ISP Comparisons

If you have been following some of my blogging and social internet activity recently you have likely noticed that I had been testing the Clearwire internet service. This service offered a very attractive startup package with some decent incentives to try their service. I had been watching some of their promotion and was intrigued by the service, so I talked with a representative and signed up. He made it clear to me that I could try the service for seven days without penalty. I obviously did not cancel my current ISP (AT&T)

First Impressions

The first day I hooked up the Clearwire modem I was a bit concerned. I noticed through a direct connect that my local area connection was only 10.0 Mbps. I am used to seeing 100.0 Mbps on this connection, but I forgot that it changes when plugged into the router.

I followed directions for hooking up the wireless modem that they provide (Clearwire is not DSL or cable, they use radio towers to send signals to their modems). I “tuned” the modem by turning it to receive the best signal as indicated by the five lights on top of the modem. These show signal strength, much as a cell phone does. The best signal I could get was two lights (two bars?). I tried other rooms in the house and found a three-light signal upstairs in one of the bedrooms. This wasn’t going to be convenient, as I would have to rewire my cat5 lines and would have move the wireless router.

Attempting to connect

I decided to try to surf the web, so I hooked it up and found that I could, indeed, find web sites easily. There were some notable changes in download speeds. I was, of course, taxing the system with some sites that I knew would require heavy processing. The results were “adequate” but not “acceptable.” I attempted to upload some small files to my server and found very unacceptable upload speeds (60 kbps). I knew that this service was not going to meet my needs if this was the best it could provide. I do a lot of live audio and video streaming, so this was going to have to be improved if I was to keep the service. I contacted their tech department to see what we might be able to do.

Clearwire Tech Support

The gentleman that I talked to at Clearwire technical support was very helpful and very thorough. He explained to me that two lights showing on the modem was considered “excellent.” I still wasn’t completely convinced. He then asked me to go to Speedtest.net to check upload and download streams. This is the result on the first test:

Not very acceptable in my opinion. He then walked me through a few steps, including clearing dns cache and ipconfig. This is the result of the second test:

Again, I wasn’t very pleased. We rebooted the machine, did another sweep through the dns cache and here is the final result:

I truly felt that this still wasn’t good enough. The upload speeds were not consistent — and they were not reaching over 200kbps — which I knew would not support my streaming needs. I asked to cancel the account, knowing that it wasn’t going to suit my needs.

Give it a week

Obviously, the customer service and technical support folks at any company would not be doing their job if they didn’t ask the customers to continue the account. I was told to give it the full week to see if speeds might improve and to give it the full test just to be sure. I thought I would at least do that much. So, I agreed.

Through the week I was able to see a slight improvement on download speeds. I even found that if I moved the modem further away (about two feet) from the router that I could get more signal strength. This did, obviously, improve my upload and download speeds. However, they were not quite what I had hoped to gain. I even took the modem with me to work and found that the location there was even better with a stronger signal to/from the tower. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough.

Ultimate test

During the week I performed three live acoustic sets in Second Life. The first was simply a test set where I asked a few folks to join me on the stream to critique and point out any drops or issues in the stream continuity. They reported a fine stream for the hour that we tested.

I performed a full show Friday evening with no consequences in the stream, though I did see a jump or two in the Second Life client that concerned me. I thought that I was offline for a short time, but found I was only lagging a bit.

Saturday was the day of reckoning. This was the final day of my one week test. I performed a show at a brand new location in Second Life. I didn’t think there would be any concerns with the stream, as I had two successful tests through the week. However, the streaming client that I use (Simplecast) was not able to keep the stream flowing. It sent an error message several times throughout the show that it was “unable to stream fast enough” while it attempted to buffer. I apologized to the listening audience, rebooted my PC, reset the router to accept my other ISP settings and hooked up the DSL modem. I knew when the show as over that I would be calling Clearwire to cancel the account.

Why I am staying with my current ISP for now

I have been using the ATT account for many years. It has been a reliable, stable account. I rarely run into outages and rarely have complaints about connection speeds. The only conflict I have is that it is on a separate phone line in my home. This phone line used to serve as my business line, but with the advent of services such as Skype, Grand Central, and others, I’ve found this phone line has become obsolete. I would like to cancel it and save a few dollars each month. So I am shopping for cost effective options, including moving my DSL to my other phone line or getting cable internet. Whichever gives me the best speeds at the best price will win.

However, the reason I am keeping this ISP for now — and why I canceled Clearwire is just this:

This is the first test I’ve run since reconnecting the ATT modem. As you can see, the speeds are considerably improved over the Clearwire results. One Clearwire test during the week even showed an upstream speed of only 60kbps. I just can’t accept this inconsistency. And note the difference in latency on the different tests. Ping rates over 100ms on Clearwire; 55ms on ATT.

It might be okay for you

Overall, though, I have to say that I was extremely impressed by the Clearwire crew that I worked with over the week. Customer service personnel were top-notch. Their mannerisms, patience, and education methods were very professional and friendly. The support technician was a pro at handling my questions, working with me without being condescending, and at helping me to understand different options and potential for their service.

If you are simply surfing the web, with occasional file downloads such as software, music files, etc. this might be a fine service. Their startup incentives are very good and their monthly rates are very competitive with other services. If you are a power user, there are likely better options. However, the Clearwire supervisor that spoke to me on the phone noted that there are some technology improvements getting ready to launch. This will bring them to comparable speeds with higher-end DSL services. It is something I will look at again in the future.