How Badly is this ISP owning me?

Let me start off by saying that I spent some time reading around the forums and there is some really great information provided by informed posters, so I decided to make an account and throw this question out here.

I have a basic knowledge of how the internet works and such but am sure most people on here could shed some light on this situation I am in. Its kind of a long post but would appreciate any responses.

So basically I moved into this new residential complex with everything included, internet power water etc... (i am in college)

I was told the internet provider would be Cox and we would have "high speed" internet.

I nearly crapped my pants when I read that our high speed internet was provided by a company called shentel. Our high speed internet was capped at 1.5 mbps and we could upgrade to 5 mbps for like 20 dollars more a month (lol?).

The internet has been hovering at about 80 kbs down 90 kbs up... of course I went to the office and complained.

I got an email in response after sending them a really nasty email about the bad service and it gave me some horrifying details.

For a complex of 700 residents, shentel is providing a single 10 mbps line.

Yes thats right, just a 10 mbps line for 700 college students. They were "working" on upgrading it to 20mbps after talking to the complex's lawyers for about a month. (what was shentel thinking in the first place using just one 10mbps line?)

This 20mbps upgrade went through and of course nothing changed, its still horrible.

I was wondering if anyone knew a speed I could quote to the office as to what bandwidth the complex would be getting from a real internet provider.

I know for a complex 1/3 the size we had a T3 line from cox and the internet was pretty solid.

A tracert to the DNS server of shentel provides these little goodies (xbox live is out of the question)

Tracing route to ns1.broadbandsupport.net [209.55.5.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 144 ms 100 ms 53 ms 10.10.128.1
3 63 ms 58 ms 111 ms 64.238.167.121
4 75 ms 87 ms 337 ms 64.238.167.125
5 95 ms 77 ms 138 ms 64.238.167.225
6 167 ms 264 ms 269 ms 64.238.167.233
7 120 ms 155 ms 181 ms gru-shentel-gw.customer.gru.net [209.251.128.245
]
8 82 ms 31 ms 328 ms co2.gig.gru.net [209.251.148.2]
9 85 ms 225 ms 142 ms atl.gig.gru.net [209.251.148.9]
10 * * 310 ms gi1-17.mpd01.atl04.atlas.cogentco.com [38.104.0.
97]
11 806 ms 658 ms 572 ms te3-4.ccr01.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.1
13]
12 94 ms 128 ms 237 ms te9-4.mpd01.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.24.
9]
13 185 ms 187 ms 101 ms vl3492.mpd01.dca02.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.8
6]
14 51 ms 102 ms 60 ms vl3495.mpd01.iad01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.5.
62]
15 144 ms 95 ms 80 ms ber1-ge-7-43.virginiaequinix.savvis.net [208.173
.10.181]
16 207 ms 136 ms 111 ms cr1-tengig0-7-2-0.washington.savvis.net [204.70.
197.242]
17 169 ms 46 ms 51 ms cr1-pos-0-0-0-0.Atlanta.savvis.net [204.70.192.5
3]
18 263 ms 216 ms 127 ms 204.70.197.157
19 333 ms 144 ms 98 ms 165.193.46.244
20 283 ms 75 ms 267 ms 165.193.46.229
21 326 ms 116 ms 134 ms ns1.broadbandsupport.net [209.55.5.10]

Trace complete.

Now I am no expert but this is un****ingbelieveably bad. It appears that this VA based company is hosting their DNS server in VA when the complex is in florida??

Someone please provide me with some hope, I am having CoD4 withdrawls and have nothing better to do than to campaign for the office to get rid of this ****ty ISP. Thanks in advance.

So what do you want us to tell you? (serious question )

Oh sorry, upon rereading I did notice that my question was kind of buried in there.

What kind of bandwidth would support 700 college students? 20 mbps is not even close to cutting it!

Also, are these latency figures due to the low bandwidth in the complex or are they problems along the route to the DNS server that will not go away regardless of bandwidth provided to the complex?

Has anyone ever heard of this company shentel? Or maybe NTC ? If so are they known for horrible internet service?

The problem is to many people on one connectiuon - simple,

they likely have

Bad switched
bad routers -hence the high MS on the 2nd line..

you cant do much but complain, and either

1. Get them to use QoS on things like web browsing
2. filter downloads on P2p to throttle it..

You downloading wont help..

the solution is simple - better connection and speed limits per person and QoS to assure HTTP and stuff doesnt have issues and or, stop certain downloads / add limits.


