Is "DSLAM congestion" a legitimate reason for slow DSL?

Question

My DSL has been extremely slow in the evenings recently.

To test it, I telnet to my DSL Modem, and ping the gateway. This way I eliminate internet congestion and local network issues. In the mornings I get 30ms - 50ms pings. In the evenings, it bounces around a lot, but 10000ms pings are common.

I complained to Qwest support, and they said it was a known issue on their end, their engineers were working on it, and wouldn't say anything else.

A couple days later I complained again, and they sent out a technician. He tested my house wiring and found that one of them had a short. It was an unused line, so we disconnected it, and he said things looked better and left. My daytime speeds improved at this point, but evening is still bad.

I complained to Qwest support again, and they said it was a problem with DSLAM congestion at their end, and that they were working on it, but no ETA.

My neighbor has Qwest DSL and doesn't seem to have these problems. That seems strange. I go use her network when I absolutely must get online and mine is behaving badly.

I can't tell if they're yanking my chain or not. Regardless, these speeds are crap. I'm paying for 7Mpbs but am lucky if I get 1/10th that in the evenings. My kids like to watch Netflix streaming movies, and it's just impossible after 5pm or so.

Should I wait it out? Will complaining again produce any results? Should I change my subscription to a lower speed until they fix their end? Or switch to cable?

Answer 1

If you have high user contention ratios on your exchange, it can definitely affect your speed. It sounds like the area is oversubscribed. Usually they only improve this if enough people complain, or it gets saturated, and there's no real way for you to force their hand.

Whether the contention is actually the DSLAM is up for conjecture and there's nothing you can do about it. Vote with your feet and find another ISP, or complain loudly. But check around your neighbours and see if they're also having issues. Maybe if enough people complain, it'll help.

Answer 2

The reason your speeds seem slower in the evening are far more likely to do with your usage. If you turned off wifi on the router and connected a laptop or pc by Ethernet. Turn them on and put it into safe mode. Run a speed test and your speeds will likely be the same at night as in the morning If your neighbour is on the same exchange which is likely and they do not suffer the same issue then it is clear your fault is your bandwidth usage in home.