@home uploads

[supraway]

Ok, here at school, I am directly connected to a OC-48 by 10baseT connection. FAST. At home, I'm connected to the internet by @home's service (down right now). Does anyone know if upload speeds are going to change with the transition from Excite@home to AT&T's own network? I sure hope so.

Also, does anyone know how to limit upload bandwidth from inside Windows? Or any 3rd party software to do so?

[supraway]

OMG nobody is using AT&T Broadband (formerly known as AT&T@home??? :)) Nobody???

Is there no way to limit uploads using software or something?? At school, I can't upload more than like 1 gig a day, my uploads can go as high as 800KB/sec... and Direct Connect doesn't have a way to limit itself... Any way at all?

[Fink]

Yes - your upload/download speeds will change.... I went from 2 Mbps download to 0.5 Mbps and upload went from 0.5 Mbps to less than 76 KBps.

AT&T reports that they throttle your upload/download to 1.5 Mbps and 128 kbps respectively. Sorry man, the good old days are gone. (see att 'welcome' page (http://newuser.attbi.com/attbi_welcome_page.html) for the messed up truth)

My old work had direct, fiberoptic connection to the internet backbone (it ran through the school); the quintesential fatpipe. There was No limit to upload/downloads! Ahhh, the memories, 600 Mb's in 10 minutes........

[flounder43]

My att@home was totally unaffected.

My dload is somewhere around 1.5Mbps, and upload is .300Mbs or so. Super fast.

[Fightingpiper]

hey fink and superway.
You may wanna try this "@ Home" tweak http://www.speedguide.net/Cable_modems/cable_patches.shtml
Ya gotta scroll down a bit to find the @ home patch. It more than doubled my download speeds from ~0.7 to 1.5Mbps.

[Fink]

did the tweak ages ago. I am a bit out in the boonies and the quality of my cable connection is not great...

[FRANK]

Having just gone through the transition due to the AT&T debacle, I have seen my download speed virtually cut in half. Previously my speed ranged between 1.5 to 3Mbps, now I'm at 800Kbs to 1.5Mbs. More irritating to me is that my connection has picked up a nasty habit of hanging on pages at times, requiring a refresh to get it going again.

I haven't checked my uploads since the change over, previously I was consistently at 128Kbs, it feels about the same now.

I'm not complaining about the reduction in bandwidth, as stated in one of the above posts, up to 1.5Mbs is what it is advertised to be. So I'm getting what I'm paying for, a bit disappointed , but not complaining, especially after spending a week on dial up at 49K.

Time for a little rant;

Although easy to applaud AT&T for the speed in which they were able to make this massive change over to their new network, I can't forget about the unnecessary inconvenience that I, as well as the rest of the 850,000 affected subscribers, had to endure do to poor customer relations and service from AT&T.

From what I've come to understand, there were options that could have been taken that would have provided a smoother transition for the customers. Such solutions were implemented by the other cable companies involved, resulting in no interruption of their customers' service. AT&T's "spin doctors" responded with statements that would lead the less informed to believe that the shut down was as directed by the court decision. However the court order only opened the door for Excite@HOME to renegotiate the contracts with the individual ISPs. AT&T instead decided to pull the plug on 850,000 of their @HOME customers. Their statements were riddled with phrases such as "beyond our control" and "due to the court decision" when in fact it was AT&Ts decision to suspend the service to almost one million subscribers.

When I subscribed to this service, I was promised that they would provide me with a "fast, reliable, uninterrupted, always on" connection, I in turn promised that I would send them approximately $40.00 per month. I did what I agreed to, they didn't.

Many people use other services provided by this company, for instance I use their cable TV service, local phone service, long distance phone service as well as my cell phone service, with the emphasis on "service", which they have shown to me comes second to maximizing their profits. Although not much in the whole scheme of things, the couple of hundred dollars per month that they have been able to get from me to this point, is now available to any company that will provide me with the service that I signed on the dotted line for.

End of rant.

All in all, this is still the best connection that I can find in this price range. I'm going to keep comparing what the competition has to offer, when I feel that my money would be better spent elsewhere, that's what I'll do. No longer will AT&Ts service be the deciding factor. I stand corrected, I should say that their lack of service will be the deciding factor.

[Kingslayer]

Frank,

I wholeheartedly feel your pain. I was just about to make the jump from DSL to cable so I can have a static IP (read web, ft, game server). I have a buddy that runs the local routers for the cable internet service, and he is going to place me on a special router. I would get the full up and down speed of the cable without the local ISP's throttling. I was excited.

Then Excite decided to go belly up....

This left me wondering if cable is a good alternative anymore. The local cable TV company took it over from Excite. But can they handle it. Sure everything is fine now, but can they handle the expense of cable internet. Will they shut it off for good in 6 months, a year....who knows. They will tell you that everything is all fine and good, and are willing to provide me with service saying that I have to sign with them for a year. But they refuse to sign my simple agreement saying that if they are forced to go bankrupt, or stop service for a lenghty time period, they will pay for me to go back to DSL. Funny how that works. I'm not allowed to protect my investment, but they can ***** money from me at will.

These broadband companies are going out of business for one simple reason. They don't own the infastructure. The local TV and phone companies do. If you pay your ISP $40, two-thirds of that is going right back to the cable and phone company for the ISP to rent the pipe. This is forcing them out of business. Now you would think that the local TV companies taking over broadband is all fine and good and would work better because they already own the pipe. But now they have to pay for servers, and people, and maintenance to pick up the ISP's end that the ISP used to handle. No one knows if they can handle that yet. So no one really knows if the service once provided by Excite@Home will even be around in 6 months or a year.

I dont like poor service any more than you do. But service will always be 2nd to making money for a company. Any company that puts service before making money will go out of business. Making money is the whole point of starting a business. Be grateful that service is 2nd on their list. There are companies out there that place it way lower....

[supraway]

Ok, I went home over the weekend and I will share my experience with the new AT&T broadband :).

First, I noticed that I don't to use my c203445-a or similar login, which makes it to add a Linux computer or router as there is no special setup. Also, you can basically plug any computer into the cable modem via ethernet and you have access.

Second, I noticed that some websites were either taking a very long time or were not loading at all. Many of the pictures on websites weren't loading, and I was having general connection issues.

Third, I noticed that I was occasionally not able to browse internet sites, such as a DNS server was freaking out. I could keep whatever open connection I had, but couldn't open new connections. I would then have to release my IP configuration, which would kill all transfers, then renew the configuration. Also note that this is DHCP.

Fourth, I noticed that as soon as I would get 5 or more open connections in whatever file sharing utility I was using, any other file sharing program would freeze all transfers, and transfers would have to be restarted.

I haven't tried games yet, and I'm scared to do so. I go back home on Thursday, so I'll post then about how good (probably bad) everything is going.