To start off, the following internet service providers or plans are not available in my area. I live in Southern Florida in a metropolitan area somewhere near Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
- Cox Communications
- Verizon Internet/FiOS
- AT&T UVerse
Comcast may not be a viable option due to spotty coverage in our immediate area. I am begging you to please help me fix or find me new internet. For the love of God, help me.
As I type this, my internet has likely gone out about 5 to 10 times. To most, this wouldn't be common. It may not be your fault, but rather, the ISP's problem.
Well, it is the ISP's problem. And for some reason, they refuse to fix it.
I have had BellSouth Internet ever since my family moved to our current house in 2002. Back then, coverage was superb. I would estimate that before the buyout, we had a 10Mb/s connection, which is certainly better than what we have now. A couple years back, Southern Bell Communications (BellSouth's parent company) was bought out by AT&T and all accounts were transferred to AT&T's database. This wasn't a problem until about a year ago.
I play a metric ton of games, and I usually spend about 6 to 10+ hours on my computer doing homework or playing games a week. A majority are multiplayer selections and because of the strain on our bandwidth I usually refrain from playing them except for on weekends, after 7 o'clock, or after my mom has stopped working on her laptop. Like I said, I never really had problems. Back in 2009, we had to downgrade to a slower internet plan due to the economic downturn. Our family is well off, but we switched just to be safe. I was fine with my 256 kb/s connection and rarely complained, only sometimes wishing I could have maybe 1MB/s to be able to download Steam games at an increased rate.
As time went on, we were generating much more income and were able to switch back to a normal plan if we wanted to, but ignored the opportunity. I continued playing games as normal, and my mom, dad, and I were perfectly fine with what we had at the time. Around July of last year, I asked my mom to switch us back to the 1MB/s to 2MB/s internet plan and she consented. Within a month we had called AT&T and settled the upgrade with the provider. They gave us an estimate of around August 17, about two weeks, to have the bandwidth and connection settled.
Two weeks passed. No difference in our internet speed resulted. I performed a benchmark by attempting to download GTA IV, a download I had estimated to take around 5 hours, a whole 8 hours shorter than my usual download time of 13 hours.
It took 16 hours.
I was visibly pissed. Of course I expect ISPs to be shady, but to forget up and tell us we're getting a connection we're paying an extra 25 dollars for when we obviously aren't is bullstuff. Of course, my mom called and asked about a connection status and the customer service woman claimed that she had done a speed test and that our down and up speeds were what we asked for and to have a nice day. I guess my mom thought it had sufficed, as she had hung up soon after talking with the representative.
I never got that connection, even from the office where the router is based. I still don't have it, a whole 7 to 8 months later. Here's where the stuff starts.
By November, I've forgotten and just continued using my computer without problems. Occasionally the router would have to be restarted every couple weeks or so, but I was fine with that. As long as I could do homework, watch YouTube, and play games I was happy.
I had considered moving to a back room in the house to use as my new bedroom so I could have some more space and a lot more natural light. The room would put me a ways from the router (we use a wireless connection, the house was never wired with ethernet and we never had the desire to have the house wired), but I decided I would just wait a while and see how it played out. By my birthday, I was moved in and had no further problems with the internet.
In January, we all began to have problems. The connection would fluctuate, and would sometimes allow me to go on Steam or Skype, but not access an internet browser. At first it would happen late at night, but it has become more and more frequent to the point that it's happening constantly. As I am typing this, my connection has fluctuated twice and has refused to load Facebook at least 5 times.
So we come to the present. In the past week, I have had to restart my router 142 times, with an average of 15 restarts an hour. It's not only affecting me, but it's affecting my dad as well. My mom has had infrequent problems. Surprisingly, I've haven't had to restart while typing this.
All attempts to resolve the problem have failed. We have called AT&T, only for them to claim there is no problem. I am literally at wit's end. I am asking for recommendations as to what I can do to fix this, or what kind of ISP I can change to so I can be rid of AT&T for good. Any type of help would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
tl;dr: Get banned.
