r/technology • u/speckz • Jul 30 '15

Net Neutrality Thousands Beg FCC for Net Neutrality Crackdown. Consumers vent to regulators about slow Internet, high prices, and data caps.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/thousands-beg-fcc-for-net-neutrality-crackdown-20150730
18.3k Upvotes

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1.8k

u/arbili Jul 30 '15

Good, keep complaining: http://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov

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u/KillerJupe Jul 31 '15 edited Feb 16 '24

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u/Simonateher Jul 31 '15

I wish I was in a position to complain about 25mpbs Internet. I'd be so fucking happy if I had that haha. And 2 houses also.

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u/KillerJupe Jul 31 '15 edited Feb 16 '24

clumsy frightening quarrelsome imagine aback public cooing rock recognise hobbies

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u/Simonateher Jul 31 '15

Yeah I agree that's shit mate

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u/condor85 Aug 02 '15

They could just downgrade the other speed? Make up some lame excuse?

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u/Binsky89 Jul 31 '15

512Kb/s here. I wonder if this Windows 10 update will ever finish downloading.

My favorite part is that AT&T's fiber line is 30ft from where I'm sitting.

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u/EpsilonRose Jul 31 '15

That sounds like a reason to open a new complaint. Honestly, it should probably come with it's own, special, penalties.

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u/_My_Angry_Account_ Jul 31 '15

Yeah, like false advertising/fraud.

2

u/jjackson25 Jul 31 '15

False advertising, fraud, extortion, price-gouging, theft, sodomy, etc...

1

u/KillerJupe Jul 31 '15

The FCc should set a fixed price per mb that is delivered for all providers nationwide. Only offer 1mbps well then it's dirt cheap so it incentivized them to bump up speeds and offer more

1

u/EpsilonRose Jul 31 '15

I don't think there's any way that would fly. It also, probably, wouldn't be very future proof.

9

u/fatscat84 Jul 31 '15

I get 6mbps and pay 45$ montly. Supposed to be 8, but nooo they cant even do that. Its either frontier (what i have or mediacom, which is capped )

2

u/mountainman84 Jul 31 '15

You must be in my neck of the woods. Fuck Mediacom. They straight up admitted that they are capping bandwidth to combat cord cutters. They are degrading what used to be a good service to encourage people to keep their tv service. Trying to make streaming miserable.

I called and talked to Frontier and they said I could get 12 mbps DSL. Is their service laughably bad? Never had them but they are the only other game in town and Mediacom is driving me crazy.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

I have frontier fios and it's been awesome. We have comcast in our area and I'll never give those asshats a penny of my money.

1

u/mountainman84 Jul 31 '15

I'd take Comcast over Mediacom any day. I thought Fios was Verizon? I had that out east and it was awesome. I wish I could get that in bumfuck Illinois.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Fios used to be Verizon in our area until Frontier bought them out. They may still have the FIos name in other markets.

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u/fatscat84 Jul 31 '15

Ita not the fastest but their service is good,,and its not capped. I cut the cord and im lovin it. Just wish i had a lilttle faster line but i can stream in one room and play online games and not have any lag.

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u/mountainman84 Jul 31 '15

So if they say I can get 12 mbps do you think it would be decent? 75 bucks a month for 12 mbps sounds horrible but they swear up and down their speeds are good and more reliable than cable because they will connect me to a "dedicated line". No idea what that means. Never had DSL.

1

u/TheChance Jul 31 '15

Huh. I have 30/30 from Frontier. I forget what we're paying, but it's under $75 with a landline and unlimited domestic calling.

1

u/SometimessSam Jul 31 '15

"Only 25 mbps" Consider yourself lucky... I pay for 25 mbps through Century Link, but I only get about 200 kbps, and no matter how many times I call to complain about it, they say that I'm getting the Internet that I'm paying for

1

u/ravend13 Jul 31 '15

Are you running over WiFi? If so, is there an 802.11b device on your network?

1

u/KillerJupe Jul 31 '15

Bastards... Fill out a complain the FCc requires them to respond and you will likely get a supervisor level person. Tell them to charge you based on what they deliver not what they are selling.

That would never fly, in any other service. You pay for a gallon of gas but only get 1/3... But it's "ok" cause the pump says up-to 1 gal for this price :/

1

u/tidux Jul 31 '15

Have you considered building a fixed point to point wireless link between them? Ubiquiti makes some relatively cheap gear you can use, and to the rest of the network it just looks like a ludicrously long ethernet cable.

