Slow Download Speed - Tampa

[w0rd]

Hi,

For the last 2 months I have had slow download speeds but tech support refuses to help me because I can get normal speeds to my nearest hub, but ANY hub beyond that is useless.

I am in Tampa and using the speed check at verizon.net/speedtest I get...

Alabama -

Your download speed is 0.788 Mbps.   

Your upload speed is 36.182 Mbps.   

Georgia -

Your download speed is 0.574 Mbps

Your upload speed is 36.263 Mbps

Florida  -

Your download speed is 42.578 Mbps

Your upload speed is 35.926 Mbps.

Almost every hub I have tried is the same slow download speed, except for Arizona, for some reason that one gives me decent results. These results are repeatable every time.

My package is 35/35. So as long as I only connect to web servers in Florida, my internet is fine, but anything else is unusable. The Verizon tech support person said I should clear my browser history, and said that those speedtest results only work in your own area. OK whatever.

Speedtest.net testing out of Ft. Myers is giving me 1.24 Mbps down and 14.78 Mbps up.

Speakeasy.net testing out of Atlanta is giving me 12.23 Mbps down and 23.63 Mbps up.

Both speedtest and speakeasy give me wildly different results at different times of the day. Ranging from 0.5 Mbps to 40 Mbps.

All speed tests were run just now.

[smith6612]

Are the speeds where they should be in the morning to all servers, or do they remain the same regardless of what time of day it is? My guess would be there is a router or a backbone being overloaded leaving the Tampa/Florida area. Those things should be load balanced, so perhaps something went wrong and hasn't been noticed yet.

[nick_d]

I have been having the same issue. Went through everything with the tech and they decided my router may have been malfunctioning. They sent a new one... but it's the same deal. I can barely watch a youtube video or stream anything. Even this support site loads incredibly slow - I'm so frustrated that I'm paying for second tier speed but achieving less than my old cable modem speeds. The jitter on my ping test was disappointing (75ms ping time and 53ms jitter) and when I perform a trace route it hangs just before leaving the fios pool and entering verizon-gni.net. Tracing from my IP to another fios ip in the same city returned 98ms response time from one of the hops and 100% packet loss.

My machine's firewalls are off, only the built-in firewall on the router is on and it's set to allow all incoming and outgoing data during these tests. I don't know what else to do. Is there a top tier support team who can make sure traffic is being routed correctly in the area?

Nick

[w0rd]

Nick,

You wouldn't happen to be in the Seffner/North Brandon area? I have talked to a bunch of people and the only person having a similar problem is another friend that lives in the same area as me.

I never had a problem until a major thunderstorm we had about a month ago. The power was out for about 5-6 hours and ever since then I have had a problem with this. I don't notice any difference based on time of day, it's really random.

[nick_d]

Yes, I am in the Seffner area - youtube is painfully slow. In fact I think you're right, when the storm went through and killed all the power a few weeks back is when my speeds dipped. I get download and upload speeds the way I should but when it comes to multimedia delivery it's like I am back on dial-up. GOTTA get this fixed soon.

update: also received a new router - set to factory default and the problem persists. It's not an issue with any of our home routers, the problem lies further up the chain. Anyone know someone at support who could pass this on to a VZ network engineer?

[jaegertech]

Thought I would chime in to note that I am in Seffner and my download speeds have been intermittently poor lately. I'm getting acceptable upload speeds just about anywhere, but downloads are often under 2 mbit.

[jaball77]

Also in Seffner, same symptoms.  Verizon is sending me a new router but somehow I have a feeling it's not going to fix anything.

[flbeachtiger]

We are just over 75 from Seffner (MLK and Faulkenburg).

No problems at all.

[jaball77]

New router did not fix my problem.  They are sending out another tech.  I explained that a tech had already been out, and they assured me that this tech would "be more thorough"  and implied that they would be testing fiber in the area.  We'll see.

[w0rd]

Tech was out here 2 days in a row. Replaced everything, still doesn't work. He called the network guy and he refused to help because the verizon Florida speed test site is giving good results.

He said 0.5 mbps down and 30 mbps up on speedtest.net, speakeasy.net and most verizon.net/speedcheck sites doesn't mean anything. He said the only one that is valid is the Florida verizon.net speedttest site.

Does anyone know how we can get in touch with a network tech that knows what he is doing?

[jaegertech]

After their failure to return a promised call, I called support again today. Apparently, getting a 0.5 Mbit for most of the net is the best I can expect from Verizon, so long as the Florida test site reads OK. The tech had absolutely no problem with that level of service. Thankfully, my contract is up. Hmmm... Keep getting the runaround on what defines a reasonable expectation of service or just jump ship?

[w0rd]

Still slow. 3rd tech visit scheduled for my house tomorrow. Getting tired of entertaining techs at my house for a MULTIPLE USER ISSUE!!!!!!

WHY WOULD YOU SEND TECHS TO A SINGLE USER FOR A MULTIPLE USER ISSUE!!! THIS IS TECH SUPPORT 101.

I am going to give them 1 more week before I call brighthouse. I need to work from home this Friday and I can't because of this. My cell phone minutes are all gone and I've spent 4 hours wasting time with techs at my house, and will probably spend 2 more tomorrow.

If your tech calls the war room, we need to find someone else besides {edited for privacy} or get his supervisors name. He is the one that is telling us that our service is normal. He has no common sense at all.

