Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: SBC Global DSL SUCKS!

This is topic SBC Global DSL SUCKS! in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=005099

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 05-13-2007, 01:17 AM:

I'm soooo f*cking sick and tired of their shitty service and outages that I'm ready to change.

Anyone have suggestions for reliable hi-speed DSL supplier in the Hollywood/Los Angeles area?

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 05-13-2007, 02:51 AM:

I've had 0 problems with SBC in 3 locations. Any issue with their reliability, I believe, is related to line conditions or a fault modem only...

Posted by Chad M Calpito (Member # 3736) on 05-13-2007, 04:06 AM:

I currently use Cox High Speed Internet Service & they are great. I've had a few problems, but, got those resolved with virtually no problems & the customer service is great. I would recommend it to you, Phil. I used to sell Cable Modems when I worked for The Sutherland Group as a CSR in a Call Center.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-13-2007, 11:49 AM:

I've had tons of problems with them here too, but I have found that for some reason they get along better with Linksys routers than any other kind. I started with a Linksys router, then when it died a friend recommended Netgear and the problems started. When that one died another friend recommended a DLink and the problems continued. Then another friend recommended a Linksys so I went back to that. The problems stopped.

WRT54G is the model I use for what it's worth. Also be sure to have the "self support tool" loaded on your computer. Every so often the line does glitch and that has fixed it for me every time.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-13-2007, 11:58 AM:

Cable net always runs faster but outages aside no system is perfect. Your outages may also be caused by the inordinate amount of fires in your area....

Posted by Allison Parsons (Member # 2728) on 05-13-2007, 12:01 PM:

We have SBC at the record store with a Linksys router. The f'n thing keeps dumping on us every month or so. We have 3 laptops here, and out of no where it will just decide to drop connection. We have one employee that can fix it, but it always takes him a few hours to get it back up and running. I'm not sure of the exact computer-talk details on what happens, but we are fed up with it as well. SBC says it's the router problem, Linksys says it's SBC's fault.

Once our contract is over in two months, we're done with SBC and going to a local service called Insight. They are locally owned and are one of the main internet providers in the central illinois area.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-13-2007, 01:33 PM:

SBC uses a number of different DSL modems. Some play nicely with Linksys routers while others do not.

One of my friends hasn't been able to make her modem work with her Linksys WiFi router while another friend is doing alright.

I think one of the scams going is SBC wants customers to buy the WiFi router it is selling rather than a more proven after market solution, such as the routers sold by Linksys, D-Link and Netgear.

I have an old Efficient Networks Inc. Speedstream 5260 model DSL modem. It's a bigger, more ruggedly built DSL modem than many of the little black plastic doohickeys SBC commonly gives its customers now. It was first hooked up to a Linksys BEFSR41 wired router (to network two desktop computers together). Two years I ago I replaced it with a Linksys WRT54GS to provide WiFi to my notebook PC.

Connection problems have been rare. They were more common years ago with SBC was just getting DSL infrastructure built into the area. Many of the lines have been upgraded a couple of times since then to provide faster service, such as "DSL Pro" and the new "DSL Elite" standard.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-13-2007, 02:09 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
I think one of the scams going is SBC wants customers to buy the WiFi router it is selling rather than a more proven after market solution, such as the routers sold by Linksys, D-Link and Netgear.

Nah, don't do it. A friend of mine who posts about every 3 years here has that and has routine problems with it.

Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 05-13-2007, 02:33 PM:

We have SBC/Yahoo DSL at work with about 4-5 computers using it. It is super slow when two or more people are using it but they told us we cannot upgrade to a faster level for some reason. It runs through a Linksys router and the router died twice on us. Not to mention all of the lock-ups with the router along the way. The DSL also stops working on occassion. We are going to switch to a cable service since they cannot upgrade us.

I use Time Warner Cable for my access here at home and I like it. It is lightning fast although their customer service is lacking also since it takes them 15 minutes to answer a call. They supplied the modem which I rent on a monthly basis and I bought the WRT54G Linksys router. I use my work laptop here when I work from home and needed the wireless access. The Linksys router occassionally locks up and needs to be unplugged and rebooted. This seems to be a common problem with any Linksys router I have ever seen. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Joel N. Weber II (Member # 3530) on 05-13-2007, 03:06 PM:

Isn't SBC now AT&T?