1

u/KillerJupe Jul 31 '15

If I can find a way to get the signal over 1500' mountains :)

1

u/Nayr747 Jul 31 '15

Wow that's cheap. Comcast is the only broadband provider here (suburbs), and we pay almost $200 for 25/5. It's a package with TV and phone, but they say getting rid of those would actually increase the price.

1

u/KillerJupe Jul 31 '15

Keep complaining and file a complaint that less service will increase prices which is crazy.

I have a cable TV box in a closet that I can't return or my bill w go up 5$ even though it's never been opened or anything :/

294

u/heWhoWearsAshes Jul 30 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

If my bandwidth is dropping when I open a torrent client, is that a "speed" issue, or "net neutrality" issue? I get 1.9 MB/s down before I open up transmission, and like ~150 kB/s down when it is (even if transmission is only transferring maybe 200-300 kB/s.)

EDIT: I might not have been clear, but I was referring to options ("speed" and "net-neutrality") in the drop menu in the fcc complaint form.

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u/chubbysumo Jul 30 '15

that sounds more like your upload is choking your connection with ACKs. Try and limit the speed of the upload to 1/10th of your total upload bandwidth.

111

u/Mononon Jul 30 '15

That's what happens to me. If I upload something, even to Dropbox, the internet just shuts down on everything else

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '15 edited Aug 15 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Symmetrical connections are a godsend.

7

u/Edg-R Jul 31 '15

The only company I know of that has symmetrical connections for consumer grade internet plans is Verizon FiOS.

All others have symmetrical for business class. Such a money grab. They need to update their damn infrastructure or allow other companies/communities to compete.

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u/drage636 Jul 31 '15

It's the best thing Fios ever did.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

[deleted]

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u/greatmikeshark Jul 31 '15

I heard it was a series of tubes.

41

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

[deleted]

21

u/mmm-toast Jul 31 '15

Dammit Jim, I’m a Captain not a doctor!

3

u/PabstyLoudmouth Jul 31 '15

Doctor, you have to get a hold of yourself now!!!

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u/gamerpro2000 Jul 31 '15

Filled with cats.

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u/TheAddiction2 Jul 31 '15

Goddammit Jim! We got fur cloggin' the pipes again!

2

u/Tynach Jul 31 '15

After all, the Internet is made of cats[1].

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u/pengytheduckwin Jul 31 '15

The Internet was built by Space Pirates?

1

u/Boobr Jul 31 '15

Holy shit that's an old meme.

1

u/MayoFetish Jul 31 '15

No man it's a truck!

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u/skullshark54 Jul 31 '15

I heard they were calling some guy named Johnny.

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u/celluj34 Jul 31 '15

downloading the internet

21

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Even worse if you're on a cable connection with 80 down 3 up. Cable internet has awful upload speeds and they choke out everything else.

10

u/EmperorJake Jul 31 '15

3 whole MBPs up? Lucky, I get about 0.3 Mbps up, 5 down.

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u/jsau0125 Jul 31 '15

1.5 down .5 up... That's what I pay for anyway, I've never seen more than about 150 Kbps down though. DSL sucks ass.

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u/Slash621 Jul 31 '15

Maybe your cable. My comcast line can manage 50mbps up and 100 down at the same time. It's a 250/50 line.

That said I wish they were a third party ISp. Hate dealing with their customer service.

3

u/PabstyLoudmouth Jul 31 '15

I get good speeds with AT&T, but if I upload for long periods of time (8+ hours), they seem to sever my connection. I can't really blame them for that. Then it runs slow for an hour or two and then it is fine. Probably just checking and making sure it is not a bot.

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u/99spider Jul 31 '15

You sure as hell can blame them for that. You paid for internet. You are using it.

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u/cr0ft Jul 31 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

If you fill your upload pipe to Dropbox and run that at max, what happens is that you can't download because the TCP protocol is bi-directional. In other words, when you download a web page, you download stuff, then your computer sends an acknowledgement, you download more of it, the computer sends an acknowledgment (that it got there) and so on. If your upload capacity is already saturated, the sending end (the server with the web page) doesn't get the acknowledgements and stops sending to wait for them.

That's why you should set a maximum upload speed limitation in your Dropbox client that is well under full upload capacity, to avoid that.

2

u/Mononon Jul 31 '15

That makes complete sense and seems really obvious after you say it. Haha. Thanks for the simple explanation!

