ISP question..

Xaviar

So.. I live in a smaller town. There is a local ISP, and there's charter. Both offer only cable or dialup.

I'm currently with the local ISP.

I pay for 10mbps.
I get about 3. Maayybe 4 on a good day. Consistently.

My question is, is it even worth switching to charter?
They are both using the same infrastructure, yes? It isn't as though there are two sets of cable buried out to each block, right? So would I actually see any difference?
Anybody know about this kind of thing?

Fantasma

Perhaps you should do a small survey talking to your neighbors, if it is not terribly awkward for you, they could give you some information so that you take the right decision.

StrifeRaZoR

It comes down to who around you is using which network. Both the local ISP and Charter are DOCSIS networks. Which means: The more people retrieving data from the local serving office, the less throughput you will be able to request. Cable networks are a different beast. They offer higher speeds than DSL because the "pipe is fatter". That doesn't mean you'll actually hit those speeds. There's a limited amount of data that can be processed by the local nodes, so if everyone around you is on the same WAN and pulling tons of information at the same time, everyone suffers. But, at 4 in the morning, when everyone is asleep, your speeds will be higher.

If you're lucky, you can speak to technical support at each place and ask them how many people in your area will be sharing your node. I got lucky when I lived in TX and had a whopping 3 people on my local switch. My speeds were ridiculous. Now that I'm back in SC, I'm on a node with 30+ people and I'm lucky if I'm not experiencing DNS errors everyday during peak hours.

Xaviar

See this is what I thought, which is why I wondered if I'd get faster speeds by switching. Aren't the same number of people pulling bandwidth down the line regardless?

(Also, I'd be fine with 4am speeds closer to my cap, as I'm mostly on my computer on off-peak times anyway, but at all times of day, I'll go from about 3mbps to 1.8mbps)

Deusfaux

Have you contacted your ISP tech support? I've definitely experienced tech support visits that increased bandwidth reliability. Typically they'll upgrade components to increase the SNR

Hewn

I can't speak for your area, but Charter where I live is pretty fast. I'm also in a small town. It's off hours, but right now I'm getting over 20, maxing at 30 Mbps on speedtest.net.