Regardless, the typical DSL options are to either buy from the ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier, which is now Verizon or AT&T in most parts of the US), or to buy from Covad or a Covad reseller.

If you go the Covad route, Covad generally leases the copper from the central office to your location from the ILEC at lower prices than the ILEC would like to be offering the copper for, and the ILEC isn't really required to make sure that the copper is of adequate quality for DSL to work well.

If the ILEC doesn't want to make DSL work for you when you buy direct from the ILEC, then your options probably boil down to cable modem or spending vastly larger amounts of money for business class service. There may also be some wireless options, but I really haven't been impressed by any wide area wireless service I've seen thus far; some of them seem to have reliability that's surprisingly competitive with marginal DSL.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 05-13-2007, 03:30 PM:

quote: Joel N. Weber II
Isn't SBC now AT&T?

Yeah...that's ANOTHER reason to switch! [fu]

I'm sorta leery to go to cable service as I heard that the data rates slow down depending on how many users are on your "neighborhood" loop. I have no idea how many users would be/are on "my" loop.

I've had SBC for about 9 years and when it works, I get lightening speed with DSL ...I'm about 1-1/2 miles from the CO.

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 05-13-2007, 04:30 PM:

We switched to cable DSL last year at home and are switching after the contract expires this summer. DSL speed is glacial compared to the old POTS DSL line from the phone company. We see slow down between 6 - 10 p.m. We have Linksys hardware and WiFi with zero problems other than speed.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-13-2007, 05:36 PM:

I have what is called "Champion Broadband" here and every time the internet goes down, I reset my modem and 95% of the time it comes back up. Rarely do I need to reboot my Linksys router.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 05-13-2007, 05:44 PM:

Yeah, I'm beginning to think it's my modem like others have suggested. It's some ancient thing I've had for 9 years.

I have a Netgear WGT624 wireless router and haven't had a problem with it.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 05-13-2007, 07:52 PM:

If you're losing line sync or the DSL bridge isn't passing data for some reason, get yourself a SpeedStream 5260 off of eBay.

If you're having problems keeping the PPPoE virtual circuit open, try a Linksys router (the best thing they currently have out is the WRT54GL which is the same hardware as the WRT54G(S) with more memory), if that doesn't fix it switch providers. You'll more than likely be provisioned over the same xSLAM equipment but will at least have a different VC end point (maybe one that's even configured correctly and on hardware that's not overloaded).

Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 05-14-2007, 06:18 PM:

I told Ma'Bell and her minions to shove it 3 years ago and haven't looked back. I've had cable modem and haven't had an outage in over 2 years that I didn't cause (unplugging the modem etc). With Vonage running over that connection I have no need for a POTS line. I've only had 1 issue with VoIP, and that was resolved rather easily.

I haven't use anything other than Linksys, and have not had any issues other than 1 power brick taking a dump. Other than that, the Linksys's have been replaced over time simply for upgrades to combine wireless etc. I've had my WRT54 for about 2 years with NO issues, running either the Linksys firmware or a 3rd party code.

I REFUSE to accept any product from AT&T untill they offer fiber to the home (FTTH) their FTTN (U-Verse etc) is not a decent offering of any sort.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-14-2007, 07:17 PM:

Most cable companies aren't spending much $$$ to run fiber directly into people's homes. Direct fiber connection is still a pretty high luxury item. Count yourself lucky if you have access to it or can afford it.

Perhaps in the long run we may see more in the way of direct fiber connections straight into a home. In my town, they're just running fiber out from the main office switch deeper into many neighborhoods. That's at least enough of a boost to be able to deliver "DSL Elite" service to many places in town with bandwidths up to 6 million bits per second. Not too bad for $30 per month.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-14-2007, 07:33 PM:

Well I heard from Phil today and he said his land line and DSL is totally down, so this brings me to two things.

#1 Now that he is down and cannot read this message, I am officially recommending that he should just purchase a Sprint USB internet card. Radio Shack is running a special $60/month with a 2 year agreement. (Normally $80/month)

#2 This is most important...time to tell your coot jokes! [Big Grin]

Posted by Joel N. Weber II (Member # 3530) on 05-14-2007, 07:42 PM:

Cable modems aren't necessarily perfect either; I've occasionally experienced rainy days when my cable modem has stopped working acceptably, and every couple months my ssh tunnels drop for no obvious good reason. However, it's somewhat difficult to really blame them when it's consumer grade service, and I haven't gotten around to complaining to them about the problem.

