ZeRoFaTaLiTy asked: Ok, so I use Verizon highspeed DSL as my connection to the web. I had it a year and a half ago, but I switched to Time Warner Cable for a year. Now my family has decided to switch back to Verizon for some unfathomable reason. The problem I have been experiencing of late is constant fluctuations in internet connection speed. It was never a problem with Time Warner Cable, but I DID have this problem when I had DSL even further back then Time Warner Cable. The difference is that in the past, DSL would start lagging in the evening hours. I assumed this was because of increased network traffic. However, I am now experiencing an entirely new problem with my internet connection.
At any time of the day, my internet connection experiences extreme fluctuations. I became extremely angry and began using Verizon’s online speedtest aggressively to monitor my internet connection speed. The results were like this: Around 30% of the time, the tests showed my connection to be almost 3MBps, what my parents pay for each month. I don’t mind it being a little bit less than that, but the fluctuations are far more rough than that. An example is this.
Test 1: 287MBps
Test 2: 243MBps
Test 3: 154MBps
Test 4: 123MBps
Test 5: 68MBps
And it’ll keep going up and down like that on a crazy scale. It’s not a problem that only occurs during night either, so please don’t give me the old “Oh, it’s slower because more people are on at night!”. These fluctuations occur within a minute, and are ALWAYS going on. Sometimes I get a few hours of bliss in which the connection remains above 2.5MBps, but those moments are pretty rare. At this point, my only ideas are: the internet service provider, the cables in the street, or the cables in my house. It’s definetly not a spyware or virus problem because I recently reformatted my computer (reset it to factory conditions) and I know how to completely clean out all spyware and whatever from my computer. Any ideas on what’s going on? I figure that as a possible solution, I might try and convince my parents to upgrade to Verizon FiOS. Despite my frustrations with Verizon, they do offer free installment for fiber optics with a 2 year plan…and that means a complete reworking of all internet cables in my house. And it means connecting with a completely different set of internet cables in the street. Thanks for reading.
Javier