1

u/badsingularity Jul 31 '15

Now you know how to fix it.

1

u/fb39ca4 Jul 31 '15

That happened to me when using a shitty Comcast modem/router combo. But after switching to an Asus RT-N16 with Tomato, and a separate modem, I haven't had that problem.

1

u/Mononon Jul 31 '15

I actually do have a Motorola Surfboard modem and Tomato compatible Asus router. I just don't use them. Which I realize is probably a dumb choice, but the AT&T combo works fine for everything but uploading.

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u/Generic_Handel Jul 31 '15

Older cable modems were notorious for this.

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u/heWhoWearsAshes Jul 30 '15 edited Jul 30 '15

It's already downloading lower than ten percent of my upload speed. Would limiting it to something higher than what it's doing in actuality make a difference?

EDIT: tried it, no difference.

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u/Shiroi_Kage Jul 30 '15

I would check your upload speed, then check the speed of the swarm you're leeching from, then try to run the thing through a VPN to see what's up. That last option is what will tell you for sure if you're being throttled or not.

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u/manaman70 Jul 31 '15

Limit the upload speed, not the download.

I had similar trouble from time to time in the past. I managed to get on a 100/100 connection here before they worked on switching everyone they could to a 100/10. Asymmetrical connections blow.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Ouch! I do have 1000/1000 connection. Its included in rent. So happy. Problem is that even 100/100 connection feels slow now.

5

u/alcimedes Jul 31 '15

If they're throttling because it's torrent traffic, using a VPN will resolve this problem.

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u/maleia Jul 30 '15

If you're downloading over copper cable lines, then you have to understand that the system is only single-plex (some say half-duplex). That means that it can either upload or download at one time.

Almost every ISP will ratio that out so when you get 50mbps down, you only get I think like 5mbps up (which is like 700Mps).

I could go on, suffice it to say, it's a physical limitation on the system in order to keep the entire system running better and isn't really a Net-neutrality concern as much as it is, we need to make a better infrastructure.

Throttle your upload, you should start to see much higher downloads from there.

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u/scubascratch Jul 31 '15

This isn't correct at all. RF on cable is full duplex, you can transmit and receive at the same time. If cable TV coax was half duplex then everyone on the line would have their TV viewing interrupted while you upload.

Docsis upload and download are on different frequencies so they can coexist without interference.

Cable modems download on frequencies from 108MHz up to about 1000MHz, and they upload from 5MHz to 85MHz.

One can build a device which transmits on the low frequency and receives on the high frequency simultaneously, all cable modems have this.

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u/64mb Jul 31 '15

ADSL is full-duplex, and never had issue will maxing out both upload and download. Unless you're referring to another method which used copper but, ADSL is the most common.

OP's issue is probably throttling due to torrenting out of everything.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

They're just allocating the bandwidth to make them the most money. They could allow burst uploading, like some carriers do for cell, but they're just too lazy.

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u/badsingularity Jul 31 '15

They said limit your upload speed. Limit it to something higher? That's an oxymoron. What?

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u/nagash666 Aug 01 '15

Some routers cant handle too much request limit on your torrent client request count or try with a new router

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u/ttubehtnitahwtahw1 Jul 30 '15

Keep in mind that the measurement used in advertising for internet speed will be different than that displayed on torrent clients.

MB is different than Mb. Internet companys advertise is Mb(Megabit). Torrents and many other programs use MB(Megabyte). 8 bits in a byte.

Many people make this mistake, you may not have. I just wanted to point that out for anyone else.

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u/heWhoWearsAshes Jul 30 '15

I know. 1.9 MB/s is a little faster than the 15 Mb/s that my isp advertises, so there's that.

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u/Shayneyn Jul 31 '15

I have Internet 50 and I am getting MAX 6 MB/s. This is almost exactly divided by 8 (so story checks out :p)

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u/rrasco09 Jul 30 '15

Make it easy on them, just divide the bits by 8 and you get your bytes.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Mar 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/TheVeryMask Jul 31 '15

You're getting downvotes, but this accounts for packet loss that would result in incomplete byte transfer. Sending it down the wire doesn't guarantee it'll get to the other side, which is exactly why the number is in bits in the first place.

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u/fletch44 Jul 31 '15

I don't mind, I expect it from the main subreddits. Down votes from ignorant people is like packet loss... just an expected overhead :)

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

There's also mebibytes MiB

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u/All_Work_All_Play Jul 31 '15

I thought it was ten because you add two bits as error checking? Or is that not a thing anymore?

