I have 12 Mbps DSL with Qwest. And yes, streaming Netflix works great. Not sure if it is HD, however. I'm mostly watching TV shows. There are sometimes a few momentary pauses or picture blurriness as a show starts up, but once it's under way it's smooth as silk. Netflix is apparently using some sort of very clever algorithm that degrades the picture quality to the level necessary to keep the jitter down. I have no idea how they could do that dynamically, but apparently they do.
Although Netflix works well, I still have occasional problems with YouTube videos. Some play perfectly smoothly from the get-go, others need maybe 30 seconds of buffering before I start playing them.
How are you getting the signal from your DSL input to your output device? If you are running over a wireless connection, that could be the point of constriction. Although you would think that 54 Mbps would be plenty fast enough to keep ahead of any possible level of DSL, such is not the case. DSL always runs at the same speed (theoretically, anyway), but apparently wireless speed is deeply impacted by distance and signal strength. I'm no wireless expert, but from what I read on the Intertoobs, typical bandwidth on a wireless network is about 30% of the max speed. That's a lot of variability!
As for Qwest as an ISP, they seem okay to me. I don't use them for mail or as a website or anything like that, but providing reliable Internet connection is part of the ISP service. When I first got upgraded I was reading Qwest DSL forums and saw people complaining about variable ping speed, so I started checking it myself. Sure enough, my ping speed varies from a normal speed of about 50ms to as much as 300 ms during busy times.
This is apparently a meaningful variation to people playing online shooters on very fast gaming systems, but seems pretty negligible to me. I don't know how it compares to VISI, as it never occurred to me to monitor my ping speed back when I was using them.
Try pinging at different times of day and see how variable it is. Of course the tricky thing there is finding a site that doesn't itself slow down at certain times of day. Just pinging your local DNS server can be instructive, as it gives you an idea of how much congestion there is in the local ISP network itself. Or ping qwest.com.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 05:48 pm (UTC)Although Netflix works well, I still have occasional problems with YouTube videos. Some play perfectly smoothly from the get-go, others need maybe 30 seconds of buffering before I start playing them.
How are you getting the signal from your DSL input to your output device? If you are running over a wireless connection, that could be the point of constriction. Although you would think that 54 Mbps would be plenty fast enough to keep ahead of any possible level of DSL, such is not the case. DSL always runs at the same speed (theoretically, anyway), but apparently wireless speed is deeply impacted by distance and signal strength. I'm no wireless expert, but from what I read on the Intertoobs, typical bandwidth on a wireless network is about 30% of the max speed. That's a lot of variability!
As for Qwest as an ISP, they seem okay to me. I don't use them for mail or as a website or anything like that, but providing reliable Internet connection is part of the ISP service. When I first got upgraded I was reading Qwest DSL forums and saw people complaining about variable ping speed, so I started checking it myself. Sure enough, my ping speed varies from a normal speed of about 50ms to as much as 300 ms during busy times.
This is apparently a meaningful variation to people playing online shooters on very fast gaming systems, but seems pretty negligible to me. I don't know how it compares to VISI, as it never occurred to me to monitor my ping speed back when I was using them.
Try pinging at different times of day and see how variable it is. Of course the tricky thing there is finding a site that doesn't itself slow down at certain times of day. Just pinging your local DNS server can be instructive, as it gives you an idea of how much congestion there is in the local ISP network itself. Or ping qwest.com.