Is "DSLAM congestion" a legitimate reason for slow DSL?
- by Jay Bazuzi
My DSL has been extremely slow in the evenings recently.
To test it, I telnet to my DSL Modem, and ping the gateway. This way I eliminate internet congestion and local network issues. In the mornings I get 30ms - 50ms pings. In the evenings, it bounces around a lot, but 10000ms pings are common.
I complained to Qwest support, and they said it was a known issue on their end, their engineers were working on it, and wouldn't say anything else.
A couple days later I complained again, and they sent out a technician. He tested my house wiring and found that one of them had a short. It was an unused line, so we disconnected it, and he said things looked better and left. My daytime speeds improved at this point, but evening is still bad.
I complained to Qwest support again, and they said it was a problem with DSLAM congestion at their end, and that they were working on it, but no ETA.
My neighbor has Qwest DSL and doesn't seem to have these problems. That seems strange. I go use her network when I absolutely must get online and mine is behaving badly.
I can't tell if they're yanking my chain or not. Regardless, these speeds are crap. I'm paying for 7Mpbs but am lucky if I get 1/10th that in the evenings. My kids like to watch Netflix streaming movies, and it's just impossible after 5pm or so.
Should I wait it out? Will complaining again produce any results? Should I change my subscription to a lower speed until they fix their end? Or switch to cable?
