Flow Broadband - Status Thread

[TriniXaeno]

lol, come off the soap box nah awesome.

These things take time. You feel flow want to give bad service? That isn't in their interest at all.

Some constructive feedback on poor performance will go a much longer distance than a rantfest on any facebook page.

We already agreed to try and get someone to look into the issues posted on the forum.

Takes time.

I wonder how woodyear getting such great figures while some of us catchin we backside?

hmmm. Maybe there is some sort of vlan type deal going on at the outside of the flow connection to the external world. So it divvys up the bandwidth per region, some sort of traffic shaping deal. Lets say they allocate 100MB of bandwidth per region.

So if 100 men from st. anns reach their router, it allocates 1MB a man.

If 10 reach from Arima. It allocates 10MB a man.

When you do a speedtest to flow, it stops at the inside of the router....where no traffic shaping is taking place and as a result you'll get the full speed regardless.

I know once traffic shaping is taking place it introduces jitter. That could explain the deterioration in connection quality.

Its all theory though. Hopefully we'll get someone who knows to answer/confirm soon.

[Spazosaurus]

I dont think they WANT to give a bad service, its just that they dont CARE. Countless calls to their 'customer service' line and an equal number of calls and emails to higer up people over a period of 3 to 4 months, all resulted in a big fat round ZERO. I have logged many an official complaint to them and to this day I have not been contacted to ascertain...well anything about fixing the service. But guess what. I cancel the service, THE NEXT DAY THEY CALL ME TO FIND OUT WHEN I COMING IN TO PAY THE BALANCE!!!!!!! The NEXT dayyyyy!!!!

How much more time they want? How much more time am I going to give them to f**k with me?

Ask bout a rebate, they be like...and I QUOTE.."Or ok, I dont know, but we go see how it go nah".

What? You think I didnt try with Flow the civilized way? I tried and tried until I realised I wasnt dealing with PEOPLE. I was dealing with ANIMALS who saw me, as the paying customer as a LESSER being than an animal, an insect if you will.

So the Facebook rants didnt just come out of the blue. Give me a little more credit than that. The facebook was the last last resort, and guess what, they just deleted my comments and left the neutral ones...like water off a duck back.

Now I not saying that the service have to be good ALL the time and never ever go down or dip in performance. I am saying that they NEED to work much much harder on their customer service. MUCH harder man. This is the message I trying to get across to you which you probably didnt understand before, so im trying to explain myself a little better.

People could say what they want about TSTT but the times I had to call them in the last couple months, I got a foreigner, yes, who I had to listen hard to to understand what they were saying, but they were respectful, informative and helpful. They said someone would get into contact with me when I was getting only 1mb out of the 2, the guy said someone would contact me X day at X time, GUESS WHAT,  I got a call  x+5 minutes, technician on the other end, AT the exchange working on the problem.

"We agreed to get someone to TRY to look into it?" What is the status on that? Have we recieved any feedback? Im sorry, are we BEGGING for a service? Wow, I was under the impression that we were paying good money every month and deserve something better than 'we go try to get somebody to look into it.'

Wow, we is really Trini. We REALLY 'like it so'.

[TriniXaeno]

awesome, I'm happy for you, and I'mma let you finish, but TSTT has given me the worst ISP experience of all time....of all time.

lol

Let the rest of us try with flow nah, oh gorm.

We know you have endless nerdrage for 'em but trying to conduct an exercise here to get to the bottom of this performance prob.

I ordered internet from flow and blink for our new home. Flow installed in 2 weeks.

3 months later, TSTT now send a mail saying service available. wshb.

You know how much sweat I woulda miss out on if I had to wait on TSTT?

[woodyear99]

I see where you coming from Captain, and I've had my fair share of issues with Flow. From the dialup like speeds on their internet to the poor reception on the tv service. Things are nice for me now that they HAVE rectified my issues.

As for TSTT yeah I'll say it, I had a VERY bad experience with them on multiple occasions. It left a taste so bad in my mouth that I refuse to go back with them, and on top of that their packages are more expensive per mbit. I am happy with my Flow service at the moment and if it gives trouble again I'll have to complain more.

As I keep pointing out the issue with both ISPs is the wide disparity of service in various areas....both have their problems.

