Qwest DSL Connection: The Saga Continues

[thndregg]

Question: Is there anything more I can do to spur Qwest's large posterior into action?
I have now filed a complaint with the Oregon P.U.C.

This has been going on since June, with temporary fix after temporary fix, invariably leading back to regular interruptions in DSL service.
Qwest acknowledges the source of the problem is in their system, as this excerpt from my chat transcript illustrates:

"Tech Noel > Phillip, I just got done speaking to our Tier 3, and it looks like the equipment is the one that's generating the outage alert to them
Tech Noel > They have 4 dslam and that one is having an issue causing all customers on that one dslam to be put on the remaining dslam which is causing a congestion on the 3 dslams.  They are on it"

They said the same thing the last three times, supposedly fixed it (probably with hay bale twine found on the side of the road ), but it always reverts back to this:


This is a 24hr graph. On the left is where I started Ping Plotter once I was aware the net was screwing up again. Later this morning, I started the sample set back up shortly after 8am. Check out the pattern. Each one of those red spikes kicks me out of the game, or lags any media or webpage I run.


Flayed1 (my brother) shows the same thing on his ping plot at his place. Same gateway, etc.

So, is there anything I'm missing here? What would spur corporate greedy-gut Qwest into fixing this for good (that's legal and civilized)?

I'm out of ideas.

[Skuzzy]

Unfortunately, all you can do is yell at them.  If they are the only game in town, then may chose to ignore you.

[thndregg]

Unfortunately, all you can do is yell at them.  If they are the only game in town, then may chose to ignore you.

That's pretty much what we all figured. My mom & brother are angry as well because we all pay good money apparently for crap. There are no other carriers out here, so if I had to switch to (Heaven fordbid) satellite, well.. that does it for AH. We'll be keeping an ear out for any response from the P.U.C. this week.

[Tigger29]

That's pretty much what we all figured. My mom & brother are angry as well because we all pay good money apparently for crap. There are no other carriers out here, so if I had to switch to (Heaven fordbid) satellite, well.. that does it for AH. We'll be keeping an ear out for any response from the P.U.C. this week.

Dial-up is always an option as well.. I've heard it's better for AH than satellite.

[thndregg]

We were on dial-up for years before this. I might be okay with it, but there are members of my family who do business online that broadband is better suited for.

The local phone company's service was fine back in the day. Qwest's service is comparable to a fat guy who has an itch, but due to his girth, he can't reach to scratch it.

[Ghastly]

I know that 10 - 15/mo is in some households a burden, but given the low bandwidth requirements of AH you might consider using both if the idea of having a dial-up account just for AH is acceptable.  Play AH via modem, and keep the crappy monopoly with the higher bandwidth for the applications that aren't so timing sensitive.

It's not ideal, but it might be a solution.

<S>

[Flayed]

 I spent 2 hours chatting with a Qwest Tech today and was even disco'd from him once due to one of these lag spikes and yet he said they could find nothing wrong with my connection but admitted there was something wrong lol...  They are sending the local tech out AGAIN though he has been out at least 4 times and said there is nothing wrong with the wiring to our houses and even replaced my modem with another one for free (now I have two fully functional 4 port wireless modems).  he even called his boss before he came out the 3rd time saying it wasn't a problem here.
  I don't believe this tech will be able to solve anything with the equipment he has, looks like standard stuff for fixing Voice lines and of course the voice lines show no problem.... 

  What absolutely kills me is that the techs on the phone keep trying to tell me it's the wiring in my house because they don't see a problem on their end even though at least 4 houses up the road are having the exact same problem at the same time and I informed them of this.  I guess my place controls the internet for everyone beyond, I never realized I was so important... lol   

[thndregg]

I know that 10 - 15/mo is in some households a burden, but given the low bandwidth requirements of AH you might consider using both if the idea of having a dial-up account just for AH is acceptable.  Play AH via modem, and keep the crappy monopoly with the higher bandwidth for the applications that aren't so timing sensitive.

It's not ideal, but it might be a solution.