I'll come back to Verizon once they figure out the problem, so if someone from Seffner will bump this thread when the issue is finally resolved I would appreciate it. 🙂

[jaball77]

I ran into the same brick wall as w0rd yesterday.  Despite all the evidence I provided, nothing could convince Patrick in Brandon that there was anything wrong with my connection.  As long as the speed test from Verizon in Florida said 30mbps, the connection is perfect according to him.

My Evidence: Multiple users in the same area reporting the same problem.

His reply: "There are only 6 reports of slow speed in your area of 22,000 users!"

So I guess those 6 users are S.O.L.?

My evidence: Slow speed tests from Speedtest.net, Speakeasy.net.

His reply: Those sites aren't designed to handle the speed that FIOS provides because they were designed back when people had dialup (hahaha), and are generally useless and aren't engineered properly.  Verizon.net's Florida speed test is the only speed test is the only valid speed test.  No, you can't use the one in Georgia!

I don't even know what to say to this.  It's kind of like a car dealer saying "As long as your car can idle around our parking lot, it works perfectly, I don't care if it catches fire on the highway!  I think the folks at Speedtest.net and Speakeasy.net probably know what they're doing.

My evidence: 8% packet loss when pinging Verizon.net

His reply: Anything could cause that.  It's not our network!

Really?  A Verizon customer pinging Verizon.net isn't your network?

The technician that came out actually agreed with me that there was something going on with my service, but there's nothing he could do.  He didn't have the authority to escalate it himself.

At this point I'm not sure what to do.  You have an issue that's affecting multiple users and a mountain of evidence, but the people responsible for investigating it won't do so because they're convinced there's nothing wrong.  I've heard about a Verizon "Customer Advocacy Group" but I haven't been able to find any contact info for them...

[nick_d]

Uh oh, I have the same issues. Today it got worse - down to 1.9Mbps - even let the support tech share my screen and run the test from my computer to verizons speedtest site. It came back with 1.9Mbps, they reset my ONT and tried again - same speed. It showed the same speed that speedtest.net gave me - that network guy you mentioned is full of crap.

I have a tech scheduled to come out here tomorrow but I doubt he can do anything - the problem is at a hub somewhere.  I've been downloading a 167MB file for about two hours. Getting around 29Kbps **bleep**. It's coming from Apple's servers so Verizon can't tell me I'm connecting to a slow host. 

Hmm, maybe I'll dial up to AOL so I can get faster speeds. Ridiculous.

I'll post results once the tech does his thing tomorrow afternoon.

[perry1510]

I have the Same problem as Tampa.  It takes an hour and a half or more to download a 20 minute video.  I was told this would be fixed, but it continues, yet I am paying for high speed connection.

[RAJag]

I am having very slow download speeds in Lakewood Ranch FL.

5 hours to download a HD movie.

[Drinklime]

I am in tampa and my internet is now completely out. But my fios tv still works... Something is seriously wrong with the network

[nick_d]

By the way, even the built-in "diagnostics" on the router fail at the most rudimentary of tasks... a ping. Check it out: Ping Fail Pic

Below are the results of the speed test from verizon's site. What does it mean when it says "this connection is network limited 97.3% of the time?"

Analysis information:

Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
SendBufferSize set to [131768]
running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 23.35Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 1.22Mb/s

------ Client System Details ------
OS data: Name = Mac OS X, Architecture = i386, Version = 10.5.8
Java data: Vendor = Apple Inc., Version = 1.5.0_28

------ Web100 Detailed Analysis ------
Client Receive Window detected at 359104 bytes.
45 Mbps T3/DS3 link found.
Link set to Full Duplex mode
Information: throughput is limited by other network traffic.
Good network cable(s) found
Normal duplex operation found.

Web100 reports the Round trip time = 14.76 msec; the Packet size = 1448 Bytes; and 
There were 127 packets retransmitted, 364 duplicate acks received, and 412 SACK blocks received
The connection stalled 22 times due to packet loss
The connection was idle 6.78 seconds (56.50%) of the time
This connection is sender limited 2.69% of the time.
This connection is network limited 97.31% of the time.
Excessive packet loss is impacting your performance, check the auto-negotiate function on your local PC and network switch

Web100 reports TCP negotiated the optional Performance Settings to: 
RFC 2018 Selective Acknowledgment: ON
RFC 896 Nagle Algorithm: ON
RFC 3168 Explicit Congestion Notification: OFF
RFC 1323 Time Stamping: ON
RFC 1323 Window Scaling: ON
Information: Network Middlebox is modifying MSS variable

[w0rd]

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@nick_d wrote:

By the way, even the built-in "diagnostics" on the router fail at the most rudimentary of tasks... a ping. Check it out: Ping Fail Pic

---

I think that is normal, it looks like apple has pings turned off, probably to prevent a DoS attack with ping. Verizon.com is the same. The other stuff is not normal though.

[jdvarmit]

Another slow speed from South Brandon/Riverview. After the Internet Optimizer, Virtual Agent, Live chat, and tech support phone call it all comes down to this...if you are getting good speed from from their speedtest then there is not a problem. Not to optimistic about my options. Wait for Verizon to acknowlegde the issue or switch to Brighthouse.

[nick_d]

There must be some way to get a log to a network ops guy at verizon. I have issues even screen sharing with a friend who lives across town and he has FiOS also. Maybe I'll just drive downtown and start knocking on doors at the verizon buildings until I find someone to help. Is there even another fiber solution in the area? It took me 4 hours to download a 450MB file today - I can't work like this, that's for sure.