Shaw ISP Internet Speed Help?

[Fusion]

I am an American students living in the Vancouver area attending University. I have lived here for about four years now, and on campus, Telus is used.

I moved off campus 2 years ago and signed up with Telus due to their low price. I had horrible service for the first 6 months, but after threatening switching, I had not a single problem afterwards. For over a year, I had a constant connection that was never dropped and had great speeds. Torrents commonly maxed out around 120kps.

I recently moved into a new condominium, and was once again faced with the choice of Internet providers, etc... I decided that Shaw's speed claims over Telus were worth it, and the money I'd be saving by switching to VOiP for phone balanced it out. I decided to sign up for their standard plan, which claims to be 5mbps down and 1mbps up. Telus was 1.5 down and 512kbps up, so you can see just how much of a speed increase I expected to see.

I finally got moved it, and the service was installed yesterday. I installed my router, forwarded all my ports correctly that I needed to. I am not using the standard BT or other app ports to insure the ones I am using are not being throttled. I can not seem to get a down speed on BT over 30KiB/s though :( .

I ran some speed tests, and I am not really sure how to interpret the results, but it looks to me as I should be getting better speeds. I also tried testing with the app Acquisiton, which I commonly use to download music. Again, top speed I could get was around 25 to 30, when on Telus I could get well over 100 constantly.

I have forwarded my ports, chosen non-standard ports, etc... What else can I do?

Do the test results look bad or good?

Any help anyone can offer would be great. I searched here and it seems most people have had good experience with shaw, both in speed and support. Am I just missing something? Did I make the right choice by switching?

[Berto]

Shaw suffers from network congestion, at least in my experience it has. Albeit, they are far more a better option than Telus, which is where I am right now. I usually get disconnected from my ADSL connection up to 6 times in half an hour sometimes, which is extremely annoying. I'm thinking of Shaw again in the future, unless I can find some sort of other ISP here in Edmonton.

[benjmon]

Both are crap, your better off with no internet at all.

Currently I can't get above 400 b/s with shaw.

[Liquid]

In populated area's, Telus would be a better choice. If you live in an area with no more than 100-200 houses around you, Shaw would be better.

Also Shaw throttle's bittorrent speeds. I think the cap is 150kB/s (Thats the top I receive since the throttle).

I have shaw and so far its far better than Telus was, but if you are in a heavily populated area then forget it, get Telus (poor service though).

[MrKuro]

my shaw extreme in edmonton is great. From a good server, a regular download can go up to around 700 KB/s. Torrents are usually between 50-200 KB/s, while they have been up round 400-500KB/s. I have no complaints other than the download cap, my extreme service is capped at 60gigs a month, however I can usually download double that and get away with it. Last month I download just under 250 gigs, and uploaded 120gigs, yet no phone call or letter yet, kinda odd but whatever.

however in other areas of the city, shaw is now congested, i live right near a shaw building, my speeds never drop.

With bittorent make sure your router is port-forwarding or that you have the appropriate ports open.

[MrKuro]

The trottle is only on regular high speed internet, they don't monitor or throttle the extreme version, and for a extra 10 bucks i'd rather have my full download speed, and no stupid throtles

[Ryan V]

Don't expect the speeds they advertised with BT. As of lately, a lot of cable ISP?s have been screwing around with the BT speeds using various traffic shaping tools. [Messing up the uploads so you have a slower download] Yes, they're able to control the speed. As to why they are doing that, it?s because there networks are heavily congested and using BT doesn't help at all. BT Usages is rumoured to take up the majority of band witch. Even on the Rogers Network in Ontario there doing that too.

Also check this out...It may help

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,12636566

[allen1090]

The trottle is only on regular high speed internet, they don't monitor or throttle the extreme version, and for a extra 10 bucks i'd rather have my full download speed, and no stupid throtles

585890939[/snapback]

i live in edmonton and have the 'regular high speed' and my torrents can go up to like 250-300kbs some times if im lucky so im not really sure if they have any throttles or whatever :s or i could just be paranoid about this whole thing and not know what im talking about :p \

but now on the other had my upload in BT never goes past 60kb/s is that normal? or no :pinch:

[chconline Veteran]

Shaw suffers from network congestion, at least in my experience it has.  Albeit, they are far more a better option than Telus, which is where I am right now.  I usually get disconnected from my ADSL connection up to 6 times in half an hour sometimes, which is extremely annoying.  I'm thinking of Shaw again in the future, unless I can find some sort of other ISP here in Edmonton.

585890881[/snapback]

my shaw extreme in edmonton is great.  From a good server, a regular download can go up to around 700 KB/s.  Torrents are usually between 50-200 KB/s, while they have been up round 400-500KB/s.  I have no complaints other than the download cap, my extreme service is capped at 60gigs a month, however I can usually download double that and get away with it.  Last month I download just under 250 gigs, and uploaded 120gigs, yet no phone call or letter yet, kinda odd but whatever. 

however in other areas of the city, shaw is now congested, i live right near a shaw building, my speeds never drop.

With bittorent make sure your router is port-forwarding or that you have the appropriate ports open.

585890929[/snapback]

Yeah I live in Edmonton too :laugh: I have Shaw and its darn fast. I can get over 700kbs on STEAM, using High speed... maybe because less people live in my area? I am at Ellerslie Crossing (91st & Ellerslie road)... when I moved in 3 years ago it was even faster... because no one lived here except like 5 neigbours. (Telus ADSL wasnt even here yet at the time :laugh:)

[Fog Dogg]

BTW Shaw uses Ellacoya and theres nothing you can do about it to increase your speed...