<S>

Yeah, maybe will have to resort to that. I just fired off another e-mail to Qwest with tonight's trace route samples to prove my point. They tried to tell me it was repaired, and I'm attempting to show them "no, it hasn't". Flayed1 says they are sending the poor field tech out to his place for the fifth time although we all know the problem is definitely NOT at any of our households since they gave us the DSLAM story.

<EDIT>: Oh, hi there Flayed. How's the cup & string thing doing?

[thndregg]

Hmm... it cleared up at about 11:30 this morning. We'll see if this lasts another two weeks. I guess I'll play AH while it lasts.

[thndregg]

Qwest still is unable to troubleshoot the problem, but they do still confirm it is their hardware that is the source. I will give them the magic number (2 weeks ) to resolve it. If they still prove inept in doing so, I will resubscribe with my old dial-up service and ditch Qwest's lame excuse of DSL.

Currently DSL is still lagging very much, so dial-up would be about the same speed as this defective DSL is now. All I need the net for is to pay bills anyway, so what the hell? In fact, at the present time, Aces High will perform better on dial-up than this DSL.

That's just sad.

[Tigger29]

You have to keep in mind that speed and lag (latency) are two completely different things.

Think of a highway... speed would be the speed limit on that highway.  So, basically, traffic would be able to move at the speed of 10mb/sec (for example).

Lag (latency) is how long the traffic has to sit on the on-ramp before it even gets a chance to get up to speed.  A good efficient on-ramp would see 35ms.. but if there is a lot of congestion on the ramp, it may take 200ms or more for a "car" to actually get to the highway.

A problem with ISP's is that they tend to not put enough lanes on the highway, so when traffic gets congested no one can even get to the speed limit, and things get so backed up that a lot of cars get stuck on the on-ramps, not even being able to get TO the highway (dropped/lost packets).

It looks like Qwest is suffering from a 9-day mega traffic jam!  (must be chinese owned LOL)

Since not a lot of information is exchanged for AH to work, speed isn't nearly as important at lag(latency) is.

DSL/Cable/Fiber (when working properly) = FAST SPEED, LOW LATENCY, NO LOST PACKETS (ideal for gaming *IF* it works properly)
Satellite = MEDIUM SPEED, HIGH LATENCY, A FEW LOST PACKETS
WiFi = MEDIUM SPEED, LOW LATENCY, SOME LOST PACKETS
Dial-Up = SLOW SPEED, LOW LATENCY, NO LOST PACKETS (until someone picks up the phone)

[MADe]

Try Verizon DSL if available. I get 95% of the bandwidth I pay for. Tried Roadrunner and Time Warner sux. My 3MB Verizon DSL blew away Roadrunners 5MB service.
FYI

[thndregg]

Try Verizon DSL if available. I get 95% of the bandwidth I pay for. Tried Roadrunner and Time Warner sux. My 3MB Verizon DSL blew away Roadrunners 5MB service.
FYI

In my part of eastern Oregon (yeah, it's still called Oregon here), Qwest DSL is the only high speed option. We don't have any other landline alternatives other than going back to dial-up. I live eight miles south of Nyssa, and four miles north of Adrian- basically not in town where there might be other options.

[Flayed]

The tech I chatted with last night got an engineer on it and after a few hours the engineer could see the lag spikes but was unable to figure out where the problem was so he shipped it on up the chain to those responsible for hardware outages... Haven't heard anything back since.


  Talked to the tech that was out today checking thndrs  line for 3 hours and he said they didn't find much wrong other than some latency between his house and the first hop but not enough to give us the problems we are having though I was showing the same spikes every 4 to 8 min while they were working on it.    Soooo   he is shipping this problem on up to his manager...    I love how they say they see a problem but yet can't find the problem.

[thndregg]

I've finally "squeaked" enough I made it through on a direct line to one of the "higher-ups" in the chain. He sent the poor tech guy back out again and the result thus far is that DSL is now working normally.....(sigh) again for everyone I know of in my area. Once again, we will see for how long. For now, my trace route looks great!

I guess the lesson is persistence and plain stubbornness backed with a little basic knowledge & common sense on how the internet works. I know these guys hate it when I send trace routes to them by e-mail, but I felt I needed to annoy the crap out of them with it anyway.

I hope I got somewhere.