Tuesday, November 15
Worst ISP Strikes Again
I fired SBC as promised this weekend.
I got my cable modem back from the Worst ISP.
True to form, the connection has gone squirrley tonight, and I know more than the tech I contacted on the phone.
You see, when you connect to Road Runner, they have you go to their local site and download a file from the local server where you are to prove that the speed is fast and good.
If you have a problem with anything outside the local area, they cannot help you.
So right now I'm getting 2.5 Mbps over my cable modem, but only .110 Mbps if I leave the Houston area. I tried to explain this to the tech, and even ran a traceroute command for him, and got:
U:\>tracert pcpitstop.com
Tracing route to pcpitstop.com [64.29.201.21]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms 3 ms 4 ms 192.168.0.1
2 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 10.50.32.1
3 15 ms 10 ms 13 ms gig2-2.hstntxala-rtr2.houston.rr.com [24.28.100.113]
4 13 ms 12 ms 11 ms srp13-0.hstntxtid-rtr1.houston.rr.com [24.28.100.17]
5 30 ms 14 ms 11 ms pos12-0.hstntxtid-rtr3.houston.rr.com [24.93.34.94]
6 16 ms 13 ms 12 ms son0-0-3.hstqtxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [24.93.33.161]
7 * * 71 ms so-0-0-0-0.gar2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.78.234.9]
8 19 ms 20 ms 20 ms ae-11-53.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.68.122.77]
9 25 ms 22 ms 19 ms unknown.Level3.net [209.246.152.194]
10 21 ms 26 ms * daa.g921.disa.datareturn.com [64.29.192.230]
11 21 ms 20 ms 24 ms daa.g906.p40a.datareturn.com [64.29.192.213]
12 63 ms 64 ms 61 ms port-64-1952021-da120383www002.devices.datareturn.com [64.29.201.21]
Trace complete.
U:\>
You can actually see the hops from my home network to the Houston Road Runner routers to the Texas Road Runner router and where it hangs up at the jump to the Level13.net router in Dallas. But he could not help me with this. I think it really freaked him out when I told him I could trace the problem and just wanted to talk to someone that could fix the problem.
Oh well. There really seems to be no good ISP in the area. I'm just waiting anxiously for Verizon FiOs to my house when it becomes available.
I got my cable modem back from the Worst ISP.
True to form, the connection has gone squirrley tonight, and I know more than the tech I contacted on the phone.
You see, when you connect to Road Runner, they have you go to their local site and download a file from the local server where you are to prove that the speed is fast and good.
If you have a problem with anything outside the local area, they cannot help you.
So right now I'm getting 2.5 Mbps over my cable modem, but only .110 Mbps if I leave the Houston area. I tried to explain this to the tech, and even ran a traceroute command for him, and got:
U:\>tracert pcpitstop.com
Tracing route to pcpitstop.com [64.29.201.21]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms 3 ms 4 ms 192.168.0.1
2 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 10.50.32.1
3 15 ms 10 ms 13 ms gig2-2.hstntxala-rtr2.houston.rr.com [24.28.100.113]
4 13 ms 12 ms 11 ms srp13-0.hstntxtid-rtr1.houston.rr.com [24.28.100.17]
5 30 ms 14 ms 11 ms pos12-0.hstntxtid-rtr3.houston.rr.com [24.93.34.94]
6 16 ms 13 ms 12 ms son0-0-3.hstqtxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [24.93.33.161]
7 * * 71 ms so-0-0-0-0.gar2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.78.234.9]
8 19 ms 20 ms 20 ms ae-11-53.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.68.122.77]
9 25 ms 22 ms 19 ms unknown.Level3.net [209.246.152.194]
10 21 ms 26 ms * daa.g921.disa.datareturn.com [64.29.192.230]
11 21 ms 20 ms 24 ms daa.g906.p40a.datareturn.com [64.29.192.213]
12 63 ms 64 ms 61 ms port-64-1952021-da120383www002.devices.datareturn.com [64.29.201.21]
Trace complete.
U:\>
You can actually see the hops from my home network to the Houston Road Runner routers to the Texas Road Runner router and where it hangs up at the jump to the Level13.net router in Dallas. But he could not help me with this. I think it really freaked him out when I told him I could trace the problem and just wanted to talk to someone that could fix the problem.
Oh well. There really seems to be no good ISP in the area. I'm just waiting anxiously for Verizon FiOs to my house when it becomes available.
Number of people who will never get their time back from reading this page:
