DSL performance evaluation

[SteveDallas]

So, I finally decided to take the plunge and hook up DSL. (I've been on the Internet since 1986 and had high-speed access at school or work almost that whole time. One would have thought that broadband at home would be a no-brainer for me. The very fact that it's taken me this long to try it says a lot about how badly the various people reponsible have handled broadband.)

My only concern is, given the ancient telephone wiring in my neighborhood, what kind of performance will I get? I decided to give it a try and evaluate things carefully during the 30 day money-back period to see if I thought the situation was acceptable, since there seems to be no way to find out without actually hooking everything up.

So, my questions for you are: first, if you have DSL, what kind of download speeds do you typically see? second, what SHOULD I expect? are there particular metrics I can use to measure whether I'm getting good performance? Any software utilities to measure it?

http://www.dslreports.com

I'm paying for 1500K/384K down/up. I get about 1900K/500K, but I'm close to the CO. All for only $80 per month!

[verbatim]

I get usually 80 to 100k down (I dunno if its k or kbps, I know theres a difference tho). And I'm also like a block from the telco.

[Lt]

$80.00 per month...ouchies...where are you? Who is your ISP? Verizon do that for $60!! (just signed up.)

Whatever you do, don't get RoadRunner, they suck...unreliable and, like any good tech support, they always blame you when the connection goes down...

[Tobiasly]

I would prolly pay $80 per month for the rates dham gets.. with DSL, do they have any restrictions on what sort of services you can run?

Nope. I'm allowed to do servers, whatever.

Yeah, I live in Fairfax, VA and I have Verizon DSL. I've had this rate for about a year now; for all I know, the price dropped to $60. Are you sure your upspeed is 384Kilobytes though? They used to have a $60 plan that was 1500 down but only 128 up... that was unacceptable to me.

Anyway, it's worth it. $80 a month is a small price to pay for the connection I get. It's nearly flawless.

[Tobiasly]

I'm not "supposed" to run servers or whatever on my cable connection, but they don't actually block ports or do NAT like I've seen from some ISP's, so it works for now. I pretty much use it just for myself, so I could prolly argue that I'm not violating the TOS (I'm not "providing services to others".)

But I agree, $80/mo. is worth it if you're truly getting 384 up. I could run some real-deal servers with that kinda throughput. Alas, DSL is still unavailable here..

[Xugumad]

Originally posted by dhamsaic
Are you sure your upspeed is 384Kilobytes though? They used to have a $60 plan that was 1500 down but only 128 up... that was unacceptable to me.

I may very well be wrong on this, but 1500Mbps/384Kbps down/up refers to 'Mega bits' and 'Kilo bits', not 'bytes'. Double-capitalization on the acronyms MB and KB indicates bytes, whereas single-capitalization such as Mb and Kb indicates bits. Naturally, bits are never mentioned in any advertising anywhere, and most laypeople casually use terms such as Megabytes and Kilobytes when they are in fact getting bits.

Not that it'd matter, but they are exaggerating by a factor of 8. On Verizon's DSL ad pages, they advertise how you are given 10MB of web space, and up to 1.5 Mbps/128 Kbps (or 384 in your case) of DSL throughput. Note the capitalization. Thus, you are in fact only getting 188Kilobytes/48Kilobytes. (you referred to 384kilobytes in your post)

Feel free to correct me, though: DSL would become a lot more attractive to me if you were right.

The misleading advertising (shown <a href="http://www.verizon.com/ForYourHome/dsl/learnmore/NLF_DSLVsCable.asp">here</a>) on Verizon's pages was quite amusing though (nothing to do with connection speeds).

Quote:
'Use existing phone lines for phone or fax and Internet?
DSL : Yes
Cable Modem: No'

Strange, that.

X.

You're right. My brain was fucked on that. Instance of thinking one thing and writing another. Anyway, yeah. Kilobits.

I've had two cable providers and one DSL, and the DSL is far superior to the cable. So it's worth the extra money.

[Lt]

Got to install my DSL this morning. After a few teething problems I was hooked. One HUGE glaring retarded feature is the smtp server.

With RoadRunner I used their smtp to send my business e-mail. With Verizon, I can't send mail unless it's from a verizon.net address.

I'm not giving up the connection so I have to move my site to a host that provides smtp and pop.

I know, it could be argued that the host should put the smtp on the server but I still think Verizon's spam filtering (for this is why they do it) is a little draconian. And I thought AOL's spam filters sucked!

Still, Vive la DSL!!!! It's faster than my old cable and, if my son-in-law's service is a good example, it's also very reliable.

[Tobiasly]

So why don't you set up your own smtp server, and send your business mail through that?

[Lt]

Easy, when you are a sole operator working 12-16 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week and you're responsible for every function in the business you look for shortcuts and sometimes that has unforseen consequences.

Good idea though.

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by Xugumad


I may very well be wrong on this, but 1500Mbps/384Kbps down/up refers to 'Mega bits' and 'Kilo bits', not 'bytes'. Double-capitalization on the acronyms MB and KB indicates bytes, whereas single-capitalization such as Mb and Kb indicates bits. Naturally, bits are never mentioned in any advertising anywhere, and most laypeople casually use terms such as Megabytes and Kilobytes when they are in fact getting bits.

Not that it'd matter, but they are exaggerating by a factor of 8. On Verizon's DSL ad pages, they advertise how you are given 10MB of web space, and up to 1.5 Mbps/128 Kbps (or 384 in your case) of DSL throughput. Note the capitalization. Thus, you are in fact only getting 188Kilobytes/48Kilobytes. (you referred to 384kilobytes in your post)

I agree with your math and you're right that this is potentially misleading to the inexperienced reader, but in Verizon's defense, this seems to be the standard way of specifying bandwidth. (We say "gigabit ethernet", not "gigabyte".) At work we have a 256K frame relay (working on a full T1!), which is bits, in bytes it's 32K, and indeed I get from 26 to 30 for downloads under good circumstances (bear in mind that this is shared for the whole office). Modems are speced in bits too, so when I get a 48000 Kb connection with my 56K modem, that translates to a theoretical top of 6Kbytes, and I get 5 or 5.5 when the stars align properly.

So while the 768K DSL that I signed up for is "only" 98 Kbytes, it's still a heckuva lot faster than the 56K modem. We'll see what I end up getting for real when they turn it on.

[SteveDallas]

I have to say, I'm moderately impressed. My self-install kit arrived two days before the scheduled cut-on date. I was sure they wouldn't have it up yet, but I decided to hook up the hardware and be prepared. Imagine my surprise when the little green light came on!! I've gotten from 684 to 704 for downloads on the dslreports speed tests, and 132 to 136 on the upload (I have 768/128). So I'm pretty happy if it continues like this.