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I upgraded to the Turbo Tier (20/2Mbps) yesterday. Oceanic Time Warner Cable is offering a promtional rate of $10.00 more a month (regular rate is $20.00) for this tier. The promotion expires at the end of this month.
They're doing this promotion because the speeds for the Turbo, Extreme and Ultimate will be increasing shortly. The hardware upgrade is complete. Oceanic just needs to reprovision each service tier.
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I wonder if this "upgrade" is what threw my connection out of whack. Everything was working fine until last week when my cable modem started resetting randomly. Talked to the service guys and they said the frequency might be miscalibrated wrong for the modem or some such, but it's been fine for six months.
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Any idea what the new speeds will be?
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Turbo tier 20/2Mbps=30/5Mbps
Extreme tier 30/5Mbps=50/5Mbps
Ultimate tier 50/5Mbps=100/5Mbps
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During the evening hours, generally between 5 PM & 10 PM my connection often will slow down. Sometimes movies degrade in quality, and very occasionally stop for buffering. Does anyone know if a faster speed will alleviate this problem? Or is it just that I'm at the end of the pipe (HPP near ocean), and get whatever bandwidth is left after everyone closer to the source takes theirs? If I upgraded, would I just get faster speeds during off peak hours, but continue to have the same problem in the evening?
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves
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The current network infrastructure supports six downstream channels. Each of these channels equals about 40Mbps (240Mbps). Oceanic upgraded the amount of downstream channel capacity to eight as of couple days ago. This boosts the amount of bandwidth up to 320Mbps.
The catch is your cable modem has to support channel bonding. All DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems support this feature (DOCSIS 2.0/1.1 modems only support one downstream channel).
Channel bonding is supposed to allevate congestion on the network and support higher speeds. It could theoretically resolve your issue, but if its a wiring or node issue, you'll need to have tech check your connection.
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I know some people are excited about the faster internet possibilities but isn't this just the Starbucking of your internet service? You can buy a Grandy, a Super Grandy a Tall Grandiy, or a Delux Grandy. What about people who just want reliable internet? Chances are they will be intentionally slowing down some people's connections in order to sell more options to people who still have money to spend.
Not me- very happy with DSL on HawaiianTel and it's a lot cheaper than TWC was. Also more reliable and the people who work there seem happy, not grumpy like a lot of the TWC workers.
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Thanks Aaron. I bought my modem when TWC started charging the monthly rental fee, and thought I picked out a fairly good one, but I checked and it's only DOCSIS 2.0. I watch a lot of movies on Netflix, Hulu+ and Mubi, so it's probably worth upgrading. I appreciate the info.
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves
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Target, WalMart, Amazon, etc sell DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems. Its better to buy your own cable modem instead of paying the 5.99 rental fee. This is what I ended up doing. In addtition, the DOCSIS 3.0 modems are much more efficient allocating bandwidth over the DOCSIS 2.0/1.1
modems.
Steve1, I'd take Road Runner over DSL anytime of the week, especially after they've upgraded the amount of downstream channels. This addresses the problems that plagued the DOCSIS 2.0/1.1 modems. The latter supported only one downstream channel (40Mbps). This was shared among everyone on your node. DOCSIS 3.0 modems support up to eight downstream channels (320Mbps)
