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So we met with Mr. Erb and other folks from his company on Tuesday afternoon. To make a long story short, they seem to be determined to solve our problem, and are “just as frustrated as we are.” We talked at length about tests that they and we have performed. I believe we generated some mutual respect, and a determination to fix the problem. It does seem that we are an isolated case for them, and that their service doesn’t suck for all of their customers. We are scheduled for a conference call on Friday, during which time we’ll be disconnecting our router and doing some detailed troubleshooting. They also requested some packet captures, which I provided today. I also installed an Ethernet switch between our respective routers, and plugged a vswitch from our ESXi hypervisor into it, so that I could give them a couple of VMs on the outside they could test remotely with. So there’s a Linux box and a Windows box configured with veracity user accounts. I told them they could do “whatever they want” with them. The BBB response to their response is due Monday, so I was going to hold off on that until then. Cheers! Jim

I run 802.11 b/g/n/ac in my house. Sometimes my laptop for instance will feel laggy on my AC network, I run a speed test and it's obvious even before the results page that something's wrong. I switch to my N network, retest and pull my full speed. A couple of times I've reset my router and issue resolved but the last time it was due to improper router placement. ... I knew it would be an issue but I put it there anyways. I wanted to see how much of an issue. We recently rearranged our bedroom and the bed was to go on the wall where I have my modem and router. I put them in our bedroom because it's the best placement in our home, right on a central interior wall. After moving things around we put the router under the bed... things appeared to run fine at first but then devices connected to ac wifi weren't running right. I went in the bedroom and pulled the bed away from the wall and didn't touch anything else. Went back to my laptop and hit 'retest' ... immediately apparent that was the issue. I just used 4 medium 3M strips (I love those) and stuck it to the wall about a foot above the ground. Works better than ever. Hidden off to the side of the bed behind a (wooden) nightstand. My N network seemed almost totally unaffected by comparison. So I want to give you the heads up that if you have more than one wifi network running... try switching the network. If one runs much better than the other it might be a clue. They run on different frequencies and can be affected by different factors. When AC is running at < 1 Mbps and N is running at > 100 Mbps it's a pretty major clue that it's wifi interference. Realize that it doesn't always have to affect both ranges. ... I was also only a few feet from the router with only 1 wall between. Most likely the cause in this case, the metal bed frame and metal in the box spring created a partial faraday cage around the router.

Correct me if I'm wrong but ac is 5Ghz right? I imagine the metal Springs in your mattress were causing interference or there is something in a interior wall causing interference but looks like you already came to that conclusion aswell 5Ghz band can be really finicky

Why would you want to hide that thing of beauty behind a nightstand?

