AT&T vs Cox Internet

[tyson.b]

Hey LTT Fans, do any of you live in the San Diego area? If so, let me know which internet you like better. I currently am paying way too much per month for cox internet (i think its the second from the top tier) and am only obtaining 8000kb/s down and 800kb/s up on my 5ghz wireless N setup. Would I benefit from going to a 802.11ac 5ghz network and using the gateway (modem+router, 5ghz or 2.4ghz n) for my secondary network?

 

We also might need to switch cable companies and ATT has a highest advertised speed of 45mbps which is low because right now apparently my advertised internet speed is 100mbps which seems legit because I can constantly get 8000kb/s when I am connected to the 5ghz network and I am not quite ready to give that speed up.

 

Thoughts?

[Fluffinator]

Wow Cox has 1gb/s here and second tier is 300mbs, I feel bad for San Diego

[tyson.b]

Wow Cox has 1gb/s here and second tier is 300mbs, I feel bad for San Diego

top tier is 300mb

which means I could get 30mb/s down speed which is fine by me, I don't need 100mb/s down or up lol

 

the top tier for att is 45mbps which could net me 4.5mb/s down and that simply isn't enough...

[Fluffinator]

top tier is 300mb

which means I could get 30mb/s down speed which is fine by me, I don't need 100mb/s down or up lol

 

the top tier for att is 45mbps which could net me 4.5mb/s down and that simply isn't enough...

I see I think Cox is one of the best I've never had a internet issue here don't know about San Diego area but I hear ATnT sucks (I used to live in San Diego) and my friends internet service was on that and he never got his advertised speeds.

[tyson.b]

Yeah the other thing is I can't really have downtime because me and my mom both have college classes to be doing online and I can't have the internet crap out...

 

I will probably end up getting an ac router as well just so they (mom and sis) can have a 2.4ghz n network that's fast with good range from our modem+router

[TopDollar]

Cox here in Hampton Roads falls on it's face compared to FiOS. I average 50-60Mbps both upload and download. Cox is around 20-30Mbps for similar price.

 

San Diego is one of my favorite cities btw. Spent a total of about 8 weeks in Old Town last year for work (Harney Sushi is still one of my favorite places there ). Got to know the area fairly well. La Jolla, Point Loma, Coronado, Pacific Beach, & Gas Lamp district being some of my favorite areas.

[Kamil]

8000 kb/s is 8 Mb/s, so you're really not getting that 100 Mb/s you're paying for. That said, my personal experience with Cox is that I've been getting OVER my advertised speeds as well as very prompt technician service when I need it (my only complaint being you pretty much need to make an actual phone call to get anything done) and I've never used AT&T other than DSL so I can't really say whether you'd be better switching.

[PlayStation 2]

AT&T sucks fucking ass. Just stick with Cox.

[Gix7Fifty]

@tyson.b

San Diego North County here, I am dumping ATT right now and going to cox Silver plan 100 Mbps. They gave me a $100 gift card, half off the HD contour dvr and a free basic cable box. ATT is really bad and I mean really bad in my area right now, quality of service and customer support, I currently have no watchable tv signal and the att gateway I have is really old technology. 

[tyson.b]

8000 kb/s is 8 Mb/s, so you're really not getting that 100 Mb/s you're paying for. That said, my personal experience with Cox is that I've been getting OVER my advertised speeds as well as very prompt technician service when I need it (my only complaint being you pretty much need to make an actual phone call to get anything done) and I've never used AT&T other than DSL so I can't really say whether you'd be better switching.

here's where you're wrong unfortunately.

 

mbps (rated when speaking to a cable company) is megabits per second. You must divide this by 8 to get mb/s (megabytes per second, what you're going to see when downloading something on your computer)

 

Since I am obtaining a steady 8mb/s I am getting 64mbps which is damn near my advertised speed. I feel like if I had a direct connection to the modem I would get advertised speeds.

I am also considering going for an AC router to remove potential bottlenecks in my connection so I can get my moneys worth

[Kamil]

here's where you're wrong unfortunately.

 

mbps (rated when speaking to a cable company) is megabits per second. You must divide this by 8 to get mb/s (megabytes per second, what you're going to see when downloading something on your computer)

 

Since I am obtaining a steady 8mb/s I am getting 64mbps which is damn near my advertised speed. I feel like if I had a direct connection to the modem I would get advertised speeds.

I am also considering going for an AC router to remove potential bottlenecks in my connection so I can get my moneys worth

The distinction between bits and bytes is in the capitalization of the "b", not in the choice to abbreviate "per" as either "p" or "/". Mbps and Mb/s are the same measure, megabits per second; MBps and MB/s are both megabytes per second. It is a confusing system that can easily lead to misunderstandings, but 8 Mb/s is exactly the same as 8 Mbps.

Regardless, assuming you're right about your speed measurement being in bytes then you are getting very good speeds. My guess is you'd have half that speed if you went with AT&T's 45 mbps plan, so I'd use that to consider how much you would need to save for that to be worthwhile.

As for an AC router, I wouldn't buy one unless all your devices are wireless. AC is great and all, but it wouldn't surpass the speed and low-latency of a wired connection, and in my usage any device I don't have wired doesn't really need that much speed.

[Principis]

Wow internet in the USA is terrible...

I live in Belgium and we have only 2 ISP's that have a physical cables in the ground Telenet and Proximus. (The other ones are renting Proximus' network.)

Proximus is terrible they use vdsl and the maximum speed is 70 Mbps but you won't get that most of the time (I had 12/0.9 Mbps)

Then you have Telenet. They use coaxial cable.

The lowest they have is 30/3 then 100/6 then 200/15 then 240/20. I have 200/15 and the average I get is 192/14.5 Mbps (and they are currently upgrading their network to 1 Gbps and faster)

[tyson.b]

It is not in fact the same thing. Google has a calculator that proves you wrong on this. All advertised speeds are in megabits per second.

 

Megabits per second to megabytes per second

 

 

The issue is my family is stuck on iOS devices that date all the way back to the iPhone 4. I would need to use my current gateway at 2.4ghz N and hard wire the AC router and se the DMZ function to get AC internet access which I have done already because right now I have an old crappy router running a 2.4ghz n network for the old devices and the gateway running a 5ghz n network for my new devices.