700 College students, considering 1 can suck up a 20mb line on their own,, an OC3 maybe ? but i doubt they would pay for that.... Since college is providing this, they really dont need to add speed - if you can use the internet to get school work done - they are doing their job NOW, if you cant do any school work related stuff, that is an issue.

Remember, this is provided to you, not for downloading "crap" on, but for school use..

I appreciate the responses!

Let me clarify, I wrote the post quickly and carelessly so I can see where the confusion is coming from.

I am paying 550 dollars a month rent for a 4/4 apartment.

This is not provided by my college, this is off campus.

I would gladly pay 60 dollars for Cox to come in and provide service but they contractually are not able to.

I think I have the right to download whatever I want at my private residence, as I am sure you would agree

Also each of the 200 ~ units are capped at 1.5mbps each.

I can almost guarantee that 95% of that traffic is P2P. If done properly, Shentel can introduce bandwidth caps on certain services (such as P2P), and also discover what is really going on with the traffic. Another nasty problem would be a PC that is infected with a trojan or virus that spams other people. When your system pumps out millions of 1-2kb messages that will definitely suck on the bandwidth pipe.

Just as an FYI, I know colleges with thousands of students on a single T3 (48 Mbps). The best way to manage the situation is to have the provider set up a firewall for the entire complex, and filter out junk upstream of the residents.

in the rent i assume they said they provide internet, and if they are blocking your getitng your own service, and providing you crap... i would maybe talk to someone at Cox and ask why...

Who is providing the internet, cause if it is Cox they may not care, but if you are paying your own rent in your own place.. maybe start a petition of people around, see if you can find any lawyers to find any laws on this and protest about the crap.. if i was paying rent and was told "sorry, cant get your own internet, got to use the cgarbage we provide" i would be ****ed!

denton420 said:

I appreciate the responses!

Let me clarify, I wrote the post quickly and carelessly so I can see where the confusion is coming from.

I am paying 550 dollars a month rent for a 4/4 apartment.

This is not provided by my college, this is off campus.

I would gladly pay 60 dollars for Cox to come in and provide service but they contractually are not able to.

I think I have the right to download whatever I want at my private residence, as I am sure you would agree

Also each of the 200 ~ units are capped at 1.5mbps each.

Click to expand...

you pay 550 a mont for a 4 bed 4 bath??? 550 for your room or solo?

I have bad news for you.

Your BEST bet is to sue for release from contract.

Forget throttling the P2P stuff. That's a crutch and it never works anyway. Oh, you can do the throttling, the QoS and whatever else that you want to do, but the issue is customer service. It wont fix the PROBLEM which is not a bandwidth issue, it's a customer service issue. This customer service issue was CAUSED by low bandwidth, but the REAL fix is something that your local ISP doesn't want to do.

Honestly, what you need is HSDIA over Ethernet. An 80/100 link (80meg burstable to 100) will run you around 10k/month.

Think those nippleheads at shendumb are going to spring for that?


Bottom line is that your ACTUAL network usage may actually exceed that level, and not for P2P reasons either. (Although it doesn't help)

You're going to have a LOT of streaming audio and video, plus with 700 college students; you can bet your bottom dollar that at least 70 of them will have computers that are owned by a botnet like Kraken or Storm.

Try having the lawyers demand an OC-3 link to provide a 1,050meg connection or ask for release. (700 units multiplied by 1.5megs)


It's a silly demand, and you don't need a gig link, but lawyers & judges aren't aware of that. You could stand there with a straight face and claim that all you want is the minimum that they should be providing.

Oh and, make sure you ask that it be an MPLS circuit, which is the standard these days for the SMB market.

Check your lease and see if it says anything about the connection in there. If it says ' anything along the lines of Cox providing it.... well they arent holding up their end of the lease now are they. If anything is guaranteed in the lease and you arent getting it is breach of contract.

You have to also remember that with these "converged" services, the property managers will only pay so much for bandwidth. I lived at a property where the internet was perfect. The next year, I lived in a different property and it sucked because the property manager would not shell out the cash for much needed bandwidth. Just my two cents

Yup, the owners want to save money and dont know jack about internet either.. so they get the cheapest they can get.

So what happens if you pay the $20 a month to upgrade to 5 meg service? Do they put you on your own line? Sounds like a good deal to me if that's the case.