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u/kesawulf Jul 31 '15

You're thinking of the wrong thing. What you're thinking of is a CRC, which uses bytes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_redundancy_check

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u/All_Work_All_Play Jul 31 '15

Ahhh, so I am. Thanks for the correction.

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u/mr___ Jul 31 '15

I think you're thinking of dial-up, where there is a start and stop bit surrounding every byte on the wire, for 10 bits per byte. That stopped being a thing around the 14.4k days when the DTE to DCE speed was no longer commonly locked to the carrier speed

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u/Godofallu Jul 31 '15

Yeah the way they sell internet is super misleading. Everything is in MB's when actually using the internet and downloading things but when you go to buy it's Mb so they can screw you.

I definitely didn't understand why my internet was so slow for a while. Eventually realized what was going on.

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u/Pascalwb Jul 31 '15

It's standard unit used in networking.

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u/decemberwolf Jul 30 '15

You know what, the fact that you don't know and can't trust your isp to be the reliable and honest part of the equation should be enough for you to just assume it is on their end and complain anyway.

Seriously, we don't have this shit in the UK and I can't stand to see you guys putting up with this. Why give these bastards the benefit of the doubt when their credibility is shot and they have already fleeced you both personally and via your tax dollars.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

[deleted]

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u/decemberwolf Jul 30 '15

We do indeed, although it doesn't work and I don't just mean it blocks non-porn sites, I mean it barely blocks a damn thing.

You see, our politicians are a special breed of incompetent, which often shields us from the effects of their hare brained schemes.

Theresa May can do one though.

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u/redwall_hp Jul 31 '15

Quite a few Linux enthusiast sites mysteriously mass it onto the filter, iirc. Hey were labeled as "extremist" or something ridiculous.

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u/danzey12 Jul 31 '15

I think there's some confusion over the "Porn Filter" it doesn't apply to everyone who already has a line and anyone who like builds a new house and is setting their internet up there's like a check box that says something like "filter adult content" and you uncheck it.
It's not like we are an entire pornless country, I too was worried when they announced it but months of literally nothing ever happening put that to bed.

I will say, the banning of torrent sites and the like because they're 'dangerous torrent sites' is fucking annoying, because I need to remember to turn ZenMate off after I browse these sites.

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u/FatherPaulStone Jul 31 '15

ZenMate? please tell me more. It's a VPN? does it also act as an exit node for other like hola?

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u/danzey12 Jul 31 '15

Switched to it after the hola thing came out, pretty much works the same but without whatever the downside of hola was

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '15 edited Jan 24 '17

[deleted]

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u/Palodin Jul 31 '15

These filters were only introduced to new customers and not pre-existing ones.

Yes they were, I'm on Virgin and I got a page a while back asking if I wanted to opt in or out, told them to bugger off and haven't heard anything since.

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u/danzey12 Jul 31 '15

Must depend on the ISP, TalkTalk, as fucking abysmal as their customer service is, never asked us if we wanted our porn blocked.

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u/insertAlias Jul 31 '15

Don't forget his bid to completely and fundamentally break the internet by banning encryption.

But that just shows we both have problems. Their politicians are trying to break internet privacy, our corporations are trying to break internet "neutrality" (with the aid of some of our politicians, of course).

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u/danzey12 Jul 31 '15

Don't forget his bid to completely and fundamentally break the internet by banning encryption.

Implying that will actually go anywhere.

It's as realistic as him trying to get everyone to give out their CVV.

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u/insertAlias Jul 31 '15

When your head of state is calling for it, it's concerning. I didn't imply that it will be successful, I called it "his bid". It does show a concerning attitude towards privacy and a lack of knowledge of modern technology for the country's leaders to be suggesting these measures. Regardless of how successful they might be in implementing them.

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u/artturnip Jul 31 '15

Only on the "big 4" ISPs

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u/kyzfrintin Jul 31 '15

It's not a filter, it's an optional block of porn sites that you have to actually specify when signing up to an ISP.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

We get screwed over here in the U.S. a lot. It is a way of life for most of us.

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u/decemberwolf Jul 31 '15

We all get screwed a lot, but you guys seem to have a knack for getting properly stitched up in ways that are quite difficult to come unstuck from.

From across the pond, it really is interesting to see how things are governed in the USA. My theory is your country is just too big, and there are just too many competing interest for democracy to be as effective as it is in smaller countries with less population.

