U-verse Internet Speed

[markspar]

I've been using U-Verse for over a year now, and for the last several months it has been getting progressively slower - at times fine, but today it was unbearable (on 18Mb/s plan, was pulling 1-2Mb/s down and 100Kb/s up...  It got better as time moved on today, but still pulling only 5-10Mb/s.  Is there any location that lists U-verse outages, network problems?  I can get TimeWarnerCable 30Mb/s down/5Mb/s up for the same cost (had it previous to U-Verse), but I swapped because they don't offer ESPN360 and sometimes mess around with HBOGO and similar services.  But those are meaningless if I'm dealing with these intolerable connections - at least they have a decent site listing network issues.

Any help? 

Tried to D/L the UV Realtime app, but it won't install on Win8 (winpcap compat issue).  Test PC is hard-wired gige to DIR-655, in turn behind the UVerse router.

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

What kind (brand/model) of RG do you have?

Are all your connections wired?  Wirless?  Is one better than the other?

UVrealtime gives us a large amount of data about your connection, without it we're flying sort of blind.

[markspar]

The test machine has a wired 1gig connection, which is working fine (copying between two machines in-house is blazing fast - 110MB/s.

Network traffic passes into managed gig-e switch, then to DIR-655 router, then to U-Verse router.  The DIR-655 is hardware Rev B, 2.07NA firmware.  U-Verse router is 3800HGV-B, ZERO bad packets and very few correct blocks but here is the other relevant info:

Hardware Version	2700-100531-006
Software Version	6.3.7.50-plus.tm

DSL Modem

3.73 SW:9_158_16_100526

User Rate	25208 kbs	2040 kbs
Max User Rate	36986 kbs	Not Available
Noise Margin	13.5 dB	Not Available
Attenuation	23.6 dB	Not Available
Output Power	13.3 dBm	7.5 dBm
Protocol	G.993.2
Channel	Interleaved
DSLAM Vendor Information	Country {46591} Vendor {CXSY} Specific {816 }
Attenuation @ 300kHz	13.8 dB
Final Receive Gain	12.0 dB	Ok

It's still slow from a Win7 laptop and xbox360's that used to be fast (so it's not just the Win8 machine with speed issues).

In short, it sure appears that Uverse external to the house has some issues, but there is zero info available AFAIK, something like what TWC provides showing issues in the local region (DNS servers being troubleshot, hub network gear being upgraded, etc.).  Am I wrong, is there somewhere I can look to see if there are known issues before losing myself to hours on the phone with tech support?  Or do some of the #'s above look suspicious?

Thanks!

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

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markspar wrote:

...

User Rate	25208 kbs	2040 kbs
Max User Rate	36986 kbs	Not Available
Noise Margin	13.5 dB	Not Available
Attenuation	23.6 dB	Not Available
Output Power	13.3 dBm	7.5 dBm
Attenuation @ 300kHz	13.8 dB
Final Receive Gain	12.0 dB	Ok

...

---

Here are the stats that I would look at.  The first thing that I see is that you have a raw connection rate between the VRAD and your RG of 37mbps down, and you're using a profile of 25/2.  You've got sufficient headroom in that 37 to run the 25 with good error correction, and the other numbers don't look out of the norm.  So, absent a bitloading graph, it looks like your VRAD/RG connection is pretty dang clean (confirmed by your zero error counts and low FEC rate).

AT&T does not have any site that I'm aware of showing network status for the U-Verse network.  In my experience, most such sites aren't worth very much anyway, though I've never been on TWC so I can't opine on theirs.

The most common reason for slow connections on U-verse is competition for your pipe.  You seem to have a pretty good handle on your network, so I can assume that while testing speeds you've turned off all network backup, bitTorrent, YouTube watching, etc.  Right?

Oh, wait... you've got a 3800, not a 3600.  You also have TV?  Have you been watching/recording HD channels while doing these speed measurements?

[markspar]

Yes, I've made sure TV is off, no HD recordings, cloud backups are off, etc.  And doing it at 2am means my kids/wife aren't doing anything I'm not aware of .  But it is a good point to make sure I don't have any background frequent recordings of HD material during the day when it drives me nuts when work stuff is dragging along incredibly slowly.  Because of course, making the speed tests work isn't my goal, I need normal day-to-day internet usage to work better .

Sounds like I need to hit up helpdesk.  I'm killing TV service anyway (I stream everything nowadays), so maybe I can swap out the router and give it another month to see if things improve.

Thanks for reviewing those numbers and the general info.  I'm fairly network savvy, but not at the u-verse layer .