27 replies to this topic

[Yaz4Ever]

I have Time Warner Cable's Extreme Internet package (up to 30Mbps) but I still have issues with my connection being extremely slow and often quitting completely. I don't know if there's a problem on TWC's end or mine, so I figured I'd ask people much more tech savvy than I here at dslreports.

I honestly don't know what is/isn't important, so I'm going to give you as much info upfront as possible.

I've contacted TWC about my Internet issues a few times already and they've replaced the Ubee Router/Modem (DDW 3611) once already but I'm still having intermittent issues. Some days the Internet is at a complete standstill, other times I'll go days without issue. Going days without issue for a service I'm paying $52.99/mo. for isn't exactly getting me to do cartwheels, however.

To the best of my knowledge, here is what is connected (or may be connected as several of these things are turned off most of the time) to my wireless network at any one time:

7 DirecTV receivers (3 Whole-Home DVRs and 4 digital receivers)
1 iMac running Snow Leopard
3 desktops running Windows 7
1 laptop running Windows 7
1 laptop running Windows 8
1 Google Chromebook running the Google OS
1 iPad 2
2 iPod Touches
4 iPhones (1 4s and 3 of the new 5 model)
1 Kindle
2 Barnes and Noble Nooks
3 PlayStation 3 consoles
1 XBox 360 console
1 Acer Tablet
1 Kurio Tablet
1 Android smartphone

I realize this seems like a ridiculously insane number of items that may at any point be connected to this system, but I have a wife and four children plus a foreign exchange student living with us for a year and my parents live with us for roughly 5 months each year in the finished basement in-law we set up for them.

Of those items, 1 DVR and 1 digital receiver, the Acer tablet, Android phone, laptop running Windows 8, and a desktop with Windows 7 belong to my parents and are only used while they are here. When they are here, I have most of my issues, but even when they aren't here, I still have issues. Obviously, their DirecTV receivers are always here, but the rest of the things are not in the house unless they are here.

I use my iMac for typical uses such as Internet, email, Office documents, etc. I have never Skyped nor do I stream movies or audio to it. I do, however, download things via iTunes and sometimes other sources.

My kids desktops and laptops are rarely used, although my son has become addicted to Minecraft and plays that more than I'd like.

The Kindle and Nooks are rarely used as are the iPod Touches.

The PS3s are connected to wifi but no one uses them to play online games. They are used more for media and occasional games than anything else. The media is loaded via USB drives, so they aren't being streamed from any computers or the Internet. Same with the XBox 360. We don't have XBox Live and, to be honest, I'm not even sure if it's connected to the Internet.

Our foreign exchange student uses her laptop (Windows 7) fairly often and Skypes a great deal to her family in Germany, but by fairly often I mean she may spend 2 hours a week on Skype. I don't believe she's downloading anything nor streaming anything. I've asked her and she's said no. I have no reason to doubt her honesty based on anything else.

Whew, that's a lot of information but I wanted anyone who read this to be as fully informed as possible.

TWC's recommendation to me was, not surprisingly, to upgrade to their Ultimate plan for $32 more each month. Even at that, they couldn't guarantee I'd be without issue. Needless to say, I'm skeptical.

I have no idea how to do anything with my router other than to access it and see things that I don't understand. I don't know how to turn off computers/devices via the router or how to limit the amount these items can draw from my current bandwidth nor if that's even possible. I also don't know how to read the reports to tell if there are issues on TWC's end. They tell me that there are no outages and that my signal looks strong on their end, but again I simply don't know.

If you were me, other then selling everything on eBay and going back to the postal service for communicating with others (lol), how would you approach this?

I asked if TWC could add a separate line so I could have my iMac and a couple of other vital items on one network and everything else on another, but they said they can't do this.

Vios and UVerse are unavailable in my area so I'm limited to TWC and AT&T DSL service (with lower speeds as their high-speed stuff isn't available here either). Should I add the cheapest AT&T line offered for the other items?

Is there something I could do in the router that would resolve these issues? I've heard of Tomato and DD-WRT but have ZERO idea if their compatible with my router or how to use them without messing things up even further.

I asked TWC tech support if adding wifi extenders would help and they said no.