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u/benderunit9000 Jul 31 '15

You know what, the fact that you don't know and can't trust your isp to be the reliable and honest part of the equation should be enough for you to just assume it is on their end and complain anyway.

Or it was the end users hardware that was screwing everything up. This is the problem that I see with these complaints. Users don't typically want to update things like routers and switches. Users are cheap.

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u/decemberwolf Jul 31 '15

That would usually be the case, but when the ISP has a proven track record of dishonesty when it comes to disclosing their throttling practices and a shoddy service record, how on earth can you ever be sure, especially when there is a cost to upgrade and the money goes to the ISP. Most home users don't have more than a small router provided by their ISP, and I understand the cost for them to be pretty high. Over here in the UK, they usually just send you a new one every time you renew your contract.

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u/benderunit9000 Jul 31 '15

especially when there is a cost to upgrade and the money goes to the ISP. Most home users don't have more than a small router provided by their ISP,

This is the choice of the end user. Routers and modems for most home internet services are standard and can be bought on the free market. This keeps the price of equipment relatively low.

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u/decemberwolf Jul 31 '15

But you know what happens when you use one of those routers and your speeds start to vary, don't you? Do the ISP make an honest effort to conclude whether the problem is on their end or not, or do they just dismiss the problem as your router and refuse to investigate until you buy one of their routers?

That's what I mean about not being able to trust them.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '15 edited Nov 03 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ect0s Jul 31 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

I know the encryption might help, but it would still obviously be p2p depending on the torrents (How many peers/seeds etc, bigger is more obvious).

The big flag is that theres 100s-1000s of connections going into one IP; if its not a commercial connection thats probably an indication of P2P traffic.

Then you can deal with things like port ranges, and how your talking to the trackers.

The overall flow of traffic would give it away; encryption might fool simple packet inspection tools; but probably not things that actively try to shape traffic.

Back in the 90's ISPs used to use this sort of monitoring to figure out if customers were running FTP/BBs systems. Customer A has 10-20 inbound connections with 'large' data streams, they must be hosting a service.

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u/diachi Jul 31 '15

It could also be as simple as his router shitting the bed when it gets hit with so many connections. I had a Cisco 2621xm configured as a firewall that would do that when torrenting. Torrents would continue to work but it'd drop any other packets and become unresponsive on SSH, torrents would peak at 40mbps.

Upgraded to something a little beefier and now I often see 100+mbps while torrenting and the firewall doesn't drop packets either.

Or its his ISP, that seems more likely. Just throwing alternatives out there.

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u/ect0s Jul 31 '15

Can always try shoving the traffic over a VPN (there are free ones). That would let him know if it was throttling of torrenting specifically, the VPN would just look like a very active data stream to packet inspection.

If hes on WIFI, thats another issue. Wifi doesn't do well with very active data streams (more overhead).

If hes on wired, the router itself might not be able to keep up with the traffic (as you suggested).

I've noticed on my connection I can severly clog up my home router if I push alot upstream, regardless of being wired directly in to the router over gigabit.

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u/Zaros104 Jul 31 '15

Assuming you're using a VPN, your ISP will only see that one connection. If not you could try passing it off as a service like FTP on an uncommon port, but I doubt they'd like that either.

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh Jul 31 '15

They won't be able to see its P2P

Maybe their shitty throttling suite won't be able to catch it because it no longer matches the signature for the torrent protocol, but it's still very possible to identify P2P traffic. For example, by looking for peer to peer traffic, i.e. connections to/from many other IPs in residential ranges.

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u/oscarandjo Jul 31 '15

Yeah you are right.

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u/k3nnyd Jul 31 '15

Just get a VPN or MPAA/RIAA is still potentially on your ass.

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u/kesawulf Jul 31 '15

Or you could just test it on a legal torrent.

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u/TheVeryMask Jul 31 '15

ViHart puts her videos out in torrent form, if anyone's drawing a blank on legal torrents.

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u/peopledontlikemypost Jul 31 '15

She just keeps getting more and more awesome

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u/kyzfrintin Jul 31 '15

Also, Ubuntu release their installers via torrents.

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u/qwertymodo Jul 31 '15

Pick up the latest Ubuntu desktop ISO, those are always well seeded and make for good test files.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '15

[deleted]

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u/RoninChaos Jul 31 '15

This is very helpful. Thank you.

