I posted this in the Verizon Direct forum on DSLReports.com where VZ reps offer support:
I think we are now at an impasse. After 6 tech visits and numerous techs suggesting to have the PON Card replaced, this quest to resolve my speed concerns has took a different path altogether. I am still nowhere close to understanding if and when this problem will be resolved.
Today, as a result of my service ticket <TICKETNUM REMOVED>, foreman <NAMEREMOVED> made a calls to see if he could help escalate this further as it seemed quite unconventional that this problem wasn't being solved. He tried to help. Made a few calls to maybe have the PON Card replaced or serviced. This idea didn't fit well with a rep-higher up so they started to investigate further. A few hours later a verizon representative calls me and states that no-one on my PON Card has reported such issues. I have a few issues with this statement.
1. No one religiously runs speedtests to understand if their speeds are bad, most folks wouldn't even know where to test their speeds unless they are tech savvy. And anyone familiar with proving a case should know that to identify an issue, you need to collect lots of data. And that's why I documented things here on this post as much as I could.
2. A latency based degradation would result in trying to figure out what is wrong with the network. For example, pages taking forever to load or simply not loading, packet loss, etc. This isn't very visible in my problem (and probably others who are on my PON Card are seeing the same thing, except its not apparent to them that there is any problem). So to someone using their connection to browse more than to download, they won't notice these issues. However, when you start using a VOIP device to make and receive calls over the connection, it become fairly apparent that something is amiss when your voice sounds choppy because the packets are being received out of order and then you start investigating. First you blame the other guy, as in the VOIP provider. Then you change the provider and hope the problem goes away. When it doesn't, you finally suspect the ISP is upto no good. Again, most people aren't savvy enough to have either of these setups. I do. And I am savvy enough to know when I'm being shortchanged with respect to my connection.
Let's get back to the investigation after the calls were made to replace the PON Card. A rep by the name of Joe calls me (possibly a tier 2 rep), and asks about the type of degradation and when its happening. After giving him the low-down, he calls me back a few hours later stating that they identified the cause of this issue.
Issue according to him is that due to a Verizon Network router malfunction/outage(not the actiontec one, but the commercial grade routers sitting in the middle which route traffic), traffic was re-routed through the router(s) in my path, which now has some increased load and is processing more traffic. He didn't have any ETA of resolution but said he would follow up by Tuesday the latest. So this means, this certainly won't be resolved by then. NOT GOOD.
Mysteriously, now there is a brand new reason for the issues I'm facing: Traffic is being re-routed through a router in my path for some other verizon customer in addition to the normal load of traffic. Great. So fix it. (This deters away from servicing the PON Card, which I still think shouldn't be ruled out as a possibility).
On another note, on the Verizon main forum here on dslreports.com, there were a few posts about FiOS slowdowns in NYC. A week later their problems were solved by re-routing traffic (this happened about a little over a month ago). That traffic must have gone some-place right? I bet this issue resulted in MORE traffic through the routers in my path. If that is the case, this has been on-going for quite some time and it just makes me question the effectiveness of resolving issues such as these in a timely fashion. Either case, no matter what I still don't believe that the PON Card issue is out of the question. It may still be just that.
Here's the most recent speedtest (taken around 9:05PM, it took me a while to compose this post)
I REALLY want to see a resolution in the coming week.
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
SendBufferSize set to [261360]
running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 19.30Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 6.30Mb/s
------ Client System Details ------
OS data: Name = Windows 7, Architecture = x86, Version = 6.1
Java data: Vendor = Oracle Corporation, Version = 1.7.0_51
------ Web100 Detailed Analysis ------
Client Receive Window detected at 65536 bytes.
2.4 Gbps OC-48 link found.
Link set to Full Duplex mode
No network congestion discovered.
Good network cable(s) found
Normal duplex operation found.
Web100 reports the Round trip time = 78.89 msec; the Packet size = 1460 Bytes; and
No packet loss - but packets arrived out-of-order 0.06% of the time
This connection is receiver limited 39.26% of the time.
Increasing the the client's receive buffer (64.0 KB) will improve performance
This connection is sender limited 59.38% of the time.
This connection is network limited 1.35% of the time.
Web100 reports TCP negotiated the optional Performance Settings to:
RFC 2018 Selective Acknowledgment: ON
RFC 896 Nagle Algorithm: ON
RFC 3168 Explicit Congestion Notification: OFF
RFC 1323 Time Stamping: OFF
RFC 1323 Window Scaling: ON
Packet size is preserved End-to-End
Server IP addresses are preserved End-to-End