Solved Sick of my internet issues

@Hazel123 If anyone can sympathize with you about internet misery, it would be me. I've dealt with it for years. The tale is long.

Even though I am only 3 miles outside the city limits, DSL has never been available and my options always limited. When I started out I had the 1 choice... slooow dialup.

A few years later, I had 2 choices...dialup or 2 Mbps satellite (which here satellite providers limit you to a certain amount of bandwidth for each month and you pay extra if you go over your limit) After paying a $395 connection fee, I was locked into a three year contract but I thought "hey anything is better than dialup, right? Wrong!)

When the weather permitted satellite to work, my speeds never topped out over 1 Mbps, usually less.. I went back and forth with the satellite company because service was unusable most of the time (Keep in mind this was before I ever had a router in my house. I had one PC) The company's argument was their speed was not guaranteed and I should have read the fine print in the contract.

Then we got a third option which was for wireless. When the ISP set up a tower 600 yards from my house. I said YAY! so I ditched the satellite having to pay for the year left on my contract, and yes the SOBs held me to it despite the problem being theirs. I happily paid the $395 connection fee to get wireless internet. At the time the wireless was a 5 Mbps plan but it was steady at 3 mbps most of the time. So I invested in my home network equipment and was able to use all the cat 6 cable we had run in the attic and never used.

I had retired so I opened a little PC repair business in my garage.Speeds weren't ideal for all that downloading but I made it work by working in the wee hours of the morning because speeds would increase then.

As time passed service remained steady but my speed kept getting slower and slower, usually around 1 Mbps. The ISP said it was because so many people in my area was using their service and their bandwidth was shared among everyone. They were unprepared for the demand and would have to upgrade their equipment to resolve it and had no plans to do so. Speed kept decreasing until it was at .5 Mbps which is dialup speed. I encountered the same scenario as you where they finally found they had piggybacked the fire department onto my access point and it had been that way all along.

Fast forward a couple of years and the ISP sold the company. The new owners upgraded their office control equipment but not the tower equipment. I got a speed increase to about 2.5 Mbps. (still not the 5 Mbps I was paying for) They still had no plans to upgrade the tower equipment. Then service began dropping ALL the time. The ISP determined it was due to my neighbor's trees blocking my signal so I paid $300 for them to set up an antenna pole so my radio could get over the trees. Back to 2.5 Mbps again.

Who REALLY solved all my internet problems was God. This last Nov. a tornado blew through here and knocked down the tower and devastated a big chunk of the community. Then the ISP had no excuses so had to put better equipment in the new tower. It took out all my neighbors trees, too, so I didn't need an antenna pole any more. It's a good thing because the tornado had sucked that sucker right out of the ground. I upgraded to their 25 Mbps plan but in nonpeak hours, like now, I actually get 50 Mbps. During peak hours when all the people around here are streaming it's usually around 15 Mbps. After many years of absolute misery, I can live with that. Seriously though, I'm glad to finally have decent internet, but I would never have wished such loss for my neighbors in order to get it. Luckily, no one was killed.

I can't relate to all the folks here who have access to fiber and fast speeds. I've never had it and never will. I'm sure you feel the same. It's 2023. This kind of infrastructure should be available to everyone. I can only say, I hope you and your son can get usable service with your new provider.

That is quite a story! I don’t think we will get a tornado here . However we did have Storm Arwen in 2021 which was pretty bad with no internet or even mobile signal for over a week (as well as no electricity!). Since then the mobile signal has never been anything like what it used to be. Used to be a strong 4 bars and up to 20mbps. Now it also drops out a lot. I think they just didn’t bother to invest but did basic repairs. Knowing 5G would mean work was to be done (at some point). The broadband also has not been what it was since then.

Yes we were ok with a stable 5mbps but no more.

Will be trying out the Starlink over the weekend hopefully. Testing to see if there’s a decent signal before investing in any rooftop poles.

Just to add - last engineer visit he said nothing wrong with the line and there was 8mbps at the point of connection indoors. Well maybe there was at that particular moment. I replaced the modem and it’s no different. So I do think it’s them cramping bandwidth. And I do think there are faults on the line. It was completely dead a few months ago - fixed apparently but never right since.

So fingers crossed for the Starlink.

Hazel123 said:

So where we live, maximum speeds are 8mbs. Yes I know it's rubbish. After having issues for a year or so (1mbps or less) an engineer said - you want to be on 10/40 instead of 20/80 at the connection box - speeds won't be faster but they'll be more stable. So switched to another provider, ensured it was 10/40 and had stable 5mps for a year - which was fine. A few months ago, internet kept cutting out completely. Had engineer out - he said line was ok, it's the box in the house. He changed it. Fine for about 2 weeks then the same issues again. Engineer came out tested everything and said - you're getting the full 8mbps to the box inside the house - it's your router.

Now I had a very good Router - to try and get the best out of the internet speeds - Asus RT-AX88U ans a Vigor modem. I was sure it wasn't the router. Engineer said - definitely the router.

After some testing it turned out to be the Vigor modem that was the issue. Updating firmware and rebooting fixed it temporarily. But it needed rebooting every few days.

So I was on the look out for a new modem. Don't know much about modems - and there doesn't seem much info or availability for "just" a modem. And Vigor seems the most popular. But articles said this Vigor is notorious for starting to fail within 6 months to a year. There is a newer model but it's not supposed to be as good.