Here's a speedtest.net result from earlier today:

http://www.dslreport...47d47/31217_905

If you've made it this far through this post, thank you and I look forward to any suggestions you may have to offer.

[Reverend]

Are you the Pentagon?

[absintheofmalaise]

Did they hire you as the IT guy at that company too?

[soxfan121]

So for 7-9 people there are 31 devices, not including whatever networking hardware you may or may not have mentioned?

[75cent bleacher seat]

I know virtually shit about any of this stuff but...have you considered contacting tech support for the router mfg. with the info you listed here? Perhaps its woth asking?

[Yaz4Ever]

Did they hire you as the IT guy at that company too?

Har Har, Mr. Clean

[Yaz4Ever]

Are you the Pentagon?

No, I think we've got more stuff.

[Yaz4Ever]

So for 7-9 people there are 31 devices, not including whatever networking hardware you may or may not have mentioned?

Pretty sure I've named it all. Wide wouldn't let me get the wifi-enabled toaster oven.

[Yaz4Ever]

I know virtually shit about any of this stuff but...have you considered contacting tech support for the router mfg. with the info you listed here? Perhaps its woth asking?

Had not thought of that. Thanks for the suggestion and PM. I'll let you know if I need to take you up on the offer.

[The_Powa_of_Seiji_Ozawa]

A few things to throw out there, not positive about these ideas but they seem to jibe, as I've had my own issues with TWC and seem to have done ok so far after my investigations into similar problems as and concerns as Yaz (albeit not as many devices, holy shit!)

Ubee products are crap. I would ask to replace the modem/router with another brand, if necessary dump the provided modem/router combo and get a plain Motorola modem from TWC (or buy a docsis 3.0 modem and tell TWC to fuck itself on the rental) and add your own Cisco N (or whatever brand) router (can get a cheap Cisco for about $30). I think, but am not sure, that TWC modem/router combos are only Wireless B/G protocol routers, not N.

I have read that when you have several wireless devices running simultaneously, the speed is brought down to that of the device with the slowest wireless protocol, so perhaps you have a B device running among the many?

Don't trust your DSLreport speedtest, as the number they give is not going to be achieved often. When the test is run, there is a lot of data being sent and received, and I believe that there is a temporary burst mode that enables that speed to be achieved momentarily, but I don't think it can be sustained.

[Joe Sixpack]

Ubee products are crap. I would ask to replace the modem/router with another brand, if necessary dump the provided modem/router combo and get a plain Motorola modem from TWC (or buy a docsis 3.0 modem and tell TWC to fuck itself on the rental) and add your own Cisco N (or whatever brand) router (can get a cheap Cisco for about $30). I think, but am not sure, that TWC modem/router combos are only Wireless B/G protocol routers, not N.

I agree with this recommendation. See if you can try a different brand router, whether it's from the cable company or just buying one yourself that's compatible.

I don't think the number of devices you have is that crazy. 30mbit should be plenty.

Do you keep bittorrent clients running usually? This is one possible cause...if you see these issues, try closing out any bittorrent clients that are still running and see if it makes a difference. These things can generate thousands of simultaneous connections that can sometimes cause issues (there are some workarounds for that, if it does turn out to be the issue). I used to have this problem, caused by bittorrent, with the shitty Verizon Actiontec router, and ended up setting up a bridge to my own linksys router, running tomato, to fix it.

The nice thing about tomato is I can see a bandwidth chart of my connection so I can get some idea if something unknown on my network is using all the bandwidth vs an actual cable company issue.

[Yaz4Ever]

I agree with this recommendation. See if you can try a different brand router, whether it's from the cable company or just buying one yourself that's compatible.

I don't think the number of devices you have is that crazy. 30mbit should be plenty.

Do you keep bittorrent clients running usually? This is one possible cause...if you see these issues, try closing out any bittorrent clients that are still running and see if it makes a difference. These things can generate thousands of simultaneous connections that can sometimes cause issues (there are some workarounds for that, if it does turn out to be the issue). I used to have this problem, caused by bittorrent, with the shitty Verizon Actiontec router, and ended up setting up a bridge to my own linksys router, running tomato, to fix it.

