A little help from fellow Insight customers would be appreciated

[RoadToad]

I'd appreciate it very much if anybody here who has Insight or AT&T cable internet service would take a minute and go to this web site: http://voiptest.packet8.net/ and run their speed test a few times, and post the results. I'm mostly interested in what you get for Quality of Service (QoS), jitter, and packet loss.

Here's why, and it's kind of a long story. I've been a Sprint customer for a long time now, but in the eight years I've lived in this house, I've always gotten crappy reception, in the house only. I can step out into the back yard and it's fine, and it's fine anywhere else I go. A few months ago, I found out about a device called a Sprint Airave, which Sprint calls "like having a cell tower in your house." This device covers a 5,000 square foot area, and captures all cell calls and sends them out over my broadband internet connection as VOIP (Voice Over IP) calls. They usually charge $4.99/mo. for it, but in a situation like mine, where a customer is getting poor reception at home, they'll waive the fee, and so I have one in my house for free, which at first was working wonderfully. Then over the past few weeks, we've had trouble getting through when trying to call each other at home - we'll get "We are unable to connect your call at this time; please try again later." Worse, my work has been unable to reach me on my Sprint Blackberry when I'm oncall! So I called Sprint, and of course it took several calls before I got a tech that knew what he was doing, but finally he ran through a battery of tests and seemed mystified at what was going on, then he directed me to that web site, and what I've discovered is that, when things are working fine, my QoS is 80% or better. But in the evenings it drops off, and goes as low as 40-50%, and it's at those times that it takes 5-10 tries to get through, or more. So I took that information, and called Insight, and of course got some pimply-faced kid who thinks his A+ certification makes him Steve Jobs, and everything I said was immediately blown off. He had me run THEIR speed test, which tests speed only, no QoS, no jitter, no packet loss results, and I was told that the speed I was getting should be plenty for the device to work, and that I should switch wireless carriers! Instead, I'm more likely to switch ISP's, because AT&T has just recently finished installing new fiber optic cable in my area, and FINALLY there is another option besides Insight!

Which leads me to another question: Does anybody on here have AT&T U-Verse service, or just their cable internet, and if so, what do you think of it?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[GeoFisher]

Mine SUCKED...........Speedtest.net says I'm good at 10mb/s which is about what I pay for.

details:
Upstream jitter 77.1 ms
Downstream jitter 79.0 ms
Upstream packet loss 0.0 %
Downstream packet loss 1.1 %
Upstream packet order 100.0 %
Downstream packet order 97.5 %
Packet discards 9.8 %
MOS 3.2

[MsgMills]

my thing was 67% and

MOS was 4.0

[RoadToad]

Thanks for running the tests. Insight sent a tech out today. He rang the doorbell, and told me they'd been replacing cable in the area the past couple weeks, which correlates with the time since my trouble started. He said he'd looked at the line and everything looks fine now; they don't see any problem on the line. I know firsthand how near impossible it can be to track down something like this and fix it, and now that I finally have options, I think I'll just switch to AT&T. Anybody else on here use them for broadband?

[MLTSPCS]

Please, if you switch to AT&T, only take their internet. I had the entire U-verse package (home phone, bb, cable, and cell). Their cable is junk and waaayyyy over-priced. Multiple issues with their equipment and service. Their customer service is garbage at best, unless you are signing up for new service with them. Have used directv, at&t, and insight. So far I have been most satisfied with the insight overall. When I dropped U-verse I decided not to keep a home phone, as I have more minutes than I will ever come close to using on my cell plan. With Insight I have better broadband service, a better television package with less issues, and I am paying around $100 less per month and the only thing I dropped was the home phone. When I returned my AT&T equipment to UPS to ship it back, I had barely walked in the door when the worker said "Another at&t return, huh?" Pretty bad. I asked about it and why they were so familiar with the equipment (just a very small piece was sticking out of the top of the box I used to carry it into the store). They told me that in my area they are averaging somewhere around 10 U-verse returns daily. To me that speaks volumes on their low quality and poor customer service/satisfaction. Just my input. Do with it what you will. Good luck with whatever you go with. Seems they can all have their quirks.

