As much as I may hate admitting it, switching back to Comcast after a year with CenturyLink was one of the best decisions I've made in quite awhile (though, it might be that I make an inordinate amount of suboptimal decisions).
While I may loathe Comcast as a company, in my experience, their service is markedly better than CenturyLink's. While I didn't have CenturyLink's "gigabit fiber" service I can say without hesitation that their service and support was *far* worse than even what Comcast offers. Things have only become better for me since Comcast doubled their advertised speeds from 50 to 100 megabits. I may not be able to hit the advertised speeds in non-synthetic benchmarks I am routinely able to achieve 85 Mbit or higher when downloading large files and somewhere between eight and ten megabits in the other direction. As I mentioned, I didn't have CenturyLink's gigabit "fiber" service but what service I did have wasn't worth the little amount of cash I saved compared to Comcast's exorbitant prices. I experienced far more service interruptions, random TCP resets, and generally wonky connections, not to mention insanely poor customer service issues with CL then I ever have with Comcast. If CL were to offer their "gigabit fiber" in my neighborhood (Sullivan's Gulch <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan%27s_Gulch,_Portland,_Oregon>) anytime soon I'd likely only subscribe to it if I were paid, even then, I'd probably use my neighbor's Comcast connection as a backup. I guess what I'm saying is that I have a hard time even imagining how bad my service through CL was. 240 millisecond ping times weren't uncommon. Actually, 240 ms wasn't even all that bad in the scheme of things. I'm not a gamer but the latency would often get so bad that I wasn't able to hold an SSH or VPN connection together, it was almost like being on a satellite connection (e.g. HughesNet, dishNet, Blue Sky, etc...). Please, unless something drastic happens, stay away from CenturyLink at all costs. --adam On Mon Jan 19 2015 at 4:05:39 AM Chris Kerchum <[email protected]> wrote: > Tree trimmers told me Century Link was going to run fiber up 30th Avenue. > They didn't know when, but said it was supposed to be 100 times faster than > the cable. The line will hang below the comcast line. > Chris > > > On 01/18/2015 07:02 PM, Peter Torelli wrote: > > I have Century Link and my bandwidth is definitely time-dependent. I > cronned this guy's script (https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli) on my > local machine and the data shows it rolling off daily at a peak rate of > 1.5MBs to 300-600kB/s between 8 and 11pm. I'm really far from downtown and > I pay $45/mo for 1.5MB/s down, but it pisses me off to no end that my > internet performance has been getting worse over the years due to their > throttling. I have no other choice, HughesNet is a joke (tried it for a few > months years ago), so I'm stuck with CenturyLink b/c of where I live. > > They totally got me by the shorthairs. > > Is there anything I've overlooked besides HughesNet satellite and the > one DSL provider that offers service?? (I've checked with the other big > ones that show up on google search). > > P > > > > On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 3:26 PM, Brandon <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Bummer! >> >> Just tested mine (Milwaukie area) and it's with 5% of advertised. >> >> Let us know what ya find! >> >> Cheers, >> >> Brandon Mathis >> KD7INF >> [email protected] >> >> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Sova <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> The line from the street comes directly into the house via a single >>> pair of CAT5 terminated with a RJ-11 jack. There is not extra wiring. DSL >>> circuit is not experiencing any dropped packets or signal issues. The >>> issue is speed which is inconsistent but never reaches 20/5 service. The >>> best I have received is 18.1Mbits down which, with overhead, is pretty >>> close. My upload speed is clearly capped at 800kbps as that is >>> consistently the maximum speed up. Today on the phone they said that is >>> the speed promised. I can’t find any upload speed in anything that I >>> signed or on any of the advertising. 800kbps is really slow, and not >>> really acceptable. >>> >>> >>> >>> But the biggest evidence is that the speed I get is completely time >>> dependent. If I run tests after 6pm until 11pm the speed is around 2 – 4 >>> mbps! If I run it around 4am then I get around 16mbps. So my belief is >>> that they have oversold my local DSLAM and that there is not enough >>> capacity from the DSLAM to the Internet. >>> >>> >>> >>> They are sending me a new “modem” to see if that fixes the issue despite >>> my explaining that the problem is not my connection to the local DSLAM but >>> the speed from there out to the net. >>> >>> >>> >>> Sova >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* [email protected] [mailto: >>> [email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Brandon >>> *Sent:* Friday, January 