tedb3rd

It's not just Texas.  Georgia sucks too (WB1 Duluth).  This past Tuesday night at 9:00 EST, my download speed was 100kbps and upload was 26kbps.  Yes, twenty-six.  Monday, at the same time, it was 146 down/13kbps.  Overselling capacity.  It sucks because I was on WB1 within 2 weeks of it opening in my area.  Speeds were awesome.  Over time, I've watched it slowly degrade... and degrade...  and degrade.  The past few weeks it's been so bad that I actually did call Dish Network to see if something was wrong.  The tech couldn't believe that the slow speeds were only due to peak-usage.  She said, "If it were the entire network, we would be getting a lot more calls."  Apparently, people seem to just sigh and live with it.  She had a new modem sent out but it's the same thing.

If WildBlue is going to advertise, "up to" speeds, then they should adjust the monthly bill accordingly.  If my average download speed is 25% of the advertised up to speed, then they should only charge 25% of my $49 bill for the month.  Is that not fair?

If a customer only got 10% to 25% of Dish Network's advertised channels for a given package between the hours of 4PM and midnight, there would be a lot of complaints.

WB does not have a way to check signal strength from the computer / modem.  You have to have a signal meter / go outside and hook it up.  They also have some thing you have to hook up on the modem side too so not just any satellite signal meter will work.  (I watched the installer do this upon initial installation.)  I have a $80 signal meter that I use with Dish Network but I'm not sure if it's compatible w/WB.  I'm not sure if calling in to customer support can yield a signal strenght but I know they can tell if I am connected / logged on.  (I can do that by looking at the lights on the modem too--without having to wait on hold.)

I don't think it's poor signal strength either because speeds are much better during off-peak times.  I'm pretty sure it has to do with WB's over selling and having too many subscribers on one beam.  (That's why they aren't accepting any more customers on Duluth WB1 right now.)

--Ted

Thanks for the suggestions, but I've done all that.  I tweaked the browser a while back and that did help somewhat.  The speed slow-down has to do with peak/off-peak times.  If I test at 8:00AM it's much faster--more like it should be.  It has nothing to do with weather because I am located right in the middle of the drought area (if you've seen on the news) and there have only been about 3 days in the past month when skies were something besides 'clear' as defined by the National Weather service...  and even then it was 'partly cloudy' or 'cloudy'.  The last time the weather was inclement was on 8/29--it was defined as 'thunderstorms' and my speed was measured at 262kbs down / 101kbs upload at 8:45PM (local time).  At that time, I was on the basic plan.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if my dish is out of alignment or something--that's why I was asking if anybody else on the same beam / satellite saw the same slow down in the evenings as much as I am.  But I doubt that because, if that were the case, I would have slow down at all times (not just in the evening).  Again, I appreciate the suggestions but I don't think there is anything else I can do software-wise.  The next thing would be to hack WB, I guess, to tweak my QOS. 

I would be interested to see how others on WB1 Duluth beam (or anybody on WB1 at least) compare to this crap--at peak and off peak time.  I'm on the 'middle' of the 3 packages and these are the results I've been getting since I upgraded a few weeks back.

Note:  This test was done at 10:12PM local (EST) time.  The service used to be great when I first signed up for WB back in May '07.  I've watched it slowly go to hell.  By end of the year, if this projection doesn't change, I'll be doing the equivalent of dial-up.  Basically, I'll be paying $50/month to not use the phone line that we never use anyways.

:::.. testmy.net test results ..:::

Download Connection is:: 162 Kbps about 0.16 Mbps (tested with 386 kB)

Download Speed is:: 20 kB/s

Upload Connection is:: 56 Kbps about 0.1 Mbps (tested with 97 kB)

Upload Speed is:: 7 kB/s

Tested From:: https://testmy.net (Main)

Test Time:: 2007/11/05 - 8:12pm

D-Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-G3W84YLKC

U-Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-O50AZY7UB

User Agent:: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9 [!]