Qwest DSL--Throttling?

You may be aware that there's quite a bit of discussion reflecting concern and actual problems with true available bandwidth for the end users of various broadband delivery systems, including cable, satellite and DSL. I have Qwest DSL (ADSL), which I recently upgraded from 1.5 Mbps (download) to 7.0 Mbps. The key reason I upgraded was because I was seeing quite a bit of lag time with streaming video ("buffering") from various news websites as well as YouTube. The idea I had was that the basic bandwidth being received might have been so close to the edge that any kind of internet load could cause such delays. In addition, as past posts will reveal, I added MagicJack internet calling this spring, further consuming bandwidth on my DSL line. So it seemed like a good idea and the cost was actually a wash if I switched from my local ISP to Qwest's preferred ISP, MSN.

The switchover was very smooth and I went so far as to even buy Qwest's ActionTec PK5000 modem (rather than a 3rd party modem). So I was lined up with Qwest's preferred equipment and ISP, the change was very efficient and there I was one fine day, running at 7Mbps and enjoying it. By the way, no faster DSL speed is available at my location or I may have tried for something like 20Mbps.

But the honeymoon was fairly short lived. Although the interruptions were fewer, I started noticing that there was still quite a bit of streaming video buffering going on. The typical time of day was during the work week between 6pm and 10pm CT with virtually no problems during the daytime unless it was a holiday or, occasionally, on weekends. I started capturing bandwidth data from 3 main online (and free) speed measuring sites: bandwithplace.com, speedtest.net and pcpitstop.com. Sure enough, I was seeing download speeds of well under Qwest's requirement (80% of 7Mbps, or 5.6Mbps). Often speeds were in the under 2Mbps range with the lowest reading to date being .77Mbps (on December 9, 2010 at 7:44pm CT) ... and, yes, these are download readings, *not* upload (which is spec'd at about .75Mbps and is consistently around .65 to .72Mbps).

So I called Qwest and immediately learned a very interesting fact. Their performance criteria of 80% of 7Mbps applies *only* to the data link (in the midwest) from Qwest's servers in Kansas City or Minneapolis (take your pick) to your residence (for example, I'm here in Iowa). So if you want to verify that Qwest is contractually compliant with their requirement on their DSL delivery bandwidth, the only way to check it out is to run their test at http://kansas-city.speedtest.qwest.net/ ... what that means is that your overall performance is not their concern at all (yes, I was told those very words). The only thing they are obligated to provide is whatever bandwidth you're paying for from their server(s) to your residence.

This is new stuff to me and I've not seen it described this way in the forums and blogs I've been reading on the subject. The fact that my performance is good except when it seems that a much larger part of the population is probably logging on to the internet could mean that the internet is just busy and everyone is slowing down ... or not. I have a theory that says it's possible for Qwest to throttle the "input* side of their servers based on total data transfer requests (which will obviously go up during high usage times like the evening) but still provide the full bandwidth paid for on their servers' output side (which is the input to residences). In my case, I typically do see about 6Mbps and, since it should never be lower than 5.6Mbps (.8 * 7), it's certainly acceptable. But why is it that there are many times when I'm seeing 6Mbps from Qwest but at the same time only, say, 1.58Mbps from a measuring site like bandwidthplace.com or speedtest.net?

When Qwest actually came out to my home, they verified that the modem was properly installed, the wiring was all good and everything in my local network was working fine. But I have also actually seen bandwidth data from Qwest showing download speeds as low as 2.1 to 2.7Mbps. It's quite rare, but did give me the reason for a no-cost visit from them while they checked it out. They had no answers for me but when the problem occurs (and I'm keeping the measurements in a spreadsheet) they also want me to verify the internal modem status on my LAN at 192.168.0.1. It always has shown 7168Kbps for download and 896Kbps for upload but I'm also now collecting that data.

So the bottom line here is that it looks suspicious to me that I can get excellent performance from Qwest but dismal overall bandwidth when loading actual internet data. And, after all, it's overall performance that counts. If I'm getting throttled 1Mbps data over a "bigger pipe" (i.e. 7Mbps DSL), it's still only 1Mbps to my system. And what I'm wondering is if there are other folks out there that see similar performance, particularly Qwest DSL customers. Any 20Mbps customers out there that have similar issues? It's discouraging to me to think that I could probably go back to 1.5Mbps service and have everything work just as well ... but that's about where I am today, based on what I see at my computer and the data I've collected regarding this issue.

