Pretty much the same here. Lease a managed router from us for
$5/month, or if you buy one at the store head for the $70 to $100
price range. Less they probably cut corners, more and you’re probably
wasting money.
Our leased routers are Mikrotik 951G, we just got some hAP AC in to
consider as a dual band AC solution. We like the ability to manage
the Mikrotik routers but they don’t really give us a solution for
customers who want a fancy router, or to take management to the next
level (application level QoS, customer dashboard). The answer for
that is probably Calix, but our customer base mostly shops at WalMart
and Dollar General, I’m not sure we have enough demand for a Calix
class router. There are a few who would want something like that, but
it’s probably well under 5%, unless we subsidize them.
I only push the leased routers so hard, actually I think it’s a better
deal for the customer than for us, if they want to buy a router and
hope it lasts 5 years they are welcome to. Unfortunately this means
the people taking the leased router may be the people who just don’t
have the money to buy a router we’ll be shutting them off for
nonpayment in a couple months and trying to get our router back.
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *Joe Novak
*Sent:* Saturday, October 15, 2016 1:31 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] "buffering"
What are you recommending on routers now Ken?
Our spiel usually includes netgear and spend no more then 100$.
Especially for the people on the 3mbit and 5mbit plans. We've been
doing good at converting these people that don't want to mess with it
to our rental router. (Zyxel 2.4ghz) for 5/month.
On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 1:23 PM, Ken Hohhof <af...@kwisp.com
<mailto:af...@kwisp.com>> wrote:
I’m still waiting to run into a customer with a media library to
justify the $400 WiFi router some kid in the store sold them so
they could have multigigabit WiFi in their house. Cuz if your
only source of content is your 25 Mbps Internet connection, I’m
missing why you need that AC5300 router. And honestly, if I had a
media center with locally stored content streaming 4K video around
the house, I’d figure a way to run a cable to the big screens.
Why spend all that money and then cheap out by using WiFi,
especially since that 60 inch TV isn’t exactly portable unless
it’s on wheels.
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com
<mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com>] *On Behalf Of *Joe Novak
*Sent:* Saturday, October 15, 2016 1:09 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] "buffering"
It makes me sad that Kodi got associated with all of the nonsense.
It's a beautiful media center front end. I actually just got a
'NexBox' in that runs android, outputs 4K, which I can't do with
my current media center setup. I've been excited to play around
with it.
On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Ken Hohhof <af...@kwisp.com
<mailto:af...@kwisp.com>> wrote:
And the people with the Kodi boxes, usually the people who
barely know how to use a computer, are they answering ads in
the back of magazines or something? They seem to expect
something like the analog TV converter boxes, you plug it in
and get free live TV. Must be legal because I bought a box.
And for tech support, call your ISP.
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com
<mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com>] *On Behalf Of *That One Guy
/sarcasm
*Sent:* Saturday, October 15, 2016 12:54 PM
*To:* af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] "buffering"
Don't forget these rooted amazon firesticks are dominating
right now. I won't offer any support for any issue unless it's
a vanilla stick. These things are blatantly illegal like the
black box descramblers for satellite days.
People are dropping malicious operating systems in the middle
of their trusted network left and right for "free" tv. God
only knows what iot bot net activity is also causing their
xhamster buffering
On Oct 15, 2016 12:48 PM, "Chuck McCown" <ch...@wbmfg.com
<mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com>> wrote:
I read the word “Netflix” and my brain received
“Netscape”. Talk about a confusing moment...
*From:*CBB - Jay Fuller
*Sent:*Saturday, October 15, 2016 11:33 AM
*To:*af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Subject:*Re: [AFMUG] "buffering"
I have a smart tv that works fine but won't update. It is
an earlier Netflix interface but I actually like it better
than the modern interface.....
Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Smartphone
----- Reply message -----
From: "Ken Hohhof" <af...@kwisp.com <mailto:af...@kwisp.com>>
To: <af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>>
Subject: [AFMUG] "buffering"
Date: Sat, Oct 15, 2016 12:10 PM
In your experience, does it help if the customer goes
through the procedure to update the app on the smart TV?