[Spazosaurus]

Thing about it, ive been with TSTT, 3 years ago or more, and yeah, things was rough. We waited on the service for about 6 months, went down constantly, couple times well per day. Customer service was bad, the switch to Flow was a no-brainer.

I know I sounding like a TSTT poster boy, but believe me, I too have had serious issues with their service in the past. Luckily, I have an open mind (more like I was backed into a corner, rabid wolves inches away from chomping on my balls) so I had no choice to jump back in bed with the devil.

That said, their service (to me, as the only person I can speak for is myself) has been infinitely beter than Flow's in this year of 2010. Whatever TSTT did between then and now, they do it right.

I understand and appreciate that everyone's experience is different ISP to ISP. Im not saying that TSTT wtfpwns flow ALL across the board. The message that I hope I was successful in delivering here tonight is that regardless of who you are with, you should never never settle for crappy service. Make noise, be a bloody niusance, if enough people willing to back you, form a protest outside they head office if you have to.

In MY case, I tried with Flow, got absolutely nowhere, now im with TSTT. Service is great, I am paying the same as yall for less than half the bandwidth but it is good and stable. Bet your last cent if that changes in the morning they will be hearing from me, every day, twice a day until I am happy again. If they stop doing it for me and go back to the old nasty ways, I will be ditching them (reluctantly) and going back to Flow, also reluctantly.

You guys work hard for your money (although some of us seem to have a very well fertilized money tree(s) iin the backyard). For that money, make sure you are more satisfied than dis-satisfied else they go figure 'oh well them Trini doh really complain, we go give them whatever nah'

Just saying...

[Wyspa]

Thing about it, ive been with TSTT, 3 years ago or more, and yeah, things was rough. We waited on the service for about 6 months, went down constantly, couple times well per day. Customer service was bad, the switch to Flow was a no-brainer.

I know I sounding like a TSTT poster boy, but believe me, I too have had serious issues with their service in the past. Luckily, I have an open mind (more like I was backed into a corner, rabid wolves inches away from chomping on my balls) so I had no choice to jump back in bed with the devil.

That said, their service (to me, as the only person I can speak for is myself) has been infinitely beter than Flow's in this year of 2010. Whatever TSTT did between then and now, they do it right.

I understand and appreciate that everyone's experience is different ISP to ISP. Im not saying that TSTT wtfpwns flow ALL across the board. The message that I hope I was successful in delivering here tonight is that regardless of who you are with, you should never never settle for crappy service. Make noise, be a bloody niusance, if enough people willing to back you, form a protest outside they head office if you have to.

In MY case, I tried with Flow, got absolutely nowhere, now im with TSTT. Service is great, I am paying the same as yall for less than half the bandwidth but it is good and stable. Bet your last cent if that changes in the morning they will be hearing from me, every day, twice a day until I am happy again. If they stop doing it for me and go back to the old nasty ways, I will be ditching them (reluctantly) and going back to Flow, also reluctantly.

You guys work hard for your money (although some of us seem to have a very well fertilized money tree(s) iin the backyard). For that money, make sure you are more satisfied than dis-satisfied else they go figure 'oh well them Trini doh really complain, we go give them whatever nah'

Just saying...

I couldn't agree with you more.. well said!!! Ah done talk!! lol

[Arcmanov]

This is me at present...







Its good for now, but some of you know the woes I've been having over the past month or so.
I still get frequent disconnects.  All this after a few months of stellar service.  Not sure what happened
at Flow, or in my area over the past month to explain the serious deterioration in service.
More users perhaps?

[TriniXaeno]

extreme lol @ fertilized money tree

well that's much better said than the jibes and quips.

no ISP is perfect. (kinda obvious, but if it feels good saying it out loud, then by all means, go ahead)

So I ask again, now that awesome has had his rant, could anyone on "FLOW" post their speed tests tonight so we can compare performance?

Thanks again to Suzie, Woody, Arcmanov and Apprentice who posted their results thus far.

Arc, that ping looking kinda high in the speedtest though, 578

[Spazosaurus]

Aww I love how you guys tolerate my rants. Ure da best lol

[Arcmanov]

Not sure why the ping in both results are not similar.  Tried it on more than one PC and i get the same result.  Every time.  I think that may be a browser issue..

[TriniXaeno]

hmm.

a browser issue causing a scary ping like that?

what is your ping to www.carigamers.com? Averaging 237ms here.

lol, awesome why you so idle, you don't have men to go and kill in medal of honor or something with yuh low ping connection?

