terrible dsl speeds

[mananavi]

recently got att yahoo dsl and am having dial-up type speeds. Downloading at 5 KB/sec and horrendously bad browsing speeds. i've cleaned up the whole system and nothing seems to work. any thoughts? is there a way to test my speed with att?

[Tonyn]

Yes, there are several speed tests online. ATT has more than one. Try this one: http://helpme.att.net/dsl/speedtest.

If you do not get better than half the speed advertised for your plan do call tech support.

Keep in mind you should not expect to get the max advertised speed when running the test. The test is "throughput" meaning it does not count the headers and other overhead. Also the advertised speed is the max speed within a range of speeds for the particular plan you subscribe to.

For example my plan advertises speeds "up to 3mb/s" I actually get a throughput of about 2.5mb/s. ATT tech sup told me that that plan only guarantees speed to be above 1.5 mb/s, which happens to be the max speed for the next lower plan.

Good luck.
Tony

[Tonyn]

Actually- - - Take a look at the top of this page. There is a speed test right there.

Tony

[samsmith4]

I hope this helps someone:

I had Yahoo/SBC/ATT DSL running for about two years straight without a hitch. I was paying for a 1.5mb/384kbps connection. Getting about 1.2/315, which translated into 150kb/sec down and 40kb/sec up.

Two days ago things suddenly went south and I was getting 56k or worse speeds. I called their tech support and they ran the usual tests and had me unplug, replug, check the plugs, etc etc. Their final accessment at the time was that nothing was wrong with their signal, so a technician appointment would have to be made. If they found some issue with my line or modem, they could charge me for repair or a new modem as needed.

It all sounded a little fishy, when I realized that my upload speed was still 315ish kbps. Download however was down to about 60kbps (basically 56k).

Luckily the technician didn't show up. I called tech support again and this time the operator was someone that actually knew what they were doing. They couldn't explain why my speeds were suddenly down but ran some tests and made some adjustments from their computer.

Immediately, my speeds were back up to 600kbps. Still not the usual 1,200kbps, but much better. I'm going to call again to try to get to the bottom of this. If it's all a matter of a few software tweaks in the system that can screw things up so badly for a user, they need to reevaluate this.

I had to wait at home for a whole day for a technician, and almost had to spend $$$ for repair charges or hardware that I apparently didn't even need.

[DV90]

I had almost the exact same problem but they couldn't do anything and said there was nothing wrong, basiclly saying i was lying. So I'm stuck with slower than dial-up speeds (15kbps down, 5kbps up).

[thebastard]

the tech support would always tell you to turn off all devices in hopes of fixing the problem. but usually, the problem lies in the dsl filters. if tech support suggests that they need to transfer your call to maintenance or some other department to check on the signals further, i suggest that you go with the flow. this department would run thorough tests on your dsl line to locate the cause of your slow speed or signal loss. and also, at&t experiences a lot of outages! just trying to help. ^__^