The nice thing about tomato is I can see a bandwidth chart of my connection so I can get some idea if something unknown on my network is using all the bandwidth vs an actual cable company issue.

I never leave bittorrent clients open unless I'm downloading something. As soon as Transmission gives me the broken glass sound, I quit the application.

Will tomato also allow me to see how much each client is using in terms of bandwidth? IOW, can I see how much my son's Minecraft is using up or my exchange student's Skyping? Can I set time limits for connections - turn off this client's access to wifi at 9pm or limit this client to 2 hours of wifi access?

I've got a fairly new Cisco router here somewhere (Linksys E4200) that I ditched for the TWC hardware. If I can find it, is it easy to turn my modem/router into a bridge (or whatever it's called) so I can attach the Cisco router to it or do I need TWC to do this? Would I be better off having them give me a stand-alone modem instead of disabling the wifi portion? Tomato runs on my router, right? Don't want to do anything to ruin TWC equipment and then get charged a fortune for later. Is tomato easy enough for a dunce like me to use?

[soxfan121]

Pretty sure I've named it all. Wide wouldn't let me get the wifi-enabled toaster oven.

Were I the mean sort, all kinds of fun could be had with this typo/Freudian slip. But I'm not, so I'll just note it and move on.

You have a lot of traffic and experience slow downs during peak demand. Either increase your capacity (i.e. not the rental router from TWC) or regulate usage (do you really need to be taping House Hunters on that 3rd DVR at 7 PM?)

[Yaz4Ever]

Were I the mean sort, all kinds of fun could be had with this typo/Freudian slip. But I'm not, so I'll just note it and move on.

You have a lot of traffic and experience slow downs during peak demand. Either increase your capacity (i.e. not the rental router from TWC) or regulate usage (do you really need to be taping House Hunters on that 3rd DVR at 7 PM?)

That's the thing, though, we don't DVR much other than during prime time (Breaking Bad, Big Bang Theory, Boardwalk Empire, and other shows that don't begin with B's), so the 7 receivers can't possibly be taking that much bandwidth, can they? We rarely (like three times total) use the On Demand stuff through DTV. The receivers are also shut off when we're not watching TV. I listed them only because they are connected to the system.

Of the 31 things on that list, 7 are these receivers and 4 others are only here when my folks are in town. That drops us to 20 including three rarely used ebook devices and two rarely used iPod Touches. 15 devices among 7 people really isn't that much, is it? We're talking cellphones and computers, mostly.

The slow downs also don't happen only during peak demand. They happen whenever they feel like it at all hours of the day. When you say increase capacity, what do you mean? Use a better router or add more bandwidth by bumping up to the 50Mbps plan?

[Snodgrass'Muff]

Maybe none of the individual 7 receivers are taking up a ton of bandwidth, but you have 7 receivers. Whether they're actively recording or not, they're using at least some bandwidth. Same goes for the PS3s. When they're on, they're connected to the internet and are exchanging information with Sony's servers. The Playstation Store is sending data to each console with new release information, sales, ect ect that updates on the console whether you are looking at it or not. There is often some amount of animation involved, whether it's still images cycling through or actual video, so that's chewing up bandwidth any time the consoles are on. Most games, even when not being played online, connect to servers to update profiles and look for downloadable content the game can then inform the player about and try to sell them. With three consoles running at the same time, you're going to use a good chunk of your bandwidth right there. The only way to prevent this is to turn off wifi capabilities for the console, though some games don't function without it so you might have to simply regulate gaming time for your kids instead of just turning off the network adapter for the machines.

Then there is the slew of other devices that may or may not be connected at any given time. Each one, whether they're downloading or streaming something or not are chewing up bandwidth. 30 seems like a lot, but for the amount of equipment you're listing, I don't think it's enough. Just the 7 receivers might be enough to kill your signal at certain times of day. At some point, you simply tip the scales past the point of a reasonable expectation of clean service.

I think soxfan has it right. You either need to regulate usage more strictly or upgrade your plan and pay for more bandwidth. You can certainly try upgrading your modem and router combo to see if an N-router will work better, but as was pointed out earlier, a single slower device will make it function like a slower router anyway so that might not do anything for you.