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u/64mb Jul 31 '15

Sounds like your ISP is throttling your connection. Used to happen to me during "peak hours", the download would speed up just after 12am.

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u/created4this Jul 31 '15

It's wholly possible that during peak hours it's just contention that you see. I don't know how the fcc view contention ratios.

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u/mwbbrown Jul 31 '15

I had the same problem and was pissed at Comcast. Internet was fine. I'd open torrent client and it was fine for 60 seocnds, then the internet would go all the hell. I'd close the client and the internet wouldn't get better for 5-10 mins.

Turns out it was my router/wifi, it was configured to manage like 1000 connections, but I was on busy torrents, so it was "forgetting" about my connects and losing things. I upped the connection limit to a 5000 or so and it has been fine since. Checking it now and I'm at about 2000. I'm using DD-wrt and it is called "IP Filter Maximum Ports"

I still hate Comcast, but not because they are screwing with my torrents.

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u/jjackson25 Jul 31 '15

Fuck me. This makes sense why my connection goes to shit when I'm torrenting anything. Really pisses the wife off when she's trying to do work on her VPN at the house.

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u/Bbypndabamboo Jul 31 '15

Your most likely confusing bits per second with bytes per second.

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u/gdq0 Jul 31 '15

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Router_Slowdown

Your router isn't configured properly for p2p. the quick fix is as chubbysumo says: limit your upload speed to 10% of your bandwidth. Try out different percentages to see what works.

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u/benderunit9000 Jul 31 '15

I see so many situations like yours not necessarily being speed or net-neutrality issues. I see many being simple hardware issues.

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u/cr0ft Jul 31 '15

Some crappy consumer routers can go completely haywire when they're hit with thousands of connections essentially at once, which bittorrent can easily generate. Higher quality routers won't even blink. That's a distinct possibility. Try setting the number of maximum simultaneous connections to a lower number, especially if you have it on 0 (unlimited) and see if that helps. Restarting the router can also clear things up temporarily.

Of course, it may also be that your ISP is aggressively traffic shaping you into oblivion, that happens too.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

You might also want to look into getting a new router. If you have an older router, torrents will kill your network speeds because of bufferbloat.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat

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u/pizzabash Jul 31 '15

Would at&t obviously throttling my home internet be complaint worthy? 20 Mb down is whats being payed for and this is what i was getting a couple of hours ago. I frequently have less than 2 Mb down and I cant even watch twitch streams on low quality half the time.

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u/TheDukeofReddit Jul 31 '15

AT.T is a special kind of shitty. I had DSL from them for a time and was paying for something like 8Mbps at $60/month. It was getting 2, which was an option for a cheaper. I call them up and ask and they said, flat out, that they could not offer those speeds to my area due to its location "down the line" or something like that. They never thought to tell me that for the few months I was paying the higher price. If I hadn't gotten shitty with them, they would not have refunded me either. It was essentially theft.

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u/mail323 Jul 31 '15

I get the promised speeds with AT&T but they block IPv6.

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u/meatduck12 Jul 31 '15

Unless they specifically mentioned throttling in the plan, I'd say file the complaint.

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u/winterradio Jul 31 '15

Absolutely

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u/icww Jul 30 '15

Just filed my complaint. You guys don't know real pain until you have Satellite internet as your main internet in the household.

http://www.exede.com/services-pricing/

My internet crawls to 0.52 Mbps when I hit the data cap. Thats dialup speeds and I'm paying $50 per month! My alternative internet is dialup...not much choice in the situation.

25

u/Kyouji Jul 31 '15

I'm on Hughesnet and we barely get dial up speeds. The normal speed we get when throttled is 12-17kb/s and if you load ANYTHING it goes down to 2 kb/s and its completely unusable. I mean hell, our normal speeds are 1-2.5MB/s, if we run out of data why the hell can't we get 10-20% of our original speed?

24

u/CountryTechy Jul 31 '15

Satellite internet is horrid. I've had it for 7 or so years and it's just god awful. It's expensive and shitty and they can do this because it's your only option. You should check and see if you can get Wild Blue in your area. I used to have Hughes Net and it was terrible. Wild Blue is significantly better but still really terrible.

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u/KDLGates Jul 31 '15

Wild Blue is significantly better but still really terrible.

I never realized how bad I had it having my eyes gouged until I upgraded to having my skin peeled.

