Hello from a new Rogers Customer (for now anyway)

[Johnster]

Greetings all.

 

I just joined this site and am amazed at the differences between the speeds reported for my new 150MB Rogers connction here as opposed to the results I get on Speedtest.  Here it basically max's out at 40MB down, whereas on Speedtest (which Rogers recommends of course) it shows 150MB.  Rogers says they have never heard of this site, but my actual download speeds seem to be closer to the ones reported here than Speedtest.

 

Can anyone shine some light on this for me?  Similar experiences perhaps?

 

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

 

Cheers

John

[CA3LE]

The guy on the phone probably didn't know TMN but Rogers knows me.  I'd bet you money that if you dug deep enough (in these forums and elsewhere) you'd find many instances where their customers say that they were referred by customer service or techs from Rogers.  TMN has run millions of tests JUST on Rogers customers over the years, in the beginning my number one referrals were from call center and field techs.

 

... convenient that they don't know who I am after they get their own test that makes them look better.

 

This is the case across the board Johnster.  With 99% of all ISPs leaning customers towards their own tests now.  I'm hearing of instances where techs and customer service reps are going against the handbook so hopefully the tides are changing.  It's better for consumers to know the truth.

 

It's very common for people to see huge differences like that.  It IS affecting your overall experience and speed.  You may be able to get 150 Mbps under certain IDEAL circumstances but if you can't do it here... then you're not really doing it. (IMHO)

 

First thing, if you want... search these forums for TCP Optimizer (search box at the top of the page).  You'll be returned with page after page of results.  Many of which are from people in the same boat as you. "Why is my speed faster elsewhere" is pretty much the theme.  That search term finds all of those because it's commonly mentioned in threads where people see discrepancy ... and often works.  If you're on Windows (7 and older) I recommend trying TCP Optimizer, you'll see improvement instantly in many cases.  I see "Windows NT 6.1" detected in your results, so you're on Windows 7.  ... lol, just thought about it... even with version numbers, MS makes things more difficult than they need to be.

 

TMN has more than one dimension.  So far you've only tested one way.  The default is default for a reason, it's a great test but if you want to fully understand your connection you need to test it other ways too.  You can select mirrors, multithread speed test and Mercury (test to anywhere).

 

Let me know after you've tested some other ways and applied optimized TCP settings... and retested.  I'll pull your results up again and let you know what I think.

 

Another thing to try.  Test wired to your modem directly if possible.  Those results will represent the baseline and should be the fastest and most stable numbers you get from TMN.  Then you can test wifi and networking equipment beyond the modem knowing that drops in their performance are not a reflection on your provider.  (One of the many reasons I'll never buy a combo modem/router.)  Note: Plug the modem into your computer with ethernet, unplug the modem for 10 seconds and plug it back in.  This ensures that it reboots with the computers mac address.  Repeat the process when you connect back to the router.

[Johnster]

Thank you Ca3le for such an insightful and comprehensive reply. 

 

I did try some of the speed tests with my notebook plugged directly into the router, although the wired connections to the router are all Gigabit with handmade (by me) ethernet cables, I still wanted to be able to tell Rogers support that it was a direct connection.  I have made some interested discoveries in my search for what my true internet speeds are.  Please feel free to move this to another forum if appropriate.

 

One of my biggest issues was that if I download files, I was getting much higher speeds than previously with Bell, but if i connect my VPN, the speeds slowed to about 10% of what I was getting without the VPN.  In researching this I also discovered something interesting about my speeds as a whole;

If I run the speedtest from speedtest.net using the default (usually a very nearby server), I would get around 150MB downloads, so far so good, but if I select a server in another geographic location, i.e. Maryland or Germany, the speeds would drop off to around 30MB, which coincidentally were the speeds that I was consistently getting with Testmy.net.  It seems to me that TMN gives me a far more realistic "real-world" speed result that speedtest.  Now my problem is what to do about these "real-world" speeds?  Rogers will claim that they are responsible for speeds to/from them, and what happens on the other side of the connection is beyond thier control, but it could also indicate that thier back-end connections are lousy and that is where the speed drop-offs occur. 

 

What to do next?  I'm still trying to get the folks at PrivateInternetAccess to help me find out why the speeds drop off so precipitously when I ceonnect he VPN (which they never did with Bell BTW), but now I also need to find out why my new utlra fast rogers connection is so poor outside my own geographic area.

 

Any other thoughts and experiences are greatly welcome, and thanks again Ca3le, I look forward to supplying you with the data you mentioned.

 

Cheers

John

[CA3LE]

When I VPN my speed is always degraded, you're complicating the route... it slows things down by nature.

 

Is the VPN faster, slower or the same.  You said that they didn't drop off with Bell... but your Bell connection was also slower.  It might drop off more steeply now but is the actual speed about the same?

 

The VPN service may have limitations.  I've seen many drop my speed from well over 100 Mbps to 5-10 Mbps or less.  VyperVPN by Goldenfrog (a Giganews partner company, which is also the best usenet service IMO) has a fast service.  It's the VPN I personally use.  But I'd never leave it on all the time.  If you want the best possible speed you should only connect VPNs when you really need them.

[Johnster]

My coworker has the same VPN service I do and he claims that he sees no degradation in his speeds when he enables it.  I would be willing to believe that I am simply hitting the maximum speed for the VPN link except for the fact that with Bell, I was generally seeing speeds around 2.7MB down with the VPN enabled, with Rogers the fastest I've seen so far is around 1.5MB connecting to the same endpoints.  I've spoken to the VPN tech support and they want me to try all protocols and ports that their client can use and if that doesn't work, they want screenshots of the speed differences.  According to them, I should see no speed hit at all. 

 

Also interesting to me was that if I leave the secure NNTP protocol to the default of 583, the speeds were again degraded, but when I changed it to 443, they went through the roof.  No matter what Rogers says, it looks to me like they are still throttling certain protocols. 

 

I was with Giganews for years, but ultimately, thier prices drove me to their competition.  I had no complaints about thier service while I was with them though.