In the end, it's just a numbers game. Even idle devices use bandwidth and with 7 boxes on all the time, 3 game consoles that are used regularly and a bunch of laptops, you're putting a lot of strain on your network. I live with two roommates. We have a plan giving us 10 on the download, 1 on the upload which is normally enough if we're each just using a laptop and my PS3 is on. Generally, the other guy in the apartment can be playing a game through steam while I'm on with my PS3 and we have no problems.

If I'm working from home, though, and have both laptops running while they're home and am actively uploading or downloading files from my client or the company contracting me out, it can slow to a crawl because we simply tax the network too much. Same amount of devices, more bandwidth. In your case, you simply have a ton of devices (even accounting for the stuff that's normally off) constantly using a little bit of bandwidth each. It adds up.

The intermittent nature of the drops might not be as random as you think, either. They could be happening during firmware updates to the gaming consoles or even the DirectTV boxes. Could be that several laptops are downloading system updates at the same time you're DVRing on four boxes. I've never had DirectTV myself, but I've used it while house sitting and if I remember, it actually goes through a download process that then stores a copy of the recording on the box until you delete it. If this is happening through your internet, that's no different than downloading through iTunes or another service.

Maybe someone with experience working with DirectTV can chime in and correct me on that assumption, though. Otherwise, I'm agreeing with soxfan that you need to pay for more bandwidth or be more strict about usage in the house.

[j44thor]

How much of your network is wireless vs. wired? It doesn't sound like you have any access points so I assume the router is also serving the wifi for everything.
Are the issues predominantly with the wifi, wired or all devices? If you have a single band wifi router serving all those clients that could be the issue. You may need to add some access points or at least wireless repeaters.

30MB down should be more than sufficient for your network.

[Yaz4Ever]

Maybe none of the individual 7 receivers are taking up a ton of bandwidth, but you have 7 receivers. Whether they're actively recording or not, they're using at least some bandwidth. Same goes for the PS3s. When they're on, they're connected to the internet and are exchanging information with Sony's servers. The Playstation Store is sending data to each console with new release information, sales, ect ect that updates on the console whether you are looking at it or not. There is often some amount of animation involved, whether it's still images cycling through or actual video, so that's chewing up bandwidth any time the consoles are on. Most games, even when not being played online, connect to servers to update profiles and look for downloadable content the game can then inform the player about and try to sell them. With three consoles running at the same time, you're going to use a good chunk of your bandwidth right there. The only way to prevent this is to turn off wifi capabilities for the console, though some games don't function without it so you might have to simply regulate gaming time for your kids instead of just turning off the network adapter for the machines.

Then there is the slew of other devices that may or may not be connected at any given time. Each one, whether they're downloading or streaming something or not are chewing up bandwidth. 30 seems like a lot, but for the amount of equipment you're listing, I don't think it's enough. Just the 7 receivers might be enough to kill your signal at certain times of day. At some point, you simply tip the scales past the point of a reasonable expectation of clean service.

I think soxfan has it right. You either need to regulate usage more strictly or upgrade your plan and pay for more bandwidth. You can certainly try upgrading your modem and router combo to see if an N-router will work better, but as was pointed out earlier, a single slower device will make it function like a slower router anyway so that might not do anything for you.

In the end, it's just a numbers game. Even idle devices use bandwidth and with 7 boxes on all the time, 3 game consoles that are used regularly and a bunch of laptops, you're putting a lot of strain on your network. I live with two roommates. We have a plan giving us 10 on the download, 1 on the upload which is normally enough if we're each just using a laptop and my PS3 is on. Generally, the other guy in the apartment can be playing a game through steam while I'm on with my PS3 and we have no problems.

If I'm working from home, though, and have both laptops running while they're home and am actively uploading or downloading files from my client or the company contracting me out, it can slow to a crawl because we simply tax the network too much. Same amount of devices, more bandwidth. In your case, you simply have a ton of devices (even accounting for the stuff that's normally off) constantly using a little bit of bandwidth each. It adds up.

