Shaw Internet

[Raingler]

Just curious what others are getting for speeds on Shaw lately.

I was on Lite speed and getting only 25kb/sec, which is obviously MUCH lower than the claimed 256kb/sec. So I called them up today and the tech I talked to said there didn't appear to be anything wrong and suggested upgrading to Hi speed. Now I really hate getting sucked into an upsell but have been tearing my hair up at these sub-dialup speeds for some time now so agreed to give it a try. After a quick reboot I was up and running with my new hi speed connection, supposedly... Ran the speed tests again (dslreports.com) and sure enough the speeds went up. Slightly. My download speed was now 188kb and upload 499kb. I'm fine with the upload now as it's close enough to the claimed amount, but geez I'm STILL not even getting litespeed speeds after upgrading to hi speed, nevermind the 5mb/sec I should be.

Anyone else having these kind of problems?

[kevman]

I'm not farmiliar with Shaw's claimed service speed but one thing you should know is that an ISP's claimed speed is sometimes advertised in kilobits while the speed you're thinking of is kilobytes.  If this is the case their claimed speed of 256 kilobits is actually 32 kilobytes (8 bits to a byte)  and the 25kb/sec you're getting would be about normal.

[FiEND]

only way to know for sure is to get a tech to come to your house and test.  i've used quite a few lightspeed and typically faster than that but still terribly slow to me so I can't guage very well.

dslreports isn't a good place to do a speed test.  there can be problems on the route anywhere at any time.  I do my speed tests with email or news servers because that is going from you to the shaw servers and back.  this is the only way to test your home other than having a techy come in.

ie. find a 5MB file, a mp3 is good to try since it is a compressed file and wont distort your readings as text based files will.  email it to yourself and watch your speeds when it uploads and then downloads from shaw's mail server.

go to this website and download DUMeter and install it.  gives you realtime speed readings for your computer.  has a 30 day trial and no junk installed with it.  http://www.hageltech.com/dumeter/

can also go to start button, run.  type in cmd or command (depending on which windows you are using) and press enter.  then type tracert dslreports.com and see what your speed is at.  for example here is my reading.  some problems in wp (winipeg) and mt (manitoba) but not too slow for almost 6pm.

Code: [Select]

C:\Documents and Settings\FiEND>tracert dslreports.com

Tracing route to dslreports.com [209.123.109.175]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.2.1
  2    18 ms    20 ms    19 ms  70.73.224.1
  3    57 ms    16 ms    19 ms  rd1so-ge3-0-0-18.cg.shawcable.net [64.59.142.226
]
  4    23 ms     6 ms     7 ms  rc1so-ge6-0.cg.shawcable.net [66.163.71.129]
  5   165 ms    26 ms    34 ms  rc2nr-pos13-0.wp.shawcable.net [66.163.76.86]
  6    33 ms    27 ms    21 ms  rc1sc-ge12-0-0.wp.shawcable.net [66.163.73.170]

  7    61 ms    86 ms    91 ms  rc1sh-pos13-0.mt.shawcable.net [66.163.76.73]
  8   200 ms    48 ms    45 ms  rc2sh-ge11-0-0.mt.shawcable.net [66.163.66.14]
  9    65 ms    50 ms    54 ms  gw-nac.torontointernetxchange.net [198.32.245.38
]
 10    93 ms    74 ms    71 ms  0.so-3-2-0.gbr2.nwr.nac.net [209.123.11.225]
 11    74 ms   114 ms    66 ms  0.so-0-3-0.gbr1.oct.nac.net [209.123.11.233]
 12   156 ms    62 ms   118 ms  www.dslreports.com [209.123.109.175]

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\FiEND>

[cablesmurf]

Just curious what others are getting for speeds on Shaw lately.

