Sunday, September 11, 2011

Broadband Speed Fails Again

Last night I had a major issue with my computer. I could not view any video. It didn't matter what site-YouTube or anything else. the videos would start & immediately freeze with that annoying little circle that spins around signifying "buffering". I also had an issue with trying to download a podcast from the local sports station. A 20 minute interview with Steve Young(HOF Niners QB) wouldn't download because the speed was too slow, namely this interview hadn't downloaded after 10 minutes. The tech show TWIT is 2 hours & downloads in 6 minutes!

I was doing everything. I unplugged everything twice to reboot the computer. I did a system restore. No change. Finally I went on the website SpeedTest. There are actually several sites like this. They check your download & upload speed. This site uses several servers & you can use different ones. My speed came to .50 Mbps. That's 1/3 of what I am paying for. I pay $30 for 1.5 Mbps, & usually when I run this test it comes to around 1.2.

Today when I retested it was back up to 1.1-1.2. Better but still not perfect. Seems like I will have to have a talk with my ISP tomorrow. I have thought of upgrading to 3 Mbps, which is $5 more. The problem is of course, that even that is unacceptable. South Korea gets 85. Yeah I can change to cable & maybe get 12, but they will try to get me to get cable TV. No thanks, I like my Directv. Never have had a problem. The local Cable company has always been bad here. So of course thay just bought a major network. Lovely.

This shouldn't even be an issue. With more & more programming online, speeds should be higher without the cost being prohibitive. But this is the USA where profits always come first.


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