The intermittent nature of the drops might not be as random as you think, either. They could be happening during firmware updates to the gaming consoles or even the DirectTV boxes. Could be that several laptops are downloading system updates at the same time you're DVRing on four boxes. I've never had DirectTV myself, but I've used it while house sitting and if I remember, it actually goes through a download process that then stores a copy of the recording on the box until you delete it. If this is happening through your internet, that's no different than downloading through iTunes or another service.

Maybe someone with experience working with DirectTV can chime in and correct me on that assumption, though. Otherwise, I'm agreeing with soxfan that you need to pay for more bandwidth or be more strict about usage in the house.

Snod - my receivers are turned off when I'm done watching them. They even have a four-hour energy saver that turns them off if we forget. The PS3s are also turned off when not being used. Two of the three are connected to "smart" surge strips that turn off everything once the TV is turned off.

How much of your network is wireless vs. wired? It doesn't sound like you have any access points so I assume the router is also serving the wifi for everything.
Are the issues predominantly with the wifi, wired or all devices? If you have a single band wifi router serving all those clients that could be the issue. You may need to add some access points or at least wireless repeaters.

30MB down should be more than sufficient for your network.

Everything is wireless except a box the DirecTV people hooked up to the router via ethernet cable:



and, I'm a moron. Access points and repeaters, what's the difference? I've seen repeaters that I think simply plug into outlets and have a couple of antennas on them like this one:



would that do?

Edited by Yaz4Ever, 31 December 2012 - 01:39 PM.

[Joe Sixpack]

Maybe none of the individual 7 receivers are taking up a ton of bandwidth, but you have 7 receivers. Whether they're actively recording or not, they're using at least some bandwidth. Same goes for the PS3s. When they're on, they're connected to the internet and are exchanging information with Sony's servers. The Playstation Store is sending data to each console with new release information, sales, ect ect that updates on the console whether you are looking at it or not. There is often some amount of animation involved, whether it's still images cycling through or actual video, so that's chewing up bandwidth any time the consoles are on. Most games, even when not being played online, connect to servers to update profiles and look for downloadable content the game can then inform the player about and try to sell them. With three consoles running at the same time, you're going to use a good chunk of your bandwidth right there. The only way to prevent this is to turn off wifi capabilities for the console, though some games don't function without it so you might have to simply regulate gaming time for your kids instead of just turning off the network adapter for the machines.

Then there is the slew of other devices that may or may not be connected at any given time. Each one, whether they're downloading or streaming something or not are chewing up bandwidth. 30 seems like a lot, but for the amount of equipment you're listing, I don't think it's enough. Just the 7 receivers might be enough to kill your signal at certain times of day. At some point, you simply tip the scales past the point of a reasonable expectation of clean service.

I disagree with this. 30mbit should be plenty for the number of devices he has. These things that Yaz has described shouldn't be using that much bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth used by things like game consoles checking for updates, and that sort of thing, is miniscule.

What's more likely is either an issue with the cable service or something on the network that is sucking down bandwidth that he's not aware of (maybe the kids are into bittorrent downloads too?)

At my office we have about 800 PCs going through a 38mbit internet connection and it works fine for everybody.

Tomato or something similar that would give a better view into this would be the way to go at this point.

You can set time-based access restrictions for certain clients.
I think you can also view the bandwidth per client...you can definitely view the overall bandwidth anyway, which should be a good start in working out if the issue is truly at home or with the service.

Setting up their router as a bridge can be a pain, but I'm happy to help out with that if you want to try it. The other way that would be easier to set up just for testing purposes would be to just plug your own router into one of the LAN ports on theirs.

[SteveF]

Did you ever try the attenuator? If I recall correctly, the signal to your house was on the strong side.

Edit: I also agree with those above. 30 down should be plenty. I think it's more likely the wireless is overtaxed, or there is intermittent wireless interference which you could test by running a wired connection during a slowdown.

Edited by SteveF, 31 December 2012 - 01:37 PM.

[Yaz4Ever]

Did you ever try the attenuator? If I recall correctly, the signal to your house was on the strong side.

Edit: I also agree with those above. 30 down should be plenty. I think it's more likely the wireless is overtaxed, or there is intermittent wireless interference which you could test by running a wired connection during a slowdown.

