Canadian internet access gets shittier

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Canadian internet access gets shittier

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

What does this mean for someone that uses a high-speed Rogers service?

# ¿ Oct 31, 2010 20:23

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:46

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

I live in Toronto right now, down in Etobicoke, and I'm really looking at getting a better ISP because gently caress having limited bandwidth caps. I'm with Rogers now and I have the Rogers Extreme 80Gigs a month, 15down/1up.

Right now I'm browsing Acanac and they've got the exact same plan(download/upload speed) for 20 bucks cheaper and unlimited bandwidth cap. I'm skeptical, because seriously? How can this even be an available option when Rogers is charging me 20 dollars more for 80gigs/month? Someone explain this poo poo to me :smith:

# ¿ Jun 25, 2011 21:45

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

8ender posted:

Because Rogers is mandated to allow independent ISPs wholesale access to the network. This is what the big UBB hubbub has been all about : Rogers and Bell want to continue charging outrageous prices for little tiny parcels of bandwidth and they don't want you to be able to go and get a better deal elsewhere. They also want to prop up a dying cable and satellite market while keeping the Netflix boogeyman out of Canada.

That said, Acanac seems to be pretty hit and miss for quality. Prices are great but there seems to be a lot of complaints. Teksavvy is a little more, and they've had their own quality problems recently, but things have gotten a lot better and they're probably the best of the independent ISPs at the moment.

So what would be the difference going from Rogers to Teksavvy? With the same down/up speed plan?

# ¿ Jun 26, 2011 16:56

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

kuddles posted:

The difference is your bill will be cheaper and none of your downloads will be throttled, at least for the time being.

As others have said, the only big downside to going with something like TekSavvy or Acanac is the fact that they are forced to rent the "last mile" from Rogers, and thus rely upon Rogers to provide support with the actual connection to your house.

Almost any complaint that you hear about TekSavvy on either DSL or Cable is that someone runs into a connection problem (i.e. the modem isn't properly provisioned, or they were accidentally disconnected at the cable box) and it takes way longer than it should to have the problem corrected because Bell/Rogers will make it as low a priority as they are legally allowed to. It's not surprising that when they are forced to allow third parties on their network by law and those third parties offer a far superior deal by not gouging their customers, Bell and Rogers ensure the administrative/technical support side is as cumbersome as possible.

Will I get a more shoddy/interrupted/worse connection? I mean I run at 15mb/s download but only download at like 1.3 or 1.4mb/s with my connection right now... maybe that's normal, I don't really understand it but yeah, I'm mainly just worried about the reliability of the connection because it's obviously a smaller company.

Also I'm renting a rogers router/modem in one, if that has anything to do with it.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2011 17:51

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

kuddles posted:

That's pretty normal. I think you're confusing two different things there. Your connection is probably 15 Mbps (MegaBitsPerSecond) but your download speed from most places is presented as MB/S (MegaBytesPerSecond). It's annoying that it's always put in those terms, but the short of it is that even with a perfect 15 MBPS connection, you won't get more than about 1.8 mb/s.

TekSavvy used to have some problems with congestion during peak hours, but they are a lot better about it now (basically because they will now refuse to take new customers in an area when the number of connections to a single POI is high enough), mostly because they no longer trust Rogers on claims of when they will be allowed new upgrades to the line.

My connection in Ottawa has been flawless, but your mileage may vary (I've heard about some problems in Kitchener a while ago). And like I said, your connection probably will be even smoother since TekSavvy doesn't do any kind of throttling or traffic shaping, or at least performs a negligible amount.

Probably the biggest hurdle with TekSavvy is right now you can only buy a cable modem, you can't rent from them, so I can understand feeling a little shaky with a rather high expense upfront for a company you never heard of.

Well I live in Etobicoke, Toronto, so I assume their connections would be pretty good here since it's the most populated city in Canada, but I could be wrong.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2011 18:38

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Eej posted:

I thought people nowadays tried to avoid labeling themselves as from Etobicoke.

Why would this be?

# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 20:09

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

So I'm seriously considering changing to Teksavvy, what would the best and least painful process be in switching from Rogers to Teksavvy cable?

Also, what would I need to do about a modem? My modem is in my basement right now, its rented off of rogers, and it's connected directly to two computers, and then we have 3 laptops that are usually a floor up from the basement or up in the 2nd(third) floor. What should I do when I switch? Whats the best recommendation?

# ¿ Jul 3, 2011 00:02

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

kuddles posted:

Phone and cancel your Rogers internet and make it at least a few weeks out. Phone TekSavvy, tell them you're switching to them from Rogers, and get them to activate your account on the exact same day as your cancellation.

