So my mom calls me tonight and tells me that TWC is delivering them a new modem this week that is able to handle 40MB/down and that they will be getting a sizable speed boost for no charge. I am assuming this is in response to the fiber optic plan the city is rolling out, but I was curious if any one is there that might be more technical than my mother that knows more about what is going on.

2/11/2008 8:53:09 PM

40Mbit/s (~4MB/s or ~4,000KB/s) downstream?

No way.

4Mbit/s (~400KB/s) more likely.

(btw, the way you wrote it as 40MegaBytes ... that's ~400Mbit/s)

[Edited on February 11, 2008 at 9:15 PM. Reason : translation...]

2/11/2008 9:10:07 PM

The most TWC offers to anywhere residential is about 8Mbit/s l think. Time Warner business class (according to their website) tops out around 10Mbit/s for their tiered small and medium business products for the Carolinas. 40 Mbit/second does sound like something I'd expect to hear out of one of their customer service people though...

2/11/2008 9:51:32 PM

Although I suppose it would be entirely correct to say that the cable modem is able to handle 40MB/s downstream if it comes with a gigabit network port in it Says nothing for the network traffic limitations they impose on you of course.

2/11/2008 9:58:50 PM

FYI: 8 bits = 1 byte

2/11/2008 11:34:51 PM

I love going into bestbuy and hearing the sales people say, "yeah that router can handle 100 MegaBytes/second." I correct them saying, "you mean 100 megabits/second". And they're like, "yeah that's what i said".

2/11/2008 11:47:02 PM

good lord, it was a typo.

get back on topic.

2/12/2008 12:12:17 AM

What was the rest of the topic? There's absolutely no way RoadRunner is pushing 40Mbit/s in Wilson.

2/12/2008 12:17:57 AM

Quote :

"So my mom calls me tonight and tells me"

like mother like son?

if you had a typo is it possible your mother misheard?

never heard of anything residential even close to 40Mb

2/12/2008 12:18:03 AM

touche.

Well the point is that she wouldn't even know to make that number up. I personally think they were referring to the capability of the modem, but seeing as there will be a fiber network in place it wouldn't surprise me to see them get a fairly significant speed boost. TWC is already offering rates much higher than the 8mb that RR+ gets in Raleigh. Seeing as they have no real competition anywhere else and Wilson being a smaller area, I could see them going up fairly high.

2/12/2008 12:23:40 AM

Quote :

"I personally think they were referring to the capability of the modem"

i concur, most modem's max is 40-50Mb

[Edited on February 12, 2008 at 12:25 AM. Reason : .]

2/12/2008 12:25:12 AM

Quote :

"never heard of anything residential even close to 40Mb"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_FiOS

As far as Time Warner offering 40Mb in Wilson...I'm not saying for sure it is happening, but never say never. The theoretical bandwidth of cable is 30Mb/s and I've heard of the possibilty of bonding cable lines. If that's true, the speeds are certainly possible, and they'd have to run a test market somewhere. Could be Wilson.

2/12/2008 12:29:02 AM

Never say never, sure ... but they're not going to boost anything -- test market or otherwise for residential -- that high.

2/12/2008 12:32:36 AM

i'm very familiar with FiOS thank you

that's what i can't stand about TWW, i have to clarify everything i say because any exaggeration to make a point gets turned into a erroneous statement and you get called out for it

in reference to TWC and cable internet, let's just say I've never seen anything of the sort from TWC in their residential market

2/12/2008 12:41:58 AM

pardon me for not realizing that by "anything" you actually meant TWC.

I don't know how I made the mistake of not figuring that out.

2/12/2008 12:56:26 AM

Quote :

"get back on topic."

2/12/2008 1:07:28 AM

oh i know... it's my fault, i was just venting, i expect nothing less

2/12/2008 1:09:17 AM

ok, let's set the record straight...

according to the Wilson Daily Times article (1/30/08)

Quote :

