My internet is WAY faster - SHHH! Don't tell my ISP!

[exile360]

Today I was streaming a video on Netflix and once I started the stream I took a peak at my little bandwidth monitoring sidebar gadget as I typically do during streams and downloads and I happened to notice something I had never seen before: my connection speed downstream was rated at a high 3 MEGABYTES per second!

This should be impossible, not only because I am only paying for a 12 MEGABIT (that is, approximately 1.5 megabytes) connection, but also because the theoretical physical limitation of my ISP's copper DSL lines is supposed to be that same 12 megabit/1.5 megabyte speed (though I'm sure they have at least some amount of overhead just to ensure they don't fall short of their rated speeds).  Normally I get really great speeds through my ISP, not only because it is DSL so it is consistent (no sharing bandwidth with my neighbors or the rest of the neighborhood as you do when you have a service like cable), but also because I have always gotten faster than the speed I'm paying for, just not by this much.  Originally, back when I was paying for a 6 megabit connection (the fastest offered at the time), I was receiving approximately 850~860 kilobytes per second download speeds which equates to approximately 7 megabits per second (6.88 megabits to be more precise; a whopping .88 megabits higher than the 'official'/advertised speed) which was great, and initially when I upgraded to this 12 megabit speed that they just started offering (likely due to a recent upgrade in their lines/equipment), I was consistently getting just under 2 megabytes per second (around 13.7 megabits to be precise) which is already nearly 2 megabits faster than the advertised speed.

But today things have changed.  I am now getting a whopping 24 megabits per second, or almost exactly 3 MEGABYTES which is a HUGE jump above the measly 12 that I am supposed to be getting (basically double the bandwidth!).

I don't know if it is going to last, and of course it may simply be due to some kind of 'error' on their end such as an equipment malfunction or misconfiguration of the line/my connection, but I have tested and validated it and it is indeed working at these speeds (I've conducted multiple speed tests, and initiated multiple streams to test it from the likes of YouTube and Netflix etc.).

Well, I just thought I'd share my good fortune with you all.  I have had issues with ISP's in the past, but I must say, I love my ISP.  They've been great, always providing better than the rated speeds I pay for, always keeping the service up (it's only gone down maybe 2 times in the 10+ years that I have been with them and even then it generally gets fixed very quickly), and the price is cheap with no bandwidth caps and (at least as far as I can tell), no throttling whatsoever (I get full speeds regardless of what I'm downloading/streaming, so no slow performance on the likes of Netflix etc.).

So yeah, it's not the fastest connection ever, and fiber optics make it look like dialup, but it's plenty fast for all my needs, works consistently (which is the most important thing to me; I like knowing precisely how fast my connection should be at all times as this makes troubleshooting any issues much easier), and it only costs me around $64 per month (including all the taxes/fees etc.).

Anyway, I hope that my good fortune finds you all and that you too are able to get better than what you pay for!

[David H. Lipman]

I guess you are close enough to the CO.

BTW:  Are you in an apartment building or house ?

[sman]

It's surprising that you are not in Fibernet, which is the iin thing and would have the benefit of symmetric speeds both Dn & Up side..

[sman]

Nowadays 100 Mbps is very common..

[sman]

And for the speed in use, $64 is very high, should be within $10..

[sman]

Price Rankings by Country of Internet (60 Mbps or More, Unlimited Data, Cable/ADSL) (Utilities (Monthly))

"https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=33"

Nowadays it's about Gbps connectivity on the higher side..

[Porthos]

I am stuck with this until google fiber gets to my area.

 

[David H. Lipman]

There is no reason to successively reply to the thread sman.

There may be lots of reasons why exile360 has aDSL.  This could be availability of services, spectrum of service providers, locality and other limiting factors.

additionally $64/month is a market price for POTs and Internet.

My parents lived three miles from me and wile I enjoy symmetrical FTTP services, it was not available to them and I believe they were paying ~$75/month for aDSL at a lower bit-rate due to their distance from the CO.

 

[sman]

All after thoughts.. while taking time off from my trading..

[exile360]

4 hours ago, David H. Lipman said:

I guess you are close enough to the CO.

BTW:  Are you in an apartment building or house ?

Apartment, and yes, I'm very close to the office/main node, but even with that, the DSL techs were still surprised at the speed of my connection.  Must be good wiring here, or better than they're used to around here  

2 hours ago, David H. Lipman said:

There is no reason to successively reply to the thread sman.

There may be lots of reasons why exile360 has aDSL.  This could be availability of services, spectrum of service providers, locality and other limiting factors.

additionally $64/month is a market price for POTs and Internet.

My parents lived three miles from me and wile I enjoy symmetrical FTTP services, it was not available to them and I believe they were paying ~$75/month for aDSL at a lower bit-rate due to their distance from the CO.

 

Correct, the only other option for internet is from the local cable company and their service is HORRIBLE.  It goes out every time it rains, or just randomly 'just because' and in fact was so bad that I actually cancelled my cable TV service years ago from them because all or nearly all of the channels would almost constantly be blacked out due to loss of signal because of these issues.  They obviously advertise much faster internet speeds than my DSL provider, however the quality and consistency of the service provided is terrible, so much so that I have noticed that over the past few years ALL of my neighbors have switched to the very same DSL provider I am using (I can tell because of the SSID's of their wi-fi routers/modems that I see broadcasting in my area; tons of them, all from the same provider except maybe one or two out of many).

