[GRLUG] AT&T's U-verse DSL service

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Tue, 2011-05-17 at 21:06 -0400, Bob Kline wrote:
> A few people in the group have AT&T's 24 Mbps 
> U-verse DSL service.  I'm interested in knowing
> how the service behaves.  

I'm a very happy U-verse customer; with a much lower plan than 24Mbps.

> e.g., Comcast's services clearly varies with load
> throughout the day, and one sees factors of as
> much as 4 in the bite rate in tests on speedtest.net
> ( Just for reference, Comcast sponsors the Chicago
> test point, and always shows the highest rates... )

Speaking as someone who has access to an OptE-man Fiber connection...
these speed tests are meaningless and pointless.

Do you have performance issues?  That is the only relevant question.  

There is mean throughput, peak throughput, and latency.  Any meaningful
test will benchmark all three, will need to run for hours, and you'll
need to simulate a real-world mix of network traffic.

> So, does AT&T's service act more like a dedicated
> connection, 

There is no such thing as a 'dedicated connection' on the Internet.
Nothing will act like one [from someone who has many point-to-point
circuits as well as a private MPLS cloud].

I see no evidence of last-mile contention on my U-verse circuit.

> like one more less fantasizes a DSL
> connection could have, since you have a "wire"
> right back to the CO?  i.e., does anyone know 
> whether that is the case?  Many things come in
> to play here, including congestion on the bigger
> "wires," but I'm pretty much assuming that test
> server congestion is not an issue.

A big assumption, even after one assumes their test means anything.

> Of course service congestion is a time of day

Maybe, maybe not.  I suspect usage patterns are actually quite complex
and influenced by everything from time of day, to weather, to current
events.



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