Streaming Through Wow vs Brighthouse (appointed, houses, movies)

[wsamon]

Being a work-from-home software developer, good, steady internet is critical for my job. I've had Brighthouse's Lightning 90 (or 100?) for the last couple years but am pretty disappointed in it. The speed is decent, but consistency - especially with streaming anything - is a problem. I ran some tests with one of our network guys and his response was "your service provider sucks".

The ping times and number of hops to get to even the most basic of IPs (Google's 8.8.8.8 DNS server in this case) is terrible. IIRC it was an average of 6 hops to get to something that should never be more than 1 or 2. Because of this we sometimes have issues with streaming tv & movies through Hulu and Amazon Prime (stuttering, having to downgrade to sd), and more importantly I repeatedly have issues with videoconferencing during meetings, and my VPN or remote desktop sessions will sometimes pause for a few seconds to a few minutes to reconnect.

Where I live, FiOS is not an option - I'm stuck with either Brighthouse or Wow. Does anyone know if Wow's internet service is any more reliable in terms of the hops / streaming consistency? I'd like to make the jump both for price and also to hopefully have a better experience but I simply can't afford to have a worse one than I do now...

[Tim Tim Tim]

sounds like your issue isn't the hops, but a crap signal getting to your equipment.

Can you post any tracerts or anything while the issues are happening?

[wsamon]

Originally Posted by Tim Tim Tim

sounds like your issue isn't the hops, but a crap signal getting to your equipment.

Can you post any tracerts or anything while the issues are happening?

I can try but it may be difficult to time a major issue. When we ran the tracerts the issues weren't happening / were minimal and the IT guy still said it was some of the worst results he's seen and that even a 30mbps service with fewer hops and lower ping time would be preferable to the 100mpbs with what I have.

When you say a crap signal getting to the equipment, are you talking about my wireless setup? I could try running the tracert stuff while connected directly to the modem or the router via ethernet

[wsamon]

My internet is currently working normally, but I ran a tracer to 8.8.8.8 anyway with the following results:

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms TM-AC1900-1E68 [192.168.29.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 18 ms 20 ms 11 ms 72-31-92-102.net.bhntampa.com [72.31.92.102]
4 22 ms 15 ms 19 ms ten0-3-0-13.tamp05-car2.bhn.net [71.44.3.170]
5 15 ms 21 ms 18 ms 72-31-3-170.net.bhntampa.com [72.31.3.170]
6 17 ms 23 ms 25 ms ten0-4-0-6.ORLD71-CAR2.bhn.net [72.31.218.10]
7 24 ms 22 ms 26 ms hun0-3-0-7.ORLD71-cbr1.bhn.net [72.31.220.238]
8 28 ms 25 ms 29 ms 10.bu-ether15.orldfljo00w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [66
.109.6.98]
9 35 ms 31 ms 31 ms bu-ether18.atlngamq47w-bcr01.tbone.rr.com [66.10
9.1.72]
10 30 ms 28 ms 30 ms 205.197.180.41
11 109 ms 100 ms 94 ms 205.197.180.54
12 36 ms 27 ms 31 ms 216.239.51.47
13 29 ms 28 ms 29 ms 209.85.244.218
14 32 ms 29 ms 29 ms 209.85.254.105
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 33 ms 29 ms 29 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]



And this one is connecting to my phone's hotspot from the middle of my house with questionable reception and slow downloads (considering 4g):
Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.43.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 49 ms 45 ms 52 ms 10.170.211.6
4 73 ms 59 ms 64 ms 10.170.211.10
5 54 ms 38 ms 40 ms 10.164.162.172
6 52 ms 40 ms 39 ms 10.164.165.129
7 98 ms 39 ms 58 ms 72.14.219.114
8 84 ms 60 ms 47 ms 216.239.51.47
9 107 ms 59 ms 74 ms 216.239.51.243
10 56 ms 57 ms 70 ms 64.233.174.133
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 86 ms 58 ms 60 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

[mermaid sees all]

I am not a techie type of person but we got divorced from Brighthouse and went with WOW without any problems.
Their slowest internet is still faster that Brighthouses fastest internet. Ask for an experienced tech if you do call to make an appointment.Check with other people in the area to see if they've had success with it as well.
if you are tech savy then by all means get WOWs upgraded faster service. We're in Pinellas county and it works just fine here even with our old crappy computers.