[RoadToad]

I'm doing the U-Verse internet & phone only. I like watching hockey too much to even consider switching from DirecTV. Plus I've always hated Insight!

[pontooner]

Toad I ran the test a few time on my girlfriends Insight connection and it seems to be off compared to other places I've ran test from. Might just be a poor server for me to test to from Bowling Green.

I only got a Download speed reading of 3.8 Mbps with the link you provided and a really high jitter and fairly poor Quality of Service score.



I can test the speed, jitter, ping.... at a couple other places and get much better results.

Speed test links I like to use that all give me atleast a 10 Mbps download reading (which is what she is provisioned for) using the best servers. Try a few different servers to find one that gives you the best results.

http://speedtest.net/

http://www.dslreports.com/stest They have a Insight forum and lots of information about isp's, connections and other computer stuff.


You can test your ping and jitter here and get a grade for your connection. I can always get an A grade testing on there where as I would have proabably got a D or F from the results I got from your link. Again try a few different servers to find one that gives you the best results.

http://pingtest.net/

[RoadToad]

Thanks for the links. I hadn't tried http://pingtest.net/, and at least it measures jitter, instead of just latency and packet loss like some other sites, but I like that site I gave, http://voiptest.packet8.net/ because it gives an actual QoS reading that the other test sites don't, and I was wondering if other Insight customers might be getting the low numbers on that result that I was. And I think even the tests that measure jitter are too lax. When I called Insight, the guy said all my results were "within normal parameters," and when I pressed him for what a "normal parameter" on jitter was, he told me 0-100, which is crazy.

I have an installation appointment with AT&T on 12/9. I'm eager to see how well their new fiber performs. It can't be much worse than the service I've gotten from Insight.

[MLTSPCS]

Hope I don't bust your bubble, but it was explained to me by my tech that the fiber optic cable is only to the v-rad. From the v-rad to your nic box will be cat-5 at best. Maybe its different in your area, but that info came directly from the tech that did my U-verse install.

[GeoFisher]

I live in New Albany, Indiana. When they redid the cable here 5-6 years ago and ran FIBER everywhere, it made a significant difference in everything, including digital reception, phone, cable, and broad ban. Before that, my cable was spotty, the HD stations were CRAP, my Insightbb 10mb/sec was more like 3mb/sec, etc, etc.

I was told by the techs that they were fiber to the pole, but the crappy coax in most homes and from the pole to the home were most of the issues.

I had some coax problems recently, when trying to upgrade to the Multiroom DVR, and they had to replace the wire from the pole, and restring wire in my house. Once that was done the noise on the coax went away and my Multiroom stuff worked, and continues to work fantastically.

Later,

Geo

[MLTSPCS]

Geo, in my previous post I was speaking strictly of the U-Verse/AT&T lines. They don't use the same cable lines at all. Its from the v-rad where your phone line comes in, instead of the typical cable. At least that was the information provided by the install tech. They upgraded my nic coming into the house to cat-5 where cable, internet, and voip are all tied into the gateway via the custom box/cover they installed which came straight out of the nic box on my house. So far my Insight has been far superior to the service provided by U-Verse.

[RoadToad]

Update: I made the switch from Insight to AT&T U-Verse (Internet & Voice only), and the problem I was having with my Sprint Airave device has disappeared. Running the internet speed tests confirms that my quality of service is markedly improved. I'm not getting quite the speed I was getting from Insight, but I'm not paying quite as much, either, and the speed is plenty for what I do, including working from home. But I wouldn't say this is an indication that Insight is inferior overall; I think it has more to do with the area where I live. We're just on old infrastructure. We're definitely on an unstable part of the power grid. It seems like if anybody for miles around is going to lose power, it's us, and ours is always the last restored. So being on AT&T's new fiber is making a big difference (so far).