ISP Sharing Bandwidth! Is this legal?

[Moneyman228]

Ok so my ping is totally ----ed up, I live in a town near Saskatoon(Sasketchwan, Canada) and I ping a server in Regina(Sasketchwan, Canada, bout 146 miles away) and I get 100-300ms ping! I phoned the techies and one came down. He got the exact same thing and after phoning someone, he told me that it is because the ISP is sharing bandwidth with everybody in town. Here is how he worded it:

"Were sharing the bandwidth so that everybody gets an equal opprotunity to use the internet and not just ones who get on first or who download youtube/bittorrents and play games. Thats why you have such high latency."

First do a netstat. If you don't know a connection, check that program, if all connections are known, then the problem should be:

-Your ISP is attending too many connections at that time (hence the delay difference using ping)
-You have "hidden connections" (horses, spyware, etc.) sending information while you're at Internet
-You have to watch your ISP, If they told you that you can download 512Kbps, then you must have that speed. Sometimes, ISP's cut users broadband to give more to others (that pay more).

Solution: Track your connections, and then call your ISP asking why you have this disorder, they MUST give you what the contract says.

This is from my original post: http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=129897&highlight=ping+screwed

So is what their doing illegal? Is it illegal here in Canada? Were can I find documentation to prove it?

All help appreciated

 

[KOdEx]

Just curious what tier (amount of bandwidth) are you currently on? Are you getting the desired amount?
How long have you had their service?

As to the legalities, I can't answer for sure because I don't live in Canada or a lawyer, but I do know that it is not unusual for ISP's to share bandwidth between customers because it would be too expensive for an average person for a dedicated line (those are usually for businesses). Cable is definately known for this everybody in your neighbourhood shares a node, obviously you will have better connections on Wednesday at 11pm than on a Friday at 8 generally speaking. In their contracts usually in the fine print it says speeds not guaranteed. My ISP Comcast uses this in their contracts in the fine print.

"Many factors affect speed. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. Maximum upload speeds range between 384 Kbps and 2 Mbps depending on the service tier selected and can be even faster with PowerBoost®."

Also 100-300 doesn't seem too unusual for a distance of 146 miles with a 512kb connection. I currently have an 8mbps/768k connection and I get a ping of 70 to my preferred server on the speedtest.net site which is about the same distance to the server you're pinging (150miles). Also with ping it's two ways. I send you a packet you send me a packet. Your connection could be fine but the server is on a bad connection or experiencing a lot of network congestion. The most important pings are from your house to your ISP. If those check out it's not you or your ISP usually(In which case there's not much you can do aside from switching to another ISP(you might still get similar results though)). It's hard to troubleshoot internet connections because there is just sooooo many variables. Some ISP's are known to throttle the internet connections of heavy users, its best to check with your ISP to make sure your account hasn't been flagged for excessive use or anything like that. To test the hardware run anti-virus, spyware etc.. reset your modem and router to default settings, change cables, change outlets, and computers if you have to. And yes smashboards has been acting a little weird lately for me too, the recently took it down for maintenance about a day or two ago.

Tests Here
www.speedtest.net
www.bandwidthplace.com

 

[Moneyman228]

Just curious what tier (amount of bandwidth) are you currently on? Are you getting the desired amount?
How long have you had their service?

As to the legalities, I can't answer for sure because I don't live in Canada or a lawyer, but I do know that it is not unusual for ISP's to share bandwidth between customers because it would be too expensive for an average person for a dedicated line (those are usually for businesses). Cable is definately known for this everybody in your neighbourhood shares a node, obviously you will have better connections on Wednesday at 11pm than on a Friday at 8 generally speaking. In their contracts usually in the fine print it says speeds not guaranteed. My ISP Comcast uses this in their contracts in the fine print.

"Many factors affect speed. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. Maximum upload speeds range between 384 Kbps and 2 Mbps depending on the service tier selected and can be even faster with PowerBoost®."

