Calling all Charter or Charter Pipeline Users....

[jcwagers]

Hello everybody. I FINALLY got broadband yesterday. I got set up on Charter Pipeline here in one of the small podunk towns in Southeastern KY.
Now....I noticed that a LOT of people that have @home or ATT or some others get REALLY great speeds. So far....I haven't gotten overly great speed.
The package that I signed up for was 2048kbps down/ 256kbps up. I know this is the THEORETICAL part of the connection. I will say that I've come
nowhere CLOSE to that so far. The BEST speed test I have had was 606kbps. That was in the early afternoon. Last night I went on and when I
tested it on dslreports, it said I was downloading at modem speed. That kinda blows my mind....shouldn't it be faster than that? Anyways, I have a
Linksys Router and the access is shared between 3 computers but the other computer that uses the broadband mainly just runs apps like ICQ, MSN,
and AIM. That shouldn't cut into the bandwidth too much....or I wouldn't think so anyways. Right now as we speak I am downloading from WinMX and
the transfer rate is 14-15k per second. It goes down to around 7 or 8k for a lot of the time. I'm only paying 29.99 a month for the service and it IS faster
than dialup for the most part. It's always on and doesn't tie up the phone line, which is good. I was just expecting.....well.....a little MORE than what I'm
getting right now. I've gone to John Navas's site and downloaded and installed the registry tweak....but maybe that doesn't make much of a difference.
A friend of mine who had it installed yesterday said that they told him that as soon as the paperwork was finalized that the speed would probably increase.
I'm hoping so...but....not totally sure about that. As I said, I'm not TRYING to gripe.....I'm just curious as to whether or not this is normal. Are there any other
Charter Pipeline users out there that can shed some light on the subject? I'd love to hear from you....to see what kind of speeds you're getting. Thanks in
advance!

jcwagers

 

[RC7]

I'm pretty sure they are advertising their speeds in KiloBITS per second. 1 kiloBIT per second = 1/8 Kilobyte per second. Most programs measure download speed in bytes/second. 2048/8=256kbytes per seconds.. so you seem to be getting much higher than they advertise. I have charter digital cable... still no pipeline internet access here yet :\.

 

[jcwagers]

I understand the part about kiloBITS and kiloBYTES. But.....I'm getting about 14 or 15 kiloBYTES a second....which is roughly 150-175kiloBITS a second.
With the maximum being 2048 kilobits.....(which as you mentioned was 256 kilobytes)....I was thinking I should get a little higher than what I'm getting.
I tried downloading some files at around 3am off of a T1 and T3 connections and had 3 files peak at 218kilobytes a second....and stay around 70 to 80
or higher. I was pleased with that! I suspect that some of the problem is due to restraints by other cable/dsl users (on WinMX) and some may be
caused by slow servers and such on some websites. But.....unless there is some MAJOR congestion....I should be able to download faster than 6-8 kilobytes
a second on files shouldn't I? It will go up to 12-14 kilobytes or so....but then it isn't consistent.....it goes up and down a lot.

jcwagers

 

[Kingofcomputer]

doesn't the Charter basic plan just guarantee 256Kbit?

 

[pillage2001]

Two words for you. Charter Sucks. They really have one of the suckiest service in the WORLD.

 

[Ne0]

I have charter service in Suwanee, GA and my speeds are supposed to be 1500/384, but I get much higher. At first it was really slow like you. When I called them about it, they came the next morning and said something about the wiring in my room. They changed some wires, and the modem from a sb3100 to sb4100 and after that I have gotten amazing speeds. Also it has never gone down once. Depending on the server I'm downloading from I can get up to 400 kb/s. I tested my bandwith at bandwithplace.com and it measured it at 3.1 megabits per second. I also get very good results from dslreports.com. My ping in games like Quake3, UT, and Counterstrike also depending on the server can go down to as low as 30. Most of the people in my neighborhood are on Bellsouth DSL, I think only 2 other people in my subdivision have charter cable pipeline. I also got a free year of HBO, Showtime, Cinnemax, STARZ, and the Move Channel. I pay $39.95 a month, it's really great. But then again, it seems it's only great in my area. Most people in different locations hate charter service.