To be "fair and balanced", I do see where it makes sense for Qwest to have contractual terms that limit their performance liability to something they can control (i.e., Kansas City or Minneapolis to you). Otherwise, they'd probably be getting hammered by folks about every underpowered server system on the internet where the output bandwidth may be 1/2 Meg or so. But the performance hits I regularly see (pretty much every day) are enough to at least make me think that DSL might be a poor choice, at least from Qwest, for consistent download bandwidth operation. Wish there were some alternatives, like fiber optic ... but cable is my only other choice and it's more expensive, plus there seem to be similar bandwidth issues there, according to some comments I've heard and read.

Please comment if you have more information on this. Thanks everyone!

MagicJack ... It Does Work

Primarily out of a desire to save daytime (7am - 5pm, M-F) cell minutes while not having a landline, I decided to give MagicJack's VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) system a try. Basically, it's pretty much a no-brainer to at least try since it's only $40 for the first year of service (and $20 per year after that). This writeup is going to be my documentation of the high's and low's of installing and using MagicJack (MJ) over the first few days. I'll update it later with comments about my ongoing experience regarding its long term functioning and viability.

First, the ordering process. I ordered from the online store late in the evening of March 14, 2010, using a PC running WinXP with Google's Chrome browser. At the time I decided to order I'd already spent about 1.5 hours reading comments on MJ from various forums as well as familiarizing myself with how it worked via the FAQ sections on its web pages. At any rate, I decided to order (with a credit card) and got to the very end of the process when some additional, final question (I don't even remember what it was) popped into my head and I left the order page right at the point of "last click". However, I hadn't closed the page because I didn't want to go through the entire ordering process again. I just clicked over to another tab that had the FAQ section on it and read through to find the answer to that one last question. This took me about 10 minutes. Imagine my surprise when I returned to the order page to see a "Thank you" for my order. I absolutely never clicked that last required link so I know it timed out or something and entered the order as if I *had* actually done so. Fortunately, by the way, it did use the cheapest shipping option. This "auto timeout order click" thing was disturbing, but since that final question was answered correctly (for me) and I really was going to order anyway, I let it go. Again, that should definitely *not* happen ... you really should have to make an actual positive click to finish placing an order. I wonder if anyone else out there has had a similar experience?

The MJ arrived in snail mail on Saturday, March 20 and I immediately started the installation process on my iMac. This was about 2:30pm and thus began a 7 hour odyssey with MJ's chat support technicians. While the system mounted properly after being plugged in, and I could start the MJ program running, the registration procedure was not clear at all. I finally ended up dbl-clicking the upper center magicJack icon area but it simply was not (apparently) able to properly startup my account. I did have a phone number assigned but the top line of the soft dial pad showed a phone number of 000-000-0000 instead of the correct number. By now, if you've read about this type of thing from other customers' adventure tales, you know that I was chatting with tech's and they were going through the same procedures with me, time and again, before passing me on to one of the "top 10%" agents. So when you can't get a problem solved, you visit 2 agents every time you start a chat. We downloaded the "upgrade.dmg" file and erased the Mac volume on the MJ several times (my protests at the repetitions fell, of course, on deaf ears). Finally, agent number 6 (this was at almost 9:30 in the evening) opened the Mac network window and added two new DNS IP addresses. And, lo and behold, it suddenly seemed to be working as the MJ displayed the correct number and indicated "Ready to call" in the center icon area. Although I tried to get an explanation as to why this should make any difference, the tech was unwilling (or unable) to supply one. But it was working!

OK, here are the two IP addresses for the new Domain Name Servers as entered by the MJ tech during the screen sharing session (I saved them for possible future repair work): 67.107.71.186 and 67.90.152.122. If you're not familiar with where this is entered on a Mac (this is an Intel Mac running the latest Snow Leopard OS X operating system), just open System Preferences > Network > Advanced. Under the DNS tab, click on the "+" at the lower left of the "DNS Servers:" box just before the line that says "IPv4 or IPv6 addresses". Add the first one and then add the next. After this, restart the MJ via its "Menu > Advanced users > Restart" option and you will have done exactly what made mine work.