Here's the e-mail response I sent this morning: Dear Mr. Erb, I received your response to the BBB complaint I filed against your company, and have attached it here for reference. I trust you realize that is a public record. So to confirm that I’m understanding this correctly: Veracity Networks is unable, or unwilling, to provide us Internet service with speeds reasonably close to what we’re paying for. Veracity Networks will allow us to cancel the contract for Internet service, provided we pay the ETL for the “last mile” fiber provider (XO Communications). Even though no new fiber had to be laid to the building from which we are leasing office space, Veracity is paying XO a monthly fee for riding that fiber transport, which is then passed on to us as part of the monthly bill. Presumably, Veracity made a commitment with XO on how long that term would be, and cancelling early will trigger the ETL. You wish to collect that ETL from us, and excuse yourselves from any responsibility or liability. There is one word which comes to my mind in reaction to this: Stunning. Both Technicolor and Veracity agree that the problems we are experiencing are unrelated to the underlying XO circuit. Therefore, the problem must be originating from within Veracity’s network infrastructure, in terms of routing or peering with your upstream providers. However, Veracity continually fails to acknowledge this, conveniently hiding behind the notion that you can’t guarantee the performance of the “greater Internet.” While it is true you can’t control the performance of the “greater Internet,” or specific endpoints on it, you can, and do, control the size/type/quality of the connections to your upstream providers. From our perspective, these are woefully insufficient, with the two known exceptions being your connections to XMission and the University of Utah. It is clear that your technical staff is either incapable of determining root cause and correcting the problem, or unable to because of business decisions over which they have no control. The way I see it, there are two possibilities: Veracity maintains [mostly] poor/oversubscribed peering connections with their upstream providers, meaning that all of Veracity’s customers are experiencing the same problems we are, though may not be aware they are getting ripped off. There is some idiosyncrasy with the way our circuit terminates within Veracity’s network infrastructure, be that routing, a physical port or device, whatever. This would mean that the problem is isolated to our connection, and not impacting other customers. I really want to believe that it’s the second one, but I feel that if it were that, then all that would need to happen would be, you’d move our termination point to a different device or location (the same as one of your “working” customers), and we’d be off to the races. But that hasn’t happened, so it begs the question, is it really the first one? If it were that, it may not be “illegal” to maintain inadequate peering connections, but it would be [at the very least] highly unethical. Which is it? Asking us to pay the ETL is insulting, and I’m struggling with what it would take for you to face reality here. Do we need to approach the local news media? Do I need to publish my “story” on social networks so that all of my LinkedIn contacts can read it and potentially distribute it? What needs to happen for you guys to do the right thing? Some of my frustrated colleagues in the office want us to just stop paying the bill, let you sue us, and go with Comcast…which would be faster and cheaper. But personally, I think we should be willing to finish out the contract we originally committed to. While it is expensive, if it were performing as advertised, it would be meeting our needs, and we would be supporting the local economy. But the problem is, you are not holding up your end, it is impacting our business, and that is just plain wrong. What if the water pressure at your house was only averaging 25% of normal all of the time? That would make you pretty ticked, wouldn’t it? Disclaimer: I realize that this isn’t a “perfect” analogy, as one can’t choose between different suppliers of water; but please stay with me, the general points are the same. Me: I need to report a problem with the water supply to our house. The water pressure is very low, and has been that way since we moved in. We and our kids have to get up several hours earlier than normal, so that we have time to take the resultant long showers, so we’re not late for church. We had a plumber come in to take a look, and after measuring the flow, he said we’re only receiving an average of 25% of the water we should be. He said we should be able to receive twenty gallons per minute, but we’re only averaging five. City: Okay, that sounds odd. Are you sure you don’t have a leak somewhere? Perhaps a toilet is malfunctioning and running all the time? Me: No, we’ve checked for things like that, and everything appears normal. We’ve also analyzed the water bills from the city, and they verify that our water consumption has been very low. Incidentally, our bill is ten times higher than what our friends pay in different neighborhoods. Why is that? City: Well, your neighborhood requires us to install special main pipes, which connect your house to our water system. Those pipes are very high quality, made out of a titanium alloy, and capable of handling over a thousand gallons per minute, although we have that limited to twenty, as that’s what your currently paying for. However, unlike your friends, you are allowed to consume as much water as you want every month, for no additional charge. Much of what you are paying for is that special pipe. Me: Okay, that sounds odd. But whatever, please send someone out to troubleshoot, as we’re only getting five instead of twenty. City: Okay, we’ll send someone out. Days/weeks pass, as the city sporadically sends technicians out to troubleshoot. Each time they do, the technician has to disconnect the house from the water supply, which is disruptive and inconvenient. City: We haven’t been able to find a problem, so we changed the setting on your titanium pipe to allow thirty gallons per minute. Try it now. Me: That hasn’t made a difference; we’re still only averaging five gallons per minute. A different plumber came to the house and verified that. Will you send someone out again, please? City: We’ll check some things and get back to you. More days/weeks pass. City: Good news! We tested your titanium pipe, and it is functioning normally – we can push thirty gallons of water per minute through it just fine, when we hook up our water truck to it. Me: That’s great, but we’re still only getting five. Since the titanium pipe is not the problem, perhaps the problem is with your water supply not being good enough to handle the neighborhood’s capacity needs? City: Well, we can’t guarantee that your house, or anyone else’s, will always receive the maximum allotment. What if twenty people in the neighborhood are taking showers at the same time? We don’t have control over that. Me: Yes, I understand that, but shouldn’t your water system be built with enough capacity, so that your customers can receive reasonable amounts of water and pressure most of the time? City: What? Me: What? City: We turned your dial up to one hundred gallons per minute. Try it now. Me: Nope, we’re still only getting five. City: We don’t know what to tell you. Your titanium pipe is capable of thirty, and we’ve proven that. Me: Yes, but you can only deliver five, which is not acceptable. We’d like to switch to a different water provider. City: No problem, we’re here to help. Just pay us seven thousand dollars, and you can be on your way. Me: Seven thousand dollars?! For what? City: For the titanium pipe. Someone has to pay for that. That stuff is expensive! Tony (our Titanium supplier) is going to make us pay for it, whether you use it or not. So you need to pay for that. Me: But you’re only able to deliver five gallons of water anyway, not near the twenty we’ve been paying for (for months), and even further from the thirty and one hundred you set it to…what would happen if we needed and paid for one thousand? Why should we have to pay for your ineptitude? City: You don’t seem to understand how water delivery works. Pay us our money and move along. Thanks for reading. -Jim