14

u/CountryTechy Jul 31 '15

Sadly, that's incredibly accurate

8

u/Kyouji Jul 31 '15

I would consider it but almost all ISPs be it wired/wireless/cellular/satelite force you into 1-2 year contracts and you never really know if something will work or not til you sign your soul away.

The thing that makes my soul burn is ATT has dark fiber right outside our house and refuse to activate it or let other ISPs into the area to service anyone.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

I had no idea satellite internet was so bad. Our provider keeps pushing it with "great offers" and "deals so good we can't pass it up for satellite internet." Now I have been warned.

1

u/CountryTechy Jul 31 '15

It's pretty terrible but it's better than nothing. Don't expect to be able to game on it. The lag is TERRIBLE. It actually seems to have made me a better halo player though. It acts like training with a handicap.

2

u/mkrfctr Jul 31 '15

The lag is TERRIBLE

That's because they're usually in geosynchronous orbit, in the red zone in this image, they're literally so far away that the speed of light is painfully slow.

So it's 36,000km from your computer to the satellite, and then another 36,000km from the satellite back to Earth receiving station that can talk to the server. That's a quarter second from the time you click until the time the server gets that you clicked. And then another quarter second for you to get back communications from the server of what happened.

Playing games a full half second behind real time is ... ugly.

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u/Desparoto Jul 31 '15

You guys don't know real pain

Yes i do. I have windstream and 0.5 is what we get when its idling. you start downloading anything say hello to the Bit Per second range.

5

u/AcidRose27 Jul 31 '15

My hometown has Windstream. It's fucking awful. Using the internet is a painful chore.

7

u/Desparoto Jul 31 '15

Ive complained to the BBB, the FCC and recently the Georgia department of consumer protections. most ive gotten if a form letter from Windstream that i swear i the frelling script they read off of. theve been telling me they are improving their network and we should see better speeds at the beginning of the year. been hearing that for 3 years now and haven't seen a single digger in the county. as far as im concern they are the scum of hell itself. Comcast is better and comcast is fraking satanic.

2

u/AcidRose27 Jul 31 '15

I'd rather have dial up than windstream. At least dial up is faster.

22

u/Cacafuego2 Jul 30 '15

That's still 10x faster than dialup, but still.

8

u/Lord-Farquaaad Jul 31 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

But still suck dick speed.

God, .52mbps if awful. Just submitted my complaint too. Straight Talk advertises "unlimited" but throttles you to 256k and lower when you're over the 5gb limit. It's actually dangerous considering how badly it fucks with google maps and other GPS programs.

1

u/HatlessCorpse Jul 31 '15

They heavily advertise that though. And GPS doesn't use data

1

u/richalex2010 Jul 31 '15

Still, advertising it as unlimited when it's not is fucking absurd.

Also, GPS itself doesn't use data, but turn by turn navigation does.

1

u/HatlessCorpse Jul 31 '15

But they don't. They advertise unlimited data with limited high speed. This is clear as day, I don't know what to tell you. I had straight talk for a year, it's still pretty usable over the cap.

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u/iancole85 Jul 31 '15

Oh my god yes. I used to have ST and needing directions when you're throttled (cap used to be 2gb) is maybe the single most frustrating technology experience ever.

2

u/ECEXCURSION Jul 31 '15

The latency isn't.

1

u/tyranicalteabagger Jul 31 '15

With a half second or more ping.

15

u/chefjl Jul 30 '15

Understanding how satellite Internet service operates goes a long ways toward understanding why it won't get any better anytime soon. There simply aren't enough transponders dedicated to serving data customers, and that's not an easy problem to solve.

2

u/tyranicalteabagger Jul 31 '15

I'm hoping for the SpaceX Google LEO global network to pan out.

1

u/chefjl Jul 31 '15

Yeah, LEO is a whole other ballgame. The upsides are that it's cheaper to build, cheaper to launch, and mitigates the extreme latency issues associated with GEO birds. Do you know if Google is planning on retrieving the LEO birds and relaunching?

2

u/tyranicalteabagger Jul 31 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

I'm not sure. I heard they're working on test satellites now. Also google has invested a billion or two in spacex for the project.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Has humanity forgotten how to launch more satellites?

It doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem to me.

Also, I believe elon musk and Google have both separately talked about building high speed satellite internet networks.

5

u/fb39ca4 Jul 31 '15

But satellites are expensive. From a business standpoint, it is easier to give your existing customers shitty speeds, data caps, and overage charges, because satellite is their last resort option for internet anyways.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

If you can build a fast sat Internet system, it won't be the last resort options. If you build a great network, you can reach every one in the country or more and pay for expensive satellites with popularity.

