[TriLUG] Request for help: residential internet service provider options.

[Steve Holton via TriLUG]

Hi all-

I'm in a monopoly-provider location (Windstream DSL on the Hwy 42-side of
Harris Lake) and for the past two weeks I've been seeing 20-30% packet loss
(for pings to their DNS server).

I'm looking for feedback/ideas from the TriLUG community.

1) What are the alternative service providers such as satellite and 4G? How
are they generally regarded? What are they good for/not good for?

2) Are there adjustments I can make to my gateway (OpenWRT/barrier breaker)
which might provide relief, or better monitoring?

3) Is this level of packet loss considered normal for a DSL connection? Is
there something I'm missing or not considering? Is there information I can
gather to aid diagnostics?

I've seen something similar years ago when the Macs were all trying to
download a critical update (in the background) over a dial-up link. Is
there something going-on in the Windows world I'm not aware of which could
be causing all my neighbors to unintentionally overload the link?
Something which might correct itself with time?

More about the problem:
I run a continuous ping test from my gateway (OpenWRT/barrier breaker) to
their DNS server. 100 packet test at 10 minute intervals.

I see 0% to 5% packet loss during bankers hours (8:30am to about 4:15pm)
and between 20% and 40% on evenings and weekends. This is a broadly
consistent pattern over several weeks of monitoring.

This loss is consistent even if every other device in my house is
disconnected from service.

When the packets get through, I generally see acceptable (50ms) round trip
times. It's just that a third of them never return.

I can't reliably load speedtest.net, or even Windstreams home page, but
fast.com generally reports 25-90 Kbps in the evenings.

This particularly affects web browsing as each advertisement seems to want
to be served by a different domain. I'm running local caching to reduce
this, but one of every three external lookups fails to the secondary name
server after timeout. Has ad blocking changed the way we use DNS recently?
Would employing it on my boxes the problem?

Has anyone had luck resolving broadband service problems by going through
the NC Public Utilities Commission? Last time I checked, they indicated
broadband was not a regulated utility and they had no jurisdiction.

Are there any other options or strategies I haven't considered? I've been
told by Windstream that they don't consider these problems to be unusual.
I've opened 3 tickets and the pattern is consistent: they claim they'll
test it the next business day, don't see a problem when they test, and
close the ticket without contacting me. They also say because I'm on a
copper service some packet loss is to be expected, and that my choices
amount to "...take it or leave it..." (their words, not mine.)

Any suggestions?

-- 
Steve Holton
sph0lt0n at gmail.com