"By Rochelle Moore | Daily Times Staff Writer Time Warner customers in Wilson with older Internet connections and slower download speeds are receiving upgrades at no extra charge as part of the company's plan to improve its Internet service from the Triangle to the coast. Wilson customers started receiving calls this month about the upgrade, which offers faster Internet speeds for its Road Runner and Road Runner Turbo service. Time Warner is providing the upgrade by replacing older modems to better accommodate the faster Internet speeds. "As Time Warner Cable continues to respond to customer demand, we are increasing Road Runner speeds throughout our footprint," said Melissa Buscher, public affairs manager for Time Warner. "We never stop trying to provide a better product. We have to position ourselves to compete." Road Runner Internet speeds will increase from 5 megabits per second to 10 mbps and the Road Runner Turbo service speed will increase from 8 to 14 mbps. Wilson customers are being serviced now, and customers across the Time Warner division, which stretches from the Triangle to the coast, will receive the upgrades throughout 2008. Time Warner would not release the number of customers receiving the upgrade. "It's only a small amount," Buscher said. "It's not a majority of our customers." The upgrades are part of the company's effort to stay competitive with all other service providers, she said, and not just Wilson, which plans to roll out its new city-owned fiber-optic network this year. The city of Wilson promises to provide some of the fastest Internet speeds available in the market today. Wilson's future service will offer up to 20 mbps, with the ability to provide even faster speeds, said Brian Bowman, Wilson public affairs and marketing manager. Time Warner is making other competitive moves in the Wilson County area, including its decision to not increase fees for its basic and standard cable packages in 2008. Basic cable fees have remained the same in Wilson since 2006. Standard fees had increased in Wilson by 4 to 5 percent for the last several years. Time Warner customers in other cities across the state are experiencing rate increases this year, said Bob Sepe, president of Action Audits and cable consultant for North Carolina cities, including Wilson. "The only places that have not experienced increases are Goldsboro and Wilson and areas around Morrisville," Sepe said. "These are the only areas I'm aware of where rates have not increased.""

2/12/2008 3:26:57 AM

fuck i want to roll to wilson

2/12/2008 7:14:14 AM

It's amazing what a little competition will do to TWC.

I think this is a great case for the old monopoly cry.

2/12/2008 8:47:49 AM

nice fact-checking NCSUBBM

Quote :

"Road Runner Internet speeds will increase from 5 megabits per second to 10 mbps and the Road Runner Turbo service speed will increase from 8 to 14 mbps."

nice.

2/12/2008 10:38:04 AM

Only really interested when Time Warner decides to not cap thier upload bandwidth so low. I mean 60kB/s is like stoneage.

[Edited on February 12, 2008 at 10:41 AM. Reason : ..]

2/12/2008 10:41:16 AM

60? I'd welcome that ... It'd be a nice change from 35

2/12/2008 10:47:11 AM

yea I used to get like 400 when I first got it and was the only person around with it but damn if I get anywhere near that now

2/12/2008 10:56:56 AM

the speeds will increase more dramatically (supposedly) when DOCSIS 3 is rolled out, which probably wont happen for another few years. that's probably going to be the last ditch effort of HFC vs PON (used by FiOS) in terms of bandwidth. eventually, timewarner and other MSO's are going to have to get more creative with services and pricing.

2/12/2008 12:51:26 PM

If we actually had competition

and I could choose Verizon in the triangle.

We'd be rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 this summer.

Like comcast.

2/12/2008 4:00:40 PM

Quote :

"at no extra charge as part of the company's plan to improve its Internet service from the Triangle to the coast."

Dear TWC,

Can we work on making the cable service not suck first guys? Please?

2/12/2008 4:27:24 PM

yes, not freezing up all the time would be great... among other issues with boxes fucking up constantly

2/12/2008 4:31:27 PM

i get 14+mbps/400kB up to my apt. now via comcast for $40/mo. in CO

love it.

2/12/2008 6:09:21 PM

Quote :

"The theoretical bandwidth of cable is 30Mb/s and I've heard of the possibilty of bonding cable lines. If that's true, the speeds are certainly possible, and they'd have to run a test market somewhere. Could be Wilson."

What the fuck are you smoking? Internet provided over cable occupies one tiny fraction of the overall bandwidth of the cable. Roughly 2/3 of the bandwidth is occupied by ANALOG signal. The bandwidth occupied by ONE analog channel is about 50-100 Mbit. If TWC dropped all analog stations from their signal, there would be room for gigabit internet connections in conjunction with several hundred HD stations and video on demand. When you use HD video on demand services you're using 10-20 Mbit of bandwidth. Keep in mind you can do this from many TVs at once even with all the analog noise going over the cable.

If TWC got tremendous hardware and STREAMED only the channels you're watching to your TVs over IP, you could potentially have a terrabit connection to TWC. Comcast has already developed a 150 Mbit cable modem (DOCSIS 3.0) occupying 4 channels intead of 1. I have no doubt that once cable providers switch to all-digital, there will be a 5 or 10-fold increase in cable modem bandwidth in the following couple years.