[Soham]

get rogers

[mikey1001]

My family that still lives in the Vancouver area used Telus until I said that if they felt like throwing money away, then to please give some to me...the product is old technology and slow by Shaw's standards.

My Shaw is great:

Your download speed : 6863630 bps, or 6702 kbps.

A 837.8 KB/sec transfer rate.

Your upload speed : 987166 bps, or 964 kbps.

and that's without tweaking anything, but checkout dslreports for some good tips to make your connection better. As always, don't rely on one site or one specific time because it might not be your connection, but congestion on the other end.

Oh, if you care about good customer service, then bite the bullet because I have yet to get anything but ignorance and attitude when speaking with Shaw, but when eveything's working, it's FAST.

[Axon]

Check out the speeds I get on Shaw Extreme-I in Maple Ridge (Just suburb of Vancouver):

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?show...couver+Shaw+ISP

Friggen insane speeds.

-Ax

[Fusion]

Axon,

Thank you for your post!

I live in Langley, and am pretty close to Maple Ridge. I got home tonight and downloaded the survivor episode from last week that I missed, and with BT, I got a pretty good 270 peak down. That is well more than twice what I used to get on DSL, so I am very excited about that.

I am really thinking about the extreme version though. For only another 10 dollars a month, it sounds like a really good idea.

[Rudy]

i get 650kb/sec on BT (i have HS Extreme with shaw)

[tkyoshi]

Shaw's network is actually pretty good.

It was terrible with Rogers (In Vancouver area).

Anyway I have Extreme and on servers that can handle the load (ATi, Microsoft, Etc..) i consistantly get awsome speeds. It generally hovers around the 800kb/sec range.

Generally though probably average around 300kb/sec on normal servers. I don't really BT but that also depends on the seeds avail and how much you upload.

I had telus come demo ADSL in my home and it was much much slower than Shaw so they disconnected it with no charge :p.

[Lighthalzen]

In populated area's, Telus would be a better choice.  If you live in an area with no more than 100-200 houses around you, Shaw would be better.

Also Shaw throttle's bittorrent speeds.  I think the cap is 150kB/s (Thats the top I receive since the throttle).

I have shaw and so far its far better than Telus was, but if you are in a heavily populated area then forget it, get Telus (poor service though).

585890903[/snapback]

Bah... Get Shaw no matter how populated the area is... unless you are a lite internet user... Trust me... I have telus, I regret! and Thanks to Danny for making me feel better! *Being Sarcastic*

[MrBear5587]

Presumably if you set your torrent/p2p apps to use none standard ports, and forwarded those in the router then it wouldn't be throttled. Couldn't you set it to use port 80 for example?

[Fusion]

For you with Telus, if you are having problems, disconnects, etc... Try calling them and telling them about it. Don't just sit there and take it. You are paying for their service after all. After about 4 months of bad service, I finally threatened to switch, and in the year and a half I lived at the place after that we never had a single drop or chunk of bad service. It was almost surreal.

[zivan56]

Is the condominium located on Yaletown? If so, get Novus, then you don't need to worry about problems associated with DSL and Cable services. I've had them for 3 years, and would never go back to any other ISP.

[Miran]

Looks like I'll be updating to Shaw Extreme. I have been thinking about it - especially with my brother's addiction to downloading dozens of torrents at a time. When it gets really bad I end up filtering his IP ("uhh.. ya sure... the internet connection must be down").

[Lighthalzen]

Looks like I'll be updating to Shaw Extreme.  I have been thinking about it - especially with my brother's addiction to downloading dozens of torrents at a time.  When it gets really bad I end up filtering his IP ("uhh.. ya sure... the internet connection must be down").

585898644[/snapback]

I am sure he will be happy but Shaw won't. LOL! :woot:

[Quickstrike]

I have gotten up to 900KB/s w/ my Shaw High-speed Regular edition (usually around 650KB's).. No throttling here, you just gotta find a good torrent with lots of fast seeders.

They are really ****ing me off though. I hate the bandwidth limit!!

I have gotten calls from them a few times saying I am downloading 50-60 times my limit. I wish I could just download with no limit like most ISP's in the US.

As you can see in the screenshot.. I haven't been downloading too much. I think I could be a lot worse.

Oh, and I've had Shaw since the first week it came out in Calgary.. must be 5 or so years now. I can say it was a lot faster back then. I could get 1MB/sec downloads off of FTP's quite regularly.

[MuddyMuDmaN]

Hehe....I used to work for Telus, where I live in Edmonton, and I would NEVER use their service or recommend it! Nothing against Telus, I just think Shaw offers a superior product. :p

I just upgraded from Shaw's High Speed to the Extreme package and I'm totally loving it. I think, for the most part, I'm limited by the speed servers are giving me the files I download. :)

As for the trouble you are having, I like to use TCPOptimizer to tweak my Shaw Connection, maybe it could help you out. Also, you might try a direct connection without the router, just to make sure its not causing you the trouble. :)

If neither of those suggestions help, then you might need to contact Shaw and let 'em know your low speed woes. They've got pretty good customer service, so hopefully they'll straighten out your connection quickly.