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Old 06-24-2011, 05:52 AM
 
6 posts, read 34,587 times
Reputation: 17

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I'm moving locally and want to upgrade my internet service. Currently I'm using TWC, and dissatisfied due to intermittent service slowdowns during the daytime, and major slowdowns in the evening. Despite paying for the 'boost' option, speeds at night often drop to 1 mbit/second or less. Can't reliably watch a Netflix movie at less than 1.5 mbit/sec, and forget AppleTV streaming HD films with less than 5. What I'd like is consistency in the 5 mbit range.

Has anyone tried GWI or OTT/midmaine in Bangor? What were your experiences? Are there any other providers I should consider?
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Old 06-24-2011, 09:09 AM
 
Location: Forests of Maine
37,464 posts, read 61,388,499 times
Reputation: 30414
Quote:
Originally Posted by powermd View Post
I'm moving locally and want to upgrade my internet service. Currently I'm using TWC, and dissatisfied due to intermittent service slowdowns during the daytime, and major slowdowns in the evening. Despite paying for the 'boost' option, speeds at night often drop to 1 mbit/second or less. Can't reliably watch a Netflix movie at less than 1.5 mbit/sec, and forget AppleTV streaming HD films with less than 5. What I'd like is consistency in the 5 mbit range.

Has anyone tried GWI or OTT/midmaine in Bangor? What were your experiences? Are there any other providers I should consider?
I live a stone throw North of Bangor.

TWC is not available in my township. We have MidMaine/OTT.

They provide DSL to us.

We watch netflix and/or Hulu.

Verizon-wireless recently bought our local cellphone provider. I think they are upgrading their local tower to provide some form of internet capability however I do not know much about it.

So we have these two available here: MidMaine/OTT and possibly Verizon-wireless.
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Old 06-24-2011, 10:01 AM
 
Location: Corinth, ME
2,712 posts, read 5,654,148 times
Reputation: 1869
We live in Corinth and have TWC, often watch Netflix, play WOW, down- and upload large files for my work (graphic design, print and Internet) with no issues.
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Old 06-24-2011, 10:28 AM
 
Location: Forests of Maine
37,464 posts, read 61,388,499 times
Reputation: 30414
Starwalker normally gets much better connectivity bandwidth speeds than we get here.

Just now I ran Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test four times and I got:
ping: 65ms, download: 0.86Mbps, upload: 0.21Mbps
ping: 59ms, download: 1.01Mbps, upload: 0.21Mbps
ping: 59ms, download: 0.96Mbps, upload: 0.21Mbps
ping: 59ms, download: 0.91Mbps, upload: 0.21Mbps
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Old 06-24-2011, 07:58 PM
 
Location: Log "cabin" west of Bangor
7,057 posts, read 9,079,887 times
Reputation: 15634
Quote:
Originally Posted by powermd View Post
I'm moving locally and want to upgrade my internet service. Currently I'm using TWC, and dissatisfied due to intermittent service slowdowns during the daytime, and major slowdowns in the evening. Despite paying for the 'boost' option, speeds at night often drop to 1 mbit/second or less. Can't reliably watch a Netflix movie at less than 1.5 mbit/sec, and forget AppleTV streaming HD films with less than 5. What I'd like is consistency in the 5 mbit range.

Has anyone tried GWI or OTT/midmaine in Bangor? What were your experiences? Are there any other providers I should consider?
The problem with cable i-net is that you share a loop with a number of other subscribers. The available bandwidth is shared by all subscribers on the loop, and the more people that are using it at the same time (especially for large capacity things like movies), the lower the speed for all subscribers.

In heavily congested areas (urban, dense suburban) you can almost tell what time it is by the sudden slow-down when the kiddies get out of school and start playing games, watching/downloading movies/music, etc.

You may want to consider DSL (Fairpoint, in Bangor). Your line is not shared and you purchase the speed/service level you want. Speed is limited mainly by your wireline distance from the Telco DSLAM.