I've had lots of experience with VOIP call quality problems at work; on the other hand, having my work phone number also ring at home sometimes turns out to be very convenient. I've had occasional dropouts taking work calls at home, but the most noticeable ones came from VPN routers changing the encryption keys, which they had been configured to do once an hour or so. I've switched routers since I carefully did that experiment, and then haven't used VOIP across the big bad Internet as much since then, so I'm not sure to what extent changing routers may have fixed that problem.

When you're running VOIP calls between offices over Internet T1 circuits, some sort of priority queuing turns out to be extremely important. A T1 circuit is 1.5 million bits per second. Most links tend to be configured for packets with a maximum size of 1500 bytes; this works out to 8 miliseconds to transmit a single full-sized packet. The phones we use seem to be set up to deal with 40 miliseconds of jitter. You don't want your voice traffic waiting in line behind too many 8 milisecond long line packets.

I sometimes find myself calling someone who works for a CLEC that isn't really terribly friendly with Verizon, and it's funny how if he and I are both at home, we end up talking over Verizon POTS lines on both ends, even though both of us have employers who provide VOIP phones we could be using at home instead. There's something about the audio quality...

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 06-23-2007, 10:19 PM:

UPDATE:
On 05/11/2007 I complained to AT&T about a loud hum and static on my phone line and crappy speeds on my DSL

AT&T came out on 05/14/2007 and determined my underground conduit and 5-pair telephone cable was damaged from my house to the terminal block about 200ft away. They tried to pull the old cable to replace it and it broke and determined the conduit was crushed and damaged the cable...most likely from all the heavy construction trucks from the 4 houses being built on my street.

Since the conduit and cable runs under a city street, they have to submit engineering drawings to the city to get a permit to jack-hammer and dig up the public street in order to replace the crushed conduit and failed cable.

SO! Long story cut short: Supposedly AT&T submitted the drawings and permit request to the city Building and Safety Dept the 1st week. Both AT&T and the city are pointing fingers at eachother as to where the holdup is. Ya know.... it's the typical Government and Big Biz runaround!!!!!

I have not had ANY service in 7 weeks and STILL cannot get any answers!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-24-2007, 05:34 AM:

Hey Phil. I saw this comic today and thought of you. [Razz]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 06-24-2007, 11:15 AM:

That's hilarious! Thanks for the laugh...I needed one! [Smile]

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 06-24-2007, 02:00 PM:

If you are having any quality issues with the LINE, itself, all you have to do is to order "caller ID." Before they are allowed to charge you, they must "engineer" and repair the line if needed.

You can then wait one month and order out the caller ID.

This comes to you courtesy of a supervisor for South Central Bell. I used a lawyer; he says this is cheaper & better. Louis

Posted by Brad Allen (Member # 470) on 06-25-2007, 02:16 PM:

quote: Allison Parsons
going to a local service called Insight. They are locally owned and are one of the main internet providers in the central illinois area.

Insight is hardly a locally owned outfit.

Around here, a complaint filed with the state Utility commission gets AT&T's attention real fast. Solves a multitude of problems.

In four instances of SBC DSL I'm connected with, I have no complaints with it. Works just fine for the past 3 years.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 06-25-2007, 03:55 PM:

Today, 06/25/2007, I filed a formal complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission. Hopefully they will kick AT&T's collective ass.

In the meantime, for the last 2 months, AT&T has been charging me for service they have not provided.

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 06-25-2007, 04:18 PM:

quote: Joel N. Weber II
When you're running VOIP calls between offices over Internet T1 circuits, some sort of priority queuing turns out to be extremely important.

I'm curious what type of queueing that might that be if you are running native IP?

The answer I have heard is they over-engineer their core networks so that necessary bandwidth will be available.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 06-27-2007, 05:54 PM:

Phil, I can't believe that you haven't just grabbed a box of Cat5e and your BIX tool and gone for a walk down the street and hooked yourself up in the interim.

quote: Rick Raskin
I'm curious what type of queueing that might that be if you are running native IP?

The answer I have heard is they over-engineer their core networks so that necessary bandwidth will be available.

I believe he's talking about his own leased circuits and not circuits within the providers' networks.

These days some method of classed based queuing (CBQ) or similar at the egress point of your private network is essential for a shared link with limited bandwidth (such as a T1/DS1).

