Take that, Cox!!

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Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Take that, Cox!!

Post by Adam »

Streaming update: all the services work.

I was a little worried, my first YouTube video via the Roku was at 480p-ish (no exact way to measure this). The second and all subsequent ones have been 1080p. Need to try some 4K.
Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Take that, Cox!!

Post by Adam »

4K YouTube through a browser works. YouTube on the Roku can't decide if it wants to run at 720p or 1080p. Not sure where the problem is as it seems to work correctly on my laptop. Netflix/Hulu/Amazon is consistent at 1080p.

Speedtest.net sometimes fails to load through a browser. So far it's worked every time via the app on my phone. Not the end of the world.

Overall, its looking bad for Cox. I'm going to run both ISPs at least through next week so I can fully evaluate it.
Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Take that, Cox!!

Post by Adam »

Fun fact: Cox recently re-branded my service as 'Preferred 150' and states it has 'up to' 150Mbps of 'speed'. I've never seen a speedtest or a download come close. I've recently pulled downloads from Steam in the low 80 Mbps, but that's not 150Mbps.

Maybe they're planning on a speed update for the area? This happened a few years ago, our '60 Mbps' connection started pulling 80 Mbps, then they announced they increased the speeds....and raised the price.

As everything with T-Mobile is performing fine, and my invoice cut-off date is this coming week, I'm going to call them Monday to cancel. What's the over/under on how long that phone call takes me? I'm going with 45 minutes. I may cheat and say I'm moving to somewhere they don't offer service in. That fact that I'm even considering that is a good testament to everything that's wrong with Cable providers.
Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Take that, Cox!!

Post by Adam »

Cancelled Cox. Surprisingly painless, although I told them I was moving to a non-Cox area....
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Take that, Cox!!

Post by kevm14 »

Might be time to switch to Cox so I can switch back to FIOS to get the good rates.

I currently pay about $58/mo all in for 50 up and 50 down. This started as $39.99 then was $54.99 I think and finally settled permanently at $58. I have started to outgrow the 50/50. Mainly due to synchronizing my 1TB Onedrive.

Verizon current new customer offers:

200/200 for $39.99 and a Discovery+ subscription I'd have to cancel within 3 months. I am not sure this price ever goes up. Can't find any details. Even if it did this seems like a no brainer upgrade.

400/400 for $59.99 and same deal with Discovery+ except 6 months instead of 3. Again, not clear if price ever goes up.

Gigabit up/down (940/880) for $79.99. Same deal as above but 12 months for Discovery+.

Will compare to Cox next. These sound great to me.

Cox

150 down, 10 up, $44.99 for 2 years (no contract), or
500 down, question mark up (but possibly 30), $54.99 for 2 years (no contract)

So these are both cheaper than what I am paying now and have 3-10x better download speeds. Uploads, however, I guarantee are worse. Technically the plan is to switch to Cox, be lazy for a bit, and then switch back to FIOS...but I use my 50 Mbps (actually usually closer to 60 sustained) upload pipe all the time so going down is terrible, especially down to 10. So....the 500 plan? For a couple bucks less? Eh.

Cox is also capped to 1.25TB/mo, though apparently additional data (and unlimited) may be available. That print was so fine that Bing told me this but when I click through I can't find it anywhere.

Here's some: https://www.cox.com/aboutus/policies/in ... res_vanity

Looks like they haven't updated for the 500 Mbps plan. So not sure if the 500 plan uplink is better than 30. Maybe it's 50? That would be something. Cable is just inherently sucky and FIOS was ahead of their time advertising symmetric down/up with the proliferation of cloud stuff. I saturate my uplink all the time. And when I shot that 25GB of video this weekend, I was simultaneously saturating my up AND down link to Onedrive. True story.
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Take that, Cox!!

Post by kevm14 »

Wireless getting flakey. I have one of those FIOS Gateway G1100 units. It needs to be rebooted periodically to get the wireless back. Wired connections are fine. So it's not the actual internet connection.

Ordered this router. Definitely a few rungs up from a low end one and price is good.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NF ... UTF8&psc=1

The plan is to demote my G1100 to just interfacing with my ONT via coax (disable the wireless) and use the new unit for wireless.

But really I still want to switch to Cox so I can switch back to Verizon....
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Take that, Cox!!

Post by kevm14 »

Update.

I did the Verizon 300/300 upgrade a while back and did demote my G1100 to just wired duties. However I have decided that my single TP-link AC1900 (placed in the basement) is not providing me sufficient range in all the places. I moved it to the second floor from where it was in the basement and did a wireless survey with my laptop (which seems to have better reception than my phone due to physics) and I can report that at least inside the main house + basement, speeds are acceptable.

In short, the download speeds in the main house + basement ranged from 223 to 309 Mbps across the 12 test locations. Uplink in those same locations ranged from 100-280 which admittedly is a wider variation.

However, when I moved to the garage, and outside, things got pretty bad.

Across the 1 garage + 6 outside test locations, download speeds ranged from 18-55. Uplink ranged from 18-66. I should caveat that it is considerably worse on my phone so I should redo the test with my phone.

I did a lot of research and while I was tempted to move to a 3 node mesh setup (Wifi 6 or 6E), I got scared. Actually, I realized that my TP-link AC1900 actually supports TP-link's OneMesh which means I can use TP-link OneMesh extenders and rather than having a dumb wireless repeater (which they also support), I can have a mesh-like single SSID network, but with extended range. That's what I want. So I ordered two TP-link RE550 (AC1900) extenders @ $60 each.

I know I don't need 300/300 in these locations. However, like I said, my phone is worse. In fact I did some quick testing yesterday and near the mailbox with vegetation blocking line of sight to even my upstairs router location, I got well under 1Mbps down. I just need that to be better and I am hoping an extender in my great room will bump up signal strength to the driveway area side of my house. I am also hoping that the second extender placed on the opposite side wall will help with the yard side of my house.

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Extender ... 116&sr=8-1

However, there is a problem.

I have this router:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NF ... UTF8&psc=1

Yep, AC1900. But wait, it's an Archer A9.

Looking through the marketing materials, it turns out the A9 (older hardware) version of the AC1900 does NOT support OneMesh. Dang it!

So I decided to double down on this older setup and ordered the Archer A8 version of the AC1900:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08C3 ... UTF8&psc=1

It's only $60 and does support OneMesh. So for $180, I'll have the thing I want, maybe?

Problem is for $180 I probably could get into a 3 node Wifi 6 mesh setup, so it's unclear if this is the best use of resources. Meh. At this point I will just configure all the things and see where I am at wrt functionality (and reliability) and if there is a show stopper, I will simply return everything and re-group (and maybe consider a mesh system).
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