Is Charter Spectrum Fucking me Over

[Marcus Torre DeProspero]

I am out in Houston Texas and I have Charter Spectrum Internet and they pride themselves on 60Mbps when I am only getting 3Mbps and I called them and they didn't help at all. This has been happening for a while but I finally just lost it after four months and i honestly can't take it. I am paying 35$ a month for 60mbps and only getting 3 what the actual fuck. Are they purposely screwing me over or could something in my house be causing this bullshit?

[TheKDub]

What modem and router do you have? Are you using wifi?

 

Also, mind posting a screenshot of your results from http://speedtest.net?

[Mew]

Nope they're not exactly screwing you over because they advertise speeds up to 60 megs and the real world you can't expect to get that speed from every website or server.

[Suika]

Odd, in my experience Charter is p good at getting you close to advertised speeds, if not over because of an issue. My uncle is running Spectrum but is at the end of the line, so they quoted him "up to 25Mbps," although in everyday usage he gets around 50Mbps.

 

I'd definitely check and see if your router and modem are up to speed. If they are, I'd give Charter a call and ask them to check what's up on their end. I've got a friend with intermittent internet so Charter decide to inspect the line he's being run on and perform maintenance where needed. 

[Skiiwee29]

19 minutes ago, Marcus Torre DeProspero said:

I am out in Houston Texas and I have Charter Spectrum Internet and they pride themselves on 60Mbps when I am only getting 3Mbps and I called them and they didn't help at all. This has been happening for a while but I finally just lost it after four months and i honestly can't take it. I am paying 35$ a month for 60mbps and only getting 3 what the actual fuck. Are they purposely screwing me over or could something in my house be causing this bullshit?

How are you testing your internet speeds? What is your setup, like your NIC, Modem, Router etc? I work for an ISP, not charter, but I deal with this everyday.

 

[Mew]

8 minutes ago, Suika said:

Odd, in my experience Charter is p good at getting you close to advertised speeds, if not over because of an issue. My uncle is running Spectrum but is at the end of the line, so they quoted him "up to 25Mbps," although in everyday usage he gets around 50Mbps.

 

I'd definitely check and see if your router and modem are up to speed. If they are, I'd give Charter a call and ask them to check what's up on their end. I've got a friend with intermittent internet so Charter decide to inspect the line he's being run on and perform maintenance where needed. 

That's true, I get about 10% higher than the quoted speeds with Charter. 

[Skiiwee29]

Yea I have charter as well and have 60, but I always test at 65x4.3 without ever having issues here where I live. But it could be different based on how many subscribers on the node, upstream saturation, downstream saturation etc.. You can also go to 192.168.100.1 and check your SNR and power levels. This would be extremely helpful for me and others in the DOCSIS world to determine if you have a signal related issue or a different problem. 

[Donut417]

31 minutes ago, Marcus Torre DeProspero said:

I am out in Houston Texas and I have Charter Spectrum Internet and they pride themselves on 60Mbps when I am only getting 3Mbps and I called them and they didn't help at all. This has been happening for a while but I finally just lost it after four months and i honestly can't take it. I am paying 35$ a month for 60mbps and only getting 3 what the actual fuck. Are they purposely screwing me over or could something in my house be causing this bullshit?

First level support at most ISP's have the IQ of 2. It could be your modem, it could be your router, or a lot of other factors. Any other providers in your area? Although I hate Comcast and wish they would burn in the fires of Hell, they do have great internet service. As long as they have not instituted caps in your area. Some times making threats of leaving, they might be willing to get you to some one to help. 

[Skiiwee29]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

First level support at most ISP's have the IQ of 2. It could be your modem, it could be your router, or a lot of other factors. Any other providers in your area? Although I hate Comcast and wish they would burn in the fires of Hell, they do have great internet service. As long as they have not instituted caps in your area. Some times making threats of leaving, they might be willing to get you to some one to help. 

Well great news on the data caps is that per the FCC with the Charter buyout of Time Warner they can not impose data caps for a minimum of 7 years. AFAIK though Charter does not do data caps anyways. 

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, legacy99 said:

Well great news on the data caps is that per the FCC with the Charter buyout of Time Warner they can not impose data caps for a minimum of 7 years. AFAIK though Charter does not do data caps anyways. 

Thats only applies until the FCC looses control of the internet. Our republican friends in Congress are trying to make that happen. 

[Skiiwee29]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

Thats only applies until the FCC looses control of the internet. Our republican friends in Congress are trying to make that happen. 

You are correct, but at the present time, Charter does not impose data caps. Even the ISP I work for, we impose data caps, but only if the subscriber goes over 1tb/ month, which does happen, then we have to disconnect them. 

[Lurick]

How are you measuring this speed of 3Mbps? I have a feeling (aka I hope) you're referring to 3 Megabytes a second which equates to 24 megabits per second. Still not close to the 60 megabits you should be getting but alot better than 3 megabits. Have you tried unplugging the modem for a minute and plugging it back in? If you have a separate router have you tried resetting that? Do you have anything else you can test with to see if maybe it's just your computer?

[Timberwolfhusky]

It is not surprising. I have Time Warner Cable and now that will become 'Spectrum" a.k.a Charter Comms.

 

On a daily basis, what I posit to be peak hours, speeds drop from the advertised, and paid for mind you 100Mbps to the 600-700Kbps, ergo a 720p Youtube video is functionally unplayable. I have tested the latter speeds over a span of a couple of months, and yet the data I have collected has proven to be utterly irrelevant when complaining to TWC.

Incidentally, do not hastily generalize that it might have anything to do with my equipment, all my networking is done over wired gigabit connections with CAT6 runs and properly configured AP/Switch/Modem; even if I was using wireless, 802.11 AC will not bottleneck the marginal Internet speeds.

 

I know one could not, ludicrously, expect the advertised speeds to be constant, but neither would I expect that the advertised speeds would be over 100x slower either.

[Donut417]

Maybe the OP is on a over loaded Node. Used to happen to lots of people on Comcast. Comcast over sells a node and people would call and bitch. So then they would split the node and the service would get better. I would suggest to the OP that he should check with neighbors and see if its isolated to him or if its a general ISP issue. 

[The Flying Sloth]

the OP is using a wireless network in his home and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also an overloaded node.

[Marcus Torre DeProspero]

2 minutes ago, The Flying Sloth said:

the OP is using a wireless network in his home and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also an overloaded node.

someone already mentioned that before and it isn't

[Donut417]

8 minutes ago, Marcus Torre DeProspero said:

someone already mentioned that before and it isn't

The Wireless might be ok but an over loaded node is not out of the question. Ive heard Comcast puts over 100 people on some nodes. Comcast runs fiber from that node to them. The issue is, fiber can only carry so much data. So If too many people are on your node and using their service, it will slow it down with every one. I would highly suggest talking with neighbors who have the same service provider. If they also have issues, then is on the ISP's end. Then your at the service of the ISP. Maybe with the merger they will try to actually compete. 

[techman678]

Something that I have found that is very common is people buying to Charter's scam of the router/modem combo unit. Those are JUNK. Another thing is that people will put their router right next to their modem. That my friend will cause interference with ONLY Charter's equipment.