Yes, it didn't make a difference. I bought a two pack at different levels and neither did the trick. I left each in for over a week, to see.

[Yaz4Ever]

I disagree with this. 30mbit should be plenty for the number of devices he has. These things that Yaz has described shouldn't be using that much bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth used by things like game consoles checking for updates, and that sort of thing, is miniscule.

What's more likely is either an issue with the cable service or something on the network that is sucking down bandwidth that he's not aware of (maybe the kids are into bittorrent downloads too?)

At my office we have about 800 PCs going through a 38mbit internet connection and it works fine for everybody.

Tomato or something similar that would give a better view into this would be the way to go at this point.

You can set time-based access restrictions for certain clients.
I think you can also view the bandwidth per client...you can definitely view the overall bandwidth anyway, which should be a good start in working out if the issue is truly at home or with the service.

Setting up their router as a bridge can be a pain, but I'm happy to help out with that if you want to try it. The other way that would be easier to set up just for testing purposes would be to just plug your own router into one of the LAN ports on theirs.

Not being naive, but no, they aren't torrenting at all.

I'll head up to the attic and pull out the router when I get a chance later today. I'll go with plugging the router into theirs as you said, if you think that will give us a good test.

[crow216]

I haven't read through the thread but all I can add at the moment is that Time Warner's equipment is extremely sensitive to overload and even when not under heavy load, still drops fairly often. If I ever attempted to download two torrents at once and saw my DL speed jump to 1mb/s, I absolutely knew I'd be losing my connection within a couple of seconds. I always secretly thought that they were regulating people abusing their bandwidth or downloading torrents because it was so consistent. Maybe it's silly or maybe it's not but I'm using probably 3 times as many devices as I was during my Time Warner era and have never dropped once under FIOS (even during Hurricane Sandy).

That's my anecdotal evidence against Time Warner. They are horrible.

[The_Powa_of_Seiji_Ozawa]

I never leave bittorrent clients open unless I'm downloading something. As soon as Transmission gives me the broken glass sound, I quit the application.

Will tomato also allow me to see how much each client is using in terms of bandwidth? IOW, can I see how much my son's Minecraft is using up or my exchange student's Skyping? Can I set time limits for connections - turn off this client's access to wifi at 9pm or limit this client to 2 hours of wifi access?

I've got a fairly new Cisco router here somewhere (Linksys E4200) that I ditched for the TWC hardware. If I can find it, is it easy to turn my modem/router into a bridge (or whatever it's called) so I can attach the Cisco router to it or do I need TWC to do this? Would I be better off having them give me a stand-alone modem instead of disabling the wifi portion? Tomato runs on my router, right? Don't want to do anything to ruin TWC equipment and then get charged a fortune for later. Is tomato easy enough for a dunce like me to use?

There is an option to turn off the router portion of your Ubee and use a bridge to an add-on router, but Ubee equipment used by TWC has been notorious for dropping speeds down to like 1M without warning regardless of what you're doing (and I imagine having tons of devices can't help what is already a flawed piece of hardware, even though there should be no reason for it) so I would even hesitate to rely on the bridge option since it can potentially be a pain to set up, but if you can do it easily it's worth a try. I still think the best way to go is to ditch Ubee completely and go with a new standalone modem from Motorola (which is on TWC's list) and a separate router. I don't have specific instructions on setting up the bridge, you'd have to go into the modem's firmware and turn off the router portion (there are detailed instructions online for Ubee...a Google search will likely reveal many people who share your problems).

The 30mbit download speed is more than enough for your needs, under no circumstances should you upgrade. Any improvement you would notice from the upgrade would likely be attributed to new equipment being used, not the upgraded bandwidth. Even 20mbit would probably suffice (and 20 is now the new "standard" package from TWC (used to be 15mbit), so you could save yourself $10 a month by downgrading).

Also, with the torrent stuff, have you tried Bit Thief as your client? Basically turns off the upload requirement for getting torrents and you operate as a leech, a bit immoral I suppose. But good for keeping bandwidth under control, and legally it avoids you actually sharing files since you are not sending them anywhere. Using that and PeerBlock is a good combo.

[cgori]

I seriously doubt you need more download speed, as said above, you can run ~100 computers off a 40mbit connection without these kinds of issues.