 

[Challenger]

I have Pipeline in Wisconsin just ran the test @bandwithplace.com and this is what I got:


Results


test run: 19:14CST Dec 8, 2001
your IP:

Your raw speed was 70802285.71 bits per second. There are 3 meaningful ways we can interpret this number:


Communications context


70.8
megabits per second
This is how communication devices are rated. Kilo means 1,000 and mega means 1,000,000. Examples of this context include 56k modem, 384/128 DSL, and 10Mbit Ethernet




Storage context


8.4
megabytes per second
This is how data is measured on your hard drive and how FTP programs measure transfer speeds. Kilo is 1,024 and mega is 1,048,576.




1MB file download


0.1
seconds
The time it would take you to download a 1 megabyte file at this speed.

Seems pretty fast to me,don't know how accurate it is?

 

[Louie1961a]

I love my charter pipeline. I am paying for 500K down and 128 up speeds. DSL reports consistantly reports my speeds as 490-550 down and 90-150 up. It is very reliable, never any outages.

 

[CZroe]

Got it in Newnan, GA here for only $25 a month (Been that way for years due to local cable competition).
Recently, it's been VERY slow (Like the last few weeks) & I'm about ready to call them about it (Pages have been timing out constantly!).
I have never been dissatisfied with its speeds before, as I had previously come in at over 3MBps (Yes, MB, not Mb).
I believe they've configured me incorrectly, as I have always just used a simple hub to share with all my other PCs and they all have real genuine IP addresses when according to them, it shouldn't work.
It's only advertised as "512k residential service" with no upload speeds mentioned, but my uploads have typically been faster than my downloads.

 

[jcwagers]

I was just kinda curious as to how people felt about Charter. I still have high hopes for my cable connection but I'm not totally sure what's gonna
happen with it. If there are bugs(and there may be) hopefully they'll get them lined out soon and the speed will go up. I'm going to run a test at
DSL reports right now and post the results.

Megapath CA server - (About modem speed) 69 kbps(kilobits) down/ 75kbps up
I have MSN, AOL, and ICQ running on another computer beside me.....and I have the anandtech forums and dslreports sites going on this computer.
This seems slow to me....especially since it's 1:25 AM here. Now I'll try the Linkline one....

Linkline LA server - (About modem speed) 41 kbps down/ 79 kbps up

I don't think netscape has anything to do with this....but it might. Also.....a lot of times downloads are NOT consistent. It may go from 8k to 12k and
then back down to 5k. It's very inconsistent. As I said in my earlier post....I'm NOT trying to complain. I'm just curious as to why the speeds are so
slow.

You people who use Charter....are these speeds that you get consistent all through the day and night? Last night at 3am....I started downloading some
SNL Celeb Jeopardy files and had 3 of them going and it peaked at 218k per second(not kilobits). I was excited.....even when it was at 85 or 90k per second.
I'm just kinda stumped on this one. I guess I'll just ride it out and see what happens. Thanks for taking the time to listen to me....it's appreciated!

jcwagers

 

[Kingofcomputer]

Charter cable in Riverside (greater LA area), bronze plan 768/128,
dslreports LA server - around 500Kbit download, over 140ms ping.

Pacbell DSL in Alhambra (LA area), paying basic 1.5Mbit plan,
dslreports LA sever - around 1500Kbit download, around 90ms ping.

Charter cable really sucks.

I got a new promotion mail from them:
value package 256K/64K (download/upload) $24.95/mo, requires 12 month contract
bronze package 768K/128K $35
silver package 1M/256K $60
gold package 1.5M/384K $99
all don't include $4.95 modem lease, $10 cable access fee for non-cable tv customer.
offer expires 12/15. order before 11/30 to get free installation.

What a joke!!!