The price I pay is also much cheaper than the cost from the cable company, even if 'bundled' with their cable TV service, and as I mentioned, consistency is very important to me.  I like that I can initiate a stream or download at any time of day, no matter how many people might be actively downloading/streaming content in my area, and know that my connection will be just as fast as it is at 3 or 4 AM when everyone is asleep.  There is no such consistency with cable and similar providers.

As for fiber and the like, no such options are available in my area.  It is a very small town.  I understand fully that speeds are much faster in other parts of the country (though many still have the same level of service or even worse than I do here, at least in the US, due to much of the infrastructure/lines not being updated), however the point of posting wasn't to brag that my connection is faster than everyone else's on the web or even on these forums (I know for example that MUCH faster speeds are standard in CA where the Malwarebytes home office is, not only because I've been told by their employees, but also because I have been there on numerous occasions and used it myself having been a high level employee of the company at one time), but even with that, I doubt many could claim that they are getting 2X what their advertised speed is on their connections, regardless of how fast their service might be.  Nor can most claim that they get faster speeds at all than what is advertised to them as the maximum for their connections; in fact many people don't even get close to what the advertised bandwidth is for their connections, especially when using one of the inconsistent, shared services I mentioned that work like cable does.  It would certainly be nice if we got fiber here, but given the low population numbers I highly doubt it would be worth the cost for any provider to run the lines here, so copper is what we have instead.  I'm just grateful that my particular provider seems to take good care of their copper lines and equipment because the service works great for what it is, and it's plenty fast enough for me (I have a 1440p screen and can stream full 1440p video on services like YouTube without any issues and have no trouble downloading games, streaming video on Netflix, Amazon, Vudo or any other site/service I use and it's plenty fast enough for everything that I do online).

[David H. Lipman]

19 minutes ago, exile360 said:

Apartment, and yes, I'm very close to the office/main node, but even with that, the DSL techs were still surprised at the speed of my connection.  Must be good wiring here, or better than they're used to around here 

That's what I thought.

Chances are the apartment complex is on Cable or FTTP.  The DSLAM is not in a CO but may be in a basement electrical room.  In effect the CO is that electrical room.  It is less expensive to take advantage of POTs already existing in the building than running Cable or Optical Fiber to each apartment.

DSL uses Quadrature Amplitude Modulation ( QAM )  and requires Twisted Pair wiring and the speed is dependent upon the distance between the DSL MODEM and the DSLAM.  Since the distance is so short, the bit-rate can be very high.  In fact that is what Very High-Speed DSL (VDSL) is all about.

The speed you get is appropriate for such an arrangement and you may be even closer to the DSLAM.

Edited November 25, 2019 by David H. Lipman
Edited for content, clarity, spelling and grammar

[exile360]

There's no basement here, just 4 side-by-side apartments.  It's a really small place.  As far as I know, the phone lines just run into the apartments from a box in the middle on an outside wall, and from there up to the roof and to a pole and down a few streets/blocks to their office.  I don't know all the details, but that's how the wiring is at least.

But yes, the speed of DSL (and even whether or not it is available) depends greatly on where the company's office is and the closer you are to it, the better/faster.  Like I said though, the techs even commented on how fast my connection in particular is, even though they're the same folks who hooked up my neighbors' connections.  I suspect there is more to it than that, but I'm not sure what.  At one point my connection did slow down for a while a few years back and the tech I spoke with on the phone, after diagnosing the issue, determined I'd previously been connecting through a different 'node' (I think that's what she called it; basically like a routing box on one of the telephone poles down the street that handles the connections) and that the one I was on before was faster for whatever reason, so she switched me back to it and made a note in my account that my connection was not to be switched off of that node/box/whatever unless it was an emergency/absolutely necessary, and my speed has been faster than the advertised speeds ever since (just not as fast as what I got earlier today with double the max; still not sure how that happened, but I'll take it ).

Edited November 26, 2019 by exile360

[David H. Lipman]

To get that kind of speed, the CO would have to be your neighbour.

Look for the POTs DEMARC.

Of course, you can ask the landlord. 

https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/2012/graph-ADSL-speed-versus-distance

 

[exile360]

The landlord probably won't have a clue.  They run multiple properties around here of various types and this is just one of the smaller ones.  See my edits above though; I suspect I might have at least some idea of what's going on, at least partially.

[exile360]

Anyway, it looks like they either caught their error, or I messed it up.  I had to reboot my machine and now it is back to its sluggish 13.7 megabits per second

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, and it's still plenty fast for me and still a good deal faster than the speed I'm supposed to be getting so I'm content.

But keep your eyes open, and pay attention to your bandwidth, because you too may one day find yourself with the ethereal 'SUUUUUUPEEERRRRRR FAST INTERNETTTTTSSSSSSS!!!!!'

Hehe