What do you mean by make it atleast a few weeks out? And when you say active the same day as cancellation, same day as I call to get cancelled or my internet actually gets cancelled?

# ¿ Jul 3, 2011 02:37

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Called up rogers to cancel, they offered a free modem for a year, 20% off my bill, and a higher data cap. No thanks rogers, :byewhore:

# ¿ Jul 8, 2011 03:32

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Any changes for cable plans coming for Teksavvy? All I've been hearing about is the Bell DSL stuff

# ¿ Jul 14, 2011 18:29

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

How do you guys download Terabytes of data? I don't get it. What do you guys do?

# ¿ Jul 17, 2011 03:15

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Why does toronto get such bad internet compared to maritime's :qq:

# ¿ Jul 17, 2011 21:31

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Everytime I try to watch netflix, it drops down to 0.1 mbp/s and I just ran speedtest and I'm getting 0.15mbp/s. This is with the 15mbp/s teksavvy connection on cable. What's going on?

# ¿ Sep 19, 2011 00:31

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

What is going on with my internet? When I signed up for teksavvy I was getting speeds much faster than my rogers, but now I'm downloading at 340 kb/s, youtube is having trouble loading, and netflix is pretty much unbearable to watch. (Nothing has changed as far as my knowledge goes from that point to this one)

# ¿ Sep 23, 2011 01:49

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Well when I try to go to 192.168.1.1 it just throws up "Unable to load the page because no data was sent" so... I don't even know

# ¿ Sep 23, 2011 02:54

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Ok so I just unplugged my router and plugged it back in and tossed those google DNS into the Static DNS 1/2 lines or whatever.

I'm using a WRT54G, and I should be getting the fastest speed basically because on the computer that I'm getting 300kb/s download speeds and poo poo load times on the internet, I'm directly plugged into the router.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2011 03:03

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

So this is much better than when I speedtested a few days ago(was getting like .3 or .4 mb/s) but still a third of my download speed that I pay for.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 00:08

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Adding on to what I posted earlier, it only feels like my internet is even slower on my PC(which is plugged directly into the router) than my laptop which is a floor up from the router. Is that even possible???

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 03:43

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

mediaphage posted:

Yes, especially since it sounds increasingly like a problem with your computer and less with your connection. You may wish to post in HoTS.

Well, I wouldn't say it's a problem with my computer really. I get pretty much the same slow browsing speeds on my laptop, and like I said Netflix also streams extremely slow.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 16:47

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

Drakkus posted:

Cable or ADSL?

Speaking as someone who has done tech support for years for one or the other, your steps for speed issues should pretty much be:
(In all cases, testing with more than one device is ideal. If you are lazy and very very sure it's not your issue, skip to 3)
1) Speed test (Use multiple sites) with your entire network connected. (Ping Google if it's latency, but don't do both at once, please.)
2) Speed test with ONE device connected to your router, and nothing else on the network. Physically disconnect everything else and actually turn off the wireless.
3) Speed test directly to the modem.
4) Call your ISP, while the issue is happening.

If you're curious, the steps for the tech support rep here should ideally speaking be (don't be a dick and walk them through this, but no harm in asking 'can you see my signal levels? do you know if there are any issues in the area?')
1) Customer reports speed issues. If he's not already on Step 3 from above, get him to Step 3.
2) Check for known issues on the outage board.
3) Check the signal level on the customer's modem. If it's lousy, check neighbours. If they're lousy, report the outage, tell the customer, and note the account. (If operations says it's localized, book a service call and call the customer back)
4) Check for saturation, or call tier 2 and ask them to check for saturation. If there's saturation, report it, tell the customer, note the account, and call the customer back after it's been confirmed by operations and discuss options. (Fixing saturation takes time, so speaking from experience, we'll often downgrade customers, or credit the difference, until the issue is fixed. We can rarely give real timeframes right away, however, so don't expect to get one on the first call.)
5) If the customer is getting confirmed slow speeds directly to the modem, the signal levels are fine, and there is no saturation we can see from the office, book a service call to 'prove it out'. These calls basically consist of sending a tech out with a known-good laptop, plugging it into the modem, and running a speed test. If it's slow, he calls it in, and we start trying to isolate where the hell the issue is on our side. If it's fine, and it's slow *at the same time* for the customer, pretty much not our problem, best of luck. (Though most techs will give recommendations)

Cable, I've done 1/2 and there was no real conclusive information. Just kind of all over the place, when you guys say plug directly into the modem, do you mean unplug the router jack from it and plug in my cable? Because my modem only has one jack in the back for that kind of cable.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 20:04

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:46

Brace: May 29, 2010; by Ozmaugh

I tried running my cable directly into the modem and I couldn't connect to the internet at all.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2011 20:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Canadian internet access gets shittier