Social Feed

Well, today was the acid test of Spectrum vs. AT&T Fiber at my house. Some of this information is repeated from earlier posts.

We've been on AT&T Gigabit Fiber since we moved in 2017. Spectrum finally offered us a deal worth considering: 400/20 for $50 for 24 months with no commitment, so I signed up. Got the Synology router which does dual WAN connections. Setup requires some significant technical knowledge if you want to do anything beyond the basics, but that is pretty true of any device with the same capabilities. The firewall with port forwarding in particular took some trial and error to get right.

After thorough testing using a variety of applications, including latency-sensitive ones like X forwarding over ssh, I could detect little difference in usability between the two ISPs. Pings were about 10ms slower to my work VPN endpoint on Spectrum which was not surprising, and traceroute showed a similar number of hops between my home and work. I was surprised that both ISPs routed traffic all the way to DC and back, even though they both have direct connections locally to NCREN, which is one of the Internet connections for my employer.

The real test, however, was my wife's daily workflow. She is an finance manager at the same employer, and her workflow unfortunately includes opening and working on large Excel spreadsheets from some kind of SMB NAS (pretty sure it is Isilon). She cannot change to a better solution like Box Drive or One Drive that have local caching, even though both are available, due to technology choices that are out of her control. This is where that 10ms and possibly the symmetrical gigabit come into play. In her work today (on Spectrum), 100MB Excel files that usually take around 30 seconds to save were taking 1-3 minutes. This severely impacted her work. She was very kind to put up with it for the day. I have switched back to AT&T as the primary WAN connection, and she will confirm whether that improves things for her tomorrow, although a quick test tonight seemed to show the <30 second save time that she is used to seeing.

Based on results so far, it looks like we will be continuing to pay $70/month to the Death Star for the time being, and the Spectrum modem will go back to the store. At least we get HBOmax?

If anyone has any suggestions on how to speed up SMB traffic over a VPN, please don't hesitate to share.

Also, I added a Synology MR2200AC to improve coverage in our sun room typically works, and it really works well.

ncted said:

Based on results so far, it looks like we will be continuing to pay $70/month to the Death Star for the time being, and the Spectrum modem will go back to the store. At least we get HBOmax?

Click to expand...

Since you're getting HBO Max included, I assume you're on AT&T Fiber's gigabit tier? And you pay $70/mo total, including the gateway rental? That's pretty great for an ongoing price. I mean, it's the same deal that they offer to new subs, supposedly only for the first year (although everyone says it's easy to get them to extend the first-year pricing indefinitely if you just ask every year).

If you don't care about HBO Max, could you drop down to the 300/300 tier for $15/mo less? Although that savings is the same as the cost of HBO Max, so if it's something you'd otherwise get (as I do), then there's no point. How much bandwidth do you really need? You can get 100/100 for $45/mo. Well, new subs can, I don't know if you could downgrade to it at that price.

Around here, Comcast is offering new subs standalone 800/25 (or maybe its 800/35?) for $70/mo the first year and you have to supply the equipment. Then it jumps to $100/mo in year two. Or you can take a 2-yr contract and lock in a rate of $70/mo for both years before it goes to the regular price. No free HBO Max either way but hey, you do get free Peacock Premium, a $5/mo value!

NashGuy said:

Since you're getting HBO Max included, I assume you're on AT&T Fiber's gigabit tier? And you pay $70/mo total, including the gateway rental? That's pretty great for an ongoing price. I mean, it's the same deal that they offer to new subs, supposedly only for the first year (although everyone says it's easy to get them to extend the first-year pricing indefinitely if you just ask every year).

If you don't care about HBO Max, could you drop down to the 300/300 tier for $15/mo less? Although that savings is the same as the cost of HBO Max, so if it's something you'd otherwise get (as I do), then there's no point. How much bandwidth do you really need? You can get 100/100 for $45/mo. Well, new subs can, I don't know if you could downgrade to it at that price.

Around here, Comcast is offering new subs standalone 800/25 (or maybe its 800/35?) for $70/mo the first year and you have to supply the equipment. Then it jumps to $100/mo in year two. Or you can take a 2-yr contract and lock in a rate of $70/mo for both years before it goes to the regular price. No free HBO Max either way but hey, you do get free Peacock Premium, a $5/mo value!

Click to expand...

Yes, it is the gig tier with no equipment fee. It is not a bad price, especially if you include HBOmax. We normally wouldn't have that all year long though. I've tried to get an ongoing deal on the service, but they don't seem to be playing ball in my area at the moment. 300/300 would be fine. 100/100 would probably be as well, but neither of those are currently on offer in my market. The only option is gig. I asked. New customers are paying $35 for gig. At the end of the day, the price is worth it since it keeps my wife working at an acceptable speed.

ncted said:

Yes, it is the gig tier with no equipment fee. It is not a bad price, especially if you include HBOmax. We normally wouldn't have that all year long though. I've tried to get an ongoing deal on the service, but they don't seem to be playing ball in my area at the moment. 300/300 would be fine. 100/100 would probably be as well, but neither of those are currently on offer in my market. The only option is gig. I asked. New customers are paying $35 for gig. At the end of the day, the price is worth it since it keeps my wife working at an acceptable speed.

Click to expand...