9, 2015 10:50 PM >>> *To:* A discussion list for dorkbot-pdx (portland, or) >>> *Subject:* Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] CenturyLink "Fiber in your >>> neighborhood" Experience >>> >>> >>> >>> If you're not hitting your advertised speeds I recommend doing an audit >>> of your home telephone wiring. I went to my block and removed every wire >>> except for the one that lead to the single jack feeding the modem (about >>> 15ft away) and haven't had a lapse in speed since the day it was installed >>> (with sporadic checking). >>> >>> We're in Milwaukie, so a bit further south. Pretty happy with the >>> service and especially the price. We had the 20/5 service but when we >>> called to get the annual 'deal' again they offered 40/5 for less than we >>> were paying for the 20/5 before. Sprung for that, come within 5% of the >>> advertised speed. >>> >>> I'm sure your mileage may vary, but I'm a pretty satisfied customer. >>> >>> >>> >>> I did note that their equipment (pole or ground mounted) is not UPS >>> backed (they don't offer VOIP phone service in our area) so when the >>> neighborhood power goes out, the internet drops too (even with my UPS >>> backed equipment). >>> >>> Cheers! >>> >>> >>> Brandon Mathis >>> KD7INF >>> [email protected] >>> >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 10:35 PM, Sova <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Thought I would just let everyone know that (as expected), CenturyLink's >>> advertising of "Fiber in your neighborhood" appears to be nothing but >>> marketing lies. The first lie was that it wasn't fiber to the door >>> actually >>> fiber to the node VDSL service. They then told me I could order 40mbps >>> DSL, >>> which I did, but then later my order was changed to 20mbps because they >>> said >>> higher speeds were not available in my area. >>> >>> They do actually have some fiber to the house installs happening in >>> Portland >>> now. They just aren't in the areas that the people knocking on doors are >>> canvasing. My guess is they are trying to figure out how much interest >>> there is in a neighborhood and if they should extend the fiber service >>> further into the area. Anyway, the only areas I know are actually being >>> installed with fiber to the door is along SE 26th Ave from Belmont to >>> Powell, and between SE Belmont and SE Hawthorne from SE26th up to SE33rd >>> (approx.). >>> >>> Today during the install I was told I was too far from the node and could >>> only get 20mbps (which they had already told me, but apparently not the >>> technician). Then the second issue was that the modem they provided me >>> wasn't able to do a transparent bridged connection. Luckily Tech had a >>> different one on the truck. He gave it to me and then took off. I >>> switched >>> it over to bridge but then nothing worked. Figured out that you have to >>> have authenticated PPPoE for DHCP and then spent a few hours on the phone >>> trying to get my authentication credentials, which were never provided to >>> me. >>> >>> Anyway, it is all installed but I have yet to see anything close to the >>> speed promised. Best I have gotten is 10mbps down, 0.8mpbs up. This >>> evening I have been having about 2.0mpbs down and 0.5mbps up. Their >>> provided DNS servers are incredibly slow, but switching to my own >>> recursive >>> DNS server didn't help much. Tried forever to find the promised upload >>> speed and can't find it listed anywhere not even in the very hard to find >>> legal print. A good thing to note is that in the legal print the speeds >>> promised are stated as "between your home and our offices" so you aren't >>> even getting promised Internet speeds. Maybe you won't care that you >>> have >>> 40mbps to their offices and then you have 2.0mbps out to the Internet, >>> but >>> I'm not very happy with that deal. >>> >>> So... Comcast still remains the only real high-speed option in SE >>> Portland >>> (all of Portland proper?) and I don't recommend wasting your time with >>> CenturyLink. >>> >>> If anyone has a recommendation for a fixed wireless service with decent >>> speeds, please let me know. I'm tired of giving money to Comcast or >>> CenturyLink for their horrible monopoly Internet options. >>> >>> Sova >>> >>> PS - When I was in the Netherlands I had three ISPs to pick from that all >>> provided service via DOCSIS cable service. I paid 40 EUR a month for >>> 30mbps >>> which was plenty fast, always working, and didn't block, redirect, >>> filter, >>> of otherwise molest my traffic. I did have to VPN back to the US for >>> Netflix and Pandora which was annoying, however. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber >>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing > [email protected]http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber > > > _______________________________________________ > dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list > [email protected] > http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber
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