After that, everything else was just playing and setting up my phone(s) in the house the way I wanted to. And I have to say that it really works very well. My broadband connection is ADSL with 1.5Mbps down and .75Mbps up, supplied by Qwest. The voice quality is very good and I have 3 or 4 different phones it works just fine with. I also have a switch in the line to allow me to use a FaxModem when necessary and, as far as I've been able to tell, software faxing (I'm using PageSender but I think the standard OS X fax program would work too) is working. This is nice as I have occasion to fax things several times a year but not nearly enough that I feel compelled to pay for internet fax or a landline to accomplish the task. While MJ does not advertise faxing as a standard feature (and I'm not sure how reliable it will be), it's a pleasant surprise to see it working.

There have been a few other issues, though. If anyone's generating a list of phone's that work or don't work with MJ, I've found that two old standard phones (with actual bell ringers), an AT&T two line phone, a Sony 900MHz wireless phone, an AT&T wall phone and a US West wall phone all work great. But a Panasonic DECT 6.0 phone (model KX-TGA820B) doesn't work (well, it rings and will answer, but there is no audio). Another disappointment is that none of the phones that displays callerID gets the callerID from the MJ. I've tried the 100K resistor trick but no joy. I wish callerID would work, but it's certainly not a deal breaker. Chat time with the tech's got one out of two to confirm for me that callerID is *not* passed on to the attached phone. Sure seems like a shortsighted thing to have it designed that way.

Another thing, from a Mac perspective, is that I like to suspend (enter "Sleep" mode) the computer when I leave the house and don't need it to be running. The Mac version of the MJ software is certainly not very elegant about handling the sleep process. It shuts down instead of suspending itself but it doesn't eject the MJ drive. So when the system starts up again there is an OS X nasty gram about how one should be sure to eject a drive before "removing" it. Also, the program seems to have some startup problems after it has been shut down this way. What I've found is that it seems to be best to just close the MJ program (in this case the drive ejects properly on its own) and I unplug it. That's a little annoying since, otherwise, the suspend for a Mac is a very quick and painless thing to do (I just tap the power button). As far as MJ is concerned, I'd like to just push the button to put the Mac to sleep and when I "wake" it again, the MJ should just start itself and carry on without missing a beat. If this could work smoothly it would be a very positive step. I haven't checked out how MJ handles a full shutdown, while it is running, so no comments on that ... yet.

But with MagicJack I can talk on the phone, send/receive faxes and use the MJ with about 3 phones hooked up via my house wiring. I would give MagicJack about a 4 out of 5 stars review. Additionally, I've had it running on my PC laptop (Windows Vista) and that's working smoothly. The contacts list is not saved in a common portion of the MJ drive so when I add contacts on the Mac, they don't show up when running MJ on the PC. I can manually save the .xml file that has the contacts in it on the Mac and then load them when running the PC, but that's the only way I can see to do it. It would be nice to at least have a simple way (i.e. in the MJ menus) to synchronize contacts between the two computer types with having to resort to a laborious manual process.

Anyone that has a solution that will let me see callerID on the MJ phone when running on the Mac, I'd appreciate hearing that as well. I'll write more on MagicJack when time has passed and I see how reliable it is and if any updates for some of these issues become available.

Toyota Recall Bruhaha

I don't know what it is about this country sometimes. There seems to be such a hue and cry about the "Toyota Tragedy" that awaits Toyota car drivers (notice even the Secretary of Transportation's recommendation to not drive your car if it's a "recall" Toyota model) that it seems all perspective has been lost. By the way, regarding Ray La Hood's comments (which he did later withdraw), could they be because the U.S. government is now in the car business ... and Toyota's a competitor? Hmm.

If Toyota has a true problem, it seems to me that it primarily swings around their apparent disbelief that they could even have a quality issue with their vehicles. And, actually, that's based on decades of excellent production quality and customer satisfaction ... so it's not the worst problem in the world to have. And it's one that can be easily overcome. At any rate, the initial shock seems to have worn off and they see that there's a problem and they're addressing it.

But back to the point I started this article on ... perspective. It seems that about 19 people in the past decade have been killed in Toyota's where it is "possible" that the recall issues (the accelerator pedal & floor mat stuff) were a factor. Please also note that being "a factor" does not even mean that the recall issues are the primary cause of the fatalities. Doing the math, that's 1.9 fatalities per year (with 100's of millions of miles of Toyota driving involved). Now, some contrasting perspective:

1. On average, 90 people per year are killed by lightning (in the United States alone).

2. On average, there are 120 airplane crash fatalities per year.

3. Over 2000 people die every year in Toyota's due to vehicle crashes totally unrelated to vehicle production quality failures (related primarily to incompetent, impaired or otherwise unsafe driving as well as some health problems like heart attacks, etc.).