Also 100-300 doesn't seem too unusual for a distance of 146 miles with a 512kb connection. I currently have an 8mbps/768k connection and I get a ping of 70 to my preferred server on the speedtest.net site which is about the same distance to the server you're pinging (150miles). Also with ping it's two ways. I send you a packet you send me a packet. Your connection could be fine but the server is on a bad connection or experiencing a lot of network congestion. The most important pings are from your house to your ISP. If those check out it's not you or your ISP usually(In which case there's not much you can do aside from switching to another ISP(you might still get similar results though)). It's hard to troubleshoot internet connections because there is just sooooo many variables. Some ISP's are known to throttle the internet connections of heavy users, its best to check with your ISP to make sure your account hasn't been flagged for excessive use or anything like that. To test the hardware run anti-virus, spyware etc.. reset your modem and router to default settings, change cables, change outlets, and computers if you have to. And yes smashboards has been acting a little weird lately for me too, the recently took it down for maintenance about a day or two ago.

Tests Here
www.speedtest.net
www.bandwidthplace.com

I've run speed tests, here is the link to 5 of them done in a few month period.

First One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2319845
Second One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2323237
Third One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2367548
Fourth One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2367760
Fifth One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2371432

I'm supposed to have a 1 MB Download and 250kb Upload(Something close to that) on my contract. It says I should get 1mb/s, but their speed tests say I only get 600-800kb/s. When I download something off the internet(direct link to a site, its an emulator site that I download ROMs from, as well as other sites) it says I'm only getting like 7-50Kb/s, sometimes its really fast and other times it sucks. Forget the download/upload, my latency and lag while online web surfing or playing smash online is horrible.

Oh and I don't believe what your saying about 100-300ms ping is normal for a 146 mile ping, how can that be when I ping Emularena X and get 70-100ms ping from them, aren't they in New York? I've had their service for about a year and a half since I've moved here(Sask.), I don't remeber when I started getting slow itnernet.

I've been looking at some other peoples complaints about Access Cable:
http://www.dslreports.com/comment/2440/62985
http://www.dslreports.com/comment/2440/49964

This sounds Exactly like my problems. If Access is really behind this BS there about to get an ear full. I'm going to post on DSL reports to get the info I need to make sure I can blast Access with facts and logic. I know that its Access because the idiot Tech told me himself! Here is some highlights of the conversation with him:

1."In a perfect world I could get you around 1mb Dwn and 250 Kb/s Upload, but that usually isn't possible"(Really? Then how come people tell me they have 3Mb/s downloads and whatever Upload and they usually get around that except on peek hours?)

2."300ms latency from here to our Regina servers isn't abnormal." > Me > "Do you usually come across 300ms latency to Regina when running speed tests at your/other people's houses?" > Him> "Uh........(Drools)......Not really....No...."

3.(Ok so then he phones some guy in Regina asking for help[he couldn't figure out why he was getting bad latency], the guy told him it was a problem within my town because they have to put a bigger server in or something to that effect[he wasn't specific at all].

4. He must have thought I was a no-nothing idiot so here is what he told me:

"Well we try to share the internet with everybody in your town so that the person who is gaming or downloading doesn't get all the bandwidth. So if your next door neighbour is downloading/gaming big time it will effect your latency. Really anyone in your town will get occasional bad ping." He then shifted the blame to Access saying there is nothing he could do and thus was done here. I didn't want to argue with him about legalities because he is just the tech and not a manager of Access or anything(Plus he was a prick and I was I getting really annoyed with him up to this point).

Occasional slow internet? Try every 3 minutes I drop to 75% of my Internets capacity. If everybody got this kind of ---- internet then NO ONE EVER USE THE INTERNET, seriously I'm going to switch to high speed dial up, its probably faster! If access thinks I'm gonna pay 50$(or whatever it is my parents pay) to get an internet worth a quarter of that, they can think again.

-End Rant-

Was my information helpful or did I ruin it with my whining? If it is my ISP, how should I approach them?

 

[KOdEx]

I've run speed tests, here is the link to 5 of them done in a few month period.

First One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2319845
Second One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2323237
Third One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2367548
Fourth One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2367760
Fifth One: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2371432

I'm supposed to have a 1 MB Download and 250kb Upload(Something close to that) on my contract. It says I should get 1mb/s, but their speed tests say I only get 600-800kb/s.

