Tutor
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4 Messages
Really slow internet. Need technical advice to boost it up any way possible.
When my U-Verse high speed internet finally got plugged in, youtube videos in general loaded up blazing fast, or at least initially appeard too, but maybe that was because I was doing a test when I was alone in the house. 2 weeks later, the internet is crawling to turtle's pace. I initially bought the 1.5 mbps download plan, but whenever I do an actual download, I only get 175kbps. That's basically 1/10th the speed of the advertised package. Twice me and my dad called/im'ed support, twice they said there was a problem with the line, getting my hopes up, twice the technicians say that the phone rep. always says that and that's there's nothing wrong with the line since their equipment is reading an output of 1.5mbps from the phone jack, crushing my hopes.
The technicians say I'm crazy for expecting to get the full 1.5mbps, and for expecting to be able to watch a video smoothly. I told them I expect at least half that, but I'm just told to upgrade my plan to a better package. To put things in a better perspective, when I was on my old dsl plan, I started on 150kbps, then later upgraded to 300kbps. During the entire lifespan of my dsl service, I got the full advertised speed and no lower. I could stream videos and host an internet session without problem. In comparison, my friend has a similar 1.5mbps plan from xfinity and his downloads are usually 60% faster then his advertised package. He generally gets 2.4-3.6mbps speed instead of his 1.5mbps. I'm not sure how much distance affects speed, but 90% of your speed dropping over 900 feet traveled is a bit ridiculous. No matter what I've tried on the att support pages, nothing works.
So I come here in desperation. It's been over 1.5 months and my speed only worsens. I have to pause for ~1 minute just go get 10 seconds of video to load, and I can't even host a multiplayer session in any game anymore because I have horrendous lag. Is there ANY way I can figure out where the other 90% of my speed is going and how I can take it back for my own use?
P.S. Before anyone asks, all speedtest results say I'm getting 1.5mbps, but actual browsing and download speed tells quite a different story.
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Official Solution
Computer_Joe
Master
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5.9K Messages
11 years ago
i can't vouch for your old 300Kbps service other than the lower speed requires less overhead for error correction and resending data.
As far as your 170Kbps goes on your 1.5Mbps, you might be misreading that number. If what you're seeing is actually 170KBps (kilobytes per second) and not 170Kbps (kilobits per second), you'd be on par for your service as 170KBps works out to ~1.35Mbps.
Most all internet "speedtests" use bits per second to indicate speed, while most all file download dialog boxes will indicate speed at bytes per second.
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mibrnsurg
Expert
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20.4K Messages
11 years ago
I've had 1.5Mbps internet and know a non-HD youtube should play after buffering, but this could also be a function of your computer's capabilities. When I had it I was getting 1.42Mbps, no one will get 1.5.
My download speed, other than a spedtest, was 177 MBps (1420/8 changing bits into bytes), downloading big files. So, nothing is wrong with the speed you are getting. 😉
Edit: Missed you were only getting 175kbs.
Chris
Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
Need Help? 1-800-288-2020, After he gets acct info, press # a bunch of times, get a menu from Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more
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EmpRuzu
Tutor
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4 Messages
11 years ago
That doesn't explain why I was seeing 300kbs (on downloads) on my old 300kbs dsl plan but only 170kbs (on downloads) on my new 1.5mbps uverse plan. If I divide 8 into 300, I should've gotten 37kbs. Can you explain that discrepancy? My speed got worse upgrading to a plan that is supposed to be faster.
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mibrnsurg
Expert
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20.4K Messages
11 years ago
Your best bet would be to contact ATT Customer Care here:
http://forums.att.com/t5/notes/privatenotespage/tab/compose/note-to-user-id/192773
Send them a private message and they should be able to give the help needed to solve your slow download problems. They are available M-F 7am-10pm CST. This is not the regular CS/TS people, but the social media people that know the people to contact to get things done.
Include your account#, email address and a good phone # (land or cell) and time to contact you on.
Check the blue PM envelope, upper right, in case they replied this way. 😉
Chris
Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
Need Help? 1-800-288-2020, After he gets acct info, press # a bunch of times, get a menu from Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more
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Don_H
Scholar
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205 Messages
11 years ago
Here is a link to show your YouTube speed for the latest 30 days...
http://www.youtube.com/my_speed
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EmpRuzu
Tutor
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4 Messages
11 years ago
@Computer-Joe
I feel really stupid, angry, and really mislead now. I considered myself a decently knowledgeable tech geek but I never knew about the bits and bytes regarding speed conversion. I'm irritated that ATT purposely shows only the higher bits number and not the lower bytes number.
I did do a test afterwards and noticed in the download widow that it said "KB/s". This would mean that the best plan ATT has to offer is the 24 Mb/s plan which is really only 3MB/s. I guess it's more my fault however, for seeing 1.5 M*/s and instantly saying "that's 5X better than my 300 kbs" plan.
I'm going to head off to the att e-support page now to figure out what the costs are in upgrading and such. Thanks to everyone who posted! Thank you to Computer-Joe for his detailed thought-out technical post!
Edit: I did another speed test just now and noticed that the result says 1.45m*b*/s. Sigh.
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SomeJoe7777
Expert
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9.4K Messages
11 years ago
Typically the Internet service providers and telephone companies report bandwidth measured in bits -- e.g. Megabits per second, Gigabits per second, etc. Most operating systems on computers report bandwidth in bytes, e.g. Megabytes per second, Gigabytes per second.
A similar type of reporting difference affects hard drives. Hard drive manufacturers report drive sizes using the "Mega", "Giga", "Tera" prefixes to represent powers of 10, while the computer operating systems use the "Mega", "Giga", and "Tera" prefixes to represent powers of 2. This results in up to a 10% reported difference in the hard drive's capacity between the hard drive manufacturer and the operating system. (The difference is only in the way the size is reported, the actual size doesn't change).
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EmpRuzu
Tutor
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4 Messages
11 years ago
I've actually never though about it before, but that explains why I see oly 930~ GB's available when the specs clearly said that the HDD supports 1 TB. I understand that the OS takes some space, but that's usually 40 MB's. I'm left wondering what happened to the other 30 MB. Good to know~
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Marcio2007
Contributor
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3 Messages
8 years ago
Just to give you an update,...ATT is still lagging behind on speed. Today is Jan 2016 and ATT offers max speed of 6 MBps (is some towns) whereas competitors offers up to 100 MBps IN THE VERY SAME TOWN. By the way, there is even 120 MBps on the market if you wish.
on the ATT website it says that 1h movie stream (download) take almost 5 minutes, whereas the competitor in the SAME CITY, offers 1h movies download in a 1 normal breath-time period.
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mibrnsurg
Expert
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20.4K Messages
8 years ago
Then go to the faster competitor, know I might if I was in that situation. I have 12/1.50M VDSL2 Internet, getting 15.35/2.00M and that's as fast as I need.
Unluckily, everything is distance limited on ADSL2+ that is past the VDSL2 limit and depending on where they are, can get upto 18M Internet. 😉
Chris
__________________________________________________________
Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
Need Help? PM ATT Uverse Care (all service problems)
ATT Customer Care(billing and all other problems)
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more
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