Just did a test again, its 10pm now and things still lookin lil dicey.

Will do another test in the morning, off peak and compare yes

[Arcmanov]

Actually, yes...it does seem like a browser issue.  These results are from my test rig,
with a freshly installed Windows 7 Ultimate, and not much else.






...or it could be a Flash issue, as the pingtest doesn't use Flash.  It uses Javascript.


Ping average to carigamers is about 147 ms.

Investigations immc...

[TriniXaeno]

hmm, my money is on flash.

ent @ investigations. Sherlock Holmes business.

[Spazosaurus]

119ms to carigamers. Or you only want Flow results, my bad amma let u finish lmao.

[woodyear99]

Just did a lil ping

Pinging carigamers.com [72.52.247.183] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=45
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=45
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=45
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=45

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 130ms, Maximum = 131ms, Average = 130ms

[TheApprentice]

Not to alarm you Apprentice, but this is how my troubles started. At first, things would work well in the daytime but as soon as 7pm reach, pressure.

Then eventually it get so bad that the service was horrible horrible horrible ALL the time.

Yes this is the exact repeat of what happened October last year when I first started complaining on this thread. For the past year I've only had one month of consistent service and that is only the month they upgraded the bandwidth. Its heading to the same conclusion and I really getting vocal about it.

After I posted that last speedtest on this thread, about 30mins later it was back to the 1mbps speed.
sigh.
I rel jealous of Woodyear's consistent service :/

What? You think I didnt try with Flow the civilized way? I tried and tried until I realised I wasnt dealing with PEOPLE. I was dealing with ANIMALS who saw me, as the paying customer as a LESSER being than an animal, an insect if you will.

This is what I got on my last phone call to them. I didn't like it at all.

119ms to carigamers. Or you only want Flow results, my bad amma let u finish lmao.

LMAO you troll.


Pinging carigamers.com [72.52.247.183] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=127ms TTL=46
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=127ms TTL=46
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=125ms TTL=46
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=46

Ping statistics for 72.52.247.183:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 125ms, Maximum = 127ms, Average = 126ms

Well this is...good o_O

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ah tonight Flow seems to be very nice to me:




Best speedtest and ping for the past week BUT I assure you tomorrow is a different story

[TriniXaeno]

What time was that apprentice? Offpeak? looking like 2AM or so from your post timestamp

Here are my results this morning





The requisite test to Flow:



and just for kicks, here is one to curacao



Looking at the difference between offpeak tests compared to peak time tests, I'd say the problem is related to traffic shaping on the outside interface of the flow router.

A measure taken to regulate too much demand per area, probably.

Solution A ) nuke your town/city.

Solution B ) Massive increase in bandwidth by Flow to the outside world so such traffic shaping is unnecessary

thanks for the feedback, I'll email in the results today and cross some fingers.

The lag in starcraft last night was unbearable (and unplayable)

Oh, and ping to carigamers is down considerably as well:

Pinging carigamers.com [72.52.247.183] with 32 bytes
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=142ms TTL=46
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=139ms TTL=46
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=139ms TTL=46
Reply from 72.52.247.183: bytes=32 time=140ms TTL=46

[DyN]

My speeds with FLOW 25Mb around 11:30AM


this is what im getting to FLOW servers



to Fort Myers FL





It gradually deteriorates for me till i get 225ms from about 7pm to 1am for the last month or so

Bear in mind i live in south, La Romain per say.

Now i have an appartment up uwi and results there on peak hours are consistently better, will post those later during the day.

[Eroo]

Flow sucks!

Apprentice I used to have horrible horrible speeds with my 10Mbit connection. I downgraded to 2Mbit was still horrible. They upgraded me to 5Mbit and it was bad for the first month but now its moving good. I've gotten torrents up to 600k . There is still a day here and there where it moves like toots but that's few and far between.

However Flow service is HORRIBLE. I complained for months and they didn't give a crap.

Right now for some strange reason it seems I'm paying Blink 79.00 a month for a 5Mbit speed. 

[woodyear99]

Hehe $79 a month for 5 mbit, you can't go wrong :p

Just did a test



I could never understand why both ISPs, would offer a speedtest to their local servers as their only troubleshooting tool over the phone. Obviously having poor speeds to places outside of their network would be an issue lol.