We’re paying Comcast a ridiculous amount of money every month for sub par service. They claim that we get 200 mbps, but that claim is suspect. We’re out in the country, and our internet is extremely slow. Comcast tells us that we’re the only people who’ve ever said this to them, but every neighbor we’ve spoken to says the same.
We’d like to get away from the Evil Comcast Monopoly, but our only other option is Century Link, who guarantees 16 mbps. Huge difference. We’d save a big chunk of change by making this switch, but I’m wary of signing a contract if it will render my GF useless
No answer to your problem but if you want to actually check your speed use the link above.
NOTE: If you cannot use flash for whatever reason there is a non flash link also that works exactly the same.
I was having troubles with them and after a month of several tests a day, I just copied my logs from speedtest and added it to my complaint. With the proof in their hand they finally expedited repairs.
16 Mbps is not blazing fast - the US average broadband is 22 Mbps (http://www.speedtest.net/reports/united-states/) so lots of people are slower. I can’t imagine it making the glowforge useless - perhaps a little sluggish?
I have 16Mbps and I can watch Netflix, youtube and surf the internet at the same time with no issues. You should have no issues with 16Mbps unless you have something else going on in the background that is using a lot of bandwith.
Is the century link dsl? Make sure you know how long the copper line will be. We have about 2 miles of copper before the fiber tab…getting about 8 mbps (paying 50 bucks a month for that ugh). Before the fiber tab went in it was 4 miles…say 256k…on a good day maybe 880k.
Oh and century link says im getting 12 (and in the old days 1.5). Don’t trust the sales guys if you are out in the boonies, but make sure you talk to one of the techs who knows the area (we sometimes get temp guys from the next town over and they mess everything up till one of the 2 good local guys is free…).
Another “in the country” glowforger here. I have 7Mbit DSL and it is fine for the GF (and streaming Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video, and… ).
I am certain that there are facets of using the GF that are slower than those folks with faster internet – like how long it takes to scan the bed image and how long to upload scans/large files (which is due to my DSL upload being < 1Mbit).
The Glowforge is ‘useable’ in the 300~500kbps range (less than 1Mbit) so @ 16Mbit you’ll be fine. But on the flip side of that, we have a pretty cray cray internet connection here and there are times where the UI or the unit seems unresponsive. But this is due to Glowforge’s infrastructure. Not the internet connection.
Understand that Centurylink on uploads at .8/1.5Mbits.
The issue there is that any downloads will be hampered by uploads occurring at the same time (downloads have to wait for acknowledgement packets that need to be uploaded to continue downloading).
If Centurylink is all you have, then just realize that streaming will cause upload issues during the strreaming.
A good 3rd party speed testing site (because the ISP’s will unthrottle the regular testing sites) is http://speedof.me Give that a try with your current provider.
It will show from outside your service provider’s network (handing it off from one backbone provider to another).
I can do a speedtest with my Comcast service (verifying the subscribed speed) and it will show what your ISP provides (because it is not throttled due to hand off to other backbone provider). When you use a speed test site, make sure it is connecting to a testing server NOT on your service provider’s network.
I have a client that has 30-35 Mbit (up and down) service (verified with their speed test inside their network), but their hand off to other backbone providers shows that they are proxy serving and only are getting 12 Mbits through the peering points.
If you can get Century Link fiber then it works well. Most people here in town can only get the DSL with a 2 Mbps rating. I have their 40 Mbps tier and it works really well. I can’t justify 1 Gbps service even though it is only 80 bucks a month. So tempting though…
There are so many things that can wreck a good WiFi connection, in our case an aluminum roof messed with it a good bit until we upgraded our router gear. Some people do wonders with pringles cans and washers too.
My impression is that reliability is more important than speed. When I had trouble with wifi I had good speedtest results, but occasional dropped packets (which eventually get retransmitted, but the GF didn’t seem to like that).
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