I don't know if Fairpoint matches exactly, but typical DSL service tiers start at 768k (downstream), next level is 1.5Mbit, then 3.0 or 5.0Mbit, and depending on provisioning and your distance could increase to 20-25Mbit (if you are practically next door to the Telco). You must be within approximately 3 miles from the DSLAM (or remote access point) to get the low-end (768k) service. Faster speeds require that you be closer.
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Old 06-24-2011, 09:30 PM
 
Location: Free From The Oppressive State
30,253 posts, read 23,733,496 times
Reputation: 38634
Quote:
Originally Posted by forest beekeeper View Post
Just now I ran Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test four times and I got:
ping: 65ms, download: 0.86Mbps, upload: 0.21Mbps
ping: 59ms, download: 1.01Mbps, upload: 0.21Mbps
ping: 59ms, download: 0.96Mbps, upload: 0.21Mbps
ping: 59ms, download: 0.91Mbps, upload: 0.21Mbps
Tried this and I got

ping: 46ms, download: 10.52Mbps, upload: 0.49Mbps
ping: 50ms, download: 16.74Mbps, upload: 0.49Mbps
ping: 46ms, download: 11.99Mbps, upload: 0.49Mbps
ping: 48ms, download: 12.49Mbps, upload: 0.49Mbps

Download is good...and at least they're consistent with upload speed.

Time Warner Internet.
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Old 06-24-2011, 10:13 PM
 
Location: Forests of Maine
37,464 posts, read 61,388,499 times
Reputation: 30414
Quote:
Originally Posted by GatorMama View Post
Tried this and I got

ping: 46ms, download: 10.52Mbps, upload: 0.49Mbps
ping: 50ms, download: 16.74Mbps, upload: 0.49Mbps
ping: 46ms, download: 11.99Mbps, upload: 0.49Mbps
ping: 48ms, download: 12.49Mbps, upload: 0.49Mbps

Download is good...and at least they're consistent with upload speed.

Time Warner Internet.
Much better download speeds.

I have complained a few times to MidMaine/OTT. After many re-boots and then playing phone-tag with MidMaine/OTT for a few days. Each time MidMaine/OTT has eventually claimed it was a switch out of position from the last time MidMaine/OTT replaced the DSLAM card. [things must burn out constantly] I get better speeds for a few days and then it goes back to this.

I think MidMaine/OTT pays their techs a bonus for how much they can throttle down the bandwidth bottlenecks to MidMaine/OTT customers.

"oh, look we accidentally left this switch out of position and it cut you down to a tenth of the bandwidth you expected. Opps"

What gets me is that it is a software switch. It is not like a lineman has to physically travel to the location of the trunk IRL to check the position of the switch. It is all done by computer. Which means that proper switch line-up should be checked by a sub-routine daily to verify everything is good. Unless it is actually MidMaine/OTT policy to bottleneck customers down to less bandwidth, to save bandwidth and put off upgrades.



It is not like I spent 20 years as a Computer Systems Electronics Technician and would be able to know the difference myself or anything. But I am aware of Google Analytics who crawls these forums and indexes each use of each phrase. The more times I say MidMaine/OTT, means the higher ranking these posts will get for any search of MidMaine/OTT. Which will cause MidMaine/OTT to lose face.

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Old 06-25-2011, 08:20 AM
 
Location: Log "cabin" west of Bangor
7,057 posts, read 9,079,887 times
Reputation: 15634
Quote:
Originally Posted by forest beekeeper View Post
Much better download speeds.

I have complained a few times to MidMaine/OTT. After many re-boots and then playing phone-tag with MidMaine/OTT for a few days. Each time MidMaine/OTT has eventually claimed it was a switch out of position from the last time MidMaine/OTT replaced the DSLAM card. [things must burn out constantly] I get better speeds for a few days and then it goes back to this.

I think MidMaine/OTT pays their techs a bonus for how much they can throttle down the bandwidth bottlenecks to MidMaine/OTT customers.

"oh, look we accidentally left this switch out of position and it cut you down to a tenth of the bandwidth you expected. Opps"

What gets me is that it is a software switch. It is not like a lineman has to physically travel to the location of the trunk IRL to check the position of the switch. It is all done by computer. Which means that proper switch line-up should be checked by a sub-routine daily to verify everything is good. Unless it is actually MidMaine/OTT policy to bottleneck customers down to less bandwidth, to save bandwidth and put off upgrades.