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 06-28-2007, 09:45 AM:

I use Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband. Its fast enough for me and thier network is great in New England. Its great to be able to be online anywhere. Id have to look but its like 40-60 a month you can get the wireless "Modem" at your local Best Buy.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-28-2007, 02:49 PM:

I use a Sprint wireless mobile card on my laptop and get better speeds than most DSL connections with it. Phil is too busy setting up his screening room to run out and buy one. [Razz]

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 06-28-2007, 03:46 PM:

quote: Daryl C. W. O'Shea
These days some method of classed based queuing (CBQ) or similar at the egress point of your private network is essential for a shared link with limited bandwidth (such as a T1/DS1).

I agree completely but it isn't there in native IP, at least not yet. I have heard that IPV6 will support a priority scheme that will identify traffic as high or low priority. That probably would help, but the real bottlenecks will continue to be in the IP core as traffic begins to exceed capacity. That is not to say however that service providers are doing nothing. They are actively persuing methods to solve this problem. Just my 1 1/2 cents worth.

Posted by Christopher Meredith (Member # 3767) on 06-28-2007, 04:00 PM:

No one's mentioned them by name yet, but just in case anyone's considering cable internet from Comcast, please read about my recent experience with them. I think it's still the top article on my website.

We just switched to AT&T and so far, have no complaints. For whatever that's worth...

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 06-28-2007, 06:31 PM:

quote: Grand-Poopie-BAH
Phil is too busy setting up his screening room to run out and buy one.

And from another thread:

quote: Cameron Glendinning
Perhaps he is busy finishing off his screening room?

I can't decide who's the bigger smartass! [Razz]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 06-30-2007, 05:39 PM:

After a full 7 weeks of horseshit, yesterday, the city came out with their underground service "metal detector type thingies" and located my utility feeds for the TV cable conduit, the SBC telco conduit, the city water pipe, the sewer pipe, the 240v service, and the 13,200v HV concrete conduit that runs down my street between the underground transformer vaults.

All my utilities are underground.

They spray-painted lovely color-coded arrows and comments/service names all along my street so as to inform the digging crew what was where.

They haven't yet sent the gas company to locate the feed to my house.

I'm hopeful that this spurt of action is an indicator of pending action from SBC/AT&T to resolve their shitty service.

The only thing that concerns me is they located the SBC phone cable UNDER MY driveway. Hopefully they will NOT jack-hammer my concrete 20x20 driveway. Perhaps they will chose an alternate path under the flower bed.

...more to follow...

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-30-2007, 05:46 PM:

Meanwhile check out the LIVE WEBCAST BELOW of Phil's screening room as he continues work on it.

Hmmm, maybe he is on the crapper right now. I'm sure he will be back in front of the camera in a few minutes.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 06-30-2007, 05:53 PM:

Brad, little do you know. I've done some work on my booth/screening room since your last visit.

For example: I've removed the can of RAID from the lamphouse...

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-30-2007, 07:21 PM:

Bug infestation???

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-01-2007, 03:32 AM:

Nah... just used it to get rid of a few pests... [Wink]

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-01-2007, 04:12 AM:

But it's been almost a year since I visited you last? [Razz]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-01-2007, 04:18 AM:

That's true...I guess the RAID pest repellent is working...

[beer]

Posted by Damien Taylor (Member # 4255) on 07-01-2007, 04:33 AM:

The artist's rendering turned out to be quite accurate.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-01-2007, 04:45 AM:

Yawn...

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-01-2007, 04:48 AM:

Umm, Phil it's [sleep]

. Get it right and make Mike proud.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-01-2007, 04:54 AM:

Mike has his thing, and I have MY thing... get with it Grand-Poopie-BAH! [Razz]

Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 07-01-2007, 01:19 PM:

quote: Phil Hill
Yawn...

Sounds like someone's a little short on...

(caffiene)

Get this guy a case of Red Bull or a gallon of Peet's Coffee, stat! [Big Grin]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-01-2007, 05:37 PM:

Yawn...
Well Jon, I guess some people just don't "get it". Right Mike? [Wink]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-30-2007, 05:03 PM:

Well after umpteen weeks, SBC/ATT FINALLY got my new underground conduit and telephone cable replaced and hooked up! YEA! HAPPY HAPPY!

The good news is the telco line works great...absolutely NO hum, clicks, or static.

