Real Speeds @ ~7,2xx wire ft from CO

[nickijon]

First, we are happy to have found the Sonic team - unrivaled client service, knowledgeable tech support, no snooping policies, etc. Land lines are nice.

We're curious though - what happened with the speeds at our location? I thought a 7-10 mbps down/1 up estimate (see attachment) for a single line was very conservative, given our distance and comparables that I've seen both here and on wiki's. We opted for the dual line so we can at least keep up with three people streaming HD or something. However, we're maxing at maybe 8.4 mbps on down with both lines sync'd. Speedtest is showing a low 6.8 mbps down, 1.6 up. This drops to 5.3 when just one person hops on a relatively light PC game. Imagine if everyone tried to do Adobe updates at the same time on all their devices.

sonic.PNG (21.25 KiB) Viewed 3566 times

In summary:
Estimated 7,2xx wire ft from CO; stable connection but maxing out at ~8.4mbps/1.7 mbps; paying $110+ per month. Ouch.

We're willing to pay more in hopes that it will encourage fiber rollout to all of east bay, but can we get usable speeds, or are we stuck?

[jleake]

That's definitely on the slow side for your distance. Based on the quick glance I took at your line, I think it's possible there's some sort of physical issue. I'd recommend giving tech support a call to do some troubleshooting and see if we can narrow down the source of the issue and get it resolved.

[digitalbitstream]

Have a look at this for great info on speed vs. distance:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r269108 ... ance-chart
Note taht AT&T does not offer sonic.net access to the equipment cabinets they are installing all over the East Bay. AT&T's effective service distance can be a mile or more shorter than Sonic's.

[nickijon]

Thanks for all the input. I want to provide an update of the events that occurred after I had contacted support. By the way, excellent support, again, from both Sonic and (even) from AT&T. Sonic must be one of AT&T's better customers.

Here's a quick breakdown:

• Contacted Sonic support via E-mail, multiple exchanges were had

• No problems were detectable on Sonic's side

• One week hiatus

• Connection intermittently slows to a crawl (ping >500ms, speeds ~0.4Mbps for all connected users; contacted Sonic

• Sonic detects no problems, we revisit the possibility of wiring issues, truck roll gets scheduled

• Original sonic installer comes on site, checks wiring from MPoE(?) box to MDU building

• Installer may have checked speeds at MPoE as well

• Installer places a support ticket with AT&T; doesn't think there's any issue with Sonic's hardware

• I receive calls from two different AT&T technicians, seems like they may have come on site to check

• Third AT&T technician appears this morning, takes a thorough look at their side of the connection/wiring, takes the time to explain the limitations that could be at play

• Does a clean wire strip/connect at the box, says everything looks normal.

What I deduced:

• The pre-historic copper wiring infrastructure is to blame

• Wait for Fiber to appear, by some miracle, by year 20xx or 2xxx

• Distance is (like many of you have said in this thread and in others) farther than estimated(?).*

• • *Still not completely convinced about this one. Taking the oldest and most accessible road route from the CO our the actual box location looks like this (6336 feet):
    https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!da ... 13.1&fid=0

• A bridged tap could be present and could be degrading performance; something was mentioned about asking Sonic to place a request for AT&T to provision/wire/re-wire a direct line(?), that being the only way to fix it (might be expensive, gains are not guaranteed)

In summary, I'm not quite sure what the technicians actually did, beside what the last one told me: he checked the wiring and carefully cut/re-stripped/reconnected the wiring at the building's box. He might have even massaged the copper wires, whispered to them, or un-kinked some sections. I don't know. Two hours later, I'm now seeing ~30ms response time, 10Mbps down and 1.7Mbps up. That's an improvement over the 6.8/1.7 at the time of the OP, during our first month of service.

I'm posting all this because it has been a surprisingly fun learning experience for me on two fronts: technology and politics. I still have some confidence in being able to bring the speeds up more, but our options are few at this point.

I'm happy with how Sonic dealt with and deals with their customers, both new and current. They are efficient with their use of my time, even when dealing with a seemingly dead end situation. The 'high' cost of this dual-bonded service, to me, has intrinsic value elsewhere. I'm now more knowledgeable about the tech, and I no longer dread calling my provider for support. This is value.

This is all I can think of at this point, but I will post more if there's if we make any more strides.