So the options were - try and get hold of an older model new Vigor, or a much more expensive modem. Or spend the same amount on a new Asus router with built in modem. Which is what I ended up doing - and keep it simple.

So - I have just set up the new Asus - DSL- AX82U

And it's worse! Only 1.7mbps - takes 2 minutes to open a web page. At least if I rebooted the Vigor modem daily I got better than that!

I cannot see how the new router with built in modem can be worse than the failing/faulty vigor.

It's nothing to do with placement of the router - a laptop right in front of it gets the same speeds. Ethernet is only marginally better at 1.84 gbps

Any suggestions? Otherwise I'll be sending the Asus DSL-AX82U back and looking for a new modem - any recommendations for a modem? The amount we have spent on routers just to eke out a few mbps on this lousy connection. Moving location isn't an option unfortunately but we may get 5G in the next year.

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Sorry if you've already thought of this or others said it also but can you get sattelite internet? Its a lot faster then what you have for sure.

As for satellite service, the only issues I've seen clients have is sometimes weather can interfere, line of site can be an issue with trees, hills, etc. blocking, and MagicJack phone wouldn't work, kept disconnecting.

Berton said:

Don't know about your area but in the US someone wanting service such as electricity, telephone, TV, etc., that was not already near their property they had to pay to run the cable from the nearest junction or substation, gets expensive quickly. Then there's the franchise rules where cities limit who can provide service, example for us is one electric company but another just 5 miles away can't compete in the same franchise area. If we wanted the second company we'd have to pay for the new poles, the line and right-away/easement to cross private property.

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Sounds like some regions in the southern U.S., where there are "prohibit competition" BS laws. And so there are only monopolies!

imanlien2020 said:

Sorry if you've already thought of this or others said it also but can you get sattelite internet? Its a lot faster then what you have for sure.

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Cheersl. Yes I sent for Starlink - courtesy of a tip on here - it will be tested out this next week (30 day trial).

Hazel123 said:

Cheersl. Yes I sent for Starlink - courtesy of a tip on here - it will be tested out this next week (30 day trial).

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RJARRRPCGP said:

Sounds like some regions in the southern U.S., where there are "prohibit competition" BS laws. And so there are only monopolies!

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Perzactly, but it not limited to the South. Many towns have franchise/licensing agreements in place which encouraged power/utility companies to invest in/build the infrastructure, anti-competition was/is part of that.

Whoopee. I have a fast internet connection. Just plonked the satellite dish in the garden for now, which is not the best place as there are some obstructions. If higher up there are zero obstructions so it'll need to go on the roof.

Anyway set up was easy. Temporary at the moment and a cable running through an open window. But speeds are ranging between 160mbps and 30mbps. Either of which I'm happy with.

Massive thanks to hsehestedt for the tip about Starlink! Ping is a bit higher than would like. About 50 to 60 at the moment.

Hazel123 said:

Massive thanks to hsehestedt for the tip about Starlink! Ping is a bit higher than would like. About 50 to 60 at the moment.

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Glad you got it working better hten youve had so far anyway. Yeah bad weather is the only downside sometimes but that doesnt happen or shouldnt happen to often. Enjoy.

Hope it keeps it up. Apparently it can take 12 hours to settle down so will reassess then. At the moment - wifi range isn't as good as the old Asus router - so 184mbps in one room and 30mbps in another. Also need to look into whether there's a possibility of a guest network. I had two guest networks set up with their own passwords. One for smart devices (don't trust them) and the other for visitors to connect to.

Apparently I can get an ethernet connector and connect another router to the Skylink router, to extend the wifi and use the guest network function on the second (existing) router. How does that work? The signal goes from Skylink to second router and then guest network kicks in?

Hazel123 said:

Apparently I can get an ethernet connector and connect another router to the Skylink router, to extend the wifi and use the guest network function on the second (existing) router. How does that work? The signal goes from Skylink to second router and then guest network kicks in?

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I've not worked with such a satellite setup but do keep in mind that splitting of the incoming signal may cause speed issues due to less bandwidth to both 'legs', a lot like splitting of TV signals to 2 or more sets.

Hazel123 said:

Massive thanks to hsehestedt for the tip about Starlink! Ping is a bit higher than would like. About 50 to 60 at the moment.

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That ping, is like the old DSL days, before ADSL2, I think it's because of interleaved mode in the case of DSL. I was noticing back in 2003 and 2004, IIRC, that I rarely saw others with a ping lower than 60 ms and I was wondering why, when I had lower pings than that when I first got ADSL2 in 2007!

Cheers. Apparently Starlink reckon their ping is between 25 and 50. Mostly it is just under 50. Hopefully that will be ok for gaming for Stepson! When we tried mobile broadband, ping made it unusable for gaming (200 odd sometimes).

Berton said:

I've not worked with such a satellite setup but do keep in mind that splitting of the incoming signal may cause speed issues due to less bandwidth to both 'legs', a lot like splitting of TV signals to 2 or more sets.

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Thanks, I wondered about that. Last time I tried extending wifi with another router it dropped the speed about 3mbps. But that was on a 7mbps speed to start with. So if it's only 3mbps that's ok. But if it's proportional (ie half speed) then don't fancy that. I can manage perfectly well without an extender for the wifi. But it would be good to be able to have the guest networks on the second router. I don't fancy having all the smart devices on the main network.

Whatever type of extender you get it also needs to incorporate a function to boost the signal. A repeater rather than an extender.