I was on Lite speed and getting only 25kb/sec, which is obviously MUCH lower than the claimed 256kb/sec. So I called them up today and the tech I talked to said there didn't appear to be anything wrong and suggested upgrading to Hi speed. Now I really hate getting sucked into an upsell but have been tearing my hair up at these sub-dialup speeds for some time now so agreed to give it a try. After a quick reboot I was up and running with my new hi speed connection, supposedly... Ran the speed tests again (dslreports.com) and sure enough the speeds went up. Slightly. My download speed was now 188kb and upload 499kb. I'm fine with the upload now as it's close enough to the claimed amount, but geez I'm STILL not even getting litespeed speeds after upgrading to hi speed, nevermind the 5mb/sec I should be.

Anyone else having these kind of problems?

Since I do this for a living, I can give you the best answer.

It depends on where you live. If you live in an old nabourhood with overhead lines (drop), the drop may need to be replaced. You could have a bad splitter, or even a bad connector. These things will greatly affect your speeds. If you have an after market splitter, it may not be rated for the right mhz whick will also slow things down.

Where do you live? I may be able to swing by and check it out.

"cable" smurf....get it?

[shibby]

I'm a Computer techie by trade and agree with Fiend and Cablesmurf. Internet speed can be affected by so many variables that it's not funny. The biggest variable is where you are downloading from, as you will be limited to their maximum upload speed if they are not able to upload as fast as you can download. By downloading from your ISP's servers you are usually going to be acheiving your highest download rate possible, though even these may be capped off by some ISP's.

If you are using shaw or telus, the best thing to do would be to email yourself a larger file (around 5MB) but don't download right away. Once you are sure it's been sent, close your email program and open up internet explorer and connect to your webmail service. For shaw it's webmail.shaw.ca and for telus it's webmail.telus.net. Once in there you should be able to see the email you sent to yourself and then download the attachment (make sure to right click the attachment and choose "Save Target As").

The reason for this, is that most email programs like outlook and outlook express will not show an actual download speed. But if you're downloading with internet explorer you should be able to see the download speed on the status window that pops up when you choose to download it.

One other thing to note, with shaws connection you're speed is split up and shared with all other people that are conencting to the same node as you. IE if everyone in your neighbourhood is downloading at the same time your maximum speed will drop. It's best to do this test at different times of the day to give yourself an idea whether your connection speed is being affected by others around you. Peak times when most people start using the internet is between 5pm and 9pm when they get hom from work. Things may start speeding up when people start logging off and heading for bed.

Hope all this helps.

[m0th]

Shaw have their own speedtester:

http://speedtest.shaw.ca

[calltrex]

ive killed 2 splitters already...  wierd stuff happens when the splitters go..

[Elsifer]

Also check to see if you use any couplings or barrel-connectors. The variety from RadioShack/TheSource are mostly junk. Nowadays the good coax comes in a fine thread and the couplings are usually coarse thread.

I ran into an intermittent issue with that once.

Cable-Smurf can better explain than I.

[cablesmurf]

On Shaw's speed test, I just pulled 5 mbps down and 328 mbps up.

Dsl Reports says:

[Raingler]

Thanks for all the input guys. I tried that Shaw test earlier this morning and got 400kb down/ 45kb up... and now tried it again and got 4mbps down/320kb up. It's a Java based test and aren't sure if it caches anything or not, so that may account for the increased speed now, or it's getting progressively faster if that's possible.

The connection is the same as the shaw tech ran when the house was hooked up back in Oct so whatever coax and connectors are in place are those provided by Shaw so I hope it's safe to assume they are correct.

Dan I had forgot you work for them. I'm in the middle of renovating my whole house (in Marda Loop and HAS a pole drop to answer your other question) so wouldn't mind some advice on how best to run it, what type of splitters to use etc. Will PM you my number and if you could steer my in the right direction that'd be greatly appreciated. Shaw actually has me lined up for a service call tomorrow to remove the filter from basic cable to full, not sure if you do those kind of calls or not but if it could be arranged that you take it that would work out perfectly.

Oh and thanks for that link to the DU Meter. Interesting to be able to watch what speeds are coming and going at a live rate.

Cheers.