Paul's Comments

Quick Summary: Comcast is highly reliable, but I can't afford it; Verizon's service I can afford, but it's horribly unreliable.

I think I figured out how Verizon is able to throttle people's use of the Internet. There is a feature that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use to limit usage, it's called 'traffic shaping,' which, if I understand it, means that in some cases, you simply discard certain customer's traffic as a way of load shedding or load balancing. That's why packets are not guaranteed when an application uses faster but less reliable UDP transmission service over the TCP service that's part of TCP/IP, the standard for transmitting data over the Internet.

Verizon simply deprovisions the line, and nothing goes through! It's the equivalent of reducing the volume of calls going through a phone switch by either temporarily disconnecting people's lines or not giving them dial tone, then later reversing the process. Since I don't know how a DSL line connects to the DSLAM (the equipment at the phone company's end that translates the DSL signal from the analog tones over the phone line back into digital data) I don't know exactly how it is done, but as best I understand it - and I could be wrong - that's what's happening.

If they ain't doing it on purpose to reduce traffic, it certainly indicates that they have real problems with keeping their line working. I see this constantly and chronically, I'll be using the Internet for a while, and something - typically the audio feed of BBC World Service - goes dead. I have my DSL router set up so I can see it. [Update:08 Nov. 2008] What I have done is, I have a cardboard box that my waffle maker was shipped in, that's about 3 feet tall, I put the DSL modem on top of it, it's so high up I can see it over anything which might be in the way.[End update] I turn around and sure enough, the DSL light on the router will be blinking, indicating the line has lost connectivity with the host. Just now I cheated (switched my connection back to the Comcast line I should have had disconnected when I ordered Verizon) in order to allow something I was using to finish saving. So, this interruption was only about 5 or 10 minutes instead of sometimes hours as often happens.

At least I have this luxury, for the moment, as a result of using a firewall. If I was doing this and directly connected to either the DSL modem or the Cable modem I'd probably have to reset the PC's IP address it obtains via DHCP lease. Since I connect to a router of my own which gives my computer a lease between itself and the computer, and the router gets a different lease from wherever it's connected, when the router gets disconnected, it does its own reconnection (and establishes its own lease) with whichever device it's connected to when I pull the plug to switch them. I noticed when I switched the feed from Comcast back to Verizon, the BBC World Service plays out the cached audio, maybe 5-15 seconds, then stops, usually for 20 to 30 seconds until it rebuilds the cache, then it starts back up again.

I can live with the lower speed if it was consistent. I have two possible choices to throw money at the problem to fix it, either of which would cost the same. The first is to switch from the current "up to 768K" speed residential service I am subscribed to, which is $19.95 a month, and upgrade to the residential "up to 3M speed," which is $29.95 a month, or I can switch to the same "up to 768K" speed for $29.95 as a "business" service, which I presume means it has a service guarantee as opposed to the residential service level which does not. I figure, again I'm going to try to see what, if anything, Verizon promises for business service in terms of an SLA or availability. If I could even get 384K and guaranteed availability I could probably live with that. But right now I'm getting spotty unreliability and so-so service. When it works right, it's good enough or I can live with it; when it doesn't - which is far too often in my opinion - I'm disconnected. [N.B. Business service requires a $99 setup fee, which I probably can't afford.]

Right now I'm low on cell minutes, low on money to buy more, and can't get my landline phone working, so I can't really call Verizon but I think I'll send them an e-mail about their common service failures. Or at least I'll try as I may find my Internet goes out when I want to send them an e-mail!

Actually, it doesn't matter. I go to Verizon's web site, and they have a form you can fill out to send them an e-mail. The form allows you a whopping 70 characters to describe the problem! Oh yeah, that's gonna be really useful. Hell, I suspect even a URL for the permalink to this message would exceed the space they allow! (It is.)

Verizon does, however, offer a "premium tech support" option for $14.95 a month with a 10-month commitment. But what they apparently are offering is a service to call in for general PC tech support. Hell, I have done that myself, I clearly don't need that. All I want is for my Internet to work reliably! If it wasn't for the fact going back to using a modem would cost me as much as Comcast's $57 a month service, I'd actually consider dial-up again! [Update 10/26/2008:](I also can't find the power supply to my 56Kbps modem at the moment. I had wanted to use it to see if faxes would work over MagicJack, the landline phone service I have that connects over the Internet and uses the new computer to connect, but I wasn't able to do that.)[End Update]

If I thought the higher speed service would be much faster and stop being dropped off, I'd take it. But I would not be pleased to be subscribing to the service at the higher price and seeing the connection still failing essentially every day, sometimes for hours at a time.

[Update 10/26/2008:] I am unhappy enough about Verizon's poor service to seriously consider gaming them, by canceling the service before the first month ends and my contract period starts, then re-applying, and keep doing this every time I have terrible service until something changes. Not only that, it went down in the middle of writing this one paragraph, I had to cheat again (borrow the Comcast connection) just to save this paragraph! And in the few minutes that I dropped off of Verizon's network, my connection suddenly started working again. [End Update]