Hmm, I didn't realize that they were still offering only the gig tier to new subs anywhere. That was the case here for part of last year but then they switched back to the three tiers, but now with unlimited data on all of them (not just the gig). Maybe they tailor what they're offering per market based on the main cableco they're competing with? It's Comcast here.

NashGuy said:

Hmm, I didn't realize that they were still offering only the gig tier to new subs anywhere. That was the case here for part of last year but then they switched back to the three tiers, but now with unlimited data on all of them (not just the gig). Maybe they tailor what they're offering per market based on the main cableco they're competing with? It's Comcast here.

Click to expand...

Here it is Charter, but also fiber service from Frontier, Google, Ting and some other smaller players in various areas that are still in a state of growth. Depending on your address, you could potentially have access to 3 or more companies offering "gig" service.

ncted said:

Here it is Charter, but also fiber service from Frontier, Google, Ting and some other smaller players in various areas that are still in a state of growth. Depending on your address, you could potentially have access to 3 or more companies offering "gig" service.

Click to expand...

Yeah, Google Fiber is present in Nashville too, they actually began deploying here before AT&T Fiber, which has now greatly surpassed them. Not sure if AT&T wired up all the neighborhoods that already had GF or not, although I know at least one of the first urban neighborhoods to get GF has AT&T Fiber now too, and of course had Comcast before either arrived. (Not sure why AT&T spent resources doing that when there's still likely lots of suburban neighborhoods without any fiber provider.)

So there may be some addresses there in NC that are served by both GF and either AT&T or Frontier Fiber too. I'd be really surprised, though, if any home had three fiber providers, as I doubt there's any overlap between telcos AT&T and Frontier, or between tiny Ting and any other fiber provider. (Too bad for those homes that end up with Ting instead of a different company, as all they offer is a 1 gig plan for "$89/mo plus start-up costs". I guess they're just going for top-end customers who don't want cable.)

NashGuy said:

Yeah, Google Fiber is present in Nashville too, they actually began deploying here before AT&T Fiber, which has now greatly surpassed them. Not sure if AT&T wired up all the neighborhoods that already had GF or not, although I know at least one of the first urban neighborhoods to get GF has AT&T Fiber now too, and of course had Comcast before either arrived. (Not sure why AT&T spent resources doing that when there's still likely lots of suburban neighborhoods without any fiber provider.)

So there may be some addresses there in NC that are served by both GF and either AT&T or Frontier Fiber too. I'd be really surprised, though, if any home had three fiber providers, as I doubt there's any overlap between telcos AT&T and Frontier, or between tiny Ting and any other fiber provider. (Too bad for those homes that end up with Ting instead of a different company, as all they offer is a 1 gig plan for "$89/mo plus start-up costs". I guess they're just going for top-end customers who don't want cable.)

Click to expand...

It is a mish-mash. I have access to AT&T and Spectrum, but Frontier has announced fiber for my address -- they are the ILEC. There are parts of Holly Springs and Apex that have Spectrum, Ting, and AT&T, and lots of apartment complexes across the region have Google, AT&T, and Spectrum as options. Not sure why customers in this area get so much competition. There are very few addresses that don't have Spectrum and one of the others to choose from.

FWIW: My coworker just switched from AT&T Fiber to Ting and is only paying $60/month for 2 years. Ting seems to have focused on suburban neighborhoods here instead of MDUs for some reason.

ncted said:

It is a mish-mash. I have access to AT&T and Spectrum, but Frontier has announced fiber for my address -- they are the ILEC. There are parts of Holly Springs and Apex that have Spectrum, Ting, and AT&T, and lots of apartment complexes across the region have Google, AT&T, and Spectrum as options. Not sure why customers in this area get so much competition. There are very few addresses that don't have Spectrum and one of the others to choose from.

FWIW: My coworker just switched from AT&T Fiber to Ting and is only paying $60/month for 2 years. Ting seems to have focused on suburban neighborhoods here instead of MDUs for some reason.

Click to expand...

That amount of overbuilding between fiber competitors makes no sense. Building out in an area where there's just one competitor (the cableco) makes sense. But where there's already two competitors? Spend the money building out somewhere else.

NashGuy said:

That amount of overbuilding between fiber competitors makes no sense. Building out in an area where there's just one competitor (the cableco) makes sense. But where there's already two competitors? Spend the money building out somewhere else.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it does seem pretty stupid. I get the impression they all have the same idea which addresses will make them money, and aren't paying attention to who is already there or is planning to build out there.

Also, some of it is Spectrum and AT&T Uverse VDSL were already there, so Google thought they would swoop in, only to have AT&T replace Uverse VDSL with FTTH right before, during, or after the Google install.

In my neighborhood, Frontier already has bonded VDSL, so I guess they think it will be easy to put in fiber? AT&T overbuilt Frontier copper at my address, which they do not apparently do normally. I think it might have just been an easy win for them since they had put in so much dark fiber in the region during the dotcom boom, including along both state highways that border my development.

The Internet transplant was a success. The AT&T Tech called to let me know he was stopping at the FTTN node to switch us over to the new Lightspeed connection which would knock us off as the old 2Wire router couldn't connect to it. He brought in the new router and after downloading firmware we were off to the races.

The Upload is six times what I had before. Maybe I can use the Cloud now…