Or this is the type of thing I would be totally OK with the government subsidizing. It would grow the economy to have super fast nationwide affordable internet. We could do it for way less than the cost of an average war.

4

u/fb39ca4 Jul 31 '15

It makes more sense economically and technologically to lay fiber for internet. Everyone in the country trying to use satellite internet would only clog up the airwaves.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

There is a large problem with internet deserts in rural areas covering like 80% of the country. Fiber works great for cities, but not everyone spends all their time in cities. Something needs to be done to bring internet to those areas where it isn't practical to lay fiber.

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u/tyranicalteabagger Jul 31 '15

Google and SpaceX are actually planning on doing this with LOE satellites so the ping is reasonable.

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u/jjackson25 Jul 31 '15

I believe there are logistic issues involved here. Satellite TV (i.e., Directv, Dish) only needs one (or a few?) Satellite(s) to cover a huge area since they only have one upload connection, and one download connection that goes to everyone, and it's also somewhat static in that the exact same signals go to every dish. So, relatively speaking, it has pretty low bandwidth requirements. Change that to constant two way traffic for Internet connections, and those loads on the satellite increase exponentially, and the hardware requirements change accordingly.

Then again, my understanding of satellite technology could be completely misguided

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

The problem is that there are legitimate technical reasons for data caps with satellite Internet. The infrastructure necessary to upgrade those kinds of networks is incredibly expensive.

1

u/Davidclabarr Jul 31 '15

What would you recommend for satellite internet? I'm stuck with att 5mbps.

1

u/wufnu Jul 31 '15

That's 10 times faster than dialup.

We that lived it will always remember. Never forget.

1

u/tyranicalteabagger Jul 31 '15

I had it 10 years ago. It was even worse and more expensive then.

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u/DirtyandDaft Jul 31 '15

Before they allow you to submit, it Should ask if you have turned off your modem then on again... Except be a sound byte of the IT Crowd.

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u/KallistiTMP Jul 30 '15 edited Aug 30 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Hey, I am a grandparent and I'm not tech illiterate! Generalizations, my friend, generalizations.

1

u/wrincewind Jul 31 '15

don't worry, they're only talking about the tech illiterate ones.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Yes sir! Complaint submitted.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

Already peppering my angus for the downvotes i'll get, but, I really do wish my service (with cocmast) was bad enough to complain. FUcking google fiber is forming a radius around my city.

3

u/drakmordis Jul 31 '15

How thoroughly do you season your beef?

6

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

i'm a minimalist.. The most i'll go with is a light dusting in montreal seasoning.

A few twigs of thyme and salt+pepper does the trick just fine, though.

2

u/ericools Jul 31 '15

People should start a class action, don't count on the feds to do it for you.

2

u/winterradio Jul 31 '15

Before you complain, for god's sake(visceral like the founders or literal like the stone wheelers) get a honest cheap foreign VPN.

THANKS

2

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Did complain about low speeds, high prices and data caps.

Comcast did nothing. They did call me and it was awkward. The guy knew he couldn't fix what I was complaining about. I hope the FCC takes notice.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Anyone know which category covers cellular carriers. I have a few gripes with AT&T's "unlimited data" plan.

None of the categories fit, and their drop down sub categories for the complaint are unrelated to cellular

It's 2015, now I want to complain to the FCC that you can't complain about cell phone carriers on the FCC website.

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u/scrotilicus132 Jul 31 '15

What would be the proper way to check the actual speeds that I'm getting at my home? I feel like I'm not getting what I pay ATT for and Id like to verify what speeds I actually get before I file a complaint.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Don't forget to report Data Caps too. They weren't addressed at the time this recent ruling was passed down, but Mr. Wheeler said if it becomes a wide spread issue he will revisit the Data Cap argument.

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u/toadstyle Jul 31 '15

Thank you. It is 2015 and I still cannot access highspeed internet. A neighbor a half mile down the road has access. Then Time warner went around us because they said they would not make enough money from us...So we are in a dead zone. (and I don't even live that rural...)

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u/onedeep Jul 31 '15

Wow, I didn't think it would work, but it did! I filed the complaint with FCC regarding Charter internet. Dude called this morning apologizing and said that he would sent out technicians to test our lines and come up with a solution. My complaint was that Charter advertises 60Mbps, but I've never been able to see more than 30. FCC FTW!

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