Slow real world upload speed

[73991]

I finally got a Verizon Tech to check out my situation. He replaced all my equipment (router and ONT) and of course the problem remained the same. The central office continues to say that everything is ok, even though the Verizon Tech could see it with his own eyes that the upload speeds were very slow (100kb/s). Final answer from Verizon. It must be your equipment. So I called again, trying to speak to a supervisor. Since there was no supervisor available I asked them to have him give me a call back. He did and I unfortunatelly missed the call. He left a voicemail saying that everything is working perfect within the verizon network. It must be my equipment. Hello.....you already replaced all my equipment and had one of your guys see it with his own eyes. Of course he didn't leave a number or anything and never called back so I have to get back on the phone and waste another couple of hours of my time. I'm honestly thinking of cancelling my contract with verizon. The customer service is the worst I have ever seen and I personally think that they know they are having an issue in my area. It's either oversuscribed and they are throtteling the traffic or there's a technical issues which they are not willing to fix because it would cost money. 

[Kestrel3]

Exactly the run around that I have been experiencing.  Once you think you are getting somewhere and can actually get to a level 2 tech or supervisor, you can never get them to call you back or reach them again.  They will just tell you that they will call you and won't.   Don't expect them to actually do anything about it even if you do get to speak with someone in authority there anyway.    You will end up having to start over again, and they'll just send another service tech to your house who will either not show up or leave immediately after running a speed test.    

Some more examples:

Field Tech :  "I need the tablet to run the diagnostic software, but Verizon didn't give me one (or I didn't bring it)"

Field Tech and Verizon phone support:  "Verizon speed tests run fine, there is nothing else we can do, because you are getting what you are supposed to"

Supervisor / Level 2 tech: "I'll call you back, I promise" "My number is [generic Verizon 800 number]" - Never calls back

Supervisor / Level 2 tech:  "Have the Field Tech call Level 2 Tech when he gets to your house".  Field tech arrives, but can't get to Level 2 tech without calling into basic support starting from the first step, which he can't get past if speed test runs fine.

Field Tech: "I'm going to leave now and go get my supervisor. We'll come back in about 30 minutes" - Never shows up.

ON and ON and ON.

SO frustrating.  

[Usedtousetmc]

I have a similar problem. I just changed from Time Warner and I was expecting faster Internet with Fios because that is what I was told. I chose the 75 / 35 plan and my Internet connection is slower than on my cell phone... I did 10 speed tests on different sites and they all showed that the actual speed I was getting was closer to 25 / 10. I called Verizon and they directed me to their Internet test which (supprise supprise) showed that I was getting 83 / 41. I pointed out that all of the independent sites showed different results so the Verizon Woman directed me to "another site that she liked to use".

When the 3rd party site that she directed me to came back with 42 / 23, she put me on hold for a while and then told me that other test sites did not have the bandwidth to handle Verizon Internet speeds so they were not accurate. Because the Verizon site showed that everything is great, I have to put up with painfully slow Internet and no help.

The fact that the Verizon speed test is so different to every other test site shows that, either there is a problem with the Verizon site (being kind), or, they are using it to deliberately mislead customers (which they absolutely have a vested interest in doing). Any speed test tool that is managed by the Internet service provider is an unreliable source.

I had Time Warner internet until a few weeks ago and it was much faster and cheaper. Anyone who is thinking of changing over to Verizon, think twice. Even Internet shopping is so slow, that it is quicker to drive to the shops.

Verizon Internet has better advertised speeds but the numbers are a lie.

[tns2]

What she told you is true for some speed test sites.

I usually use speedtest.net and some of its sites are slow but most give me roughly the same speed as Verizon's speed test.  I know in NY when I do speedtests that a few servers that speedtest.net will pick for me are slow and if I pick others, Even across the country, I will get better resutls

Obvoiusly if you try I site that my go over one of the compained about links (i.e. one of the slow netflix links) and you will get slow speed rates.  .

[Hubrisnxs]

There are a lot of places that uploads are affected.

First your PC.  uploads are a function of your send buffer size in your PC Windows settings.  In the entire thread I haven't seen a single NDT posted.  Please go here, run the NDT and then paste your results here. Verizon Online -- Network Diagnostic Test - My Verizon

2nd, depends on your physical connection to the router.

If you're wired, Then you can check your duplex settings in your NIC.

Try your test with both Half Duplex and Full Duplex.    See if there is a difference.

If you're wireless, there is a possibility that you have wifi interference causing your slow upload.  Wifi Interference can affect your connection speed differently depending on what kind of interference it is.  Run the Verizon In Home Agent Wifi Connection wizard (check wifi signal) and follow it's recommendations.  It will automatically find interference, and automatically change it to a wifi frequency with less interference.

