wait a few hours. Finally they sent out a tech who spent hours here checking the wiring from the building's main line to my apartment. Ultimately he phoned his home office and they found that one of their signal meters revealed a problem in signal level going into the building. They had to send out someone the next day to adjust the entire building's level in order to solve the issue.

My point is that persistence is necessary to get results. Their overseas tech support is often useless. A single tech visit to your home might be useless too but it is persistence that prevailed for me in fixing two serious problems.
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AndyD2k @ 8th Nov 06:26PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

Trust me, I'm quite persistent but it doesn't get me anywhere. I've been stuck with people that keep going through the same troubleshooting steps that go no where. It frustrates the hell out of me that I'm required to go through the same steps regardless of how many times I've called. Anyway, they are finally sending someone on Saturday but I'm sure they won't find any issues and it'll probably be fine then

When you say you kept calling and finally it was resolved - was there a solution or did you assume it was addressed? The problem is that this bandwidth speed issue isn't constant. It'll go away and then come back. Sometimes it isn't so bad but other times it's like now where I can't push over 2mb while causing major connection issues to work where I'm now debating whether I should head into the office instead of dealing with this crap

There was an outage earlier today for several hours. I'm not sure if it was just my building or what but it came back up. Speed has been worse ever since.

I would have an easier time accepting, while demanding credit to my bill of course, if they fessed up. You just have to look on the forum to see that there are problems with their network. I'm not in a unique situation.
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cdr1000 @ 8th Nov 08:15PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

Is their support back to USA?

They moved it from PA to some place in AL, then to Philipines
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AndyD2k @ 8th Nov 08:29PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

It's in the Philippines. I just called them again because my speeds are ridiculous now. Apparently there is no 2nd tier support and that the supervisor is someone else in their group that will repeat the same steps.

I realized also that it's actually my upload speed that's of issue. I'm going to assume that my download speed is being affected by the upload being so low. I don't know what's going on but those jokers can't see that anything is wrong on their end

I can't imagine it's a coincidence that there was an outage earlier in my building
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cdr1000 @ 8th Nov 08:53PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

Don't let them to filter you out. Ask for a ticket number and call RCN HQ.
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nycityny @ 8th Nov 11:08PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

said by AndyD2k :

When you say you kept calling and finally it was resolved - was there a solution or did you assume it was addressed?

I am not aware of what the solution might possibly have been. After weeks of calling and tech visits the problem finally cleared up the day before a 3rd tech visit was scheduled. I canceled that tech visit and the intermittent packet loss has not recurred.

By the way, I had become aware of the packet loss because I use VOIP phone service. There had been constant audio drops that were making my phone almost unusable. My VOIP provider helped me track the problem to packet loss with RCN. Since RCN's fix the audio drops have gone away.
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xeon22 @ 10th Nov 09:11PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

said by claygreenber :

Does the "data" light on your modem flash even when you aren't transferring any data? That is happening to me along with my decreased speeds, and it is definitely something new.

Ditto here as well....this started just a few weeks ago; I was under the impression that my computer was possibly being used as a proxy server, maybe by some old trojan that I never discovered. My modem before this started was always idle, even with VOIP. Now I'm getting hammered all the time....I even tried removing my firewalls to no avail. So something in the rcn network as changed....
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AndyD2k @ 11th Nov 06:34PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

I have several computers and networked devices - I'm going to assume the fact that the light is always flashing because there is always a device on. I don't think it's anything to suspect about. But I honestly can't remember if it was always like that or it just started
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snarfal @ 11th Nov 08:16PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

Thing to remember is that Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) is in constant communication to your modem and just because the light is flashing doesn't really mean it's using much bandwidth. Fact is it's probably very very minimal. Based on what I've seen and gathered speaking with some RCN Techs, you could actually see see how much through-put is getting used by selecting the "monitor throughput" option on RCN's new speed test page. md.speedtest.rcn.net/newtest
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Laurie @ 11th Nov 10:06PM:
Re: [Speed] Frustrated in New York

I'm kind of with Andy the last few days. I just took the new test because things have been dragging and wanted to see if it was my imagination:

Max Download Speed: 4.17Mbps
Max Upload Speed: 118.15Kbps

I have no splitters, dedicated wiring for modem.

Posting here to add another voice to Andy's frustration and confirm it's not just him.
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