On January 11, 2019 at 14:32, Ernie Gilman said...
Well, good. How is it even possible for the ISP to be responsible for the speed of wifi in the home? Sure, the ISP supplies a router with wifi, but it's up to the client to accept that or to get a better one. You might mention that ISPs also only can guarantee a MINIMUM speed of even wired internet! (And because the marketing dudes always want to cite the biggest number they can cite, it's like pulling teeth to get the ISP to name the fastest guaranteed speed. They'll usually stick HARD with "speed up to _______, which is meaningless.)
Here's where the ISP's dastardly approach makes it hard to pin things down. Are they paying for "up to 400 Mbps," or "at least 400 Mbps"?
You're not willing to say it can handle everything at slower speeds? It does make sense to say that handling something at slower speeds is not handling things!
Ask a random group of people what they expect from WiFi and you're going to hear that they believe it will work for everything and everything means every thing. Ask people who are more versed in technology and you'll hear a different answer. It's sold as the golden bullet for peoples' connectivity issues- when was the last time you heard an ISP say that some wired connections are needed in order to achieve the highest speed? NEVER gonna happen. Big numbers = more and more is better, right? They never say "At least 400 Mbps". "Speed up to...." is not meaningless- it goes from zero to the stated number and I was surprised to see that the EERO is showing 480 Mbps since the customer is paying for 400. Usually, it falls short.
I try to manage their expectations bu explaining that they don't actually use or need such high seeds, but that the content will eventually require this because it will reduce congestion in the ISP's infrastructure for now- not everyone is watching TV over the internet, so their demands will be less than someone whose house has a bunch of kids who are streaming and gaming while the parents watch Netflix, or something like it. The problems result when the ISP can't provide the speed, or throttles the service. In this case, more IS better.
I was contacted by the people with the EERO when the speed was very slow- I tested and found it to be around 2Mbps, so I rebooted the network & computers, but it didn't change so I called Spectrum. The tech support guy said that maybe, the computers weren't up to the task. I had already told him they worked fine for days before I called and he just grumbled something about "Oh, I didn't mean.....". Putz.
