Help me choose my new ISP!

[Nordic]

Hes paying 150.00 a month +3k to install it ...

I wasn't going to say anything, but it is just too funny how you again show you didn't read the thread. It is $200 a month.

 

[Aquinus]

Hes paying 150.00 a month +3k to install it ...

Read the thread already... my god.

The ISP found a vacant pair so I don't have to pay any install fees for the T1 line!

You really need to stop posting before you read a thread... It's not doing your credibility any favors.

 

[DanishDevil]

So I officially had my new 3x3 bonded T1 line installed on Tuesday morning, but I had to fly back to Southern California a few hours later, so I had very little time to test it.

My laptop (Razer Blade) does not have a wired ethernet port, and I didn't want to buy a new router just to stick in the garage for 2 months, so tests were done with a Linksys E3000 over the 5GHz band to a Killer WiFi N card.

I should have copied the links of the tests, but here's what I remember. Best ping with nothing running to my closest server was 11ms with 2ms of jitter. I never experienced packet loss. Upload and download speeds came in at 2.85Mb/s each. A pingtest to Los Angeles (about 400mi away) netted me 44ms with 5ms jitter. Not terrible.

Then I did some stress testing. I hopped on an audio-only Skype call and started up a twitch stream. I could not watch the stream at Source quality, but High seemed to work well. I don't know exactly what these resolutions are, and my laptop's res is 1600x900, but it was nice to see that I could still watch a stream one step down from what I was used to.

I managed to watch a 1080P YouTube video without buffering! I was nervous that 720P wouldn't work, but 1080P seemed to barely keep up, but it did without anything else going on.

Then I got my hopes up for Netflix. I started up the last episode of Flashpoint that my wife and I had watched and kept a close eye on the video quality. Methinks that because Netflix streams at such a higher bitrate than YouTube, the video stream never went above 480P. I was already thinking that streaming Netflix would be pretty much off the table in HD quality, and I think I was right.

I got clarification on why I didn't have to pay an install cost. There was an abandoned T1 repeater nearby that used to be used for a cell phone tower that was no longer operational. The install they were going to charge me was to install a T1 repeater because of the distance from the nearest hub to my residence. I then asked the installer if I could pay the ~$3,000 to put in a second repeater so I could have 4 bonded T1's for 6Mb/s up and down. He went to the pole to investigate. There were only 6 pairs of lines leading to the pole, one going to my house for the old telephone/DSL line, and one going to another neighbor. Each T1 required 2 pairs, and because I was getting two bonded T1's and a phone line, they had to dedicate every line on that pole but the one already going to a neighbor to me. Long story short, if I want anything faster (and this is not a guaranteed possibility either), I would not only be paying for another T1 repeater, but also to run an additional 4 lines from the repeater to our pole. I agreed to see how the 3x3 went and look into the possibility of 6x6 if I wasn't happy with 3x3.

I will post pictures of the hardware as well as more testing the next time I'm up there after the holidays. Thank you :cheers: to everyone who had input and constructive comments. It's looking better than what I had feared it could be, but it's still definitely going to take some adjustments from my normal habits.

 

[DanishDevil]

Finally got a chance to do a wired speedtest. This was done using a USB 2.0 > Ethernet adapter into my Razer Blade. I don't know if that introduces any ping degradation vs. a dedicated gigabit ethernet port, but I doubt it.

In other news, I got my first bill. They forgot to apply my 3yr contract discount, so the internet portion was charged at $799. A quick phone call fixed that, so total for this connection, one static IP, and a business telephone line with long distance capability is going to cost me $238/mo after all taxes and fees.

While it looks like YouTube is going to be just fine at 720P/1080P with a little buffering, other higher bit-rate streaming services are going to top out at 480P, but gaming looks very promising at 12ms! We are further from LA, which is a relatively popular server location, but at least this old tech doesn't look like it's going to take gaming off the table. Patches/re-downloads are going to take forever, though!

Picked up a DropCam for keeping an eye on construction while we're out of town, let's hope having it constantly uploading doesn't tank these numbers too much. I read it should take up about 0.5 Mb/s of upload, not sure if it will affect ping, though.

 

[eidairaman1]

Most telephony lines are 40+ years old.

 

[OneMoar]

those speeds are utter poo the second you put any load on the connection the pings are gonna skyrocket

 

[R-T-B]

those speeds are utter poo the second you put any load on the connection the pings are gonna skyrocket

They are typical of a T1, and as mentioned, that's really his only option within reason. He could go play outside and check his email on the odd occasion or queue a download. Some people actually do this.

 

[Aquinus]

those speeds are utter poo the second you put any load on the connection the pings are gonna skyrocket

You can pay that 500 USD bill for 20/20 fiber and the 15k USD installation cost.
Seriously, stop posting if all you're going to do is complain.

 

[bpgt64]

T1 is going to be your best option for stability....Since there usually is some kind of up time/quality guarantee which will be very important for gaming. Anything bandwidth intensive will suck though.

 

[eidairaman1]

T1 lines are just as good or bad as dsl lines.

 

[hat]

Finally got a chance to do a wired speedtest. This was done using a USB 2.0 > Ethernet adapter into my Razer Blade. I don't know if that introduces any ping degradation vs. a dedicated gigabit ethernet port, but I doubt it.

In other news, I got my first bill. They forgot to apply my 3yr contract discount, so the internet portion was charged at $799. A quick phone call fixed that, so total for this connection, one static IP, and a business telephone line with long distance capability is going to cost me $238/mo after all taxes and fees.