Judging from your line tests your first hop router looks to blocking pings(ICMP ECHO). First hop router is usually your (node/isp)Which is a little weird for an ISP to do. If you open up a command prompt and type in tracert google.com you'll see the path your computer takes it usually goes to your default gateway first(192.168.1.1) then your external ip address then after that its all ISP/Line Quality. There also seems to be some confusion about expressing amounts of data or it's just me about the difference between a Megabit(Mb) Megabyte(MB) Kilobit(Kb) and Kilobyte(KB).

http://www.numion.com/Calculators/Units.html

When I download something off the internet(direct link to a site, its an emulator site that I download ROMs from, as well as other sites) it says I'm only getting like 7-50Kb/s, sometimes its really fast and other times it sucks. Forget the download/upload, my latency and lag while online web surfing or playing smash online is horrible.

Well just taking what you said previously that you get 600-800kbps from various speed tests the site you download your ROMs from probably throttles their bandwidth. Also I wouldn't use a ROM site to determine my bandwidth. Just download a linux iso or run the speed tests posted above.

Oh and I don't believe what your saying about 100-300ms ping is normal for a 146 mile ping, how can that be when I ping Emularena X and get 70-100ms ping from them, aren't they in New York? I've had their service for about a year and a half since I've moved here(Sask.), I don't remember(fix'd) when I started getting slow internet(fix'd).

I've been looking at some other peoples complaints about Access Cable:
http://www.dslreports.com/comment/2440/62985
http://www.dslreports.com/comment/2440/49964

There's only 6 reviews for the entire service 4 good 2 bad. That isn't enough for any conclusions except everyone has a good or bad experience or for me to consider doing business with them but it may be the only provider in your area .

But like I said previously it depends on both your connections between you and the server. An extreme example would be your 1mbps connection to my 300 baud modem. Don't expect a good connection. But to be honest this doesn't seem to be the case, it looks like their doing a little bit of throttling or packet shaping to cut costs because their current infrastructure can't support it's customer base reading from the complaints posted this is the first time I've seen a 100% packet loss to a first hop that wasn't at a school or some other place of business(my college blocks all pings leaving the intranet) looks shady. and the fact he told you here.

EDIT: Probably should've asked this earlier but you should be hard wired to your router/modem when doing an sort of ping/bandwidth tests gives the best and most accurate results.

"Well we try to share the internet with everybody in your town so that the person who is gaming or downloading doesn't get all the bandwidth. So if your next door neighbour is downloading/gaming big time it will effect your latency. Really anyone in your town will get occasional bad ping." He then shifted the blame to Access saying there is nothing he could do and thus was done here. I didn't want to argue with him about legalities because he is just the tech and not a manager of Access or anything(Plus he was a prick and I was I getting really annoyed with him up to this point)."

Also from the complaint reading it seems to be pretty much confirmed there's a bandwidth cap of 70GB.

He can't do anything because he probably can't sounds like a company problem/policy, he probably knows this and tried to word it as nicely as possible. Allowing more delay between the packets passing through their network routers allows the routers to handle more load because they have more time to forward the packets to their destination but reduces the Quality of Service because the packets only have a certain amount of time to reach their destination before they are dropped resulting in packet loss. An average user surfing the web or reading email probably won't notice this until it gets to the point where the refresh button becomes his favorite friend. But playing games running bandwidth tests it becomes obvious.

But to be sure I'd do a hard reset of all my networking hardware router modem /router something might have gotten corrupted (never know) virus-scan ad-scan make it like day one when it was working good. Or if you can go to a family/friend's house with the same ISP, preferably close to you and run the tests there and compare the results.

If you do decide to cancel your service with access, just tell them the truth that you're not satisfied with their service lately, i experience high pings in just about everything i do(or just say it wasn't fast enough if they don't know what a ping is), I had a tech come to my house to assess the problem and told me there was nothing he could do help solve the problem. That should be more than enough to get them to cancel. Remember hate the company not the person even if he offers you free internet and whatever, that's the company speaking not the person, honestly he could probably couldn't care less if you cancel your internet. That of course all changes if the CSR just refuses and really haggles you. I actually canceled my verizon dsl yesterday because my internet didn't work anytime it rained or was breezy out go figure and the CSR was super cool.

PS I don't like whining