[clue-tech] Qwest DSL

[Nate Duehr]

On Nov 19, 2007, at 8:15 PM, Keith Hellman wrote:

> 3. How is the performance?  I have Comcast (cable) broadband and am
> generally pleased. Qwest "silver" service (what I'm considering) is
> supposed to be about 5x the speed (1.5Mb/s).  Do others using their
> silver service see this type of bandwidth?


You sure you're not mixing up "b" and "B" in the advertising/speeds?

1.5 Mb/s (bits) is typically quite a bit slower than Comcast's  
offerings around here, but I don't know where you live.   Maybe  
Comcast has a lower speed thing somewhere around here.

What is your Comcast speed, and is it listed as big-"B" or little-"b"?

In the past I have used Qwest DSL for connectivity to a higher-priced,  
but local, DSL provider (Front Range Internet) and it was rock-solid,  
stable, I had static IP's, etc... worked great, but I wanted faster  
and a deal came up here on one of the lists that Comcast had a sale on  
their commercial-grade service (where you can get static IP's for  
things).

I switched over, and yes -- it's screaming fast.  I regularly see 12  
mb/s download speeds on a line only guaranteed to have 6 mb/s speeds  
(this is their "speedbooster" feature -- if they have the b/w  
available they'll double your guaranteed rate for short bursts... long- 
term downloads and traffic will slow over time back to your guaranteed  
speed.  cool feature).  I also have no problems with getting the  
guaranteed or faster upload speeds.

What I do have now is instability -- they've been doing some network  
work in my area the last month or so, and I have had a number of small  
outages.  They're usually short, but there was a longish-one the other  
night.  When I called the 800 number and went to commercial/business  
class customer support to report it, they just said, "It's a known  
outage."  They wouldn't even guess or try to find an ETR (estimated  
time of repair), but offered up the ticket number (as if that helps),  
and then said, "thank you - good bye".

Not super-impressed with that.  Typical huge corporate tech service...  
"We know nothing, but since you paid for business service, at least  
we'll answer the phone and tell you that.  If you were a residential  
customer, we wouldn't even do that -- but your end-result would still  
be the same... and outage of unknown duration.  Have a nice day, and  
thank you for punching twenty buttons on your phone to get to us!  See  
ya!"

Oh well, it's relatively cheap.  Ya get what you pay for.  I'd happily  
pay more for an alternative ISP on Comcast's network -- time for the  
opening of the cable networks... common carrier rules look great, but  
they'll never happen.  The cable folks pay their Congressional bribes  
promptly every year.  LOL!

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com