It is not like I spent 20 years as a Computer Systems Electronics Technician and would be able to know the difference myself or anything. But I am aware of Google Analytics who crawls these forums and indexes each use of each phrase. The more times I say MidMaine/OTT, means the higher ranking these posts will get for any search of MidMaine/OTT. Which will cause MidMaine/OTT to lose face.

Those are abysmal speeds for DSL. Does OTT/MidMaine own the lines and equipment or are they going thru Fairpoint?

Do you notice any line noise when using the telephone? (Static, faint ring tones or voices)

When I had Verizon DSL I began having a problem, especially when it rained. I replaced all of the phone lines with Cat5 LAN cable but the problem persisted.

I had to go through 3 tiers of service "techs" (first tier didn't know diddly and were just ignoramuses reading stuff of a screen, 2nd tier wasn't much better) until I was finally able to find somebody that knew something and was able to convince *him* that I actually knew what *I* was talking about.

Long story short- I was able to get a tech to come out and, plied with sandwiches and coffee, he ran some tests and hunted down a crossed pair in an agregation box elsewhere in the neighborhood. When he fixed that my service was superb.

Before that, in another town, when DSL was first introduced (and was only supporting single user service on Win95/98 machines) my service suddenly went flaky.

Having rec'd advance copies of Win2k (Pro, Server, and Advanced Server) from MickeySoft I had set up a server to share out the DSL connection to my in-house network using 3rd-party software.

When the service started failing, the 1st 2 tiers of 'techs' insisted that the problem was mine because I was running completely unsupported software. In fact, they had the nerve to try to insist that what I was doing couldn't possibly work at all. This was my first experience dealing with alleged 'techs' who really didn't know squat about technical issues.

When I finally got to someone who *did* know something, I was able to explain what I had done and the fact that the setup had been running for 6 months with no problems. Then I outlined all the tests I had run which convinced me that it was a Telco problem. He agreed, promised to personally investigate and, 4 hours later (after he replaced the DSLAM and other hardware) I was back in business.

I suppose that my point is this- sometimes you need to be persistent, make it clear that you know what you are talking about and get to someone who can understand that and actually *fix* the problem.

Disclaimer: Your problem may have no relation to the problems I had, except that you haven't been able to get to somebody that actually *knows* how to find and fix your problem.
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Old 06-26-2011, 09:21 PM
 
Location: Central Maine
565 posts, read 935,249 times
Reputation: 402
Fairpoint is horrible. We pay $82.88 per month for useless home phone service and 3.0/.5 DSL. I say useless phone cause we only have it for the dsl. Last summer the speeds were horrible. During the day I would be lucky to get over 1.0/.3, and we have 2 computers here that use internet at the same time. Was pretty useless, and far from highspeed.

Fairpoint Customer service is the worst out of any company I have ever dealt with. We have no other option here aside from hughes net (satellite)
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Old 06-26-2011, 11:36 PM
 
Location: Free From The Oppressive State
30,253 posts, read 23,733,496 times
Reputation: 38634
Quote:
Originally Posted by inthetrees View Post
Fairpoint is horrible. We pay $82.88 per month for useless home phone service and 3.0/.5 DSL. I say useless phone cause we only have it for the dsl. Last summer the speeds were horrible. During the day I would be lucky to get over 1.0/.3, and we have 2 computers here that use internet at the same time. Was pretty useless, and far from highspeed.

Fairpoint Customer service is the worst out of any company I have ever dealt with. We have no other option here aside from hughes net (satellite)
I used Hughes Net for three years before moving up here. I actually really liked it. The downside is the Fair Use Threshold but I don't tend to watch a lot of videos or stream on the computer so I only went over it one time...no big deal.

It hardly ever went out even during massive thunder storms and heavy rainfall.

I don't know what it would do when it was snowing but if Fairpoint is THAT bad, HughesNet might be something to consider.
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