Now I know it's different if you or a loved one of yours happens to be one of those 1.9 fatalities ... but get real people! There is no reasonably complex device made by mankind that does not have a non-zero probability of some kind of a failure due to inferior design, parts fatigue, etc. And it's the way of the universe. It's certainly the way of every species on the planet. Nature builds and then rebuilds in infinite repetition to get to the solution that allows survival. Our cars have evolved as early designs have been superseded by better ones and, to build a safer and greener vehicle, more complexity has been added. It's life ... and it's progress. I own a Camry, my son owns a Corolla and we both are very pleased with our vehicles. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another Toyota and I'm sure my son feels the same. These are good, well-built cars and the company that builds them deserves to remain in business, providing jobs and excellent products around the world, including the United States.

So the next time there's a big news article on the latest regarding current (or future) Toyota recalls, just remember that this is a very safe vehicle and the problems are being fixed by the company. And think about writing to the producer(s) of the article to request the "other side" of the story, part of which I've presented here (like, you're at least 45 times more likely to be killed by lightning, in the U.S., than by any Toyota recall problem). Basically, let's focus on stuff that's really important, like people talking on cell phones or texting while driving ... those, too, have caused far more fatalities than Toyota's recall issues. I also think Toyota will redouble their efforts at quality control ... which doesn't bode well for the "big 3" in the U.S. Oh, and, if you get a chance, you might take advantage of the bright side of this whole craziness ... buy Toyota stock.

2010 Has Arrived

At the close of 2009, I feel it's good to reflect back on the year and consider what happened. Bicycling-wise, not as many miles pedaled as in 2008, but that was largely due to not taking part in RAGBRAI this year. Total miles ridden reached 1927 with a riding time of 121 hours (just under 16mph for an average riding speed). In addition, I decided to take a daily walk and accomplished that for 358 days of the past year with a total distance covered of 1161 miles in approximately 303 hours.

On a personal basis, my height is 70.25 inches at 162.1 pounds for a BMI of around 23.3. I like to shoot for a BMI right at 23.0, so there's a little work to be done here in January to get my weight back to 160 pounds or a little less.

For the first time in many years, both Ryan and Scott were in town at the same time as they flew in for their step-sister's wedding in June. That was a great time ... even as an arrow flew into the air and fell to earth we knew not where. We also took in the new Star Trek movie.

Last March my Aunt Elaine died and I went to the funeral. She was a nice lady and I miss her. Uncle Don and I went out to try to get a deer (I used a bow) this fall but we never saw a single one close enough to shoot (even with a rifle) in several days of hunting (in North Dakota). Our best guess is that they were all still hiding out in the corn fields, which had not been harvested due to the extremely wet fall weather.

Only 22 books read this year but all of them very interesting, including the auto-biography of George Carlin. I still use the Kindle to get most of my books but occasionally I do buy a paperback or get a gift of a book that I can hold in my hands and turn the pages of. And whaddya know ... reading real books still feels kinda nice. Nevertheless, I'll be looking into getting a Kindle 3, if they ever come out with one as the Kindle 2 isn't compelling enough for me to move on from my (rather primitive) baseline original Kindle reader.

Started learning more about digital photography and using Photoshop CS3 and its associated software tools. Pretty cool but it's a very big subject so it will take awhile.

This year I focused quite a bit more on energy and natural resources conservation. While the results are fairly good, more can be done if I can move to using solar and geothermal (Ground Source Heat Pump) renewable energy. Compared to 2008, the utility usage change I was able to accomplish breaks down as follows:

Heat (natural gas): -12% used, -34% cost at 47.7 Therms/month in 2009.
Electricity: -7% used, +.22% cost at 370.5 KWH/month in 2009.
Water: -46% used, -16% cost at 941.7 gallons/month in 2009.

Looking forward, I estimate that my natural gas usage will drop to <10 Therms/month (used by the gas dryer) if I can install a 4 ton geothermal heating/cooling system in 2010. My best guess is that electricity use will not be reduced further until I add solar power (a 2KW system, perhaps in 2011). In fact, electricity use may increase somewhat with the geothermal system as I'll probably switch to electric hot water heating with that installation. Finally, I expect to see a further 18-20% reduction in water usage with a 0% cost reduction (utility charges are very regressive which is not conducive to conservation) or, more likely, a cost increase.

And, as I do every year, I wonder what the new year will bring.