The bad news: My DSL modem doesn't work anymore. Dunno if it was damaged during the repair or what?

So, for awhile I'm still bootlegging on the unsecured Apple wifi

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 08-12-2007, 02:36 PM:

Final update of my sob (S.O.B.?) story.

After 10 years of mediocre service from SBC (now AT&T) and 12 weeks of NO landline or DSL due to a problem at their end, they FINALLY got my new underground conduit and cable phone line installed. Then, I dropped them like a hot potato and changed my IP to Earthlink.

Download speed consistently over 5 megabits compared to SBC's 1.2. PLUS! it's $10 a month cheaper! YEA!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-12-2007, 03:19 PM:

And now everyone who wants to harass you now has to deal with another ISP based email address. You should've used your www.philsexxxden.com domain and made an email address off of that or something.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 08-12-2007, 03:22 PM:

Glad to hear it. As one coot to another, welcome back to The Wired*, Coot-sama.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 08-12-2007, 03:35 PM:

Brad, I thought about that, but if I did that, my friends at my church, The Los Angeles Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, would disown, cast out, and excommunicate me. THEN where in the hell would I get my spiritual footing and blessings?

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-12-2007, 06:32 PM:

From internet porn, just like you do now. [Moon]

Posted by Joel N. Weber II (Member # 3530) on 08-18-2007, 10:08 PM:

quote: Rick Raskin
I'm curious what type of queueing that might that be if you are running native IP?

The answer I have heard is they over-engineer their core networks so that necessary bandwidth will be available.

If you're running a half dozen or fewer phone calls over a T1, the T1 has a ridiculous excess of bandwidth to carry those phone calls, as long as people surfing the web don't happen to have their packets delaying the phone traffic too much. (The original use of a T1 was to carry 24 simultaneous 56 kilobit per second phone calls using time domain multiplexing, after all.)

So ideally you want to convince the routers on both ends of the T1 circuit that they should separate the voice traffic from the other traffic, and if there's a voice packet waiting, to always send that before any random data traffic. (A packet-switched network such as an IP network typically will send one packet at a time; once you start sending a packet across the link, that packet monopolizes the link until you finish sending the entire packet. So it's just a matter of making better choices when you finish sending a packet and are trying to decide which packet to send next.)

Doing this right requires configuring this on your router, and persuading your ISP to do likewise. I suspect many business grade ISPs aren't prepared to do this.

There are a number of ways you might describe to the routers which traffic is high priority. Depending on the software on the router, you may be able to look at IP address, TCP/UDP port number, and the Type of Service byte (where you should actually only be using the 6 bit DSCP field), etc.

Thus far, I've only configured this on Cisco IOS routers. Cisco offers a ton of different queueing strategies (most of which don't solve the VOIP problems); I ended up using Low Latency Queueing, which gives you one high priority queue, and then randomly divides the rest of the traffic among many low priority queues so that if there are multiple low priority TCP streams, those low priority streams are likely to each get similar amounts of bandwidth. Cisco also has a strict priority queueing option that lets you divide the traffic into four levels of priority.

I've used a config that looks something like this:

quote:
class-map voip
match access-group 150

policy-map outbound-policy
class voip
priority 800
class class-default
fair-queue 64
queue-limit 20

interface serial6/0
service-policy output outbound-policy

You need to substitute the right interface name, and you need to define an access-list 150 that matches the traffic that cuts in line. And there was some slight change in syntax that was needed on the ISP end to be compatible with the software they happened to be running.

Juniper's ScreenOS offers 8 levels of strict priority queueing as its only queueing strategy (well, or you can put it into an extremely simple, dumb FIFO mode with no prioritization). However, I haven't yet managed to get that working for VPN tunnels. If you have a ScreenOS router sitting behind a Cisco IOS router, you can configure route based tunnels on the ScreenOS router, and the IP Type of Service field in the IP header leaks out to the unencrypted part of the encrypted packet where the IOS router will happily use it to prioritize the data appropriately, so that the voice traffic in the tunnel goes out ahead of the data traffic in the same tunnel. If you have a T1 card in your ScreenOS router, it appears to me that you have to define one tunnel for the high priority traffic, and another for the low priority traffic, and put those tunnels on different globally routed IP addresses so that you can tell the router to traffic shape on those addresses, and then use policy based routing to insert the traffic into the correct tunnel. However, I haven't tried that out yet.