These are a few things that did not look like they were discussed, I hope it helps.

Also Only trust the Verizon Speed test site and Speedtest.net.   With speedtest.net though, make sure you are NOT using a mom and pop ISP and make sure you are connecting to a big ticket ISP when you do your test.

In LA Dreamhost is the best server to test from

[Kestrel3]

1)  I have done all of these several times with no improvement.  NDT almost always shows good speeds, but sometimes will show uploads are slow (10-17 Mbps instead of 25).  Have tried full and half duplex - no change.  Pasted latest result at bottom.

2) I run only Mac's and the Apple program that Verizon recommends to change send buffer size is 10 years old (still at version 1.0) and is not compatible with current computers.  I have tried third party utilities that do this with no effect on upload speeds.

3) Speedtest sites only show significant drop offs in upload speed when testing to distant servers. Even Verizon's own test site to its own servers drop to 1/10th the local upload speed when using distant Verizon servers.  Download speeds stay consistently high.

4)  I only run tests hardwired

NDT result:

Analysis information:


Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
SendBufferSize set to [131768]
running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 36.26Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 57.64Mb/s

------ Client System Details ------
OS data: Name = Mac OS X, Architecture = x86_64, Version = 10.8.5
Java data: Vendor = Oracle Corporation, Version = 1.7.0_65

------ Web100 Detailed Analysis ------
Client Receive Window detected at 524288 bytes.
45 Mbps T3/DS3 link found.
Link set to Full Duplex mode
No network congestion discovered.
Good network cable(s) found
Normal duplex operation found.

Web100 reports the Round trip time = 66.9 msec; the Packet size = 1448 Bytes; and 
No packet loss was observed.
This connection is receiver limited 31.23% of the time.
This connection is sender limited 68.31% of the time.

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
Server IP addresses are preserved End-to-End
Client IP address not found. For IE users, modify the Java parameters
click Tools - Internet Options - Security - Custom Level, scroll down to
Microsoft VM - Java permissions and click Custom, click Java Custom Settings
Edit Permissions - Access to all Network Addresses, click Eanble and save changes

[Hubrisnxs]

Hi,  Thanks for doing the NDT,  The NDT shows this which is a very big deal.  Receive buffer is for downloading, and send buffer is for your upload.  To give you an idea of how impactful this could be, is that the send buffer size is almost half of what it should be, so potentially that is exactly where the other half of your upload is at.

SendBufferSize set to [131768]

That number should be double.  261360 or larger.  It's actually a function of a math computation, so the size varies but in general no less than 261360.     Just my opinion and from experience, you should probably run the FiOS Optimizer or my personal favorite. SpeedGuide.net :: TCP Optimizer / Downloads

If you have ran this before, then you might need to manually go into your registry and adjust that setting.  The Speedguide has a section where it shows the proper registry location for the setting and how to change it. 

 *Edit,  I actually just noticed you run Apple only. So for that you would need the apple optimizer.   I'll see if I can dig up a link for you.

[Hubrisnxs]

Performance Tuning the Network Stack on Mac OS X

http://rolande.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/performance-tuning-the-network-stack-on-mac-osx-10-6/

[Kestrel3]

Hubrisnxs  - thanks for the info.  Mac OSX is apparently supposed to make these calculations automatically to optimize TCP settings, so maybe every other Mac user has these same default settings?   I see the same issues on 4 different Macs at my house.  

I used Cocktail to increase the send window size.  At 261360,  upload speed was about the same, maybe a tiny bit better.

At 500000 , my upload speed was much slower - maybe half of what it was.  Cocktail has a preset for FIOS that only increased the default send buffer size - those were the settings that appeared on the NDT results I posted.

I don't want to get into all the command line/ Terminal editing stuff you linked to.  That seems way over the top just to achieve more than 10% of stated upload speed.    As I mentioned, download speeds never drop off and are consistently high.

BTW - I upgraded to 50/50 and am now getting max 5 actual upload speeds to most file sending sites.

[Kestrel3]

I just tested my actual upload speed on a PC after running the PC FIOS optimizer software and had the same result, so the problem is not the settings on the Macs.

1 minute 30 seconds to upload a 130 MB file at the fastest site, Hightail (all others were much slower). According to my calculations,  that is about an average speed of 9 Mbps.   The same file downloads (presumably from the same server) in 50 seconds, so even though I should have symmetrical upload/download speeds, upload speed is actually at most only half of download speed.

My official Verizon upload speed is 50 Mbbs and tests above 60 Mbps to the closest Verizon server using the Verizon speed test site.  When I use the Verizon test to test to a distant Verizon server, my upload speed shows only 3 Mbps, but download alway stays the sameno matter which server is chosen.

Why the discrepancy?