2/13/2008 6:17:40 PM

I would love to see a gigabit internet connection through a cable modem. I'm not saying it isnt possible, I would just like to see it.

For what it is worth (little to nothing in the scheme of this thread) the PON ONTs have gigabit ethernet ports (that actually pass the traffic error free) and Vz chooses to not even use them.

2/13/2008 6:25:20 PM

My point is simply that people seriously underestimate the potential of that little cable. I think within 10 years (after the network infrastructure is updated and TV moves to all digital), we'll see 100-250 Mbps cable connections provided the demand isn't displaced by leaps and bounds wireless or other networking technologies.

2/13/2008 9:53:12 PM

it would be great to see those speeds but there are other forces at work that may prevent that from happening even with the technological capabilities

2/13/2008 10:46:45 PM

^^Definitely ... and I know the capability exists, hell, the earliest cable modems had 10Mbit network jacks in them and people were still limited to a 2Mbit/s connection, these days the ports are at -least- 100Mbit ports and we are limited to 5-20Mbit/s connections. I see no reason why in another decade the cable modems will have 1Gbit/s ports standard and we'll have minimum 100Mbit/s connections.

Eh, why not?

[Edited on February 13, 2008 at 11:09 PM. Reason : +^]

2/13/2008 11:08:56 PM

I don't care what TWC claims to be upping the bandwidth to when my RR Turbo drops to 1.5 Mbit/sec while I'm streaming netflix movies. If they can't even give me a relatively stable 6-8 mbit connection what the hell is calling it a 14 mbit connection going to get me?

Anyone know if they've started packet shaping in Raleigh yet? I'm wondering if these periodic slowdowns I get (usually the second or third hour of streaming video) are from them deciding I'm a bad customer for using my god damn bandwidth and slowing me down; or is it just local traffic from everyone in my appartment complex getting online? Either way it doesn't matter that much since if they can't or won't provide me with the advertised bandwidth reliably the effect to me is the same. Ooooh 14 mbits, until I actually start to use it that is. That's like saying you've got a sports car that can go 200 mph but the tires will blow at 80; what's the point.

Quote :

"What the fuck are you smoking? Internet provided over cable occupies one tiny fraction of the overall bandwidth of the cable. Roughly 2/3 of the bandwidth is occupied by ANALOG signal. The bandwidth occupied by ONE analog channel is about 50-100 Mbit. If TWC dropped all analog stations from their signal, there would be room for gigabit internet connections in conjunction with several hundred HD stations and video on demand. When you use HD video on demand services you're using 10-20 Mbit of bandwidth. Keep in mind you can do this from many TVs at once even with all the analog noise going over the cable. If TWC got tremendous hardware and STREAMED only the channels you're watching to your TVs over IP, you could potentially have a terrabit connection to TWC. Comcast has already developed a 150 Mbit cable modem (DOCSIS 3.0) occupying 4 channels intead of 1. I have no doubt that once cable providers switch to all-digital, there will be a 5 or 10-fold increase in cable modem bandwidth in the following couple years."

Isn't that the point of switched digital video? From what I understand the idea is to have only the channels that are being watched actually transmitted from a certain point- greatly reducing the traffic at the bottlenecks. I know that's not quite as efficient as all digital IPTV with only streaming video, but from the little I've seen on it DSV (or is it SDV?) should increase overall cable capacity by about 800%. Sounds like the first step to what you're describing at least. Isn't that already rolled out in the RDU area?

PS (hopefully before someone jumps down my throat)- It does it with Hulu too and the speed drop is noticeable across all sites until I unplug the modem and wait at least 2 minutes to power it back on. Does it with previous mdoem and modem I just got it replaced with at TWC place in Cary. Happens regardless of whether I'm using my current buffalo router or my older linksys wrt54gl on both wireless and wired networks with or without any other devices on the network. It also happens when directly connected to the modem.

[Edited on February 14, 2008 at 12:20 AM. Reason : ]

2/14/2008 12:09:59 AM

This is crazy- it's taking me minutes to load pages now. Over the course of the night my bandwidth seems to have dropped from 3mbit/sec to 2 then to 1 and then during a live-chat with a TWC "expert" it dropped to around 500kbit/sec. Now I'm lucky if I can load a page at all and when it does it takes about 5 minutes (and that's for wikipedia's main page.) I'm getting crazy tracert results that have me with either 150-200ms hop times all over level3 and road runner's part of the network. Hell, tracert to http://www.facebook.com took forever to run and had 20 hops on level3 servers. Most of those returned "request timed out" for all 3 attempts. Is anyone else having issues?

