.60 mbps when I pay for 10* mbps

[Jiggle21]

Okay, I have reached the limit of my frustration.

I use centurylink, and I live in the Ocala FL area. I pay for 10 mbps (I normally was getting 8mbps, which is fine I know I wont get the full 10) anyway, for the past two weeks I have been getting a max of .90 mbps download and .74 upload. The upload has always been that slow, but the download is really stupid.

I cant play online games anymore, I cant stream netflix or youtube at anything more than 480p.

Any suggestions as to what I should do? The next ISP option is Comcast, and they are even worse.

I have called customer support, and they sent a tech out, and he said "shows here you are getting 9.98mbps download and 1.3 upload." obviously not. I took him into my house and showed him the speed and how slow everything was and he tried to tell me "thats normal for 8mbps".

I'm no spring chicken, I know my stuff. He either thinks I am a moron or he doesn't know a thing about doing his job.

Basically I wan't to know if there is a good alternative to this, say using the 4G LTE on my phone (however I dont have a wireless card in my desktop so I would have to rout it though my laptop which windows 10 doesn't like to do).

Any suggestions are great guy's, thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

What is showing you 0.9Mbps?
And is this wired or wireless?

 

[Jiggle21]

What is showing you 0.9Mbps?
And is this wired or wireless?

Sorry my internet was so slow it wouldnt even load this page for some time.

And it is wired. I use a 50ft Cat5 ethernet cable. Normally like I said I get about 7-9mbps. And speedtest.net is saying that. And since centurylink uses Ookla (same people who host and run speedtest.net) I assume that it is accurate. I went to centurylink's own speed tester, and it says that I am getting 6.12 mbps down and .863 up. But these can't be true or I would not be having this issue.
Youtube can't even play 140p videos.

I have reset the modem/router. We get DSL (only thing available in the area) But when we go to centurylink's site, it loads fast. (I assume it is because we are on their network) but only in the 'upgrade your bandwidth' section of the site. seems fishy, but ill not put too much thought into it.

 

[digitaldoc]

Speeds look to be slower than what you are paying for.

Call Centurylink, and escalate the problem to "Tier Two" support. Let them know that if they can't get you the speeds you pay for, that you will be leaving for Comcast. This usually gets their attention.

DSL is pretty bad these days, and the old copper networks are in need of repair and maintenance, and little investment is made into them for many cases.

If they cannot get it to work, that change to Comcast. While it may cost more money, cable internet is better than DSL in just about all cases.

 

[Jiggle21]

Speeds look to be slower than what you are paying for.

Call Centurylink, and escalate the problem to "Tier Two" support. Let them know that if they can't get you the speeds you pay for, that you will be leaving for Comcast. This usually gets their attention.

DSL is pretty bad these days, and the old copper networks are in need of repair and maintenance, and little investment is made into them for many cases.

If they cannot get it to work, that change to Comcast. While it may cost more money, cable internet is better than DSL in just about all cases.

I would love to get cable internet, but like I said DSL is the only thing in the area. I called Comcast to get their Xfinity internet and they said that there are no cable internet lines that run to my neighborhood so they would have to install them and I would have to front the cash to do so for just one household.

I called Centurylink today and they gave me the same ususal run around to their India call center and then back to someone who spoke proper english. The woman I spoke to said that the tech reported that we were getting the proper speeds.

As of now, during the day I get about 9.3 mbps down (which is fine) but after about 9:30 at night till 6AM I get less than 1mbps. Doesn't make any sense. I ordered a wireless card for my desktop and ill see about running 4G hotspot for that, but the ping with 4G is terrible. And since I play online games and stream to make money, a solid internet is what I need.

 

[Jiggle21]

Was just chatting with someone, and then out of no where I get *magically* 13.5 mbps down and 2mbps up. Like they flipped a switch or something.

 

[digitaldoc]

Yes, these are usable speeds.

Best thing is to keep screenshots of the internet slowdowns, and the times they are occurring. This type of problem tends to occur at various times in the day. A newer modem may also help.

These companies also don't like the publicity of Twitter posts about these kinds of problems. Feel free to bring attention to your issue as needed.

https://twitter.com/marshastar/status/563520712451690496