My gut says it's something flaky with the Ubee or the way it is set up. However, if everything is on wireless (thank god your DVRs/receivers are not, they are being MoCA-bridged by that adapter you posted upthread, basically the receivers use the coax cable in your house as a network), you might have some WiFi issues.

Before buying a repeater (the white 2-antenna thing you posted upthread is perfect, Netgear WN3000RP), what security/encryption settings are you using for your WiFi? I'm reading some stuff (unsure of the veracity) that Macs don't like WEP security anymore and that everything should be in WPA2 mode.

Another option, as others have suggested, is to put your Ubee into bridge mode (basically turns it back into just a cable-modem and disables the router function), and use your own router. (I would use something like a Linksys E2500, ~$70 from amazon and is an N600 device) I know next-to-nothing about Ubee stuff though, so I'm probably not the person to remote-guide you through setting it into bridge mode. It looks like it should be pretty simple from what I'm reading though, seems like there is a "hidden" option to do it.

If you actually upgrade to the E2500 router, then rather than the WN3000RP repeater (~$65 from amazon), I would look at the WN2500RP repeater (~$80 from amazon), which is an N600 repeater rather than an N300 repeater (N600 uses two frequency bands, where N300 only uses one band). The WN2500RP has 4 ethernet ports on the back as well, so if there is a convenient place to install it (home theater?), you could hook a lot of devices up to it directly.

[HriniakPosterChild]

Maybe none of the individual 7 receivers are taking up a ton of bandwidth, but you have 7 receivers. Whether they're actively recording or not, they're using at least some bandwidth.

Why? DTV has a much better way to dump megabytes worth of digital data at subscribers than the Internet: they send it through their satellites. "OnDemand" is the only thing from DTV that could be chewing up bandwidth, and Yaz says he almost never uses it.

[NortheasternPJ]

I haven't read through the thread but all I can add at the moment is that Time Warner's equipment is extremely sensitive to overload and even when not under heavy load, still drops fairly often. If I ever attempted to download two torrents at once and saw my DL speed jump to 1mb/s, I absolutely knew I'd be losing my connection within a couple of seconds. I always secretly thought that they were regulating people abusing their bandwidth or downloading torrents because it was so consistent. Maybe it's silly or maybe it's not but I'm using probably 3 times as many devices as I was during my Time Warner era and have never dropped once under FIOS (even during Hurricane Sandy).

That's my anecdotal evidence against Time Warner. They are horrible.

I agree with this. My parents-in-law have TWC and if I even try to stream something, like a flash video on FrontRowSports, the modem overloads, drops and apparently recycles. It's an absolute nightmare even though they have 15mbps or so which should be more than sufficient.

If you actually upgrade to the E2500 router, then rather than the WN3000RP repeater (~$65 from amazon), I would look at the WN2500RP repeater (~$80 from amazon), which is an N600 repeater rather than an N300 repeater (N600 uses two frequency bands, where N300 only uses one band). The WN2500RP has 4 ethernet ports on the back as well, so if there is a convenient place to install it (home theater?), you could hook a lot of devices up to it directly.

IMO Netgear wireless products are a mess,especially when you are having issues that are described here. I wouldn't waste the money on it. Just go with the E2500

[LegacyR]

Lots of info to digest, but is it possible to say run the iMac at least for some testing wired in when you are having your performance issues? This could rule out if you are having an RF issues.

If the issues are still occurring one thing you could look at is your outbound inet utilization. I have a pretty standard TWC connection and have absolutely no issues except when the outbound traffic utilization is mostly pegged. You can't make requests for webpages, etc. and I don't personally think TWC are as lenient on allowing any burst over their UL cap. I had this experience about 3 months back when the wife with her lowly little laptop was pegging my outbound with Shutterfly uploads. Your speed test shows 4 Mbps so that might not be the trouble but something to look at.

[glennhoffmania]

Are you the Pentagon?

Did they hire you as the IT guy at that company too?

Somehow I missed this thread, and I always try to catch Yaz-initiated threads early on for entertainment value. These two responses were quite amusing.

Good luck, Yaz!!!!!