More recent, slightly better tracert attempt-

Quote :

" Tracing route to http://www.facebook.com [69.63.176.11] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 2 14 ms 7 ms 7 ms xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 3 * 9 ms 5 ms srp2-0.rlghncg-rtr1.nc.rr.com [24.25.1.99] 4 8 ms * * pos1-0.rlghnca-rtr1.nc.rr.com [24.25.20.17] 5 11 ms * 9 ms ge-2-3-0.rlghncpop-rtr1.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.164] 6 * 240 ms 204 ms te-3-3.car1.Raleigh1.Level3.net [4.71.160.1] 7 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms ae-11-11.car2.Raleigh1.Level3.net [4.69.132.174] 8 25 ms 17 ms 17 ms ae-6-6.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.178] 9 16 ms 18 ms * ae-72-72.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.150] 10 24 ms * 28 ms ae-74-74.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.181] 11 40 ms * * ae-3.ebr4.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.132.94] 12 97 ms * 92 ms ae-2.ebr4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.135.185] 13 90 ms 86 ms 92 ms ae-74-74.csw2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.134.246] 14 88 ms 89 ms * ae-72-72.ebr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.134.213] 15 87 ms * 85 ms ae-4-4.car2.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net [4.69.133.157] 16 89 ms 218 ms 83 ms FACEBOOK-IN.car2.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net [4.78.242.58] 17 * 188 ms 204 ms te2-0.csw01a.sf2p.tfbnw.net [204.15.21.86] 18 107 ms * 99 ms www-f.facebook.com [69.63.176.11] Trace complete. "

[Edited on February 14, 2008 at 4:34 AM. Reason : seriously, wtf. been getting steadily worse for the last 5 days.]

2/14/2008 4:16:27 AM

^aside from a handful of latency outliers and dropped probes (and the drops could have been caused by rate limiting), that traceroute looks fine. That's pretty good final latency for a cross-continent request, especially with the oversubscription and subsequent congestion that I'm sure twc has.

2/14/2008 4:50:55 AM

^ When I ping google 100 times I get an average of 34% packet loss. Here's the sort of speed I get from any speed test I've run (even TWC's speedtest on their customer service site.)



Also, this is NOW at 5 am. Congestion at 5 am? My speeds and packet loss was better at 9 pm last night than it is now.

[Edited on February 14, 2008 at 4:53 AM. Reason : ]

2/14/2008 4:52:19 AM

Oh, I'm not claiming that your throughput isn't rubbish, just saying that the latency in the traceroute you gave isn't all that bad. For sure, I'd be shitting porcupines if I was paying for 80kbs, especially down.

2/14/2008 4:55:04 AM

That said, please stop pinging google

2/14/2008 4:56:21 AM

14 out of 54 requests dropped is not good even for cross country. I've never had that before and never had 30-40% timed out pings (on google.com, cnn.com, facebook.com, ncsu.edu, etc.)

^Pft, if google can't handle 100 pings from me twice a night then they've got other issues. Besides, I left a good delay in it.

Look at my up-speed though. That's about what it's supposed to be. This really makes me suspicious of TWC deciding I've abused the bandwidth I'm paying for. God forbid someone who pays extra for RR turbo actually use it to stream netflix and hulu videos. I know I'm ranting and should sleep, but god damn I don't think I've ever hated a faceless entity as much as I hate time warner (between the issues I had with their cable and dvr service and now with road runner.)

[Edited on February 14, 2008 at 5:01 AM. Reason : ]

2/14/2008 4:58:14 AM

A little bit stronger troubleshooting traceroute tool is mtr- [matt|my] traceroute, depending on who you ask.

Give it a shot! Yummmmm icmp spam.

2/14/2008 5:08:00 AM

^^^Speaking of ... I once forgot and left a ping session open at work on a Fri before leaving for a long weekend ... it was to Google and was still running when I got back to work on Tues.

Sorry Google.

For the statistically aware, I actually lost 0 packets the entire session.

