Fairly slower speeds than average? (New Sonic Customer)

[jessieandrob]

Hello,

We just signed on with Sonic after being treated rather poorly by Comcast's customer service. Our connection has been alright so far, and I believe the modem has finished its training period.

However, I think we may be getting slower speeds than what we could get here. According to Sonic's website, we're 7378 feet away from the CO. We should be getting an average of around 6.5 to 7 mbps at that distance. However, we've only been receiving around 4mbps.

It has been raining in the area, so it could be that. But I was wondering if it take a few more days for speeds to increase, or if I should already start calling Sonic for help looking at our lines...

[virtualmike]

If it has been more than 2-3 days, then yes, ring 611 and have Support take a look at your line.

[bostonweeks]

Just hope it's not a neighborhood wiring issue. I had a Sonic and AT&T tech out. They got me up a little but I've still got pathetic speeds (3.75 Mbps currently) at 6700' from the CO. I'm guessing my neighborhood is just crap old infrastructure. I still don't have a modern NID/MPOE, but the Sonic tech hooked up directly to the line coming into the house with a test router and saw the same speeds as we were getting in the house.

Other than going to a dual-bonded line to try and double what I have in speed and cost I'm out of ideas.

[jessieandrob]

Just hope it's not a neighborhood wiring issue. I had a Sonic and AT&T tech out. They got me up a little but I've still got pathetic speeds (3.75 Mbps currently) at 6700' from the CO. I'm guessing my neighborhood is just crap old infrastructure. I still don't have a modern NID/MPOE, but the Sonic tech hooked up directly to the line coming into the house with a test router and saw the same speeds as we were getting in the house.

Other than going to a dual-bonded line to try and double what I have in speed and cost I'm out of ideas.

so we had both a Sonic tech and then an AT&T truck come by to take a look. the Sonic tech was friendly and knowledgeable and cleaned up our apparently messy NID. there was an ADSL1 filter at the NID which was possibly causing issues, so he cleaned things up. the AT&T truck came a few days later and took a look at the line.

after all this, we saw a modest speed increase (to around 5058 kbps), but still off from the average we should be seeing, if the data released by Sonic is to be believed. i'm starting to think the wiring in our neighborhood isn't great

i really do not want to have to go to Comcast, but we need better bandwidth than this

[bostonweeks]

so we had both a Sonic tech and then an AT&T truck come by to take a look. the Sonic tech was friendly and knowledgeable and cleaned up our apparently messy NID. there was an ADSL1 filter at the NID which was possibly causing issues, so he cleaned things up. the AT&T truck came a few days later and took a look at the line.

after all this, we saw a modest speed increase (to around 5058 kbps), but still off from the average we should be seeing, if the data released by Sonic is to be believed. i'm starting to think the wiring in our neighborhood isn't great

i really do not want to have to go to Comcast, but we need better bandwidth than this

I just got off the phone with Sonic.net tech support. It appears that either the wiring in our neighborhood is really really bad or the distance estimation tool is wrong by 2000' or more. The tech support person seemed really unsurprised that the estimate would be off. It would be nice to have known that going in. If I had known I was at 9000'-10000' feet rather than the quoted 6700' (and I have seen this https://wiki.sonic.net/images/6/6b/DS_a ... stance.pdf) I would have had a much better estimation of what I was getting.

I'm satisfied with most of Sonic.net, but this is pretty poor on all fronts.

[cdkeen]

The tech support person seemed really unsurprised that the estimate would be off. It would be nice to have known that going in. If I had known I was at 9000'-10000' feet rather than the quoted 6700' (and I have seen this https://wiki.sonic.net/images/6/6b/DS_a ... stance.pdf) I would have had a much better estimation of what I was getting.

I have also felt the pain of an inaccurate distant estimate. At my home in Santa Rosa I am roughly 3/4 of a mile from the CO serving my connection. The distant estimate (which by the way is a number sourced from a database owned by ATT and compiled by humans, who unfortunately do make errors) claimed my loop length was 7000 feet. However apparently that was the initial length, and over the years of damage and repair to my neighborhood's wiring infrastructure my loop was rerouted between poles and gained an astonishing 2000 additional feet. I confirmed this when after contracting for the initial installation it became necessary to bring in ATT cable maintenance (the second tier of field technicians) after the first field tech was befuddled by the lack of connectivity. The cable maintenance technician traced the wire and updated their records and the labeling in the interconnection points as well as explained the situation to me. Once the circuit was live I was able to use Sonic's tools to electronically gauge the loop length and compare that against the map distance I now knew my line was taking, which confirmed that my loop was, alas, indeed close to 9kft. There are many reasons the distance estimate can be off but for a very large majority of the loops it turns out to be rather accurate. Nevertheless Sonic.net offers a 30-day money back guarantee with the Fusion service so if something as unfortunate as what happened to me happens to you there are no hard feelings.

[bostonweeks]

The tech support person seemed really unsurprised that the estimate would be off. It would be nice to have known that going in. If I had known I was at 9000'-10000' feet rather than the quoted 6700' (and I have seen this https://wiki.sonic.net/images/6/6b/DS_a ... stance.pdf) I would have had a much better estimation of what I was getting.

I have also felt the pain of an inaccurate distant estimate. At my home in Santa Rosa I am roughly 3/4 of a mile from the CO serving my connection. The distant estimate (which by the way is a number sourced from a database owned by ATT and compiled by humans, who unfortunately do make errors) claimed my loop length was 7000 feet. However apparently that was the initial length, and over the years of damage and repair to my neighborhood's wiring infrastructure my loop was rerouted between poles and gained an astonishing 2000 additional feet. I confirmed this when after contracting for the initial installation it became necessary to bring in ATT cable maintenance (the second tier of field technicians) after the first field tech was befuddled by the lack of connectivity. The cable maintenance technician traced the wire and updated their records and the labeling in the interconnection points as well as explained the situation to me. Once the circuit was live I was able to use Sonic's tools to electronically gauge the loop length and compare that against the map distance I now knew my line was taking, which confirmed that my loop was, alas, indeed close to 9kft. There are many reasons the distance estimate can be off but for a very large majority of the loops it turns out to be rather accurate. Nevertheless Sonic.net offers a 30-day money back guarantee with the Fusion service so if something as unfortunate as what happened to me happens to you there are no hard feelings.

Thanks for that explanation. The 30-day money back window has now closed (it took a bit to get everything in order), but I'm not mad about that. I'm going to see if I can make this work. Even with any issues like this Sonic is a far better ISP than Comcast or AT&T.

What tools do you use from Sonic to gauge the loop length?

[bostonweeks]

Thanks for that explanation. The 30-day money back window has now closed (it took a bit to get everything in order), but I'm not mad about that. I'm going to see if I can make this work. Even with any issues like this Sonic is a far better ISP than Comcast or AT&T.

What tools do you use from Sonic to gauge the loop length?

Welp. It turns out I'm actualy 10.132k feet from the CO. So much for AT&T's pre-qualification database. I'm actually on the high side for this distance so I guess we'll be making due for now. I'm not going back to Comcast or trying AT&T.