[wsamon]

Originally Posted by mermaid sees all

I am not a techie type of person but we got divorced from Brighthouse and went with WOW without any problems.
Their slowest internet is still faster that Brighthouses fastest internet. Ask for an experienced tech if you do call to make an appointment.Check with other people in the area to see if they've had success with it as well.
if you are tech savy then by all means get WOWs upgraded faster service. We're in Pinellas county and it works just fine here even with our old crappy computers.

Thanks mermaid. I am tech savvie, but am more focused on the software side than hardware, so while I know some basics of networking, I sometimes have to lean on people that specialize in it.

Unfortunately, I don't know a single person that actually has Wow (limited friends since we've only lived here 2 years and I work from home), which is why I came here to ask. I'd love to give them a try, but as I said, if it's worse than what I have now, I'll get in trouble with my company.

[Tim Tim Tim]

Originally Posted by mermaid sees all

I am not a techie type of person but we got divorced from Brighthouse and went with WOW without any problems.
Their slowest internet is still faster that Brighthouses fastest internet. Ask for an experienced tech if you do call to make an appointment.Check with other people in the area to see if they've had success with it as well.
if you are tech savy then by all means get WOWs upgraded faster service. We're in Pinellas county and it works just fine here even with our old crappy computers.

little inaccurate about their speeds. they do offer a 600mbps plan which is faster than the current 300mbps from bright house, but lets be honest here, very few people even need 300.

WSamon, I do see your concern with the number of hops being higher although none of that is going to cause your streaming to be poor. When you are having issues, I would try switching to hardwired to rule out any wireless congestion. Also, you are using the 5G network on your router, right?

If it still has issues hardwired, a tracerts should show which link is having the issues.

[DUNNDFRNT]

Originally Posted by wsamon

Thanks mermaid. I am tech savvie, but am more focused on the software side than hardware, so while I know some basics of networking, I sometimes have to lean on people that specialize in it.

Unfortunately, I don't know a single person that actually has Wow (limited friends since we've only lived here 2 years and I work from home), which is why I came here to ask. I'd love to give them a try, but as I said, if it's worse than what I have now, I'll get in trouble with my company.

Couldn't you have overlap? Don't disconnect Brighouse until you get out wow, I realize they are both coax not sure how that would work, since i have fiber I stopped paying attention to moca based technologies I had no idea they can get that v high 600mps on coax, I'd it squared what's the upload.

[Tim Tim Tim]

Originally Posted by DUNNDFRNT

Couldn't you have overlap? Don't disconnect Brighouse until you get out wow, I realize they are both coax not sure how that would work, since i have fiber I stopped paying attention to moca based technologies I had no idea they can get that v high 600mps on coax, I'd it squared what's the upload.

They don't used MoCA based technologies for broadband. Brighthouse can use MoCA based WiFi range extenders but the modem itself is using DOCSIS.

600mbps is about as high as you see currently. A few big companies are doing gigabit over COAX with DOCSIS 3.1, that offers capabilities up to 10gigs/sec once fully deployed.

[smarino]

I run the cheapo Brighthouse Road Runner Lite, and have for years. No problens w/ streaming (may have to let it buffer a bit in the beginning on some movies, that's all), and just installed Skype the other day. The sound quality is just fine, no echo, no static. It sounds almost as good as a land line (although nothing is going to sound as good as an old AT&T phone with analog technology). Also, a router can slow things way down if it's not a good one.

I'll bet you're running things wireless. That is a crap way to do it. I always go w/ hard wired connections, and even on my low cost setup it works beautifully. You don't want a computer that is dragging things down either, so I got rid of that memory hog Firefox (Chrome was even worse) and run an old Pale Moon browser w/ Ad Block and a few other things. My anti virus was slowing things down as well, so it was jettisoned. Simply backing up regularly is all I need.