My personal account: Earthlink DSL vs. @Home cable

[Funky_K]

I have been an @Home subscriber for 2 years. For the first year, my connection rocked!! Then the upload cap came. I still couldn't complain much though. At 128kbps, my online gaming pings didn't suffer. I just wasn't able to distribute files through my FTP as efficiently... and I could live with that.

For the past 2 months, however, my online gaming pings have become unacceptable. I cannot get a ping under 600 on any game I play. Even so, my download and upload speeds aren't affected. After several hours of tech support, forum research, and experimentation, I determined that the problem is caused by a worm virus in the @Home network in my area. They are trying to get a handle on it, but no solution is in sight.

With this knowledge, I decide to switch to DSL, after reading several reports about DSL being a good alternative in the Midwest. I signed up with Earthlink 1500/384. The salesman guaranteed me that if I was not satisfied with my connection, I could cancel within the first week and not be charged the $150 cancellation fee.

I activated my new DSL account yesterday, and have been testing my bandwidth over the last 24 hours. After numerous tweaks, tests, and retests, the best I can achieve is 750/300!! Online game pings are 30% higher than what they WERE when the @Home connection was working fine (2 months ago), but still much better than the pings a have gotten recently.

I decided that the DSL connection was not worth the extra money (static IP) that I would have to pay, so I called to cancel today. "We don't have any record of that guarantee. You will have to pay the $150 cancellation fee." SCREW THAT!!! I got on the phone immediately with my credit card people and put a block on any Earthlink charges.

Now I am back to the @Home connection with terrible online pings, and again searching for a solution. The only thing I can hope for is that @Home will eventually track down the worm and fix the problem. If anyone has any fresh ideas I would love to hear them.

I just got a cable modem from eBay for $50 that will bring my monthly bill down $10. That takes a little bit of the bad taste out of my mouth for now... but I am still not satisfied.

Any suggestions???

[MadDoctor]

Earthlink. Ick. I dumped them a long time ago (bad in my part of the world). Can you post your analyzer results? That would be a good starting point.

Welcome to SG.

[legalmind]

Tell Earthlink to give you free service for the $300.00 they ripped off my CC card about 3 years a go!

[Funky_K]

MadDoctor... Here are my analyzer results:

TCP options string = 020405b40103030201010402

MTU = 1500
MTU is fully optimized for broadband.

MSS = 1460
Maximum useful data in each packet = 1460, which is equal to MSS.

Default Receive Window (RWIN) = 256960
RWIN Scaling (RFC1323) = 2 bits
Unscaled Receive Window = 64240
RWIN is a multiple of MSS
Other values for RWIN that might work well with your current MTU/MSS:
513920 (MSS x 44 * scale factor of 8)
128480 (MSS x 44 * scale factor of 2)
64240 (MSS x 44)

bandwidth * delay product:
Your RcvWindow limits you to: 10278.4 kbps (1284.8 KBytes/s) @ 200ms
Your RcvWindow limits you to: 4111.36 kbps (513.92 KBytes/s) @ 500ms

MTU Discovery (RFC1191) = ON

Time to live left = 53 hops
TTL value is ok.

Timestamps (RFC1323) = OFF

Selective Acknowledgements (RFC2018) = ON

IP type of service field (RFC1349)= 00000000

[Bret]

Ya know, I find this very strange. I have Earthlink DSL, I live about 40 miles west of Chicago, and I have nothing but good things to say about my DSL. I have low ping times, my download speed is approx. 161KB/sec steady, in the 6 months I have used it, it has never gone down or slowed up. Yet, I hear alot of people talk about the poor quality of service they have received from Earthlink. Am I just an exception to the rule? I would like to think not.

Bret