Anyone in DSM having internet issues lately?

[MeowingCows]

So, I've been testing this for a while now and can't seem to find a resolution. I have CenturyLink GPON fiber in my apartment, 40mb down, 5 mb up. When I run speedtests online to CL's closest nearby server, it'll run full speed:

However, when I select a nearby custom server (or any other server), I get this trash:

Often, it's even worse than that. Note, this is a wired connection -- most of my devices are wired. This has been going on for a least a couple months now since I noticed it.

I've had a CL tech come out to diagnose it, they just blame my router and call it quits. They test the connection out to their servers, which works fine as seen above, but that's it. I do have a custom network set up, I have an ASUS vLAN-capable router replacing their modem/router combo box, but I'm 99.9999% certain it's working perfectly fine. Here's some of the things I've noticed:

• Pings are fairly consistent often, even during peak times.
• The internet rarely drops completely. It works, just sometimes with terrible speeds.
• My speeds vary greatly by website.

That bottom point concerns me... it's acting a lot like how I would expect a Net Neutrality thing to act like. To expand on that:

• Netflix usually works fine, no buffering, good quality, as I would expect.
• Hulu is hit and miss. Often doesn't buffer, but may drop in quality from time to time.
• Twitch barely works at all; I cannot stream 1080p on Twitch. I can usually stream that with a bounce between 480p and 720p, but that's it. The stream is usually only able to pull down 1mb/s or less from Twitch.
• YouTube can peg my entire connection by itself. I can stream 4K 60 fps on YouTube only, perfectly fine. I've tested it and watched it hit ~35mb/s consistently for minutes straight. No other service can even come remotely close to that speed.
• Fox Sports stream is iffy, usually buffery, but it may run. ESPN streaming is nearly unwatchable sometimes.
• I reimaged my PC lately, which required me to redownload my games. Games from Steam would peg 40mb/s, while games from other launchers (namely Origin) were very slow. Even just downloading the launchers from those companies' websites was slow.
• Windows Updates generally come fast, but downloading the Windows 10 iso maker from Microsoft was horridly slow.
• Loading even simple gifs on websites can stall out hard, depending on which site they're hosted on.

I'm pretty comfortable with networking. I've gone through my router settings many times to try to make changes to QoS and DNS and the like, nothing has made a great improvement. As a last resort, I factory-defaulted the CL modem/router combo box I still have and put that back in, by itself, with only one device connected to it via wire -- it still had the exact same problems. That completely took my hardware and network setup out of the equation. Without CL's help, I don't know where else I can go to. I'm planning on moving this summer to Ankeny, so I guess I'll see if my problems continue up there (for reference, I'm on the south side of DSM now). As much as I hate to say it, the things I've noticed with the streaming sites make it really act like a NN thing in action, but obviously I can't prove that. If it's just me having these issues, maybe it really is some hardware issue in my region (that's still CL's fault at the end of the day, they just can't or won't find it). I can't prove or disprove either theory.

 

[ArgentCy]

Century Link sucks and they are having some financial problems so I wouldn't put it past them. Trying to change the DNS servers was the only thing I would consider. The fact that it looks like your download speed is really the only one affected that is suspicious. How many different servers have you tried to test through?

 

[jdcyclone19]

It seems CL has been having problems since the flood last year. I never had a single issue prior and since then there have been a few times it’s been down and slow.

 

[MeowingCows]

Century Link sucks and they are having some financial problems so I wouldn't put it past them. Trying to change the DNS servers was the only thing I would consider. The fact that it looks like your download speed is really the only one affected that is suspicious. How many different servers have you tried to test through?

I've tried a few different open DNS's, all of which are roughly the same speed-wise (although I did stick with Google's DNS as it produced noticeably lower ping times in some games I play). I tested multiple speedtesting sites to multiple servers (both local to here and nationally), all of which produce very similar results to what I posted above. It is notable that my upload speeds do tend to stay around 4-5mb regardless of server, that's definitely another suspect point. Sometimes my download speeds are lower than my upload speeds, which seems asinine to me.

 

[Tailg8er]

Have you tried using a VPN? If nothing else, wouldn't that help to prove (or disprove) your NN theory?

 

[ArgentCy]

I've tried a few different open DNS's, all of which are roughly the same speed-wise (although I did stick with Google's DNS as it produced noticeably lower ping times in some games I play). I tested multiple speedtesting sites to multiple servers (both local to here and nationally), all of which produce very similar results to what I posted above. It is notable that my upload speeds do tend to stay around 4-5mb regardless of server, that's definitely another suspect point. Sometimes my download speeds are lower than my upload speeds, which seems asinine to me.

Ya, I don't think download speed should ever be below upload due to hardware differences. That is odd.

 

[jbhtexas]

Put CL's router on line, and call them back out. Take the router excuse away. Have them explain why your download speeds are slow with their equipment. If they gripe that your router/modem is "too old", you might have to bite the bullet and rent one from them for a few months to take away their out and make them diagnose your issue.

For a number of years, I had unreliable Internet, and I just ended up renting my modem/router from Spectrum. It didn't solve the problems, but at least it took away the "It's your router" excuse and they had to send a tech out to verify that my Internet was down or not functioning properly. The primary issue I had was that the signal power levels at the modem were constantly going out of spec for one or more channels. Strangely, I could get good speedtest results from Spectrum's servers even with power levels out of spec, but not from external servers. That said, for the last year, things have improved significantly.

 

[khardbored]

"I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud Internet connection to a 1.5 megabit fiber optic T1 line"

 

[CYdTracked]

I must live in the right neighborhoods because my Century Link at both houses I've owned in the metro has been very reliable. Hardly ever have an outage or slow speeds over the years and used to have all kinds of problems when I had Mediacom so have never tried switching back to them because of that expirence.

I see people complaining all the time on the Grimes Community Facebook page about both CL and Mediacom internet and common theme seems to be which part of town you live in seems to have more issues than others.