RR speed vs. FIOS

[hurnik]

I had (still do, but can only plug one thing into my router at a time) Fios 10/2 service.

dslreports speed is significantly faster (not counting the upload) than RR TURBO.

Yes, RR Turbo (20/1) only gets the 20 down if you test to Albany's RR servers. If you try to go anywhere else it's not as fast as the FIOS service.

So if you're thinking of switching, just take the regular RR service because, IMO, the $40/month for 20/1 is not going to get you anywhere near FIOS 10/2 speed.

Again, not counting upload.

I guess the RR fine print is that you only get 20/1 to local Albany server and anything outside there is crud.

(taking twice as long to download files from Creative Labs' site than it did with FIOS).

[adam]

This might just be a difference of where we tested speeds but like I said in a previous post, I have RR Turbo and with the modem connected directly into my ethernet port on speedtest.net using the default server which is Manchester, NH, i have a ping of 12ms and 20 down and 0.97 up. If you are using wireless it can slow it down. So in my personal experience the speed lives up to the 20/1 claim.

Edit: Here is some proof, a test I just completed.

[Chris Miller]

I upload photos to an online site and that's why I switched to Fios. At the time I had the 5 Mbs/768 Kbs rate and it was taking forever and a day to upload the images. I now have the Fios 20/5 plan and with half a dozen devices connected to an old Linksys router, I get that rate pretty much all all the time. At this point, I think the limiting factor is my router.

The 50Mbs/5Mbs plan that TWC will start offering in a few months looks interesting, but the rumored $99 monthly rate would be double what I'm paying for Fios. I was able to get the 20/5 rate at the 10/2 rate by adding Fios to my existing Verizon land line plan. I would have to see an upstream rate faster than 5Mbs before I would seriously consider paying that money.

If TWC offers a RoadRunner plan with 5Mb/s upstream under $75 a month, I would consider it. I haven't had any problems with Fios, but TWC technical support is much better than Verizon's support.

[hurnik]

Well, I'm not so sure I consider speedtest.net a very accurate result. The test took less than 2 seconds for them to calculate the speed, which seems to be based upon ping response time.

dslreports uses a much (IMO) more accurate and real-world test by downloading several file sizes to calculate the downloads.

All I know is that the ISO files, etc. that I download from MS, Novell, OpenSuse are taking almost 2x longer with RR Turbo than they did with FIOS (gigabit LAN, not wireless).

dslreports test shows about half the speed as well. (FIOS was getting about 5mbps down and I'm lucky if I get over 2mbps down with RR).

[Chris Miller]

Which test did you run on the DSLReports site? I ran the Java based one as they document it to be more accurate for faster connections. The results were pretty much the same as the ones that I got from speedtest.net



I did tweak the network controllers to offload the TCP processing from the CPU. I did that after I repaved my Vista box with Windows 7. Not all motherboards support that feature, but mine does. I gained about a 7% increases in download speed with that tweak. I blogged about how to do that in this post.

Another thing that will affect your bandwidth is the router and firmware on the router. I have an old Linksys WRT56GS and I replaced the Linksys firmware with DD-WRT. I went from 14 Mb/s to 20.5 Mb/s for the download speed just by upgrading to a newer release of DD-WRT. In all likelyhood, the stock firmware would probably be a bit faster, but I like the extra functionality that I get of D-WRT.

[hurnik]

Thanks for the info. I'm getting nowhere near those speeds you posted with teh java test (although speakeasy seems to report the fastest). I mistakenly let the RR "install" software supposedly tweak the IP settings (I have XP, not Vista or Windows 7). I'll check your post. Of course, to further complicate matters, at the same time I switched to RR, I built myself a new PC, so it's got everything installed from scratch. I do know that Vista and Windows 7 have better/faster IP stack vs. XP (without tweaking). I'll check out your post. Although my guess is that FIOS would probably be faster with sustained large transfers because I don't think as many people in our area use it vs. RR with it's shared networking. either that or possibly my cable line is crud.