Most of the smart TVs we run into seem to be Samsung. I
know a lot of the early ones also didn’t seem to play well
with certain WiFi routers.
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com
<mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com>] *On Behalf Of *Joe Novak
*Sent:* Saturday, October 15, 2016 11:59 AM
*To:* af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] "buffering"
In a lot of the early smart TVs - even some of the new
ones - the netflix 'smart' modulation did not work well if
at all. The Roku's and streaming boxes usually have
perfect support for it. Hulu seems to do good too. Direct
TV has shit poor bandwidth management, and poor peering as
far as we could tell.
On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Ken Hohhof
<af...@kwisp.com <mailto:af...@kwisp.com>> wrote:
The most recent customer I think I’ve gotten to
clarify the video is actually stopping and starting.
Previously he was saying it took a long time to buffer
but was fine once the picture appeared. That’s what
got me to thinking the latest complaint was impatience
with how long it took before the video started
playing, not problems while it was playing. The next
challenge is to find out what streaming service he is
using, people tend to call them all “Netflix”. But I
rarely hear about Netflix stopping to buffer because
Netflix can switch stream rates on the fly, if it’s
actually Netflix and it is stopping and starting, in
my experience it’s usually something other than just
slow Internet. Like WiFi dropping out, or packet loss,
or a Windows 10 download overloading the connection.
We have transitioned to the point where people sit
down in front of their “smart TV” and expect to watch
TV, who knows what streaming service, but there is
only one answer if it doesn’t work like old fashioned
TV – your Internet is too slow. I had a customer call
because she couldn’t watch an online class on her
computer which was telling her “you are not connected
to a network”, and there was an airplane symbol in the
lower right. Tech support for the online college told
her that meant her Internet was too slow. I was
tempted to tell her the airplane symbol actually meant
her Internet was really fast (it’s flying), otherwise
it would show a car or a turtle.
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of
*Chuck McCown
*Sent:* Saturday, October 15, 2016 10:29 AM
*To:* af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] "buffering"
I presume the circle thing is spinning when people say
buffering.
*From:*Ken Hohhof
*Sent:*Friday, October 14, 2016 8:34 PM
*To:*af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>
*Subject:*Re: [AFMUG] "buffering"
But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m wondering
if when a customer talks about “buffering”, he really
means having to wait for the video to start playing.
And maybe I’m confused because I assume everyone is
using Netflix. And I’m pretty sure Netflix starts the
stream at a low quality so it starts quickly, and then
ramps up the quality as the buffer fills, since their
technology allows changing the stream quality on the
fly. Other services like maybe Hulu and Amazon Prime
may behave differently.
Also with my default assumption that people are using
Netflix, I don’t expect rebuffering because it’s been
years since Netflix needed to stop and rebuffer at a
lower stream rate, I think they do that pretty
seamlessly now.
*From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of
*Mathew Howard
*Sent:* Friday, October 14, 2016 9:09 PM
*To:* af <af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] "buffering"
Well, people certainly want connections that support
multiple streams. Paying for it, I'm not so sure
about... at least around these parts.
On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 8:52 PM, Eric Kuhnke
<eric.kuh...@gmail.com <mailto:eric.kuh...@gmail.com>>
wrote:
Have you ever seen a 1080p youtube video load on a
1GbE active-E FTTH ISP that has direct peering
with Google from a router 2.5ms upstream? It's a
beautiful thing.
People will absolutely pay for connections that
support multiple streams, take a typical family of
4 or 5 people with kids that want to watch videos
on tablets simultaneously...
On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 6:49 PM, Ken Hohhof
<af...@kwisp.com <mailto:af...@kwisp.com>> wrote:
When people say their video is “buffering”, I
assume they mean re-buffering, where the video
stops and starts.
I’m starting to wonder if some people are
referring to the delay before the video starts
playing. Is this a thing? And do people pay
for faster Internet just to make the video
start faster, like cut 15-20 seconds down to 5
or 10 seconds?
