Unreliable internet

[newbury]

This is a quest for us too now, since we're moving to a property ~10 miles from the nearest town... I am just now switching my office from Comcast cable internet ($54/mo for "starter" internet at 11 up/3 dn) to Centurylink DSL (~$35/mo for 7 up/1 dn, which should be sufficient) <snip>

Did you mean to write 11 for upload/ 3 for download? Usually download speeds are higher than upload speeds.

 

[barko1]

Hughesnet is what I'm stuck with now. They are full of BS and I was fooled/lied to by them as to how much I could stream. There is fiber optic in the road past me but $8000 to get it to the house.

 

[rekees4300]

Hughesnet is what I'm stuck with now. They are full of BS and I was fooled/lied to by them as to how much I could stream.

I had Hughsnet 5 years ago, worse company on the planet, sounds like things haven't changed much. When Verizon Wireless arrived had fun crushing the Hughsnet dish with the FEL. :tractor:

 

[RNeumann]

Update, I was so fed up with the bad internet I called and scheduled an install for exede internet. It would have been twice the price at $80.00 a month plus tax and "fees". They said I would get 12 mbs down load and 3 mbs upload; that also included 150 gb of data a month. I scheduled it for a few days out since Frontier was to come out one more time.

I didn't think the price was to bad as that is about what I was paying at my last place for half the speed; although I did not have a data cap.

The Frontier tech decided to run a new line from the road to my house, he said he didn't think that was the problem but didn't know what else to try. Well low and behold I finally have good 11.5 mbs down load and .75 mbs upload speeds (average). When I called him the next day he was surprised as he really didn't think that was the problem as his meteor was showing a good signal at the house.

Nothing was said about cost for running the line, I am hoping I will not be charged, I was not charged for the other "service" calls. I will have to wait and see on next months bill. I would guess it was about a 300 foot run from the road to were it ties into my house. The line is also laying on top of the snow and nothing was said about them coming back in the spring to bury it.

So for now I am satisfied. I also feel the tech did a good job by not giving up on the problem and kept trying different things. I know there have been some negative comments about Frontier on this thread and else were on the net. I do not blame them for my issue, the people I purchased the house from were the original owners and never had the internet.

The service provider is responsible for their equipment and lines 99.999% of the time. Most service providers have their equipment at your house meaning they cover everything up to your house. With that I wouldn't expect a bill. It sounds like the drop to your house had an intermittent connection.
With regards to burying the line I'd assume it would go in the old conduit. If it wasn't in conduit you will have plenty of time to ponder why anyone would direct bury any wire while the line is redug and buried!

 

[JimRB]

We have our dial tone, internet and TV from the same cable provider. TV was always fine but the phone and internet would drop out. Many support calls got me nowhere with them doing some grabbing at straws in yard. I complained to the public utility commision about my crummy dial tone (can't call 911 with no dial tone) and upper cable company management support called me later that day. They stated they had a few complaints around me. There is potentially a few hundred houses on the same node I am on. In any event they say they found some bad equipment 1.5 miles up the road. Months and months of complaining and tech visits. A complaint to the PSC and they have it fixed in a week. Everyone else in the neighborhood should be thanking me but I only know the people on my 1/2 mile gravel road.

I was not happy with the previous ATT DSL.

 

[RNeumann]

We have our dial tone, internet and TV from the same cable provider. TV was always fine but the phone and internet would drop out. Many support calls got me nowhere with them doing some grabbing at straws in yard. I complained to the public utility commision about my crummy dial tone (can't call 911 with no dial tone) and upper cable company management support called me later that day. They stated they had a few complaints around me. There is potentially a few hundred houses on the same node I am on. In any event they say they found some bad equipment 1.5 miles up the road. Months and months of complaining and tech visits. A complaint to the PSC and they have it fixed in a week. Everyone else in the neighborhood should be thanking me but I only know the people on my 1/2 mile gravel road.

I was not happy with the previous ATT DSL.

Something everyone should understand! Because the utility is a monopoly they have extra regulation, and steps can be taken outside the utility itself.
I asked cable co for service to my business and was told it would be $10k! To bad the contract they had with utility commission required them to provide service anywhere within 300' of their line. ONE email to AHJ and I had cable installed free of charge....and multiple apologies.
As stated above- Hopefully OP has phone equipment on his house and the line the utility layer on the ground is on their "side" and their fore their responsibility.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

You make an excellent point, sir! I have seen the same thing.

Something for all of us to keep in mind.

 

[California]

As for running routers off 12v, you skip the inverter altogether. Most of them use a 12v DC wall wart, so you cut off the 110v plug part wire the cord straight to the battery, then add a $4 HF trickle charger and you have a UPS that'll run your router for quite a while if the power goes down.

Just some comments -
1) ATT U-verse here at the ranch, and at my home in town. The one in town goes down for a moment several times a day, many service calls couldn't fix it. They told me it was my power, or bad ground. So a U-verse tech gave me a 12v backup battery and I tried running from that as a diagnostic tool. Didn't help but they said I could keep the battery.

ATT is now running fiber there and sent me notice I could switch, at additional cost of course. I've read ATT is getting out of the copper-to-home business entirely, will sell remaining customers to small home town providers. My suspicion is my signal is bad due to total neglect of the 100 year old copper infrastructure, or possibly intentional bad service to drive off the last copper customers.

2) I tried that HF $4.99 trickle charger to maintain a tractor I didn't use for months at a time, concluded that leaving it connected past a couple of days boiled out the battery water needing water added occasionally to a battery that never needed this before. I attach it now only if a voltmeter shows around 12.4 volts or below, and only for a day or so. For continual use like internet service I would buy a more sophisticated charger.

3) I have a jump-start battery here at the ranch, and have the connectors to use its 12v for the router, 12v phone chargers, and some LED lighting, if needed. Also an inverter if needed for some other gadget. This battery is a little neater than a home brew system built up from a car battery.

4) And sorta relevant: I read some techie wired his Prius to power a fairly large inverter for minor emergency lighting etc in his house. Not using the high voltage that drives the traction motor, but rather he said because the engine is frequently restarted a Prius has a huge (120 amp?) 12v alternator and large battery ideal to power an inverter. He said the car starts itself and runs a few minutes to recharge its 12v battery, at something like hour intervals. He said he looked into tapping the high voltage/high amperage propulsion battery system and that looked to be complex, expensive, and dangerous, not worth the trouble for something he would rarely need.

 

[dmccarty]

I asked earlier if it was DSL,, because we had a simple fix that made ours virtually 100% perfect.

It turned out there was a phone plugged in on the line, without the filter.
We added a filter,
the performance went from 1.5 Mb to constantly over 6Mb.

The guys they send out never check in the house,,, and surely do not walk your house, looking for another phone.
Make sure EVERY phone has a filter!! :thumbsup:

:laughing::laughing::laughing: Well, that is interesting information. The repair guys that have come to our house are 50/50 regarding the filters. Some want the filters on the phone and some do not want the filters. :confused3::shocked: Having the filters in place, or not, did not do anything for us. We get the download speed we pay for, the problem is its reliability. The filters just don't do anything that we can see.

When we call for service, we always wonder if he will be a filter guy or not. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Later,
Dan