[hurnik]

Nov 22, 2009 9:58:59 GMT -5 Chris Miller said:

I upload photos to an online site and that's why I switched to Fios. At the time I had the 5 Mbs/768 Kbs rate and it was taking forever and a day to upload the images. I now have the Fios 20/5 plan and with half a dozen devices connected to an old Linksys router, I get that rate pretty much all all the time. At this point, I think the limiting factor is my router.

The 50Mbs/5Mbs plan that TWC will start offering in a few months looks interesting, but the rumored $99 monthly rate would be double what I'm paying for Fios. I was able to get the 20/5 rate at the 10/2 rate by adding Fios to my existing Verizon land line plan. I would have to see an upstream rate faster than 5Mbs before I would seriously consider paying that money.

If TWC offers a RoadRunner plan with 5Mb/s upstream under $75 a month, I would consider it. I haven't had any problems with Fios, but TWC technical support is much better than Verizon's support.

Chris, you mentioned you had the Verizon phone service?

So I called today to cancel the FIOS Internet and the lady asked why, I told her, and she was like, "who told you they wouldn't price match". So I told her and she put me on hold for a while. She came back and said that if it's just internet package they cannot do anything.

but if I added their phone service (but they didn't state which--landline "freedom essentials" or VOIP (digital voice--I think it used to be VoiceWing?)), I could get the 20/5 package WITH unlimited phone for $59.99/month. So right now I've got Vonage at $18.99/month (plus taxes and fees brings it to $22/month) for 500 minutes, and RR "turbo" (where I never see anywhere close to 20 MB) at $40.

But I don't think the lady knew what type of phone service (I said Voice over IP and she said "yes") but then she indicated that they'd need to make a service call to run another line if I did that, so that would tell me it's not VOIP, but rather their landline that runs another line to the ONT or something.

??

[Chris Miller]

I have the Fios and the land line service for $59.99 a month. I called them yesterday to see if they would switch me from PPPoE to DHCP, but apparently that's not possible. I've had my issues with TWC support, but they are 10x better than Verizon.

First the CSR told me that they would have to schedule a service call to change my Fios connection and to swap out the router. I asked her to check with a supervisor, because changing the connection to DHCP would not require a service call. After a minute on hold she came back and said that the upstream connection only supported PPPoE.

Since it was obvious that I wasn't going to get anything useful from the CSR, I decided to see what was new in the Fios world. For my own amusement, I asked if VZW will be matching RR's 50/5 plan that is coming next month as part of their DOSCIS3.0 rollout.

They didn't have a 50/5 plan, but I could upgrade from 20/5 to 20/15 for an additional $20 a month. A 15 Mb/s upload speed would be very nice, but I can't justify the additional $240 a year. Plus I would have to lock in the plan for 12 months.

It looks like the RR 50/5 plan would be $99 a month. I have no idea what the current RR rates are, but they are going to have to do a lot better than that if they want me to switch back from Fios.

[hurnik]

Thanks Chris, so it must be landline they're sending over. How odd that they'd still use that instead of VOIP.

That's strange that they have you on PPPoE because when I had the FIOS (technically I still do), the router uses DHCP. In fact, I got rid of their router years ago and used a linksys instead and switched to a NetGear last year.

However, what I did find is that with FIOS I had to plug their line into a 10/100 switch because none of the routers I used could handle the possible 15/20/whatever downstream and assumed you had a 10MB connection. But it was one of those old actiontec reouters. Maybe they'll get me a new one (haha). We'll see.

[Chris Miller]

I got Fios when it first hit Slingerlands, when they were still giving out D-link routers and only had PPPoE. I never used their router, I have an old Linksys router with 3rd party firmware and I didn't see any point in using a d-link router with some VZW tweaked firmware.

I'm getting ready to retire the Linksys for a faster router and I just figured it would be easier to get the new router up and running if I could use DHCP. Which apparently is not possible.

[hurnik]

My NetGear WNR2000-NAS has DHCP or PPoE support so I would think it would with FIOS if they're using PPoE