2/14/2008 11:10:37 AM

This has been incredibly strange. My bandwidth over the last few days has followed an exponential decay curve until eventually the cable modem would not actually stay connected. Now, suddenly, everything seems useable again- but only on one of the cable outlets (and yeah I had tried swapping them earlier.) When I did call TWC they insisted that my cable modem wasn't connected even though I was browsing with wireless off and directly connected to the modem while talking to them; this was back when I was still getting a whopping 80kbps.

Any idea what caused this strange gradual decay of bandwidth and gradual increase in packet loss? The two things weren't even proportional to each other since my bandwidth dwindled to well below 1 kpbs earlier today and at that time I was only losing about 30% of my packets. Think maybe a technician seriously fucked up running a new line to one of my neighbors?

This doesn't include when it got so slow I couldn't load speed tests anymore and it's just the ones done at speedtest.net but it's hilarious:

Quote :

" TEST_DATE DOWNLOAD_SPEED UPLOAD_SPEED LATENCY SERVER_NAME DISTANCE 2/2/2008 6:34 AM GMT 1476 kb/s 354 kb/s 211 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/2/2008 6:38 AM GMT 161 kb/s 333 kb/s 308 ms Atlanta, GA ~ 350 mi 2/2/2008 6:42 AM GMT 4501 kb/s 482 kb/s 72 ms Lexington, KY ~ 350 mi 2/2/2008 6:42 AM GMT 5003 kb/s 474 kb/s 51 ms Chicago, IL ~ 650 mi 2/2/2008 6:47 AM GMT 4487 kb/s 470 kb/s 135 ms Tampa, FL ~ 600 mi 2/2/2008 9:20 PM GMT 4586 kb/s 470 kb/s 92 ms Atlanta, GA ~ 350 mi 2/7/2008 2:44 AM GMT 4301 kb/s 481 kb/s 70 ms Lexington, KY ~ 350 mi 2/7/2008 2:44 AM GMT 5350 kb/s 460 kb/s 24 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/11/2008 3:23 AM GMT 3406 kb/s 476 kb/s 65 ms Atlanta, GA ~ 350 mi 2/11/2008 3:28 AM GMT 3326 kb/s 456 kb/s 194 ms San Fran, CA ~ 2400 mi 2/12/2008 12:13 PM GMT 5433 kb/s 463 kb/s 21 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/13/2008 2:21 AM GMT 3448 kb/s 459 kb/s 29 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/14/2008 5:02 AM GMT 1983 kb/s 456 kb/s 28 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/14/2008 5:55 AM GMT 1961 kb/s 450 kb/s 48 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/14/2008 6:11 AM GMT 3288 kb/s 456 kb/s 25 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/14/2008 6:12 AM GMT 2961 kb/s 459 kb/s 22 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/14/2008 8:15 AM GMT 92 kb/s 405 kb/s 66 ms Atlanta, GA ~ 350 mi 2/14/2008 8:27 AM GMT 122 kb/s 369 kb/s 25 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/14/2008 9:40 AM GMT 361 kb/s 412 kb/s 168 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/14/2008 9:49 AM GMT 78 kb/s 440 kb/s 183 ms Hamilton ~ 850 mi 2/14/2008 9:56 AM GMT 271 kb/s 438 kb/s 168 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi 2/14/2008 8:40 PM GMT 7881 kb/s 459 kb/s 35 ms Frederick, MD ~ 300 mi "

[Edited on February 14, 2008 at 3:46 PM. Reason : ]

2/14/2008 3:37:22 PM

Just to screw this thread up a little more...

TWC is now issuing SA 8240HDC which are completely digital, there are no analog tuners on this device. So this could be a sign that good things are coming in terms of bandwidth allocation.

I have the 8Mbps plan, and what I really want to see is TWC to stop re-encoding the damn ESPN-HD and other HD channels. Leave the shit uncompressed!!!!! Looks like shit on a 52" 1080 screen, with all the little compression artificats!!!

Just my rant for the day. enjoy

2/15/2008 12:45:05 PM

^DirecTV has much better HD

2/15/2008 2:39:14 PM

^ Color is still better on broadcast for things like WRAL HD. But yeah, much better than TWC

2/15/2008 3:08:37 PM

I'd love to see the City of Wilson figure out how to terminate their joint use agreement with TWC and force them off their poles. It would simplify the city's fiber installation goals, and it would also force TWC to replace their antiquated networks.

2/15/2008 8:06:43 PM

Fiber pls kthx.

2/17/2008 10:21:28 AM