I bet the building has two lines...the slow line that the OP is currently on that is shared by all of the standard users, and a second faster (or not as slow) line that is shared by all of the upgraded users.

Which will eventually get slow too once more people upgrade

IntelLoyalist said:

Forget throttling the P2P stuff. That's a crutch and it never works anyway. Oh, you can do the throttling, the QoS and whatever else that you want to do, but the issue is customer service. It wont fix the PROBLEM which is not a bandwidth issue, it's a customer service issue. This customer service issue was CAUSED by low bandwidth, but the REAL fix is something that your local ISP doesn't want to do.

Click to expand...

It may be a crutch, but if the correct hardware is put upstream you can prioritize certain traffic over others. Not to mention if this is an apartment/school provided service they can include in the lease what internet traffic is acceptable and what is not. What does the lease say concerning the connectivity?

Honestly, what you need is HSDIA over Ethernet. An 80/100 link (80meg burstable to 100) will run you around 10k/month.

Think those nippleheads at shendumb are going to spring for that?

Click to expand...

That's just ridiculous. You're not even factoring the buildout costs which would be in the tens of thousands of dollars. I'm not going to say it couldn't be utilized, but there are far better (and cheaper) ways for the ISP to manage this. You're also forgetting Metro Ethernet, which runs on fiber and can be scaled to as little as 5 mb to 100 mb for a fraction of the cost.

Bottom line is that your ACTUAL network usage may actually exceed that level, and not for P2P reasons either. (Although it doesn't help)

You're going to have a LOT of streaming audio and video, plus with 700 college students; you can bet your bottom dollar that at least 70 of them will have computers that are owned by a botnet like Kraken or Storm.

Click to expand...

Which is exactly the reason why the upstream provider needs an intelligent firewall in place. Many vendors have the ability to run anti-virus, prevent high connection limits (as in P2P), and even inspect the traffic as it flows to knock out exploits and such.

Try having the lawyers demand an OC-3 link to provide a 1,050meg connection or ask for release. (700 units multiplied by 1.5megs)

It's a silly demand, and you don't need a gig link, but lawyers & judges aren't aware of that. You could stand there with a straight face and claim that all you want is the minimum that they should be providing.

Click to expand...

So in other words, cheat the apartment complex and force them to drastically raise up everyone's rent to compensate for installing a faster internet connection?

Oh and, make sure you ask that it be an MPLS circuit, which is the standard these days for the SMB market.

Click to expand...

Do you even know what MPLS is? It is used to connect company sites in a virtual cloud - similar to what frame-relay does. It has nothing to do with DIA.

Adragontattoo said:

you pay 550 a mont for a 4 bed 4 bath??? 550 for your room or solo?

Click to expand...

For my room, so 4 x 550 is rent.

The ISP would not allow you to upgrade to 5mb because of the slow speeds that they were providing. Basically, you could upgrade to 5mb, but you couldnt because they knew they were providing a **** line.

Once the lawyers for the complex stepped in and demanded that they do speed tests of the network they agreed to double the connection to 20mbs.

The 5mb deal is just to raise the cap from 1.5mb to 5mb, same line.

The lease it self said very little about the internet. Almost next to nothing!

It just assured us that we would have "high speed" internet included in the rent.

Looks like I am screwed. However they did turn on the 20mb line today and it is going faster. That is, until people realize they can actually watch youtube videos and stream tv shows online.

That show slow it back down to a crawl in no time...

You would think cox would want to sell individual lines to the apartment building to make more profit? Unless if they are paying a lot for the single connection they are providing.

if it doesn't say crap about you not being allowed to get your own line - i would be talking to some lawyers about that crap, they cant tell you:

"NO you can't have internet simply because we already have a line here and we are forcing you to use it, which is likely included in your rent MUAHAHHAHHA"

i would seriously start talking to other people around the complex, get a little team going to voice your thoughts on this BS.

Actually they can. The building owner probably doesn't want a hundred different lines coming into the building.....and I can't blame them. As far as they're concerned, what you have is significantly higher speed than dialup, therefore it qualifies as "high-speed" internet.

Post a speedtest.net screenshot, I'm curious.

With all due respect, you signed a contract..... you could easily have inquired from other tenants the true speed of this "high-speed" connection prior to signing the contract, and moving in.

I see nothing that suggests any breach of contract. You say they can upgrade you, yet without trying the 5Mb upgrade you assume it's utter crap and will not be any faster. Perhaps better to try that option, then ***** about it then.