High Broadband Speed Dilema Am I getting something for Nothing?

[hershon]

Help, Help, Help. Please give me your advice on this. This is totally bizarre and I need to know what you guys would do, forget moral ethics here, please! On Saturday, I ordered for an additional $30 a month, premium broadband cable service as opposed to regular. What this means is that your maximum download speed would double from 3000 to 6000 & your upload speed would increase about 40%. Anyway, the cable company said they could do this on the phone & in a few minutes I would have the premium service without having to do anything else. An hour goes by, I try to go on to the internet and I can't get on. I phone the cable people who appologize and they said this can't be done over the phone via their computer system anyway, they would need to have someone to come over and either install a new line and/or a new modem (they weren't very clear on this) on Thursday, but in the meantime they'd hook me back up to my regular broadband service which they did and I'd just be charged my regular rate. About 2 hours ago, on 4 random independent speed tests on 4 totally different sites (where I regularly test my broadband speed), I tested my internet speed- I usually do this once a day and the measured speed had basically doubled! I called the cable company up and they said I'm still being charged regular rates which will end when I go under the new plan on Thursday after their technician installs a new line and/or modem. They have no record of doing any premium broadband service on my account.
I can cancel the installation on Thursday if I wish and continue paying regular prices. The thing is, we're not talking morality or ethics here but common sense, the actual speed when surfing to different sites does not seem noticeably faster than before even though the measured speed via 4 different sites/tests is. Should I just keep my mouth shut and cancel the supposed installation or do I need the new line/modem to actually see my surfing speed double? I'm basically afraid that maybe they did a change, they don't know it or realize I'm not being billed for it, I'm slightly better off and should keep my mouth shut, or do I actually need them to install something to increase my web speed? I'm not on drugs! What would your recommendation be?

[topspeed]

You realize there's an Off Topic Forum, right?

[hershon]

You realize there's an Off Topic Forum, right?

Yes but I posted other things about broadband before and no one objected and many people replied with good advice. Most people on this board,even the ones I've had arguments with, seem to be pretty computer savvy.

[depressed]

You ignored a lot of advices given to you on the other topic that you started. Now:
You said that your speed test results have doubled, then your speed has improved. That is your actual speed. Period. There is nothing on the ISP's end that will increase your "surfing speed" or the "web speed" as you described it.That depends on your computer, the settings, and some circumstances like the servers load. Speed tests and large file downloads are the only true indicators of your throughput.However, I hope you are using some of the links I posted in the first thread to get your speed test results. Some websites offer speed tests where they measure the time it takes to load the image, and these results are inconsistent, especially if you repeat the test as your browser will cache the image. I will come back to this kind of testing to explain you something later.
After asking for advice and receiving plenty,you ignored the majority and you cleaned up spyware (good thing) killed some unnecessary processes in the task manager (also good) and you expanded memory (waste of money)
Now, let me repeat for the third time: The speed ot the throughput of your connection means NOTHING if your latency is high. You need to check the latency the links I posted in the the first thread. Go to dslreports.com, use the tweak test (turn your firewall off in order to be pingable for the test) You can also sign up for a (free) membership which is required to use the line quality test ( and paste the results here) to get detailed result about your connection. You can also (with firewall either off or configured to allow it) type in the run dialog box: ping www.cnn.com for example or some popular sites to see what your latency (ping) is. I'm suggesting this for a reason: You need find out if:
1.Data packets have to be retransmitted a lot
2.How much of the data packets have to be pushed
3. Your latency (ping) lower=better
4. When you are browsing, for example sites that have their servers located here in the U.S. you go through at least several hops through various hosts. (to understand me better, type: tracert www.yahoo.com in the run box and see how many hops there are and what the respond time of the each one is. The last three or fours host (the ones close to you, you will be able to recognize the city names shortcuts in the DOS window) are going to be the ones you always hop" through" no matter what server you are connecting. Pay attention to see if there is a loss of signal at one of those.
If you use the tweak tester, you will know how big your recieve window (RWIN) is. The default setting is often too low, as the users aren't expected to have connections faster then 128 or 384 k. You can download a small app (from that website) to increase the RWIN if needed.
Before (and if) you try all of the above, do the following: There was an another advice you managed to ignore: Your internet settings might be on auto detect, which means that every time you try to browse, you settings are detected first which can lead to this annoying delay or "stall" in opening up the site. If you are using the internet explorer, go to tools/internet options and delete all temporary internet files, click ok. Then again go to tools/internet options,connections/lan settings and uncheck everything and try browsing to see if there is any change. If it doesn't help, I think we can rule out the internet settings are causing problems. This is where that image loading speed test comes into play: Believe it or not, the hard drive can cause that delay that troubles you, as all of the text and images go through it. However, this would be very strange since you said that your computer is new and you didn't even have enough time to frament it that bad to cause those problems. Then it might be your hosts files, they might be corrupted (did you ever have your browser hijacked) At this point I'm too tired to help out with that, just google "repair host files" and research the results.
Btw, go to pcpitstop.com and click on full tests and paste the results here if you want.
As for your question, it's irrelevant because with a properly configured 3Mbit connection, there is no need to have the upgrade. Forget the modem. And stop trusting the HP people or any support/customer sevice department for that matter. You need to be very lucky when you call them, because to get help you need to avoid the ones that know how to help you, the ones that don't care and the ones that don't speak English fluently enough for you to understand them.
Btw, you will receive a bill in the mail for the advice above :)

[Jim Clark]

http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=6745

Could have more than doubled your speed for free. Most noticeable here but every site is blazing. IE blows.

jc