While it looks like YouTube is going to be just fine at 720P/1080P with a little buffering, other higher bit-rate streaming services are going to top out at 480P, but gaming looks very promising at 12ms! We are further from LA, which is a relatively popular server location, but at least this old tech doesn't look like it's going to take gaming off the table. Patches/re-downloads are going to take forever, though!

Picked up a DropCam for keeping an eye on construction while we're out of town, let's hope having it constantly uploading doesn't tank these numbers too much. I read it should take up about 0.5 Mb/s of upload, not sure if it will affect ping, though.

Looks like you got a good connection, DD! With that down speed, downloading big shit like a new game on Steam, or a multitude of windows updates will take a while, but at least once you got all the heavy shit packed away it won't be so bad. Looks good for gaming, but you might tank if you try to game and do streaming or something at the same time... but there's QoS settings for that. Could be worse there's always dialup lol

 

[OneMoar]

speeds are in MBit
so thats roughly 300KB/s both ways

 

[bubbleawsome]

I had 3/1 internet for a while. It takes a while to download stuff but gaming is fine most of the time. My ping would tank sometimes but it isn't too bad.

 

[DanishDevil]

Moving in over the weekend. Expect some daily usage impressions once I re-run the ethernet cables through the 200ft trench! Will I go crazy and drop absurd amounts of money on fiber? Will I be able to play multiplayer games without pulling my hair out? Will life be fine? Will I walk away from the internets and become a life-long fisherman? Find out soon!

 

[eidairaman1]

200 ft trench? Burried! If youre going to have wire burried either encap it in pvc or use drop wire (2-5 pair cables round or flat casing). Ive had to use drop as ethernet due to being burried. Cat5 etc arent durable enuf to burry normally.

 

[Schmuckley]

Try checking into some satellite internet or something.

 

[Aquinus]

Try checking into some satellite internet or something.

Latency is unacceptable for first person shooters. First post says that he wants to be able to play games on it.

 

[Schmuckley]

Why does EU get like 40/20 for $40 a mo and US people get screwed?

 

[Nordic]

Try checking into some satellite internet or something.

Why does EU get like 40/20 for $40 a mo and US people get screwed?

On top of what Aquinas said, he also already made a decision on which internet speed.

I would guess Europe has better funding for infrastructure. Better internet infrastructure means cheaper better internet. The trick is how do we pay for it.

The op is also only 5 or so miles from good fast internet. It is where he decided to live that makes it so expensive.

 

[Winston_008]

This might be a silly question, but were there better speeds for the capped plans or is that more a matter of infrastructure?

 

[RCoon]

Why does EU get like 40/20 for $40 a mo and US people get screwed?

Because Americas Congress is lobbied by the ISP's to stop them from doing anything about the refusal for unbundling of cable etc. They're just companies that own cables, charge money for it, and instead of putting that money back into the system and upgrading the lines, it goes straight into pockets. Luckily in the EU the governments aren't as corrupt (they still get lobbied), so ISP's don't have th power to charge stupid amounts without being shit on from on high by an investigation body and charged millions for abusing market position.

That should change for the US though, title II was passed a short while ago, and all the big names cried and screamed about it. You know that when something causes a multimillion dollar company to throw it's toys out the pram, it means something good is being done for once.

UK isn't immune of course, our prime minister has a best friend who owns an ISP, that friend mysteriously was the creator of an Internet filtering system, which was then conveniently used to put a blanket filter on the entire Internet for the UK to block porn. Unfortunately it didn't work very well, blocked sex ed sites and all that. The government just cries blind "for the children!" and hopes nobody will hate on them for being lobbied in such an embarrassing manner.

At the current rate of infrastructure improvement, mobile Internet is going to overtake WAN is a couple of years, 4G is already faster than some people's Internet in rural spots around here.

 

[Cvrk]

Off topic:
This will not help with the issues at hand , i'm just expressing my thoughts.
I live in a poor country,but i have 1GBps at 15,7 USA $ / month. Installation cost zero. Maintenance cost 1,42$ / month. Optional you can get for another 1$ the WiFi gear, if you don't have a wireless router already with gigabit support in your home. All this with Fiber optics in your house. They call it FTTH technology.
I just upgraded to 200MBps for 10$/month . Sure you need a SSD & an i7 CPU for the 1GBps ,witch i don't have.

 

[Aquinus]

I just upgraded to 200MBps for 10$/month . Sure you need a SSD & an i7 CPU for the 1GBps ,witch i don't have.

I have a skt478 system in my attic with a 2.4Ghz Northwood Celeron that has a 1Gbps ethernet port. In fact I used the SATA 1.5Gbps to transfer files over 1Gbps, and believe it or not, it can saturate it.

I live in a poor country,but i have 1GBps at 15,7 USA $ / month. Installation cost zero. Maintenance cost 1,42$ / month. Optional you can get for another 1$ the WiFi gear, if you don't have a wireless router already with gigabit support in your home. All this with Fiber optics in your house. They call it FTTH technology.

Laws my friend, laws. ISPs in the US of A are greedy and make a killing off internet service. With respect to the op, he lives very far away from any real internet solution. He had to have service *installed* there is no fiber out where he is.

 

[Cvrk]

he lives very far away from any real internet solution. He had to have service *installed* there is no fiber out where he is.

At least hes not bothered by the neighbors . I got fast net but in this crowded city there is insanity and noise everywhere. We should start a poll: fast net crazy living spaces / very slow net relax living

 

[Aquinus]

At least hes not bothered by the neighbors . I got fast net but in this crowded city there is insanity and noise everywhere. We should start a poll: fast net crazy living spaces / very slow net relax living

I live in a "city" but that's only by name. It's not like Concord has high rises or anything but, it is the state capitol. I pay something like 80USD/mo for this.